I don't know what I was expecting from the ferry from Patra to Bari, but I certainly wasn't expecting the Superfast IV. After the little Notos (and before that a ferry career that has basically being confined to the North Sea) the Superfast felt like the Trocodero Centre on water. Ten decks high and who knows how long, it had mirrored escalators that took you up to the reception area, comfy sofas everywhere, three (or was it four?) bars, a pool, two restaurants and a disco. It was only going to be 14 hours from Greece to Italy but I reckon that if even 10 minutes passed without your being offered the chance to drink, eat, shop, dance, swim or play fruit machines, the company would have considered it had failed.
I had gone not for a cabin - they looked nice but were expensive - but for what the Superfast called 'Air Seats', which were one up from sleeping on the deck and anyway I didn't have a sleeping bag. This was a mistake really. What you got was a place in a grim, hermetically sealed box of a room where a few rows of airline-style seats were lined up in front of a giant video screen that, on our sailing, showed 'Troy' at least twice and then some sci-fi film with Will Smith in it until we managed to get them to switch it off at 2am. What they wouldn't switch off - or even turn down - were the overhead lights, which stayed on all night ('for emergency reasons') pumping out a good megawatt of icy white glare each. Add to that the ridiculously uncomfortable 'air seats' and sleep was pretty much miraculous. I managed to get some by putting in my ear plugs - easily the best thing I packed this whole trip - and putting a towel and a my jumper over my face. The deck would have been nicer.
At about 4am I woke up and went for a little walk. The DVD soundtrack had for some reason come on again, though not the video, and the sound of, I think, Maggie Smith as Mary Poppins suddenly filled the cabin in a rather creepy way. Up on deck there was a little breeze and lots of stars and on the way down again I thought I would look in on the disco. I cracked open the door to find myself in a huge black room, pounding with hi-energy Eurotrash and the whole thing a riot of flashing blue neon lights, sparkling chrome, strobes and a spinning mirror ball, as if the DJ had set all the controls to MAX and walked out. In the middle of all of this, sitting at the bar with a vodka and tonic, was a single young woman staring at herself in the mirror and a bored-looking barman gazing past her into middle distance. Neither looked as if they had moved for hours. I nipped back out again before they spotted me and went and found someone to turn off Maggie Smith.
After all of that Bari was nicely low-key, though arriving there on a Saturday morning was like walking into some bizarre gender-role experiment. After living in London, it's easy to forget that there are still parts of the European Union like the south of Italy. Everywhere you looked, women and young girls were scrubbing, sweeping, hanging out washing, carrying bags of shopping and making pasta in kitchens that opened to the street, while groups of men and boys stood around on the street corners eyeing up each other's Vespas, grunting occasionally and putting the world to rights. No wonder Germaine Greer sticks to Tuscany.
The old town, where I was staying in the least useful hostel in the world - check in at 11 (not before), leave your stuff there but have no access to it until 5, then check out the next morning before 9.30 - is lovely in a classic Italian old town kind of way. I did some exploring, lost count of the shrines to Madonnas of this and that dotted up and down the little alleyways and glanced inside the cathedral. Then I took a bus to a tiny beach just down the coast where everyone has a nice paddle in an incredibly shallow bit of the Med.
The beach is all very family and a little old fashioned and really the only thing to do in Bari, so I went again today before getting my train. The one little bar was hosting what is obviously a regular Sunday morning Latin dance session. LIttle groups of three generations of the same family sat around in the sun and listened to dad sound off about something or other. And the lifeguard and his mates, light years away from the world of Hasselhoff and Anderson, were reading the Ikea catalogue.
Now I am on the overnight to Paris. I am a staying there with Gilles and Joel tomorrow night - it'll be great to see them - and then on Tuesday lunchtime I'll be back in London and my trip will be over.
There'll be plenty of time for reflection and reminiscence when I get back, of course, but what started as a small idea to learn some Hebrew in Israel has turned out to be a wonderful adventure. I have met some incredibly interesting people and been to some unexpectedly fascinating places.
It's also been fun writing this blog and I want to say thanks to those of you who have been reading it and sending comments. One of the very best things about being back in London will be seeing you all in person again and I am really looking forward to that.
But there's another reason I'm looking forward to being back too. When I set off from Marion and Steph's house back in June I remember looking round at the sights that were familiar to me (including the end of my own road) and wondering if I would see them in a different light when I got back. Now I am only a day or so from being home again, all I can say is I very much hope so. Call it the 'Wizard of Oz' complex if you want - and forgive me one last schmaltzy moment - but the way travel makes us see the familiar in a fresh way is, for me, one of the real joys of setting off from home in the first place. And we are lucky we live in a time and in a place that makes travel so easy. So, I'll sign off now and here's to all our travels in the future and plenty of discoveries to come.
David
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