1995 Siena, Bagno Vignoni, Pienza

31.1.95 Siena

Sitting in "Il Palio" café – probably where I sat some 16 or so years ago.  Glorious view – clear blue sky, sun low with shadows long.  The harmony of this space: the buildings in all their disproportionateness, flow and rumple together.  Sitting by the fountain, children throw coriandoli (confetti).  One boy, typically Italian, with hard grey eyes, laughing.  Even the shop signs harmonious in their white on ochre.

Back in the Hotel Palazzo Ravizza (near Porta San Marco).  Lovely, old 18th-century palazzo – we have fine view south-west.  Tall room, narrow staircases, fading frescoes on the ceiling.  Outside, a grand piano in the library (hi, Venezia…).  Double doors – sporting the oak…

Wandering around the city.  Two things I remember: the main square (of course), climbing the tower and seeing its long shadow in the piazza below, and – crazily enough – memories of the square where the buses leave (I think – I also have a slight feeling that this was in Nerja…).  The Duomo I remember not at all; San Domenico, I recall better (but hideous).  The streets remind me of Bergamo (Alta), Urbino – and San Gimignano.  Especially the great high walls of the streets as they follow the roads.  And something I realised for the first time today – why these streets are so different: they are clothed entirely in stone, stone walls and stone pavements, and that there are no levels in the street -  which means that you walk along stone channels.

As dusk fell, so the Senesi appeared.  Few tourists in evidence here – why I love travelling at this time.

1.2.95 Siena

I lied: one other thing I remember from here: the entrance to the Pinacoteca, where we now are.  Bigger even than I remembered – nice to find the work of Sofonisba Anguissola.  The Domenico Beccafummi cartoons good.

In the piazza again: sun strong, air cool, happy buzz of people just sitting, talking.  A plane passes high overhead, a single prop swooping low round the space.  The reflected light of the Fonte Gaia shimmers on the marble (copies, but good enough).  The huge finger of the tower's shadow passes round the walls.  To the Café Victoria (tea room/American bar) for an overpriced cappuccino – but civilised surroundings – a bit like a café I recall in Bergamo (Città Alta).  Classic 12-bar blues in the background.

We finally find the Loggia del Papa – covered in scaffolding.  To the Campo, where the most delicate violet suffuses the western sky, and a sliver of moon hangs almost horizontally.  The ridiculous striped tower of the Duomo peeps over the girdling houses.  The sodium lamps look beautiful (or rather what their otherwise prosaic lights illuminate does).  Completely clear sky.  Magic.  One thing I can say: things here look different from what they were 16 years ago.  Then, everything was beautiful and strange; now they are beautiful and familiar.

To Osteria Le Logge.  Fine interior – one book on Primo Conti in the bookcase.  We have just moved – smokers joined us on our (big) table.  Wonderful making smokers unhappy…

2.2.95 Siena

To the Abbazia di Monte Oliveto Maggiore, with Signorelli and Sodoma.  Glorious countryside – hilltop houses, lines of trees – art in nature.  "Come benedetto riceve li due giovanetti romani mauro e placido" – a riot of colours and faces and forms – the distant landscape.  Church rather dull.

Bagno Vignoni – Tarkovsky's Nostalghia (the church at the end is San Galgano).  Tiny village (no cars in centre).  There is almost nothing here: the baths, a square around them, hills, sun, sky, peace – my god, è bello qui… Down to the hot steam.  Greenish, with deposits everywhere.  Slight whiff of sulphur.  Glorious views – a handful of hilltop towns in the hazy distance.  A tower to the south, rolling bumpy hills everywhere.

To Pienza, rising through the perfect Tuscan landscape.  Sette Di Vino osteria – eating local pecorino et al.  Small, friendly.  The sun shining through the window.  Amazing, small, perfectly-formed classical town – that never grew.  Inside the Duomo – very sober, but very light (jet fighters screech overhead like devils).  Not very Italian, but nice – facade especially.  

To San Biagio – surely the most perfect church ever created.  The stone, living almost, bubbling in its stillness, that off-white/yellow/grey, the flecks and pocks like lived-in flesh.  The curves of the vault touch like figures in a geometric image.  Outside, in the sun, huge triglyphs, everything writ large and simple.  That stone.  Viva Sangallo.  The tiny rosettes on the external pilasters – that small, allowed vanity.  The balustrade – god's balcony over the altar…

In Al Marsili restaurant – couldn't eat – left rapidly – ill...

More destinations:

1993 Urbino

Moody's Black Notebook Travels

1996 Torino

23.2.96 Torino

Waiting outside the hall where the rehearsal for Monteverdi's "Orfeo" is taking place.  Surrounded by singers – half-loving, half-hating each other.  Bitching, gossiping, trying to gain the advantage.  Torino, a city I've been to once – a press trip for 36 hours, staying up to 2am, and rising at 5am to walk through the silent city.  Typically, I can't remember the company that took me, but I presume it was Olivetti. Torino, the rectilinear city (I have memories of a de Chirico vista of facades).  To Gozzano's Café - Caffè Baratti & Milano for obscene cakes (and fine pizzette).  

To the La Capannina – excellent food, atrocious people – well, not really.  Very atmospheric – saxophones on the wall, clocks in the cabinets, walkie-talkies.  What looks like a group with three Indonesians to our left.

24.2.96 Torino

Museo Egizio.  Like an abandoned film set the entrance – parts closed off, drapes – leading to an apology of a museum.  For the first time, I feel the injustice of exposing mummies to the gawping eyes of the world.  Typically Italian, alas, the neglect of these resonant objects.  Most worryingly, the collections from the intact tombs – perfectly preserved objects – are surely rotting even as we speak.  So little explanation, so little grandeur coming through.  A parody of a dusty dull museum.  

Scappiamo, and walk through the freezing backstreets, under the galleries (like Bologna), to the Mole Antonelliana – what is perhaps the most ridiculous building I know.  It looks simply as if five or six constructions have been piled on top of each other, with no thought to harmony (including two Greek temples).  But I like it, for some reason.

More destinations:

1993 Urbino

Moody's Black Notebook Travels

1994 Trieste, Ljubljana

30.9.94 Venice, Trieste

Not in Venice, alas, but in the station, having arrived from Brescia.  On the way to Trieste, then Ljubljana.   But already a sense of being on the edge: the train half empty (overflowing to Verona), the land about to become undiscovered territory for me.  Reading "Trieste" – Magris – rather dry, but giving a good sense of that smarrimento.  Fine pale blue sky outside, hurtling towards the edge.

Note how each art has its peak when form and content match.  Architecture – the Romans, when engineering meets art; painting in the Renaissance, man the measure; music – eighteenth-century Austria.  Only literature has many – because language is arbitrary and changeable.  Other arts – architecture, sculpture (Greece), music, painting – all have an obvious measure, that of reality, harmony, representation…  Words are different (only poetry has non-arbitrary structures – sonnet the peak of these in some sense).

Trieste – in the Piazza Unità d'Italia.  Entering it I had the strange sensation that the fourth side was a huge white wall (clouds – though the sun is quite strong now through the clouds).  Hotel Roma (couldn't find the bathroom – behind a curtain of what looked like a windows).  Changed money into Tolars – confused by the rates, but I think 1T is about a halfpenny (that is 5000T = £25).  Delighted to hear the hotel receptionists talking in Slovenian – which I recognised from its similarity to Czech (and just why do we spell it that way?)

Cappuccino here – plus water and sweets: L.4000. - civilised.  I sit, of course, in the Caffè degli Specchi.  Miramare glimpsed on the way in (and Duino – thus Rilke – nearby).  To the Teatro Romano, - reminds me of Alexandria – not very moving, bricks mostly.  Sun very watery.  Sitting now (5pm) on the superbly-named Molo Audace.  Very strange – everything very strange.  Huge rucked sky above, very high clouds; sun recognisably that of Venice.  Air cool and full of the smells of water.  Men and boys fishing (can't helping thinking of that short story I wrote decades ago…).  A huge wharf being rebuilt – the sound of a man hammering carries so clearly across the water.  The aspect of the city strange as if falling into the sea – it doesn't stop.  Very long front.  To my right I may have seen the Miramare out in the haze.  Fish (small and round) in the (deep) water by us.

Before, spent a couple of hours in the bookshops here.  Aptly for Joyce's sometime city, there are many, both for new and – especially – for old (bells clang tinnily, a boat putters by).  Wandering in and out of the worlds held in these bookshops (old pornography, manuals – in Italian – for the Sinclair ZX80, poems in dialect, German literature in 50 volumes, 2000L each – alas, Grillparzer incomplete) I suddenly realise that this is precisely what the Internet is like: a huge warehouse of barely-ordered books.  Hence the excitement (mine) and the frustrations (of most people).  Next to me, two old men chatter in something that seems to hover between heavy dialect (alla Veneziana) and Slovene.  Doubtless the latter has heavily influenced the former.  People beginning to take their promenades now.  Light on the water like pale gold.

Bought: Slapater "Il Mio Carso" and Sabra – selection of poetry - plus book on Trieste and northern writers (Rilke, Joyce, etc, and Magris – all my heroes, well, almost).  Certainly this sense of the edge, a cavallo various lands and cultures, makes this my kind of place. I've not ever bothered "doing" the city such as it is: just being here, drinking coffee, roaming around in bookshop is enough.  I'll perhaps rise early and go for a morning stroll before leaving tomorrow.

Along the front, practically every large building has pillars or pilasters stuck on, purely as ornament.  To the Sala Tripcovich – right by the station, and so by my hotel – for a concert – Sibelius (Swan of Tuonela"_ and Bruckner #2.  Strange edifice: modern, shell-like – perhaps while they're restoring the Teatro Verdi.  Bloody pilasters again.  Probably sold out (few seats when I booked – 30,000L.), violins desperately practising.  Very well turned-out audience – I feared I'd be the only tie-less one.  The ushers very flash in their black uniforms and brass buttons.

1.10.94 Slovenia

Just inside the border.  A long passage – it began to feel quite menacing, a mistake.  That sudden sense of no longer understanding the language (though its links to Czech are clear).  Outside rolling green hills, neat houses, cheap cars.  It is very strange to be in a country I barely knew existed.  Ljubljana is wonderful – but closed: 1pm is the witching hour here.  Now, in Gostilna, near the Shoemaker's Bridge.  Gorgeous autumn day: warm sun, stiff breeze, the trees turning, leaves falling as the branches shiver.

Hotel (Grand Union) looks excellent value for about £40 – big room, clean, view of Miklošičev park.  Young women quite swish here – relaxed and sophisticated-looking.  [Music in the distance – saw ZDF van – the Germans invading already.]  German tourists, Italians, Japanese.  Flash Ferrari parked nearby – there is money here, it seems.   Rushed around madly, looking for two things: toothbrush and film.  The former found, but not the latter.  I have decided to speak in Italian here – seems generally understood.  

On the train, families laden with consumer goods – but the customs not too nosy – probably good for the country.  You know you crossed some invisible line when you're not only allowed to traverse the railway lines – but have to, in order to leave.  Ljubljanica the river here.  Fine Baroque facades everywhere.  A kind of Balkan Dublin (Ljubljanica ~ Liffey).  How far away that city seems… Once again, I have that schizophrenic sense of being in Ljubljana – and not being here, because this is clearly impossible.

A nice trout, heavily garnished with garrr-lic.  Two decilitres of white wine, patate all'Istria – what more could one ask…?  [The music last night variable: the conductor (American?) rather stiff – except in the last movement of the Bruckner 2 – the best I've heard.]  One thing: small noses are rare here.  With the coffee, a tiny chocolate – Croat – whose flavour is pure Mallorca of 30 years ago.  2050 Tolars all told (there's that contingent onomatopoeia again) about £10 – not that cheap – but least they take Visa.

Walking along the chestnut alley of Tomšičeva ulica – a rain of conkers – are they 56ers or 45ers – what is the magic number?  Beside the opera house – wild Empire style – playing "Die Fledermaus" tonight – I think, since it is in Slovenian.  But passing to Cankarjev dom, I see a sign advertising Pogorelić – tonight...hmm. After the National Gallery (the usual nth-rate Italians and Germans – touching in their own way), across the Ljubljanica to Stari trg – and a bookshop/gallery that is open.  Škuc galerija – typical over-excited young people's stuff – nice.

Well, I didn't go to the concert (I don't even know if there were tickets…)  I'd like to have seen old Igo (lovely waistcoat), but the concert (Tchaikovsky – 1812, Piano Concerto #1, Symphony #4) would hardly have shown him off at his best.  Instead I watch the news on RTL (why do female German newsreaders all have this blonde Nazi look?), and then wander the city (under the castle, which seems the happening place in  Ljubljana, although small).  I sit, horror of horrors, in the Pizzeria Ljubljana Dvor – not really hungry, but I want to be near the river.  I can see the castle tower from here.  Interesting (though hardly surprising) that Italian is often given as language #2 on menus etc.

Walking around the city – including dank cathedral alleys – it felt very safe – old ladies doing the same.  In many ways, Slovenia looks to be one of the most successful "new" countries of the Eastern Bloc.  It must have been pretty exciting as it broke away from what the Balkan Times (published in Greece) insisted on calling FRYugoslavia (along with FYROM – Macedonia to you and me – ah, these children…).  A lovely city to stroll through, of course, with the river, the castle, the Baroque facades casting deep shadows, the bridges… Reminds me of Budapest, or rather of Buda, the back streets…

One thing that is increasingly clear to me are the cognitive spheres of influence.  For example, if you want to know what is happening in Eastern Europe, you read German newspapers.  For the Middle East, French; for South America, Spanish.  For Japan and Far East I suppose the US press is more alert – though less so than the others, aforementioned.  Which begs the question: why read UK press?  For the ex-Empire, perhaps – India, South Africa (doesn't sound very convincing…). Walking around the National Gallery, the sense of how difficult it is to start from so little. I/we take so much for granted in terms of cultural assumptions – how much is a given.  [For some reason, this restaurant brought back memories of the café by the Pergamon Museum…]

2.10.94 Ljubljana

In the Gallery of Modern Art.  Rather less depressing than that of the National Gallery: after all, creating great modern art is (theoretically) open to all.  And even though the exhibition here is pretty weak, I wonder whether Slovenia in a sense is a hope for the future.  After all, it has only two million inhabitants, but has an opera house, various museums, theatre, etc. - that is, is functional.  If the world does split into thousands of "nations", perhaps they can survive and thrive. Note that the great galleries – in London, Paris, New York – are all built on power – empire/money etc.  - but not here.

Large if not wonderful breakfast.  Then to the market – to find that today there is no flea market – perhaps because of a bloody ZDF concert (the strains of sickly-sweet Bavarian sentimentality fill the air).  Also a few spots of rain initially, but these soon pass.  Sky clearing, sun trying to emerge.  On the way here, passed some kind of French cultural institution.  Stuff on Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.  Must read his books: the ones on flying across the desert et al. Look tremendous – the prose carries an exactitude but also a tremendous sense of being spent – French culture guttering in a century that it is extrinsic to (the Magris effect).  

At the top of the Castle Tower – hazy air, but fine view.  Unfortunately, the ghastly music comes up too.  No café here, and I'm starving.  I see that the café on the "skyscraper" is open, so I may slog back there.  Hills everywhere.  Very strange place: even though the castle itself is undergoing renovation, and therefore dead, buried deep in its bowels is this trendy bar (no food, alas).  Thumping bass line, gaudy neons, rough iron walls – feels very New York. All the young trendies here.

The National Museum had the usual Roman tombstones and stuffed birds – plus a rather fine display of bronze age stuff, including a stunning ceremonial cup/bucket with interesting scenes.  Among which a man playing the pan pipes...ah, to hear that music.  Unreasonably, I like it here.  Basically, inside a gutted castle building, lots of polished marble, grainy wood, metal (fine double staircase).  Stone walls of the castle evident.  Well stocked bar.

Afterwards, to the hotel for an apple, then to the 12th floor of the skyscraper.  Worrying coming up here: rickety old lift, and when I got to the kavarna – it wouldn't let me out.  Also slight put off by appalling pix of the strip-tease that apparently takes places here at night.  These poor 30+ women looking ridiculous as only sex performers can, with bored customers sitting around.  Fine view here (sun casting shadows in the right places).  The triple bridge just visible – what a great symbol for a nation: three bridges.  It's impressive: from here I can see the Dragons' Bridge, the three bridges and the Shoemaker's Bridge. 

Finishing the day in Tivoli Park.  A wonderfully autumnal feel – the smell of deciduous leaves, that chill in the dusk air.  The end of the weekend, of my trip, and of the season.  Into the church of Franciscans: very dark and gloomy.  Outside, the bloody ZDF Germans are nearly gone, leaving a focal point for the city.  I have noticed: no beggars in Ljubljana (though a few semi down and outs) and few signs of "dog dirt".  Prague felt far more oppressively ex-communist, and poor.  Perhaps the Tito years of later alternative communism bore some sweet fruit (the current war in Bosnia being its bitter crop).

As so often, I am back for my last meal where I had my first: in the riverside restaurant – having "Ljubljana schnitzel", and half a litre of wine (I didn't think I asked for so much, but it's good, so…).  Air cooling, but lovely to sit out in a jacket.  "My" pizzeria (pizzeria moja?) opposite.  Italians behind, Germans to my right.  Also opposite me, on the rather ugly concrete wall by the river, is the phrase: "Muki je moj, jaz ga ne dam…"  The wine has an almost flowery taste – rather drinkable…

Good to see the pages filling up these past few days – shows my brain has been loosened up – as I hoped.  I need these selfish solo trips to think hard about things I too rarely have time for – novels/ideas etc.  The countries in Europe still to "do": Sweden, Iceland, Luxembourg, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria...I might give Ukraine a miss.

And another thing: last night, while wandering the streets, I came across a group of itinerant Andean musicians – they really do get bloody everywhere.  But what a theme: musicians from so many thousands of miles away, so far from home, do gigs around Europe…  Excellent escalope.  Mad guitarist has just played "House of the Rising Sun" – I've no idea what the song's about, but it goes to the roots of my childhood memories. I've drunk nearly half a litre of wine – too/not enough...

More destinations:

1993 Urbino

2017 Bucharest

2018 Tirana

2019 Moldova

2022 Bratislava

Moody's Black Notebook Travels

1987 Italy

30.8.87 San Gimignano

The sort of place you could spend a lifetime in – looking at every stone: The Stones of San Gimignano. Every part of every building seems to have a history: like Venice, where every stone is part of its palimpsest.  Everything has been fitted over, on top of, together: you can see windows filled in, old arches, lintel lines, roof hips.  And the vertical rules.  The towers: they are the essence of rectangularity, verticality.  Medieval they may be, but time has not softened their edges.  It is said they were built partly because of noble rivalry: that pride endures.  They conquer all horizontals; they lift the town.

The faces of the buildings are ancient, timeless and modern.  Ancient in that they are old and crumbling, weathered; timeless because they suggest granitic immanence; modern because their rich textured patchwork looks like nothing so much as some modern art – a sort of cross between a happier Soulages, the Boyle family, and Giacometti.  You could easily imagine them as cut up and hung on cool impersonal museum walls.  This denies their substantiality: they could be all surface, albeit with a rich impasto.  The piazzas become like those Western towns built for films: all facade.  Except that San Gimignano is, through its massive stony solidity, anything but surface.

Towers mean bells.  And bells are perfectly suited to a stone city.  It is the perfect hard acoustic, sending off scads of sharp reflections.  And against that sharpness there is the sheer unplaceability of the bell's tone.  We tend to forget that although bells were for centuries one of the few instrumental sounds, that sound is of an impossible richness.  The overtones cause the note to shift and sway dizzyingly.  And the physicality.  No other musical instrument requires so much effort, total bodily input.  And the striking of the bell is brute force: a literal blow.  Which makes it easy to attribute something magical to the disembodied sound which ensues.  Thor's hammer.  Watch the bells in the bell-tower: they loll like huge puppies' tongues, languorous.  The sight is as hypnotic as the sound.  San Gimignano is built for bells.  

You need the blue Tuscan sky to define the towers: it acts as a perfect seamless backdrop.  With clouds or any blur in the air you would lose that unique edge.  And you need the piazzas.  The towers loom from behind buildings.  Without open spaces height does not exist.  

In its medieval purity, San Gimignano is like Venice.  Apart from the postcards outside the shops, there is little to disturb the illusion.  There are no roads, just streets.  Cars are practically non-existent – making San Gimignano uniquely quiet – like Venice.  But San Gimignano has something that Venice can never aspire to: hills.  It is built on a hill and its streets wind and wheel away, up and down, taking the buildings with them.   

From the tower: roofs, harmonious yellows and ochres – everything very flat.  Sounds rising up from the piazzas which form gaping holes in the sea of roofs.  The herringbone patterns of the bricks look almost too neat.  There is a violinist with accompanying tape: his clear, acidulous tones cut through the hum of the town sounds.  Roundabout, a patchwork of rolling hills and fields.  And trees – woods, forests almost.  This is another Tuscany.  From the tower: people's verticality is emphasised: as in Florence, from Giotto's campanile.  Towers of San Gimignano answer this.  But with very little sensation of height.  That comes inside: there you have the fragile metal staircase, which maps out height.  It is also possible to see through it – so you are more conscious of being suspended in the air.

This is Benozzo Gozzoli's town.

31.8.87  San Gimignano

In the early morning, the low glancing light catches the rough face of the main tower.  The surface boils with rock and its texture. 

Most people know the Tuscany of Florence.  Some perhaps know the Prato-Pisa-Lucca railway line.  A world of neat but midday-dead stations; hot and dusty; airless cities sweltering in the Po valley.  There is another Tuscany, a hidden Tuscany.  It lies to the south, among the rolling hills and mountains.  It is not a flat, arid plain shimmering in the heat; scrubby vegetation on one-street town along the main routes.  Fields are hunched shoulders of land, their coarse rich earth ploughed in huge gobbets of mud; from a distance they look like crops of boulders.  Gaunt square farmhouses like castles stand in isolation amidst the fields, the land cultivated to the doorstep.  The roads are quiet and wind endlessly around hills.  Trees abound.  And along the way, as you pass ridges, there are hilltop towns hugging the rise of the land, spilling down slopes.  Volterra is the king of these,  San Gimignano the queen.

There are two main piazzas in San Gimignano: Piazza della Cisterna, and Piazza del Duomo, secular and sacred centres.  In both you need to be an artist to capture them, or even part of them.  The windows are stacked three or four high; they form a kind of contrapuntal essay, with now one, now another voice dropping out.  As the threads of the windows move round the square, so the tonality of the buildings changes: rusticated stone, brickwork, crumbling plaster, dark green creepers; but just as a fugue will modulate and vary its themes, so the essential, organic unity remains.  It is squares like these which rudely expose the crass insufficiency and poverty of modern buildings.  First, they lack detail, and in particular the human scale; secondly, they arrogantly fail to acknowledge their older neighbours.  Such discourtesy always gets its comeuppance.

Towers need piazzas: but piazzas benefit from local towers.  As the sun moves round, great slabs of shadow creep across ground and walls, varying the scene constantly.  And generally, the old stone facades turn like flowers in the sun, changing their face in response to the shifting angle.  Especially when the sun is high: all the joints and scars of the bricks and stones are picked out as if with black ink.  The scars of seemingly impossibly high buildings, testimony to the other one hundred or so towers that have been lost.  The verticality of the towers is emphasised because their lines descend fully to the ground.  Just as the height of Gothic spaciousness in cathedrals was achieved by running pillars from floor to ceiling in one long swoop.

San Agostino has the simplest possible brick exterior.  It is in a small hot square which gives back the heat San Agostino radiates.  Inside comes as a delicious shock: cool, slightly suffocating air, the smell of old incense, old wood, old religion.  Gozzoli rules OK.  The frescoes of Augustine are extraordinary.  Nearly invisible – especially in the neck-craning upper regions, in the small apse behind the altar are certainly some of his best works, and in expression and humanity rarely matched elsewhere.  Above all, it is the faces which linger: so completely personalised and individual.  Timeless and thus modern, surely they were all done from life.  And Saint Augustine himself: a noble-looking man – not your usual bumptious self-righteous prelate, or wimpy proto-martyr.  Thus San Gimignano matches (almost) the great frescoes of Arezzo.

The cloister of San Agostino is delightful – so nice to come across living green in this stony place.  Even the park at the Rocca is poor stuff. Here there is a rich privet hedge, four majestic trees, and Mediterranean palm trees.  Birds chirrup – no hunters here – and there are even huge dragonflies.  

Details: the front-on staring at us; the man with a canker and boil; the small dog.  And the men have shaved – real men.  And the last San Augustine: I have never seen anyone look so calm and mature – except perhaps in Michelangelo.  

Songbirds' cages fixed permanently to the wall – like prisoners exhibited – just food and water, no shelter.

San Agostino's bells – two completely out of sync – like a holy Steve Reich composition – only better.  The way they tail off – then the long plangent reverb. 

Room with a view.  The sun has started sinking westwards: my room faces east, and is now in the shade and delightfully cool.  Before me, the wonderful patchwork of irregular fields.  A noisy cranking combine harvester finishes off a field – most have already been ploughed up for next year.  Others are neatly planted with rows of various bushes.  Now the familiar Da Vinci sfumato thickens, casting a deepening haze over the landscape.  This morning it was real mist.  The sun, rosy-fingered dawn, lifted through it, sending huge horizontal rays between hills.  It reminded me of Kashmir…

A musical city – for buskers, anyway.  Violinists, flautists – and now a virginalist.  This one in the courtyard to Museo Civico.  A delightful place: herring-boned bricks, frescoes everywhere.  And also a performance artists.  With whited face, and to the accompaniment of a rather random recorder, a youngish lady strikes a histrionic pose – and holds it for several minutes.  Her main achievement seems to be keeping her eyes open.  Ah, all this easy symbolism in a city barely changed for 500 years…

Sala di Dante – a good presence helped by old wooden furniture.  Lippo Memmi, a terribly stern Mary in state, with flocks of unbending saints around.  Rather Spanish.  The sprung floors bounce delightfully: truly a spring in your step.  In the pinacoteca, various Byzantinesque numbers: one by the "master of Clarissa" quite fine.  Other bits and bobs: two by Filippo Lippi, an unusual separated Annunciation in two tondos; a very Peruginoesque Pinturicchio – with 'orrible disembodied cherubs plus two quite impressive figures, a pope and a saint.  A Benozzo Gozzoli – rather dark – but the men's faces are individualised again.  Otherwise just anonymous lot vaguely connected with San Gimignano: Sebastiano Mainardi, Memmo di Filippuccio (what a name).  

Best of all is Taddeo di Bartolo's polyptych with San Gimignano himself.  Confidence is not inspired by the first scene: "during prayers San Gimignano is forced to leave the church for a call of nature; the devil, who is waiting for him outside, is driven away with a sign of the cross".  Some saint.  His other miracles seem to be driving out the devil from the Greek Emperor's daughter, an apparition of the Bishop of Ravenna, Saint Severus, at San Gimignano's funeral, and a couple of salvations from Attila the Hun.  Still, San Gimignano is only a small city…

At the northern corner of La Rocca, an old woman has a tiny, tiny house.  Outside, she has a small lemon tree.  It is all totally picturesque.  When she comes out, she glares at the tourists who presume to peep into her life.  As the sun sinks, the furrows in the fields deepen and darken; the chaotic and coarse tiles on the roofs echo; the contours of the land show themselves more fully.  

Even down San Matteo, traces of former glory remain: the impressive, monumental remains of a palazzo, scarred by all the siblings it has lost around it.  From the tower of the Palazzo del Popolo: Via San Giovanni and its smaller siblings cut through the roofs like clear swathes to the main gate.  I'm the last down from the tower.  Bells ring, voices command.  A warm evening breeze stirs.  At the bottom, the virginalist is still there.  Typically Italian: an Avanti-PSI festival, held in the entrance hall to the town hall, Piazza del Duomo.  

The best rear view of the towers is from La Rocca, at sunset.  As the sun sets behind the high hill to the west of San Gimignano, only the flat gaunt towers catch the light.  They shine out like slabs.  Their grey stone picks up every hue, and gradually turns pink.  And with the night, the swifts come out, like something out of Leopardi, swooping elegantly and unoriginally in the air among the towers and palaces.

1.9.87 San Gimignano

A different sunrise.  The sun comes up as a cool pink disc, turning paler as it rises through the bands of invisible clouds.  Great pools of mist hang in the valleys, making the most distant mountains white.  Cocks crow, but unlike yesterday, there is no morning chorus of dogs.  Smoke rising from odd fires throughout the landscape produce a white, coarser veil.  

The dogs have started, as have the bells.  Obviously very religious, these dogs.  The sun is now an almost perfectly white, perfectly round disc.

Piazza Luigi Pecori – nestling behind the big tower, alongside the duomo – a tiny haven of pure peace.  Yet more buskers – a plangent guitarist, with a shrouded harp in waiting – is there no limit to the varied musicality of this place?  It must be the stone: a perfect acoustic.  The Museo Etrusco.  Signposts on squared notepaper.  Handwritten notes of explanation stuck on with sellotape.  Italia, a roomful of paintings by "ignoti" – who clearly couldn't paint.  Long explanations about the Etruscan collection – mostly to do with who the superintendent was, all in long, flowing, parenthetical Italian prose.  Il Duomo – a very Catholic church.  Every surface within covered with gaudy frescoes and designs.  The arches black and white like La Mezquita.  A big Gozzoli – San Sebastian.  

Can you know a town?

I have a problem with experience: too easily it feels like a memory.

2.9.87 Volterra

Volterra is as if San Gimignano made the mistake of growing up.  It has the same impressive position, the same sense of antiquity – greater, since the Etruscans were here for centuries more.  But it is a dump.  All the grace has been worn out of it: instead, it is dusty, hot and smelly.  It surveys the surrounding landscape wearily.  The old Palazzo dei Priori is impressive in its gnarled glory: the square that surrounds it is fairly squalid.  The old duomo is gaudy inside and unspectacular outside.  The poor old battistero looks woebegone and battered.  Even the great Etruscan gate is rather pathetic: four stumps of worn stone.  The main pinacoteca is similarly threadbare – but provides a wonderful ambience for the motley collection of paintings.  Below a certain level early Italian renaissance stuff looks gawky and lurid.  The best things there were two Signorellis; but even these looked ill-proportioned.

As it turned out, the heart of the city lay in its Museo Etrusco.  On three floors and filled with an enormous collection of funerary monuments, it is a testament to the scale of Etruscan Volterra – over three times the size of the present-day town.  But however wonderful they are, you can only see so many.  Questions arise too: why are most of the inscriptions in Latin?  And why Latin myths?  Perhaps the best thing there was L'Ombra della sera: a curious, very thin statuette – with a face of extraordinary frank and childlike simplicity.  The description – as of a shadow before you – is d'Annunzio's. 

3.9.87 Montepulciano

If Montepulciano is hell, San Biagio is clearly a vision of a perfectly-ordered heaven.  This masterpiece is so unexpected, its clarity such a shock after Montepulciano: it is like a perfect exposition of classicism.  Half pillars and pilasters, various cornices to the windows – and all done out in the amazing, pitted, living stone.  The campanile fits snugly into one of the Greek cross's gaps; it too is perfectly balanced, standing miraculously as if held by magnetism there.  Inside is less spectacular.  Things have been spoilt somewhat by the over-ornate decorations over the altar.  Like San Giorgio Maggiore, pure cool simplicity is needed for such a building.  Externally, everything is on a massive scale: even the triglyphs.  Everything is perfectly proportioned: double cubes and a square cross.

Where San Gimignano appears finite and knowable, Montepulciano is like some maze, a monstrous joke on the hillside.  Getting in is no problem – but getting out is.  There are no roads, just paved streets; few signs; and everything is steep.  A crossroad may present you with a choice of five narrow paths.  Imagine this place in the rain, at night.  During the day it was deathly quiet.

Montepulciano itself seems attractive enough – an imposing situation, a neat main square (Piazza Grande).  But it lacks the purity of San Gimignano.  The palazzo municipale is of the standard Tuscan design.  Its chief point of interest is the tower.  You can go up inside – if you dare.  No modern appurtenances: it was like climbing back 500 years.  Rotten wooden rails, crumbling stairs, little light, old bricks.  Wonderful.  And the whole things was free.  You just walked in – past all the administrative offices, and up the stairs to the top.  The duomo had a unornamented west front, a bit like San Lorenzo in Florence.  Inside it was cool, bare and simple.  The square outside looked very suitable as a scene for the music festival.  Opposite the church, a loggia by Sangallo – obviously the patron artist of Montepulciano.  Quite a nice building – except that the man put square columns above round ones – which doesn't work.  

From Montepulciano to Lago Trasimeno.  Unfortunately, by now the weather had turned entirely to heat haze, with thunder in the offing.  The lake itself is not particularly impressive.  The surrounding hills are more so – though rather obscured.  The general effect is of an enormous pond.  But pleasant enough to have a cappuccino or two by.

For the drive back, mostly mini-motorways – no crash barrier, which is disconcerting – especially as I passed one car which seemed to have managed to end up on the wrong side.  Soon the rain came.  Great big splodges of it.  This suddenly made all those boring signs about "pericolo in gelo o in pioggia" terribly relevant.  My entire route seemed to be filled with them.  But worse was the lightning.  This was none of your namby-pamby British "one clean bolt and let's call it a day".  This stuff forked around the sky – horizontally even.  And I was climbing up the landscape in my little tin car.

I obviously made it, but it was interesting.  As was the view from my balcony when I got back.  The eastern part of the Tuscan hills from San Gimignano were laid out before me.  A huge thick pall hung over it.  Great nets of lightning – often multiple – flickered over it all like a serpent's tongue.  You could see how myths were formed.  It looked like El Greco's picture of Toledo.

More destinations:

1988 Venice

1994 Rome

1994 Trieste, Ljubljana 

1995 Siena, Bagno Vignoni, Pienza

1996 Torino

1996 Vienna, Venice

1999 Weimar, Venice

Moody's Black Notebook Travels

1996 Lithuania

30.4.96 Cremona

In the waiting-room of the station, fading posters of the Piazza del Duomo and the Duomo itself in front of me.  And seeing these old images of old Italy – Good Old Italy – the question naturally poses itself: what the hell am I doing here?

Here, that is, about to undertake a 36-hour train journey to Vilnius.  A journey that will take far longer than the time I have there, and far longer than it needs to be (flying to London and then to Vilnius would be quicker).  But of course, the journey is part (most?) of the point.  This is almost a pure voyage – pure travel in the sense of travail.

Standing on the platform, I stare at the main station sign: Cremona.  One of those signs, with its characteristic typography, that I have seen from Italian trains so many times in the last 18 years.  Either side of me now, the flat fertile plains of the Po.  Spring well and truly sprung despite the atrocious recent weather (but warm and rather airless tonight – storms to come?).  From the train, the typical form of the cascina is evident everywhere – just as in L'Albero degli zoccoli.  Like a relaxed fortress, turned in on itself.

Many of tonight's commuters are black: presumably living in Brescia and commuting out to the small towns by day to trade their poor wares.  What a hard life – and yet how laudable, daring to come to a foreign land, risking exploitation, arrest, for their families.  And yet, consciously or not, we look down on them.  I know that I am very unsympathetic to their sales pitches.

Ahead of us the mountains loom through the evening mist.  The sun out to my left, watery yellow.  Now a huge scrapyard, one I remember from before – along with reports of radioactive metal from Russia ending up there….

1.5.96 Wien

May Day in Vienna.  Not that I see much of it.  The train from Brescia arrives late, so I struggle through the train to get near the front, then dash over to platform 5, and find myself now in the Austrian coach of the train to Warsaw with two Poles (interesting how some words I can pick out from the general romp).

I spent hours chatting with this Italian teacher (retired) from Treviglio.  Austria picturesque as ever, rolling hills, forests, green fields, satellite dishes (everywhere), all wreathed in romantic mists.  A few Austrian flags hung from balconies… Good sleep last night – my old skills have not deserted me completely.

It was curious leaving last night.  Journeys should begin at the beginning of the day: leaving at night felt like returning.  But nothing could be further from the truth.  I've never been to Poland, so this is pushing my boundaries.

I've been reading Cavalli-Sforza on genes and language – interesting, but badly written (no clear line).  Now I move to Schwab: Die schönsten Sagen des klassischen Altertums.  Seems appropriate for a journey through Austria (and with Ithaca coming up in a month….)

Across the border at Břeclav.  At a stroke, everything that was shiny, orderly and Germanic is now rusty, chaotic and slav.  Hearing the Czech announcements makes me realise that I am entering foreign lands, and reminds me of my journeys in Russia (and what a pity I never went to Armenia and Georgia then, as I nearly did…)  Back hundreds of years: A woman with a wheel in a ploughed field: sowing?  Villages out of Breughel (with a few satellite dishes…)

The Polish passport officer inspects my passport long and hard – and adds its number to his little book...I fear that Brits coming from Italy are fairly rare – god knows what will happen at Grodno.

Through Poland, near Katowice.  Everything very poor and run-down.  Crumbling houses, kids playing amid junk and rubble.  Dusty grey factories.  Rubbish tips everywhere.  Satellite dishes like mushrooms.  And these huge, snaking tubes: gas?  With odd bends in them around non-existent obstacles.  Becoming abstract works of art.  Strange ghostly mansion, stately, decaying.  Everything dark with grime.  On the land, horses, not tractors.  An elephants' graveyard of trains, every hue of green imaginable.

Of course, one of the things travelling does is to make me appreciate home: the instant everything is fixed, I long not to go.  Another thing: I immediately discover many reasons to be fearful.  For example, last week I read that there is a nuclear reactor in Lithuania that is like the one in Chernobyl, and pretty unsafe.  But if I thought of all the reasons not to do anything…

Nobody at Warsaw Central speaks English or German – not the information desk or the international reservations.  Using Czech (sic) I got the general idea across, but the return date was used as the departure date.  And the desk was closing.  But I think I have a ticket to Vilnius (but no reservation back, which needs to be fixed).  I really feel that I am teetering on the edge of my Western world.  Poland really feels eastern bloc in a way that Prague doesn't.  The language barrier is interesting, and almost novel for me.

In the station, and here in the waiting room, a real smell of elsewhere (felt almost like India when I got out of the train.) Drinking a cold Coca Cola on the main concourse of the station – what sybaritic luxury.  Amazing how much here is aimed at Russians – Cyrillic text, people speaking russky.  Amazing, too, how many blacks and Asians here – cheap labour? – in Poland.

Still, people-watching is always fun, even in these dubious surroundings (though perhaps coming into their own as dusk falls – the two flanking bars taking a particularly Hopperesque tinge (ah, and how I wish to hear Ives's Concord Sonata, in my normal, irrational way).  So many Poles have what I can only call sad sack faces: lugubrious, crazy eyes, a moustache (if male).

On the train – one carriage for sleeping (and through to Vilnius).  Which makes everything feel even more end of the world.  Three beds in each compartment – made up – and a washbasin (à la  Cairo-Luxor train).  Nice.

2.5.96 Grodno

Well, what a night.  After more passport inspections than most holidays, a customs form completely in Belarusian, and a dash out to the immigration office to get a visa (DM50 – for one transit), this is what travel is about.  Belarus (and Grodno) much as you might expect: grey and depressing in the extreme.  A romantic mist does its best.  Also noticeable during the night were the weird couplings and uncouplings.  Having lost the Polish wagons, we've picked up some others.  Raining slightly, too, and cold.  But we're much further north.  On the way I see a few lights in the flats: what are their lives, I wonder? I seem to be the only one requiring a visa – just as well given the sleepy woman doing it – everything in triplicate.

Valkinkai – houses out of Chekhov – and the smell of damp woods.  The sun is shining weakly. And then here I am in Vilnius (pauses for appreciative murmurs).  Before me, the gleaming-ish cathedral and clock tower.  Brilliant sun and clear blue sky (it can't last).

I even managed to take the right trolley bus (number 2) from the station, paying 60 Centų (about 10p) and avoiding the taxi wolves.  Hotel room not ready yet, so I wander for a while.  Lots of building and reconstruction going on (as you might expect).  It's so nice to see all these Indo-european endings on shops etc. People have a distinctive look, blonde, blue eyes, squarish Russian faces, but also strange tints in the eyes and hair.

To the Žurnalistika Cafe – the journos' canteen according to "Vilnius in your pocket" (unobtainable in the kiosks – good job I downloaded most of it from the online version – very good).  Surprisingly civilised – no smoking (yet?), music reasonable (ah, someone heard me writing this, and just lit up…).  Prices low, as most things are here (books cost £1-£2 each…)

Hotel room, well, ex-Soviet (hot tap makes an impressive judder when you turn it on).  Everything rather faded, and never very elegant.  I have upgraded – from 240 Litas to 260 Litas, obtaining a front room.  Noisier, but the view of the rubbish tip at the back of the hotel was more than I could stomach.

More English spoken here than in Warsaw (and people generally helpful and even friendly).  Glorious summer's day.  I have showered (bliss to be clean) and am wearing only my shirt (well, trousers too…)

My initial impression (favourable) is that Vilnius has much in common with Ljubljana.  Not surprisingly, perhaps, since both would have grown up for the same reason: a defensible mound by a river.  Plenty of baroque here, as in Ljubljana, the latter probably wealthier and more relaxed then here (and further south…)

Eating beetroot soup with meat dumplings (do they have BSE here?) and exquisite black bread.  The Lithuanian pork (schnitzel-like but fried in egg) good, but the highlight definitely the black bread – the best I've ever had.  Almost creamy, with a rich but not overpowering flavour.

After lunch, back to the room, then a long, long walk to here, the cafe at Šv. Jono gatve and Pilies gatve.  Drinking canonical coke absent any čaj. Glorious breeze here – clouds in the sky, but only enough to be interesting.

Went past the cathedral into the old part of the city – very Prague, very Buda.  Baroque, with lots of derelict properties.  One day this will all be fancified like Prague, but now it is genuine and poor.  Not that I'm suggesting that it ought to be preserved thus, but at least not it is genuinely itself rather than another vague copy of other Western capitals (there's already a McDonald's opposite the station.)  Talking of which, I went there in search of "Vilnius in your pocket" (VIYP): which doesn't exist, at all.  On the way I passed through the market, which was pure Asia, which begins here, even though we're next to Finland. So many swirling Catholic churches here (and a few onion-topped Orthodox ones).

On thing I forgot to note: how tall many of the people here are – especially the women, several of whom have towered over me.  I predict some mega models from up here soon…

After buying a few incredibly cheap books, back to the hotel, where I find I have no shampoo, so rush out, chase around for 30 minutes, and finally locate some.

Now, following "Vilnius in your pocket", I find myself in a near-deserted restaurant Rugelis – perhaps I should have guessed from one of the quoted blurbs ("it was deserted at lunchtime").  I tried for pressed carp – off the menu – so settled for Lithuanian blini and cepelinai – potato dumplings (named after the Zeppelins they resemble) filled with "x" – in this case, mushrooms.  Hm, the apple blini seems to be bananas (Lithuania's national fruit, VIYP says…???). Cepelinai turn out to be very large grey maggots of indistinguishable taste.

I go off for a walk along the river, foolishly turned West, hoping to follow the river back – but found the dreariest landscape – and gave up.  One thing: there is no dog-poo in this place.  Nada. (Not many dogs, either.)

3.5.96 Vilnius

Despite BBC TV's predictions of rain, there is sun this morning (plus clouds).   Slept well in the small-ish bed.  Breakfast Nordic: cheese, ham, black bread.  Water very tepid this morning ("the smorning" as I still think 30+ years later…)

To St Peter and Paul's church.  Outside, nothing special, inside a riot of stucco.  Along the river to here – nothing noteworthy – Ljubljana and Prague use their water better.  Here it is all concrete banks and modern bridges.  Beautiful sun outside, getting hotter. On the way, I smell raw diesel fumes and think of India: along with the wood smoke at dusk, this is its characteristic odour.

To the hill and the tower (though not to the top since it's closed still).  My/our urge is to rise, to get the bigger picture.  Reminds me of so many other risings: Baux, Sigiri, Tour Eiffel, Ljubljana. The sun really too nice, too nice to move.

To the Armenian Restaurant "13 chairs".  Empty.  Choosing "Cololac": meat stuffed with egg...is this wise?  Still, one must try these things.

Before, in the continuing heat, to the Belarusian Embassy for a visa.  In fact, to the consulate, down a very dubious alley.  In the helpful transit department, who like the look of my train reservation.  Trouble is, I need a photo.  Luckily, in room number 6 there is a little old lady with a Polaroid camera: 4 images for L.14 (about £2.50).  Robbed over the transit cost – $31 – more than the sleeping car by far.  Still, at least going back I won't have to rush out for a visa at Grodno, worrying whether the triplicate form-filling will take too long… Inside the consulate, real Soviet-style: wires coming off the wall, everything not-so-old but fast decaying.

Cololac turns out to be an egg rolled in mincemeat (yikes), but it tasted reasonably fresh and not entirely made of bulls' willies.  I hope….  Interesting bread too, like thin pitta – papery but OK.  L20.50 - £3.50, so I can't complain about the price.  Here in the "13 chairs", the Western rock reveals its chord structure too transparently to my ears.  I find the three or four chords so boring now that I can analyse them without thinking.  Interestingly, house music doesn't really have this effect, in part because rhythm – or the beat, rather – is so important, and also because basically it is often more adventurous.

A Polyphon (music box) sounds in the Lietuvos Dailes Muziejus – National Art Museum.  Looks newly restored in this first room – beautiful – Wedgewood blues, cool whites.  The Polyphon creaks and scratches – it uses a metal disc with holes – painfully.  The same smell of paint thinners here as in my hotel – Lithuania's odour? Passing (uncertainly) through a door to ascend, I am hit by an ur-smell of clean corridors – from school? A room full of Boullée-like architectural plans.  One thing: the use of deep shadow in the sectional drawings: think about it.  Weirdly abstract. Surprising number of Lithuanian artists here.

After wandering around here for rather longer than I expected, I decide to go to what seems to be the main national art gallery, just further down in the big classical building.  As I move there, distant lightning among louring clouds warns of an imminent storm. When I get to the museum, I can guess what the sign on the darkened entrance says: "we've moved", to where I was.  A little man inside confirms this when I enter, just to check.

I wanted to buy an ABC (in English and Lithuanian), and passing along, I see another bookshop.  I enter, of course, and find about six books that have to buy: 4 Lithuanian poets (in English); a book on the Lithuanian language (in Lithuanian); a 700-page tome on Lithuanian folk songs; an old Soviet book on Lithuania – 400 pages for £1.30 – and a tremendous volume with the first (and more or less only) book in the Prussian language (a snip at £4.)  I also buy four tapes – mostly by Čiurlionis, of course. Total for a good few kilos: L.142 – about £24.

The Prussian book is pretty stunning in its comprehensiveness – a real hypertextual trip through the words.  Also it's numbered: (I am the proud owner of book number 162 out of 1000).  Provided I can carry this lot, the Lithuanian bible (which I also bought today), and the other five or so books, I will probably have one of the finer small collections of Baltic language books outside the country.

Now in the Geležinis Vilkas restaurant – very modern, but small, expensive relatively – still cheap in Western European terms.  Set in a rather god-forsaken part of the city, towards the Parliament.  Well, the Lithuanian borscht tasted like, er, borscht, and the chicken with fruits like chicken Kiev (but without the garlic) with fruits.  But all piping hot and good.

4.5.96 Vilnius

Weather even finer: sunny but a cool breeze.  Inside the Cathedral.  I have never seen so many pix on the walls and columns – despite coming from Italy.  Otherwise very cool and classical – pure light above the altar.  Gounod's "Ave Maria" plays quietly in the distance.  More or less empty, 9am.

Typically, the food store I was hoping to buy some food from is closed for cleaning until 11am…. It is hard to imagine this place under the Soviet regime.  It seems so obviously centred in Western Christian civilisation – a tribute to how quickly Lithuania has got back to "normal".  The bells ring for 9.

Down to the trio of churches.  The weird St Anne's – all sprung arches – in brick.  Probably the most beautiful corner of Vilnius here.  Down Didžioji gatve.  Past the concert hall, to the Monastery of the Holy Trinity – in wonderful disrepair.  The main church full of rough scaffolding – and pigeons.  Very tranquil.  In a selfish way, I feel it will be sad when all this is gone in Vilnius.  I am lucky to have seen it.

To the Gate of Dawn.  Unusual entrance – up stairs, worn to the right and to the left, by time and feet.  A woman kneels on the stairs, praying (each step?) Inside the chapel, full of devotees.  Very intense.  I am reluctant to enter as a tourist.

On the way back, I stop off in a "supermarket" – not particularly super, and buy a few provisions for the journey back this evening (even longer than going – around 39 hours all-told.)  In fact the timing works out well: 17.15 departure from Vilnius, arrives Warsaw 6.00am in time for breakfast.  Depart for Vienna at 9am, lunch on train (either the rolls I have, or from the friendly trolley lady), arrive Vienna around 17.00.  Eat perhaps in the restaurant I know increasingly well.  Back in Brescia for breakfast, Cremona for mid-morning coffee (if all goes to timetable).

Back now to Žurnalistika Cafe, since the food was good, it's near etc.  Rather surprised to find it open: many things here in Vilnius opened late or not at all.  Still, against all the odds, stunning weather.  It really is bliss walking round this place, especially the area of the three churches I found this morning.  On the way from there I passed Adam Mickiewicz's home – totally run-down.  My cold borscht has arrived.  Very nice too: cream, egg, cabbage – and all an unreal pinky-mauve (I think for no reason at all of the restaurant that I went to in East Berlin: the weather/ambience?)

To the university, a wonderful collection of asymmetric courtyards.  In one, the sound of a woman's voice rehearsing with a piano.  The sun's heat almost Mediterranean.  Selig!  On the way, passed whole rows of wrecked houses.  So much to do here.

In to St John's church – one of the most successful baroque facades I've seen, towering up and rippling.  Inside, very high, white, with fine hyper-baroque altar.  Close-up, the latter is absolutely stunning – I've never seen one with such a good use of 3D: a pair of two pillars ornamented out of functionality, and wrapped around the altar space.  Another pair of pillars around the altar itself.  Above it, an opening, through which more distant echoes of pillars can be seen.  Over all of it a huge stucco starburst of the Trinity. An organ plays wheezily in the distance; men's voices intone.

Weakly, I crawl back to another bookshop – and buy an English-Lithuanian dictionary (for about £7), plus a history of the Lithuanian language (£1.25) – and then blow an outrageous £12 on a CD of Lithuanian folk music.  I know this is disproportionate, but the disc looks good, and I'd pay the same in the UK – if it even existed…

Now the skies are leaden, covered by great rolling clouds.  With typically bad timing the hotel café closes now (3pm), so I take refuge next door in a strange open café (but under a concrete roof).  The rain is falling now, and will doubtless get heavier.  Will I manage to hold the umbrella, my two bags and food to stagger to the (nearby) bus stop (ticket already bought) later? Two rotters join my table, light up fags.  I have no intention of stinking of smoke sooner than I have to.  I flee to the hotel reception, even though here it is dark and dull.  The Lithuanian god Perkūnas - still angry, perhaps that they built a cathedral on his holy site – growls away in the background.

I've never come across a country that produces so many books so cheaply.  Obviously, the Lithuanians are determined to bolster their linguistic position now that they have the freedom to do so.  Coming here has helped me with my Indo-European linguistics.  Suddenly, all the connections between the languages seem obvious: in this respect, Lithuanian really is the missing link between the Slavic languages, Latin, Greek et al.  Lithuanian is so clearly close to Czech, Russian, but also with links across.  And its "ancient" features root it back in time, too.

Interesting that the receptionist and some other flunkies here are watching Russian TV: obviously there is much knowledge of it here, even if most keep it under their hats.  A sign: down by the university, underneath the street names there was a rectangular mark where perhaps another street name had been – in Cyrillic…

With the sun out once more, I take the bus to the station.  In the huge waiting hall, seats (orange and plastic) around the outside, corrugated steel roof, a plywood rectangular kiosk in the centre of one side. From here I can see behind me the train going to Klaipėda – next to a sign saying 17.15 to Warsaw.  This is not a train station like Budapest Keleti with trains scurrying off in all directions across Europe.  More like Ljubljana, the end of the line (though things do go further).

Interesting – and sensible – idea here: to check tickets at the train door.

5.5.96 Warsaw

Good journey – compartment to myself, though no coffee in the morning (breakfast, yes).  Usual discussions with Belarusian customs officials – who wanted me to fill in two declarations.  A real feel of the old Soviet empire there – all those spotty crew-cut boys thrown by anything odd.  Grodno as unprepossessing as ever (but more lights on in the blocks of flats nearby the station).

The trains rumble beneath me.  Warsaw station surprisingly small – only four tracks (maybe eight) – certainly nothing like a real junction.  Very modern locker system, with number punched in (I hope I've done it correctly).  But generally very insalubrious here. Quite chill. Last night it was pretty hot when we left Vilnius, and gradually became cooler as we went south (sic).  The announcement music here is the opening theme of Clementi's sonata in G major.

The history of Lithuanian language book that I bought yesterday, and of which I read one third, is one of the most frighteningly detailed efforts I've ever seen: every vowel shift across the dialects minutely examined.  And rather like Cavalli-Sforza's book, it just goes to show how much can be extracted from what we have – words, place names, blood groups – to give amazingly detailed and consistent information about things that happened two, three, four, even five thousand years ago. Reading both books I feel at a stroke closer to understanding the evolution of language.  And of Europe.

Lots of backpackers around, bound whither, I wonder.  One of the many nice things about this trip is that it shows that old age hasn't completely deprived me of the ability to voyage: 36 hours on the trot is not bad and puts most such journeys in my reach.  Characteristic sensations: cold air, smoke, hard seats, station announcements.

Wien Südbahnhof, full of memories for me.  Good design – all these escalators and ramps make it oddly Escher-ish.  A huge box like Warsaw, but much friendlier (perhaps just cleaner, and the sun is out here). The Austrians, though – at least the inhabitants of this place – look dodgy.  Lots of bikes, soldiers, people smoking.  The clacking of the old departure and arrivals boards – what old technology, and yet you find it everywhere. Der Rosenkavalier (the restaurant), even better than usual: Gulaschsuppe and Wiener Schnitzel, both huge and excellent.  Even the Wasser had a label designed by Hundertwasser.  To the train: all two carriages of it (most to Rome).  Full compartment – a long, hot night, I fear.

Die Reise nach Tilsit – good and very depressing.

6.5.96 Brescia

Brilliant sunny morning here.  The night rather long – hot and stuffy in the compartment. Even though I had to pay L.10,000 to leave the luggage at the station, it was worth it to be able to stroll.

Fortified by a cappuccino and warm brioche (one of the great essential experiences of Italy), I started off towards the centre.  It must be three years or so since I was last here, but I have vivid memories of parts of it – the two piazzas, the cathedral, the Roman ruins (and a gallery nearby?).  Walking around in the early morning sun and cool air, I am reminded of the tens of times I have done this in my life.  And in a way, Lithuania has deepened my understanding of here.  For Latin and the Romans are placed in context by Lithuania, the spread of the Indo-Europeans, and indeed of Lithuania's struggle to nationhood.  All-in-all, this was a stunningly successful trip – and only five days long.  I would do it again...

More destinations:

1989 Oslo

1996 Helsinki, Tallinn

2014 Riga 

2022 Stavanger

2022 Bratislava

Moody's Black Notebook Travels