The old town, Città Alta, is at the top of a hill (well, a couple of them), with its walls encircling narrow cobbled streets connecting numerous chapels and cathedrals. You think you are on the summit, but there is a very quaint funicular that can take you a further 100+ meters up, from which you can see this old Bergamo, then below it the more recent one, then looking up you can take in all the suburbs and regions. Valleys to the south and onto Milano, hillsides to the north that lead up to the Alps.

When I finally completed Calvino’s Invisible Cities, I could imagine his take on Bergamo. There would always be another hill, and another funicular to take you up. But on top of each hill you would be served the region’s favourite and most deceptive dish, a Polenta e Osei. And you wouldn’t know until you bit in if you were getting the savoury or the sweet version. The savoury is actual cornmeal polenta topped with strips of meat, while the sweet version is a sponge cake, made to resemble the savoury version through its creative use of marzipan and sugar, but filled with hazelnut cream in the middle and topped with a black marzipan bird at the top. They are replicas of each other in looks. And if you guess wrong, you would have to climb the next hill manually instead of getting in a funicular.

I knew that I was picking the sweet variety of the Polenta e Osei, in a cafe just on the outside of the old town’s city walls. It was delicious, and it was not even 9 in the morning yet. Across from me, and watching me having this audacious breakfast, was Chiara. I was going to spend the day with her as my very own Marco Polo, to introduce me to Bergamo. Chiara is one of those unique individuals I met at an academic conference that I actually kept in touch with (I am not very good at even meeting people at a conference, much less keeping in touch). She spotted my foreign self on the #6 bus from Trieste to the ICTP some five years prior when we were both on our way to attend a data steward summer school. Given that we were both employed at university libraries, we bonded quickly. We even made a point of finding the host institute’s library so we could compare it to our respective ones. As a proud native of Bergamo, she said that whenever I found myself in Italy again, I would have to stop by her hometown so she could share it with me.

And she did. In a single day, not only did I acquire a multitude of images of Bergamo’s spaces, both indoor and outdoor, ancient and more contemporary, but of course she took me into the libraries too, both to the one belonging to her university just outside the old Venetian city walls and the historical city one with antique globes and books nearly half a millennium old. We negotiated the maze-like connections between the churches, cathedrals, chapels, even nunneries in the old town, that sometimes come with a three-dimensional map just outside. We journeyed through history, even rode the funicular to get the top view, and then made our way down to the wide avenues of downtown Bergamo that are frequented more by those who live and work in the area. The old town seems angled towards a tourist approach, especially in terms of residence, for the sightseers and the devoutly inclined. Plenty of tastes of Bergamo, including the savoury original take on Polenta e Osei, thick slices of rectangular pizza, and its Lombard pasta variety of “casoncelli”. Something about the rustic oily oiliness of the oil, fresh fat out the cooking pan, took me to my own grandmother’s cooking (who also used to make us polenta on the weekends).

But I also got an image of what life looks like for a resident of Bergamo and its surrounds. Through spending a day with Chiara, though she had shifted her schedule and taken the day off to show off her town to me, I got a feel for her routine. Her existence in her hometown. Spending so much of the trip thus far on my own, navigating countless cobbled streets and seeing the sights, I had spent a lot of time wondering what a day for a person living in Cremona, Bari, or Napoli was like. After all, a citizen of Cape Town might not take to the winelands, beach or Table Mountain every day. One might not even see the ocean. What I had been subconsciously doing in each of these towns that I visited as a tourist was trying to imagine being their inhabitant. I finally got that chance in Bergamo with Chiara. Perhaps there was even a small tension, with her wanting to show me the high-lights and me subtly wanting to see the everyday-lights instead. Her presence and openness shifted my gaze from the sights to the human story. Maybe I was hoping to satisfy my curiosity, to get a sharper image of what a version of me inhabiting Bergamo would be doing.

And a lot of this was revealed through stories in conversation, and working in a similar field, in institutions that are far apart geographically, but organisationally connected with similar issues always provide that starting point. We could talk library work politics, doing further studies while working, career progression, lack of resources for repositories, academics’ lack of respect for libraries... and then we could enter into the more personal, the family, the relationships between parents and their children, the logistics that get in the way of the future, the past experiences that shaped the moment of now. Bergamo was the background, a beautiful and very tasty one, to the human connection. I understood when Chiara lamented the Bergamo old town of her youth, and how much more variety and personality it had then compared to now, where it caters very much to tourists and not those who once lived there. We laughed at the bartender’s child who was enjoying the cool aircon too much in his parents’ workspace on this warm day. I even got an opportunity to quickly meet Chiara’s very grown children, after having heard about them for many years, as we stopped by her house outside the town before she dropped me off. This was all her Bergamo, a day in her-story. She was proud to share it with me.

Writings

Journal Articles

Muftic, S. 2025. Setting the Stage: Enabling Spaces for Dialogues with Ibali Digital Collections UCT. Journal of the Digital Humanities Association of Southern Africa (DHASA), 6(1). Available at: https://doi.org/10.55492/dhasa.v5i02.6718

Batzofin, J. and Muftic, S., 2022. The digital archive as storyteller. South African Theatre Journal, 35(3), pp.221–235. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/10137548.2022.2136744

Muftic, S., 2016. Bricolage: Re-discovering history through intermediality and performance. Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 21(3), pp.347–360. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/13569783.2016.1192456

Book Chapters

Muftic, S., 2024. How RDM could have helped the PaR in my PhD: Research data management in a PaR project. In: M. Fleishman, ed. Thinking/Making/Doing: Methods for Performance Research. Cape Town: UCT Libraries. Available at: https://openbooks.uct.ac.za/uct/catalog/view/70/80/2719

De Wet, J., Schoots, J., Ngwendu, A. and Muftic, S. 2023. IsiXhosa Intellectual Traditions Digital Archive: Digitizing isiXhosa texts from 1870–1914. In: Proceedings of the Fourth Workshop on Resources for African Indigenous Languages (RAIL 2023), Dubrovnik, Croatia, pp.54–64. Association for Computational Linguistics. Available at: https://aclanthology.org/2023.rail-1.7.pdf

Muftic, S. and Jones, K., 2020. Endangered African Languages Featured in a Digital Collection: The Case of the ǂKhomani San | Hugh Brody Collection. In: R. Mabuya, P. Ramukhadi, M. Setaka, V. Wagner and M. van Zaanen, eds. Proceedings of the LREC 2020 First Workshop on Resources for African Indigenous Languages (RAIL). Marseille: ELRA, pp. [n.p.]. ISBN: 979-10-95546-60-3. Available at: https://lrec2020.lrec-conf.org/media/proceedings/Workshops/Books/RAIL2020book.pdf

Muftic, S., 2017. Exile Builds Performance: Performing satirical images across cultures through media. In: J. Rudakoff, ed. Performing Exile: Foreign Bodies. Bristol: Intellect.

Muftic, S., 2014. The Life and Work of Petrovic Petar (playscript with introduction). In: M. Fleishman, ed. Performing Migrancy and Mobility in Africa: Cape of Flows. (Studies in International Performance).

Bricolage - 2010

Magnet Theatre
directed by Mandla Mbothwe

Inxeba Lomphilisi – Wound of a Healer

Magnet Theatre
directed by Mandla Mbothwe

Autopsy

Magnet Theatre
directed by Mark Fleishman

La Scala di Seta

South Africa’s official submission for Best International Feature at the 2022 Oscars
Best Editing Motion Pictures International Film Fest 2020

directed by Amy Jephta
editing by Sanjin Muftić

Izililo Azilali Elwandle (2017) - short film

in commemoration of the SS Mendi Centennial

directed by Mandla Mbothwe and Sanjin Muftić
edited by Sanjin Muftić

Soldaat (2017) - short film

Best Short Film kykNET’s Silwerskermfees 2017

directed by Amy Jephta
edited by Sanjin Muftić

Late Bloomer (2023) - feature film

directed by Amy Jephta
edited by Sanjin Muftić

Extracts include:

• ingcwaba lendoda lise cankwe ndlela (dir Mandla Mbothwe) - theatre projection design

• Izililo Azilali Elwandle (co dir Mandla Mbothwe) - short film co-direct & edit

• Biko Rising & 1976 (dir Mandla Mbothwe) - theatre projection design

• Ikrele leChiza: digital hybrid (dir Mandla Mbothwe) - short films edit

• Barakat (dir Amy Jephta) - feature film edit

To get to the race track (when there is no race on and you are without a car) requires trains, buses and many steps. Get to Milan Lambrate, and find the train that goes towards Saronno, Monza is only a couple of stations out. Once you get there, grab bus Z221 (though getting a ticket can be tricky without an Italian cell number and there not being paper tickets). So you just wing it. Then, after going through most of the town, you get off in the middle of a random suburb. The only thing that seems to indicate there is a historic race track nearby is a billboard with sun drenched photos of race cars and races from nearly a century ago. You walk down a quiet road, past a row of residential houses, until you see fencing that separates you from a park. Past the gate, you keep walking and walking, eventually you are at the back of the grandstand. You can’t really see the track. As you walk through a tunnel, you realise that the starting grid is right above your head. You are now in the paddock, the pit building is on the right, you can look left and if you tiptoe above the fence you can just make out a bit of the back straight that is between Ascari Chicane and the modern Parabolica.

When I was small I liked cars. In a calm way. Comparatively. I did really like formula 1 for some reason, the cars looked so elegant, sleek, and logically colourful. In my single digit years, I had a little pedal car that was like a red formula one, and thanks to the Austria-Hungarian design of my grandma’s flat above the Sarajevo brewery, I could get up to a max speed of 2km/hr in the long passageway. I could have been a racing contender, had my sister not decided to stand on the front left wheel during a pit-stop and then hit her head on the green couch. She survived, with a small scar above her eyebrow. In Addis, I remember pressuring my dad to go to one of his friend’s houses who had Dstv (satellite TV) so we could catch a bit of the race. The starting grid looked like a box of colour pencils on wheels. But the first time I tried to drive a car, I managed to reverse our Toyota Corolla with the door open so that it got in the way of a tree and couldn’t close anymore. After the war was over, and we went back to Sarajevo, and Sunday would find us at my grandad’s orchard, I would be the only one parked in front of the tv watching Schumi own all the tracks. But in the same summer, I would be driving a Mitsubishi Pajero on the family road trip and blow the engine just outside Kroonstad. A few years later I wouldn’t pay attention to the flashing oil light in a VW Chico and repeat the same outcome. That same year my sister went to the F1 Grand Prix in Montreal and sent me videos of cars zooming by where she was sitting. Flashes of colour. Closest I got to F1 was getting a Logitech steering wheel and pedals and hooking it up to the F1 2019 game and a projector. And racing against the computer with infinite instant replays for all the spins and crashes.

Now I am at my first ever visit to a F1 race track. I just can’t see the track. On the website they say they offer a drive around the track or even the ability to bike on it - but not today, not with asphalt being redone ahead of the race in a month (and Brad Pitt’s motion picture filming in one of the pit garages). Best I could do was sign up for a tour of the public section of the pit building - press room, control room, & podium. The end of July sun was blazing. But many people gathered, they had to split us in three groups of 20, each with a different guide. As we started walking through the parking lot where all the giant motor homes will go, it dawned on me that these people were here for the same reason I was.

These F1 fans, some families, mostly from Europe from what I could tell, some very British, definitely a Polish group of young men who kept harassing the guide about how good Robert Kubica was and if he would have been world champion had it not been for that rally injury. Meanwhile the guide is trying to tell us about the history of the track and what happens on Grand Prix weekend. I found myself getting very annoyed at these other F1 fans who came on my tour. And they were really not that annoying, apart from the persistent Kubica fan club. But I was somehow expecting to be all alone on this pilgrimage. Did I want to explore it solo? In what world was I expecting that I would have the whole race track for myself?

I tend to watch all the F1 races solo. I have been doing so for most of my life. There are a few people I might talk about it later, but I never watch with a group. A watch party? Not a thing for me. I always feel a bit outside the crowd when it gets passionate, I can’t get into it. Am I stopping myself from feeling the excitement so I don’t have to deal with the disappointment if who I support doesn’t win? I try to stay objective (only exception was the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix of 2021). The end result of this solo pursuit is I don’t know the community. Sure I see other fans on TV, I know they exist. But I am not at the race.

And after all these years my relationship with F1 has been quite private. And now here is a small selection of F1 fans, a community with the shared interest, and I am not vibing with them. I don’t even know them, but I don’t like that they are here. Another way to explain it is to compare it with music. Like when you have a favourite song. The one that speaks to your soul, and you put it on repeat, and you spend hours and days singing it alone in your house or car, letting it build a relationship with you. Then you are lucky that the artist is coming to your side of the world, you go to the concert and the song plays. When everybody in the arena starts singing the song, you realise the song is really not yours, as everybody else has built their own relationship. And you have to decide whether you join them in this communal private reconnection or just go home crying “IT WAS MY SONG AND EVERYBODY ELSE RUINED IT.” Okay maybe that is a bit extra, but the song was never yours.

As we walked through the building, through the control room and the press room, I realised that I was not present so much. I was thinking more about getting the tour done and getting back on the train. That was definitely a bit extra.

We got onto the roof of the paddocks. Finally I could see the main straight, from the Parabolica to First Variante. The real life scale of it is colossal. The main straight was wide, and forever long. It couldn’t have stretched out more. I look around and all I see are trees and the race track. It stretches beyond the horizon. I wonder what it must be like to watch the cars swing out on your left, where the Parabolica is, and keep conquering the pavement down the straight. Then I realise I have seen that. From my mental garage, I try to recall all the images I had captured from watching this straight on TV (or on the projector). Then I try to blow it up onto my current three dimensions, overlay the cars in my mind on to this empty straight in front of my eyes. It is silent now, apart from the noise of the various languages of the tour group participants, but with that transposition also comes that sound of the engine. The F1 cars are on the straight in front of me, coming closer, louder then flashing and whizzing past. Then getting smaller and smaller as they close in to the First Variante, where I see them almost pause and change direction, right and left, through the chicane and then out of sight beyond the trees.

Still on that roof, traveling in my mind - I am here now, in this space with no race going on. My brain has assembled all the fragments of images of a race that took place right here at some point, and jumbled them up with all the computer game driving that took me down this very straight. Standing on the roof, alone from the tour group, I keep superimposing those images of cars on the main straight and dare myself to feel a bit of excitement at witnessing and feeling a flash of a Grand Prix at Monza.

Maybe the empty race track is enough.

It was an ambitious plan, coming to Cremona. A few years ago, I decided I wanted to learn to play the cello. I am not sure what the final push was for choosing that instrument. If it was the character of Stephen Maturin in Master & Commander, who being not only a doctor and a spy, could also play while sailing on a fictional 19th century frigate; or if it was Zoe Keating, who samples echoes of herself and creates a one person chamber orchestra; or (I am ashamed to share), a desire to play Bach’s Prelude #1 (that is such a cliched reason - I am sure adult cello teachers roll their eyes every time somebody books lessons with them to learn to play with Prelude #1). Anyway, I rented a cello, took some lessons and added even more structure to my home days with at least a half hour of practice. Starting with the basics. And even after a couple years, continuing on with those same basics. I think I was improving. But I was still cheating and looked at the numbers above the notes that indicated fingering. Some notes just never sounded right. I couldn't get a vibrato going, and I was lacking musical interpretation, mechanically right, spiritually flat. But I was consistent. I was so diligent even the neighbours noticed. They would commend me on my regularity at every opportunity we encountered each other. One neighbour even setting up misguided plans for a concert in the neighbourhood parking lot.

The plan in getting myself to Cremona, the birthplace of craftsmanship of European classical string instruments, was to force a leap in my cello playing. Maybe just walking the town for a couple of days, I would inhale some inspiration. That through osmosis, my exposure to all the cellos of Cremona would fix my vibrato, have me read bass (and tenor) clef, give me classical soul while playing, and get me ready for my neighbourhood concert. My airbnb host, whose brother or cousin is a luthier, seemed a bit disappointed that I wasn't a professional string player of some sort. She recalled fondly of one of her recent guests, who was a concert violinist, and had to practice for his concert in her flat. The flat is on the 2nd floor of one of those typical old low Italian apartment blocks shaped in a circle that overlooks a courtyard (where I could finally hang my travel clothes to dry after doing a proper laundry cycle for the first time in a week) so the sound travels. Anyway, the host got a call from one of her neighbours asking her if she could tell her guest to rather just practice in the courtyard so that they could enjoy the music at its full volume. Now that’s a neighbourhood concert.

Cremona is of course still the place to get your cello. In the Violin museum off the centre of town (it is also the cello museum, and the viola museum) - there are exhibits of the most famous cellos that were made here, along with a directory of all of the luthiers, from the families that began with the lutes to the people who came from different parts of the world to learn the craft and takeover or open their own trade. Walking through the town, you can see the shops - some possess a quality that feels like it reaches back to the beginnings of the trade, while others are more modernised with a whole sales team. I suppose the demand is greater today than it was when classical music was popular music. I had seen social media videos of professional cello layers coming to Cremona to order a custom instrument, and then coming back months later to pick up their cello, while booking an extra seat on the way back to make sure the cello does not get damaged on the way home (not sure if one can take the cello’s extra meal/drinks). I wasn’t really going to buy a cello, though I did walk into a central tourist/agent office, the one that connects you with the luthiers (a union of luthiers), just to ask if they had any summer specials? Turns out you can get it for half the price if you ask an apprentice. The lady who assisted me was kind enough to talk me through the process of what happens, but based on my lack of experience, laughed off any suggestion of even sharing the price of a cello.

Ahead of arriving, I had seen that there was some kind of music festival taking place and ensured that my visit coincided with this. I found the address for the evening’s performance and climbed up the stairs of a university building and walked into a modern auditorium. There was something friendly and homey about the crowd, lots of families, people greeting each other, lots of kids running up and down the aisles dressed formally and wearing a nervous energy. It reminded me of band concerts at my international school when I was playing the trumpet (a story for another time). Something was dawning on me and when the first piece started it confirmed that this was an international summer school festival where not one of the featured performers was going to be older than a pre-teen. And the accompanists were all their teachers - who may have on occasion been their parents, all from international places - mostly the States. And so I settled in, to watch a selection of duets and trios, with piano, violin, cello and the occasional viola performed by the next generation of the world’s classical musicians.

To my ear, they were exceptional. There is a surreal experience in watching incredibly talented youngsters - the juxtaposition of their age, not only with the age of the music they played, but the mastery of their instrument. Their hands move effortlessly with frantic energy while also being commanded at high precision. Their bodies feel like they are straining with the emotional demands of the musical pieces, emotions for which they have not had the life experience. Their faces are so focused, yet almost surprised at what the performance of the piece is doing to their soul. It is a musical intersection of time. It was difficult not to think that they were miles ahead of a level that I could ever get to even if I made rehearsing the cello my full time job. When I was looking for inspiration in coming to Cremona I am not sure that this was what I had in mind. Maybe it was the perfect thing.

Cremona has a Torrazzo, one of the tallest brickwork bell towers in the world. For 8 euros you can climb it and stop at the largest astronomical clock along the way. You can also learn about the measurement of time, and clocks. The climb, even in the late afternoon, is physically intense, and you can feel the history change with the three different sections, as they were built during different times. Finally with the last narrow spiral wooden stairs you emerge just below the roof, look out and see all the tiny roads spreading out of the piazza, many of them housing the luthiers of Cremona. And you can hear the kids performing their end of school gala in the courtyard off the piazza underneath the tower. The sounds of their strings rise up, and I felt the distance to their music

.

None of the people on this Sunday evening Reggio Emilia piazza look Italian. By that I mean, none of them fit my first image of an Italian. There are no sock-less white men with crisp linen pants, no nonnas with a hunch and a bag full of vegetables. They don’t look like tourists, nor do they feel like them, they don’t have that kind of vibe. The reason the piazza is clam and relaxed is because it is devoid of that collective heaving tourist energy that renders a place’s aura stressful. No, these people and families are dwelling in their space. It is their square, their park, their cafes. Their home?

At this point i have two intersecting thoughts.

The first thought is that I am supposing a lot here. i am making up a narrative, a story out of my own imagination which draws from my repertoire of memories, experiences and images. I am supposing that these people have migrated from other parts of the world to be here, to be able to dwell in this park on a sunny summer evening in July. But let me check myself in these thoughts. This is an assumption born out of privilege, who am I to judge what an Italian looks like, and to whom Italy belongs? I am walking around it freely because of a passport from favourable country, but a few decades back and I would have struggled to get into this place. Is this scene distorting my images of an Italian town on summer evening?

The second thought is an image. Walking amongst these pockets takes me back in time and space - yet the action and feeling is the same. The bell had just rung. From the 4th period class to the locker to get your lunch, and then the same kind of amble to find your pocket of people. It is lunch time on the lower ground of my old international school in Addis Ababa: a gentle green slope broken up by counters of low stone ledges, with a teacher’s tukul in the middle. Pockets of us were scattered everywhere, in little huddles of all geometric shapes. Most people stuck to having lunch with people form their own grade, and the boys and girls tended to have their own circles (the Americans tended to keep to themselves). But there were the cool kids, the fashion kids, the geeks, the nerds, the athletes - and most of these had a natural international feel. There was a chance that in each of these huddles, no country was represented more than once. At the time, we were only starting to understand geo-politics (How many died in your country today? At least they are not starving to death.) and took each other company at face-kid value through shared interests or exchangeable lunches (Sanjin, you only ever have sandwiches!). Why does this image come to me now? Except that maybe it is that same feeling - i am catching the same feeling walking through these streets as i did stepping out to lunch back in that school. And that feeling, maybe not at the moment, but how my mind had chosen to remember it was that the lunch period felt like home, just like this feels like it carries a home energy.

The question at the intersection of these thoughts:

Where is home?

What is home?

On one level, I would say that this place doesn’t seem like home of those I see around me. But who I am to make that call? What images do I hold for those who I think should call Italy home? What right do I have to carry that thought. I have been asked - where is home? Is home a nation, is home the house, is home the family? Is home where you can go out to relax on a Sunday afternoon with your family? Perhaps people move from one nation to another to ensure something different for their family. Maybe to ensure that that they have a safe place to go on a summer Sunday evening. Am I reading too much into this scene before me to think that these families find themselves in Reggio Emilia to make something different for their families? The family is home and whatever country the family is in, then that is home.

I think I only started understanding migration I became a migrant myself. I am not sure if you can fully understand it unless it happens to you or you do the same - unless you pack up (if you have a chance) and go - not like a tourist - not to walk through new Reggio Emilia or stop in parma eat a risotto - you have to leaving knowing you won’t come back. And sometimes you choose to migrate, but in some cases - immigration finds you. Up until the Bosnian war, my view of the world was quite rooted (and perhaps it is where this image of Italy and its inhabitants still resides or was forged). There wasn’t much migration or people moving into Sarajevo from other countries in the 1980s (and definitely not the 90s). So i thought that your nation or your birth within a nation defined your home. Only after finding myself in Ethiopia while the Bosnian war started did I realise I couldn’t go back to my home and had no more nation. And home at to be found elsewhere, like with those at lunch at school.

What will this square in Reggio Emilia, look like in a couple of decades on a similar Sunday afternoon? Who will be here, what language(s) will they speak, where will they call home, and who will be the tourist visiting them? Will the image of a person who calls Italy home be different to the one I hold today?

One of my favourite Bosnian authors, who was out of the country when the war started, wrote that a place becomes a home when you find “your own” places in a new place. Hemon found his butcher and his barber in Chicago. The people around me have found their piazza.

In nearby Parma the next day, I skip the sightseeing around piazzas and decide to treat myself to an authentic lunch that is not a sandwich nor a panini. In a classic Parma restaurant I order the individual ingredients: ham, risotto and the whippiest of all butters. I also find out, that this restaurant, with the local specialities, the owner moved here from the south of Italy.

It’s lonely on the Salento express, the special edition overnight tourist train from Lecce to Rome. The dining car, white and pristine, is nearly empty. The evening sun casts golden hour shadows as the flat landscape rolls by. The Adriatic is somewhere to the right, I catch its marine blue from the corner of my eye. I see only two other travellers at separate tables, while the duo of dining car attendants (an odd couple in energy and manners) take the dinner order.

The first course arrives instantly. The pasta is...very al-dente. I look up: the solo travellers are now sitting opposite each other across the same table. Deep in conversation, their first course appears untouched. The sun is setting, the sky converts to a deeper blue hue. The second course arrives, the chicken is…no it is fish. I hear the one attendant exclaim “Romantic!” as he pops opens a bottle of Prosecco for the joined solo travellers. They laugh slightly awkwardly. The dining room lights have taken over from the summer sun. The couple are toasting, laughing, having a good time. 2nd course still on the table. By the time the dessert arrives, a very dry tart, the other attendant is urging me to call it a night with his card machine. It is dark outside. The travellers are still chatting like old friends as the train leaves the coast of the Adriatic and heads inland and I go to my cabin.

For a number of hours in the middle of the night, the train stops. As if it needed a respite before a second go. Earlier on, I had heard the giddy voices of the travellers pass through the corridor. Now there is a silence. So silent I could hear the train and the very few people on it breathe. By the time the intercom announces breakfast in the morning, the train has been rolling again. In the dining car, same attendants, same dry food but no solo travellers. As I walk out of Roma Termini, I see them again, with their bags, standing together. One points and they walk and get into a car that has just pulled up. So, their encounter continues. Where do they go from here? Was I witness to a “before sunrise” on the salento express?

In a bookstore in Lecce, my duolingo Italian deduced a conversation between a little girl and her old grandmother (nonna). The girl had found a book she wanted (nonna had offered any book to buy?).

Bookstores are as beautiful and holy as cathedrals. And in Italy, there is something aesthetically pleasing about the ways books look. Italian books of all formats and genres. They could be translations of books from other languages, or original Italian books - but as long as they are published somewhere in Italy - they look crisp. The cover design is clean, classy, elegant. It grabs, it pulls, you want to buy them all, it makes you want to read Italian. Sometimes the book cover image is so clever, you can feel the book, the story.

The girl’s book was a Roald Dahl. Nonna was not convinced. “Are you sure this is for you?”-she asked. The girl nodded. Maybe nonna was weary of the cover, she looked for adult help. As I was leaving (empty handed), I heard nonna getting a second opinion from the salesperson, and I got a flashback of standing at the checkout counter of a small kids library in Sarajevo. My gran (baba) is next to me and the librarian is looking suspiciously at The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾. The librarian says that this book is not appropriate, but I manage to pull the “cleverer than other 7 year olds” card, and my gran lets me borrow it.

I wasn’t ready for Adrian’s daily woes.

In foreign places, as much as we yearn for the different, we relish when we encounter shades of the same-same.

Matera is a labyrinth: a rock, a ravine, a chasm in the land, carved in and dotted with stone dwellings of mixed sizes, criss crossed by steps and narrow alleys. All limestone, white and grey and aged with time. Olive green window shutters and chimneys everywhere, a few church steeples. You can’t tell where one dwelling begins and the other ends. It looks like a sketch, one of those made by never lifting the pencil off the paper. It is a captivating, dazzling, jagged roller coaster for the eyes. And for the feet. The steps are never the same height, the rocks underneath are uneven, their paths curve and steep and lead to dead ends, beautiful views and often, both.

The full scope of the labyrinth takes time to manifest. First you have to visit Casa Noha, and spend a bit of time with the history of the Sassi di Matera. The history is long, for it is one of the oldest inhabited towns. As you get lost in space, you will also get lost in time. Are you there with the first Palaeolithic people who began to carve the landscape? The artisans of the early Middle Ages whose craftsmanship brought fame and money to the town? Or with the Sassi of the early to mid 20th century, with their poor living conditions, which are now on show in various cave museums? They were then forcibly removed before the town was upgraded to its tourist glory. Or maybe you are with the several Hollywood Jesuses and one Bond who come here to shoot movies that needed a historical grounding?

But it is the opposite of a traditional labyrinth, for it asks “how did I get here” as opposed to how do I get out? The labyrinth, where once people lived and worked, is now full of hotels and B&Bs, restaurants and bars, shops, ice cream parlours and art galleries. And the history of the Sassi (if you are even aware of it) provides only the visual backdrop for their (my) summer cocktail (old fashioned). When you visit such a place do you acknowledge everything that came before? What do you get out being here? Maybe you are not supposed to think about all this. Have a view, a bite, a lick, a sip or two. Enjoy being at the end of history.

You have been wandering through the old town of Bari since just before sunset. Once again, you are hungry. A lot of options this time. Fried fish, pizza, pasta - too many. People are out and about, walking, eating, sitting on the old town limestone walls, limestone steps and limestone streets. Finally you pick a place, that is spilling out of one of the houses (also limestone). You pick it mostly for the vibes, no men to be seen. People are enjoying themselves, the tables full of dishes and beers, surrounded by parents and kids. The food comes out from behind one of those door beads (they are everywhere), and through the generous gaps you can see, not the outlines of a kitchen but like a living room - with a couch and tv (with a doily on it). Then you realise - you sat down at some Bari’s family dinner.

When I was small, I would take all my toys out of their resting place and put them in the middle of my room, then take a day to build a city with all of them - action figures, toy cars, and lego blocks. I could stand up and see it all, or crouch down and zoom in on the daily life of a transformer. Bari has that kind of coziness. The old town is a picturesque blend of stone houses and winding pathways. It is the grown up version of a toy city, just the right size to both hold it completely in your head and get lost in its winding corners. People’s houses do spill over into the street. Families sell their homemade paste on large trays, or have dinner, chat, or drink - everyone going on about their life while tourists take pictures and walk by. People live here, they host here, they share here.

Everything, even the churches, is less angular, more round, more inviting. The old town doesn’t have chains - neither of restaurants nor of stores. It is free. That it is the shape of Bari. As the sun goes down strings of street lights, lamps bring that warm orange glow reflecting off the limestone - even to the shadows. It is enchantingly cozy. So whatever you do, don’t come to Bari alone. It is a waste of your time. Bring a lover. Bring a friend - they will become a lover by night’s end.

Procida is Bo-Kaap by the sea, with each house having a different splash of paint. It does look like however, that the sea has had its way, and de-saturated the colour palette. The apocryphal story is still circulated - that the houses were different colours so that the fisherman could find their way home easily (ie my house is the mauve one between the pink and violet). The narrow roads that spaghetti through the island, on which there are no sidewalks, are full of cars, buses, scooters and people jostling towards their own house or the beach. The beach sand is a treacle brown - as if it is millions of Oreos had been crumbed. Meanwhile the sea changes colour, forever in conversation with the sky.

The sun is now setting. You thought you could wait till dinner at 7. But when you check the internet, most restaurants only open again on Tuesday. Monday is like a Sunday for the restaurants. You are not hungry anymore. You are hangry. And in Italy. You are now roaming the streets, dodging the cars, the busses, the scooters. You look enviously upon the clutter of stray cats that have had food put out for them and are now feasting and side-eyeing. It is getting dark, there are no street lights. But just when you think all hope is lost, you see lights and a sign. It is the @morsoburgerprocida. Burgers, sandwiches, and chicken wings. It is food, it is fast. An oasis on a summer’s Monday night on the island of Procida.

Ingredients:
strap of bravery,
safety chain of confidence,
helmet of disregard of your personal life,
harness of abundant faith

Pre-instructions:
Don’t bother looking both ways (there is aways something coming)
Don’t wait for a gap (it won’t appear).
Don’t wait patiently at the start of a crossing (no one cares).

Steps:
1. Imagine you are doing a bungee jump
2. Leap off the sidewalk into the valley of vehicles

If you took the energy of Kathmandu, the people of Sarajevo, the coastal landscape of Cape Town - and told your favourite AI tool to create a city with the combination of those three - it would give you Napoli (I use these three cities that I know, as one should use AI responsibly: feed it only what you know to ask for something you don’t). Napoli is uncanny Italy. Extremes are packaged tightly as people in its Spanish Quarter (where you can find a takeaway Aperol Sprits for a single euro) - touristy while unapologetically local, sprawling while claustrophobic, friendly yet intimidating. Funeral parlour, fried pizza shop, religious (and sport) icon figurine stand - they all share the same front door. It is a different country to North Italy. Something else is worshipped.

Even the food tastes different. Is it the water? The air? Maybe it is the residue of the volcanic ash in the soil that has found its way into the flour used for the pizza dough. It is lighter, airier (and also cheaper). Maybe it is the soul with which it is made. You can taste it (even in the fried pizzas). And if you want all of this soul in a spoonful - head to a market in Chiaia, at the back, behind the fisheries, the underwear, and the fresh fruit stalls. You will find @cibicotti_nonnaanna. The food there tastes as if it was cooked by a southern European grandma. By the size of the portions, it is also dished by one too.

Then while looking at all of the historic Umbria Jazz posters on display in the main pedestrian avenue of Corso Pietro Vannouci in lead up to the 2024 edition starting in a few days.

You feel like you are looking through their eyes when you visit the Umbrian National Gallery, and walk through room after room after room after room of Christian artwork from the 13th century to today. Realising that for many ghosts of this area, these were the only media images they ever saw.

You feel them trapped behind the numerous iterations of the city walls around the town - built, destroyed, extended, built on top off, preserved…

You are surrounded by them when you visit the underground Umbria. The Rocca Paolina, old fortress now both shopping and exhibition arcade, that running partly under the city centre, with an escalator that cuts right through it.

Then you finally hear it, when you step outside at 10pm on a summer night. While people are watching the Euro football semi-finals (not even Italy playing), there is a voice that rises above the crowd, and while in Italian, it still has that recognisable academic monotone swagger. You walk towards it, to small water fountain at the base of the imposing Church of Sant’Ercolano. You spot a small crowd facing a man, standing in front of a projected powerpoint slide. It’s a launch/talk tied to a new book on history of visual communication, hosted by @edicola_518. Like most academic talks, you are not sure when it will end. But the ghosts have time to listen and linger.

Queue #4 Verona has its own colosseum. It’s authentic, it’s old, it’s real. Also, It’s cute. Third largest in Italy, but it looks like a mini-colloseum. Instead of queuing up to see it, you think you could put it in your suitcase (if you have that extender zip). It’s cute but pricey.

Queue #3 A charming view of Verona? Get yourself to the Castel San Pietro. But don’t walk, queue up for the funicular - the automated see through box that squishes you in with 30 other sweaty tourists (plus their babies) and crawls its way to the top of the hill where the castle sits and you can enjoy the gaze upon the mini-majestic town.

Queue #2 @labottegadellagina - fresh tortellini (and variants), seasonal fillings, multicoloured dough and made in front of you with some oil and placed in a simple paper bowl. The taste is anything but basic.

Queue #1: The queue you really want to stand in is only found late at night, across the river from the centre, in between the open air student bars, in front a yellow/brown neon sign. You shout your order through a break in the wall. You have limited time to choose between a chocolate and/or white chocolate and/or cream and/or pistachio and/or hazelnut and/or…you can even have a savoury one (with speck!). But pick however many small hole-less donuts (or the grossos!) you want and collet them through the small hole in the plexiglass. A couple of minutes later, your fingers will be sticky with the sugar, your lips smeared with whatever flavour you picked, your mouth will be stuffed with that soft dough, and your soul will be climbing higher than Juliet’s balcony. The @bottegadelkrapfen only opens at 10pm during the summer, but is open till sunrise. That is a taste of Verona.

If you want to get away from Italy, go to Padua.

If you want to get a feel for Italy, go to Padua.

Actually, don’t come to Padua.

There is nothing of interest here. Yes there is a Basilica, a huge one, and a giant spacious square in front of it. But the streets are very quiet and tranquil. A river runs along many of them, as they wind their way from the squares of the center to the flats of the residents. Come in July and in the evenings you will find students wearing laurel wreaths on their heads, celebrating their university graduation with their family in restaurants. Stay out and you will see them later with their friends in the many open bars. You can breathe easily in Padua. There is space. Somewhere among the streets, you will find an observatory, 250 years old, still looking up at the night sky.

So let Padua be and leave me at @caffepedrocchi1831, drinking coffee with their famous mint cream.

Voice of the tour guide: Make sure you pick the right gallery for the art you want to see. David and Venus do not live in the same house. Also don’t be mad, the classics that you are looking for are not immediately there at start. You will first have to skim through the early Italian political press of the 20th century - from the futurists to the fascists.

Oh don’t mind the crowds, everybody wants to take a photo of the masterpieces. Oh that’s just Venus, I am sure you have seen her before. Yes, this is the real thing. Why of course, everything looks better in real life. Yes it is the one and only. Why don’t you take a photo, just mind everybody else who is doing the same…maybe you can crop them. It really is the original copy, from which all online copies are derived.

No that gentleman from the Middle Ages is not staring into your soul. Brianne of Tarth? No, not her. Yes Judith really was killing the patriarchy. I am not sure if a photo of the statues will pass social media community guidelines. No, the opening credits of White Lotus were not shot here.
Take a photo, but pace yourself,
there are still 999 pieces of art to see on your way out.
Take a photo, as many as you wish,
prove it to all your people that you saw art all in real life.
But tell me, how did it feel to see it live?

Just off the Uffizi gallery square, where you get your prebooked tickets, I heard a familiar sound. A few years back I got it into my head that I wanted to learn to play the cello. And what I heard now was the sound of a lone cello, but played by a professional.

Maybe it was the scene: the late afternoon sun reflected in the narrow alley, the bicycle against the wall, perhaps it was his colourful shirt or the way his bow danced lightly on the A string, or could even have been his vibrato. Maybe he was my first Italian street musician, but. I. was. smitten.

I sat on the street leaning against the opposing wall and listened through his repertoire. And they were all bangers, from the theme from Schindler’s list to his effortless version of Bach’s prelude. I was there, time passing, hoping somehow to absorb his skill. At one point he made eye contact, nodded and smiled at me. I blushed and got up to leave - broken from the reverie. The sound of his cello reverberated for a few more blocks, before resting only in my ears.