ciao ragazzi!

well, i successfully made my trip to palermo and returned in one piece (albiet with a cold and very little energy) to montpellier. how sweet was the sound of french to my ear! in palermo i stretched my brain to new lengths by communicating in four languages... i spoke french with the sicilian festival organizers who didn't speak english, spanish and english with my partner fernando and our italian roommate gabriella, and very broken italian with all of the denizens of the island who didn't speak french, spanish, or english. which was most of them. my friends who spent their university vacations in florence, rome, and venice didn't have any problems. everyone spoke english... but in the south, and especially in sicily, that is not the case.
the first chapter of my adventure...
early monday morning (oct 29) i left montpellier by train to girona, spain (a lovely small-ish city about 100 km from barcelona). the hostel where i had tried to book a room for the night was full, so i spent the whole afternoon walking around the city ringing the doorbells of pensions looking for a bed. i finally found one for 20 euros in the heart of the old city, and promptly took a nap. i got up in the evening and walked around listening to catalan and exploring the street fair...full of vendors of artisanal cheeses, sausages, candies, and breads. the next day i got up again at the crack of dawn (traveling internationally by myself, i always give myself huge buffers of time to get to where i need to be. during the whole trip i was always early, but i was never frantic.) to take the shuttle from the bus station to the girona airport, from where ryan air flies to several locations around europe and jsince only recently, to morocco.
waiting in the airport terminal to board, i heard the woman next to me speaking french to her son. she had cut her finger and was digging in her bag for a bandaid. i happened to have one in an outside pocket of my duffel bag, so i offered it to her. she thanked me and asked where i was from (i'm content for the moment to still be identifiably foreign when i speak french, but not obviously american). i told her and she said, oh! i'm irish! we can speak english. so we did. she and her husband and son, who was about 11, were going on a volcano -themed vacation, primarily to see Etna. we boarded the flight together (there are not assigned seats on ryan air flights) and they let me look at their copy of "italien pour les nuls" (italian for dummies). the little boy was sitting in the window seat in the row in front of me, and from time to time he turned around to smile at me as we both watched the passage of the spectacular mediterranean clouds below. we touched down in trapani (about 2 hours from palermo) around 1 pm, and i parted ways with the family of volcano enthusiasts.
the information desk agent was absent, indefinitely, for lunch, so all of us from the flight who were trying to get to palermo were left to our own devices to find out when there was a bus to the city. everyone had heard something different, and there was no information to be found. a man asked me in english if i knew anything about it, and i told him that i had heard that there was one every 20 minutes (not at all true). he said, oh, you speak english a lot!, thinking that i was italian or spanish. i laughed and said, well, just a little bit. i'm from the states... we started talking, and spent the next 4 hours (waiting for the bus and when it finally came, during the two hours on the road) in conversation about linguistics, etymology, politics, travel, and all of the random facts that he knew about everything.... he's a norwegian named hans, about 40 years old, who works about 6 months out of the year and travels the rest (given that oslo is one of the most expensive cities in the world, everywhere else he goes is cheaper than living at home). every winter he spends 2 months in india, every november 2 weeks in sicily with friends... he told me that geologically, sicily belongs to africa, given that it's on the same tectonic plate. he also pointed out something that i had never payed attention to, geographically- that sicily is farther south than the northern regions of tunisia and algeria. the climate and flora attest to that.
the theme of the sicilian landscape is contrast. there's the sea; the jagged, striated, rocky mountains jutting from the rolling fields, covered with scrubby plants and trees in browns and dark greens; rows of gnarly olive trees (which were being harvested) growing next to clusters of flowering cacti; sheep and goats grazing in pastures contained by timeless rock walls; vineyards; banana trees, mimosas, fig trees, and dozens of other tropical plants. when we finally got to palermo, hans gave me his city map, which he didn't need, and his email address.
one never travels alone.
i set off to find the piazza politeama, where the festival organizers with whom i had been in contact had told me to go to receive directions to the dance school where i was staying. i finally made it there and was met by the school's secretary (who spoke decent french), who welcomed me and gave me a set of keys. later i met one of the main festival organizers, who was teaching tango classes at the school that night. she used to live in france, so although she didn't speak english, we had no trouble communicating. the festival didn't start until the next evening, so i had all of that night and the next day to rest and explore, find a grocery store, and get to know downtown palermo.
to be continued.... (get on my case if i neglect to do so :D)