Turin in the Middle of August

Once upon a time Turin in the middle of August was a ghost city.
It was the time when the equation Turin = FIAT was very tight and essential, with no alternatives: Turin used to live on FIAT, it was a village built around FIAT.
In August FIAT was closing, and Turin was closing as well.
Everybody was going at the seaside: Piedmontese in Liguria, and the Southern immigrants who came here to work at the welding line were going back home.
Shops had the shutters closed and even the pidgeons were starving.
During that time nobody was yet aware that Piazza Castello is beautiful, and therefore nobody was surprised to see it empty.

Alnwick Castle, or how the Duke of Northumberland is very skilled in tourism marketing

I must confess, I didn't even know that Alnwick Castle existed.

It's been Ginger Cat who, when we were organizing our trip in North-East England this year, has discovered that not only it's been the castle that has been used for the external shootings of Hogwarts, but that, among the many attractions that it offers to its visitors, there are also broomstick flying lessons, just like you do during the first year of the Magic & Wizardy School.

Broomstick flying lessons?? Shoot me.

Since the nerd inside of me doesn't do the slighter effort not to show up (and actually I'm not even sure that I do have a not-nerd part, to be honest), we have immediately put it in our itinerary.

Gdansk: a surprise bonbonnierre

I guess it's true when they say that expectation is the root of all the disappointment.
Or, at least, it's surely quite obvious that, when your expectations aren't quite clear, you might become more open to good surprises.
Poland, to me, has always just meant one of my best friends.
I mean, a twin soul whose pen has happened to cross mine 12 years ago thanks to the will of a good fate - and, even if we had never had the chance to meet in person until now, we've got in touch so deeply since the early beginnings that I guess she is one of the persons who know more about me, including my own shadows.
But about the country itself, I wasn't quite sure about what to expect.
I guess that we Westerns end up to put all the ex communist countries in a sort of similar cauldron, as if the sovietic utopia of level them all and making them all standardized, cancelling their own identity and singular charachteristics, had finally worked out in the end.
But this is just a blinding stereotype based on the sheer flaw of not knowing enough, of course.

Berwick-upon-Tweed, and upon two different worlds...

Berwick-upon-Tweed has the kind of charme of things hanging half way.
Whenever a person is being defined "neither fish nor fowl", it's usually intended in a negative way, as something without any shape or direction, without a defined personality and therefore as something that evokes indifference.

But I also think that hanging halfway hides an enormous potential, a way to be able to be both the things you are suspended between, representing some sort of reconciliation, a junction between two elements that are usually considered very different from each other, if not actually the opposite.
Well, Berwick-upon-Tweed is not English nor Scottish.

Airports tales

When I was a kid to me the airport only meant seeing my dad again.
It wasn't happening that often, but sometimes we were going to pick him up at Caselle, waiting among the shops and the cafes for him to appear between the smoked glass sliding doors.
There was the excitment to see him again, but for me, since the beginning, it had also started to be mixed up with another kind of emotion: the emotion of the airport itself, the emotion of leaving, of selecting and closing your necessities inside a small suitcase to be carried along with you and thinking that now you are here but in a couple of hours you will be thousand of kilometers away.
During those times my biggest travels were Liguria's seaside, less than a 3 hours drive from home: I didn't know yet what was behind those smoke glass sliding doors, I wasn't yet skilled with all the procedures and the rules that flying requires.
I had just seen the slice of world which had been given to me at my birth; but yet there was something in these aseptic and frenetic places which was attracting me in an unexplainable way.
It was the seed of the travel bug which was already growing inside of me.

Newcastle - or how a cat from Turin has befriended with the Geordies

Whenever I visit a big and industrial city I always fear it might turn out too grey, brumpy and busy.
In the urban settlements I visit I'm always looking for that certain welcoming and cosy touch, that respectful bond with their own history and traditions which gives you the impression to step inside an old family's living room, where you can sip a tea looking at the pictures of the grandparents of your host.
But industrial cities are often too pragmatic to care about this aspect: the furniture of their living room is minimal, very modern and functional, and they find it self-defeating to get lost in nostalgic contemplations of the past, since their goal is running towards future as fast as they can.
But Newcastle was inspiring me.
Being from Turin, I was somehow feeling it alike even before actually visiting it.

A day in London with Ginger Cat - and so the adventure starts...

Every story has its own incipit, every travel has its own start, every adventure has a beginning - and Ginger Cat & me usually like to start ours with London.
A bit because we are obliged (since both Turin and Genoa have direct flight connections to the UK only on its capital), but mostly because we love this city, all our British trips, which for us sound more like an homecoming rather than an holiday, start and end in the Eternal London.
This latest travel, for what concerns me, has been preceded by a very hectic week, made of anxious rushes and evenings when headache was transforming me into a lethargy animal - so I haven't even got too much aware of time passing, and, when I went to the airport, I still wasn't able to realize nor to be on vacation, nor to be about to leave for my most beloved country.