Bergamo - not just an airport

Italy, XI.2012

It's 6 a.m. when severe cold air wakes me up from anyway frequently interrupted sleep. Or maybe it is not the coldness or sense of danger when sleeping without roof over the head, in the spot found fifteen minutes before laying down the head, about thirty meters from a park alley. Sense which protected me so far from falling in some more serious "accommodation trouble".

I get up from my lair made of newspapers under a tree. It was Natalia's idea - brilliant anyway, because my sleeping bag haven't got wet from the ground. The idea was the more ironic that free newspapers in Bergamo contain mostly advertisements of real estates... Maybe we don't have our four walls, but thanks to them we've had our own floor in a picturesque italian town.

This is how you get around when you've got only a small luggage in Wizzair, and that means no tent. We didn't manage to find any couch host in Bergamo and for renting any accommodation here we would pay as much as for the airplane ticket. Both ways.

Why do people put fences everywhere, once they get the right to do so? Previous night we've been looking for a place for our newspaper lair for a long time, slowly losing hope that we'd find anything. Everything closed, barred, padlocks, barriers, gates, even barbed wire. Excessive space room for them, and what harm could do two sleeping bags after all?

Bergamo - it is not just an airport on the way to Milano

I've heard about Bergamo in book written by Marzena Filipczak "Tanie latanie" ("Flying cheaply"), from where I got the impression it is more worth visiting than the famous city of Milano. I got the description of small cobblestone streets in the evening stuck in my mind. Nevertheless when we've bought the tickets, the main theme was "We're flying to Milano!". Rookie mistake.

Honestly, I have a thing for small towns where nothing is happening, at least on the surface. Where with one bus you can do a tour through the whole city, not getting lost in counting stops. Maybe this is why Bergamo became far more impressing destintion for me than Milano itself. Milano full of tourists, full of trash, noise and traffic. Bergamo offers something totally different.

Visitor is awaited by landscape of magnificent walls of Citta Alta, immediately pointing out where the strength of the city comes from. For building 6 kilometers of the city walls a big part of the town has been brought down, and the actual costs exceed the projected budget over twenty times. This kind of budget changes aren't to be found even in the projects funded by the European Union.

The city walls are surrounding a high hill, which you can climb by several small streets winding and turning among old italian buildings. You could get easily lost if it's not for one essential hint - always go upwards. So we;re going, always up, in several days getting to know almost every of numerous ways from the lower city.

On the top you can find a sleepy - at least in the beginning of November - square. Pigeons don't mind being a cliche element of the landscape, they're quite comfortable with this. A middle-aged man in classy coat stops to read newspaper. On the other side of the square a young boy kneels, takes out his guitar from the case. I just love "wasting" hours watching the slow rhythm of people slowly flowing through the arteries and heart of the city. Bergamo is perfect for this purpose.

What to eat

Pizza, of course. In Bergamo I've tasted the best pizza in my life, nothing like the ones served in Poland. The amount and smoothness of the cheese cannot be compared with anything. Bought per kilo, we've paid a lot for our bum standards, but it was worth it.

What to drink 

Italy just as other southern countries, brings immediately a thought of wine. And that would be totally correct. But during my second visit in Bergamo my host, Andrea, showed me the other face of liquor face of Italy - amaro. A liquor made from herbs, deriving from mountain monasteries. And used as a remedy for everything, a glass after the meal to help digesting. A glass, or two.

Maybe it is caused by the contrast with a close and more famous neighbour - Milano. Maybe Bergamo is not so peaceful as it looks? I've spent around 8-9 days in total there, so what can I know. But for me it stays a highly recommended place to visit if you are around the Bergamo airport. Or northern Italy.


Practical information (spoiler alert):
- you can get from the airport to the city quite cheaply with public transportation. No shuttle stuff
- the delicious pizza I wrote about can be found on Via Gombito, west from Pizza Vecchia. Most probably you can spot the place by the people waiting in line in front of it
- quite good prices for amaro in Citta Alta can be found on the north end of Via Salvecchio
- tourist information can be found by the railway and bus station, behind McDonald's
- wifi in whole northern Italy is some creepy joke. Even for getting the free one (McDonald's) you have to register with phone number. Italian one.
- cheap connections to the mountains - Orobie or Lecco (mountains + awesome lake)
- there is baggage deposit close to the airport in the shopping mall.
- tickets to Milano (if you have to go...) are around 5 euro, not much difference between bus and train

Interspaces

As I was telling the story of the trip Beograd - Sevilla, I wrote a lot about big cities and busy highways. I left out three of very important episodes which as far away from this atmosphere, happening far away from lively city centers of Barcelona, Milano or Zagreb. Taking place in kind of different time and space, then the rest, containing totally different experiences and being a separate part of the wandering. A complimentary part, but at the same time being a crucial fragment of the trip. Part allowing to taste solitude and this freedom known so well from mountain hiking.

Monfalcone

Between Trieste and Milano we got "stuck" for one day in Monfalcone. A town, where there's practically nothing - and that was the beauty of it. The main square caught in full sun, surrounded by a few old buildings - but none of them on the checklist of sights-to-see. Specific void of time and space between the train and next ride from Blablacar, a void that can be filled freely, but there is not much to fill it with. One thing left is to wander through the streets without any purpose, to sit on every other bench hoping that it will differ from the previous. We're left with time to look at everything carefully - buildings, people, ourselves. Timetasting.

Setting the camp in nearby forest and a trip to the town.

Albino

After making the decision about not going further with hitchhiking we had three days to spend somewhere around Bergamo. Why not Apls, then? We got to the last tram going from Bergamo to Albino and this way we got to next unknown town late in the evening, looking for a place for the tent. Going higher and higher, as far as we could from the last buildings of Albino.

This is how we inhabited a stone mine with view on the mountains, with a little a pathway leading down and with all the time that is possible to have during twenty four hours.

Time for a good breakfast in the morning, late supper with the candlelight of thousand city lights. For talking, playing guitar and cards, and when we ran out of knwon games, to invent new ones. With time for trip "to the town" - again with no purpose, just to drink a beer and look at the people, at the kids spinning on a merry-go-round on Sunday morning. Tasting the remnants of yesterdays party on the main square, still present in the air. Time to find a kilogram cake in a discount price in a small shop and time to enjoy it after we get back to our tent hidden in the stone mine.

And this kind of spending time delivers adventures not less exciting than being in big cities - such as discovering that the stone mine is not totally abandoned and that there are workers on the only way inside, while all of the things and our tent stayed up there...

Guillena

Tired of Sevilla we've spot first random location with a tree sign on map and we hopped on the bus to camp for two more days while waiting for plane back home. Set up the tent under a cactus-like plant, cook carbonara with spanish wine, watch a movie in a forest cinema. Buy strange fruits for some pennies just to find out, that they taste like feet.

Or to gather our things early in the morning and with flashlights on our heads make sandwiches for the road. For the airports in Sevilla and Bergamo, which was our last stop together, before Dani would return to Bulgaria and I would go to Poland, to pack my bags before moving to Sofia.

Heinz, night at a cementary and italian haven

Croatia & Italy, IX.2013

- Welcome, my name is Heinz Guderian, general of Panzergruppe.

What the hell? A middle-sized, dark-haired man about 25 years old and with left arm in a cast approaches us and greets me with his right hand. When he starts to speak again I gather all my croation powers on trying to understand what is he trying to tell us. He points on our beers, from which I conclude he wants us to buy him one. I refuse, 'cause in the end we have little kunas ourselves. He shakes his head in disapproval and disappears in the bar.

To our surprise, he appears again holding two bottles of beer and hands them to us. He stutters a bit, but we manage to understand him.

- You see... you see, what kind of man would I be, if I wouldn't agree my fellow man with a bottle of beer... - he explains. What is this all about? He points at my eyes.

- You and me, you see... You and me, we are arian race, we've got blue eyes. We've got to help each other. - if introducing himself as a general of a Nazi army hasn't convinced me that he's nuts, his dark eyes has done the job. - You see, I am Adolf Hitler. - he salutes us. In this moment Dani is really scared, taking into consideration my polish nationality [as well as her dark hair, eyes and skin - Dani] - We've got to help each other for the sake of german race. - he turns back and marches into the bar. In just a moment he returns carrying two more bottles. And then comes the awaited question to me (he ignores Dani all the time):

- Where are you from? From Germany?

Possible consequences of the answer are running through my head, but what the heck.

- No, from Poland.

He thinks about my answer for a bit, but finally salutes me, gives me one more "we've got to help each other, what kind of a man would I be if I wouldn't buy you a beer" and returns to bar. Right now all we want is to empty our bottles as soon as possible and find a place to spend the night, cause the dawn begind to fall, but we haven't even started on the second bottle.

Heinz/Adolf looks from the bar's door and asks me from out of the blue:

- Do you want to kiss me? - from inside of the bar we hear the laughter of Krapina inhabitants, who probably provoked him to ask this. It all turns into some grim absurd... I kindly refuse, we grab the unfinished beers and rush away to find a place for the night.

We head up the hill, in the direction of a forest, a bit lost on the streets. Finally, we get out of Krapina, we pass a small chapel, a cementary and in the edge of a forest we put out the tent. I'm cooking some pasta, Dani arranges the tent. In the morning, when we look out of the tent, it turns out that in the dark we haven't really passed the cementary...

Trying to get out of Krapina we find communication problems again, by foot we get to another village. Luckily, from there a friendly driver takes us all the way to Celje in Slovenia. We leave our luggage at the train station and for the first time we go out to the city without backpacks and in the full sun.

We decide not to take risks of hitchhiking and to Ljubljana we go by a cheap train. About what interesting is there to be found in Ljubljana - Metelkova Mesto - I'll try to write later. We sleep in the city park, which freaks out Dani again, and in the morning we continue with public nad private transportation. First - to windy Trieste:

... with Trenitalia to Monfalcone - next "in the end of the world" type of place, where even the touristic information they don't speak in english, starting every sentence from a friendly "Alora":

... and with the helo of Blablacar and wide metro system we reach well-known Milano. Here we find our peaceful haven at Fabio's place, who's helpful as always. Great thanks, man!

Full of new optymism, energy and aperitivo-food, with washed clothes, after a hot shower and night in comfort, we decide to give hitchhiking one more chance - in the end this is what we wanted to do in this wandering. We get out of Milano accoring to Hitchwiki only to find that the described spot is taken by road police patrol... so we go a bit further, in the end spending hour and a half holding sign TORINO like idiots on the side of a road in totally other direction. A search for internet place, good mood fades away, feeling of being lost and frustration return.

Slowly a thought appears - maybe we can look for cheap flights to Barcelona? There's probably no chance for that, but we can take a peek...