Beside the Seaside

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In Which I Host A Brief Debate Between Darwin And The Catholic Church

June 23, 2008 by Mike

Tropea

Route: Paola - Amanta - Pizzo - Briatico - Tropea

Some highlights from my morning paper, 'Calabria Ora':

p2 A student from Parma has been fined 148€ for using his mobile phone while riding a bike. Not surprisingly, this is news in Italy, considering millions of bicycle, scooter and motorbike riders do it every day. And every car driver.

p5 The funeral of three girls (17, 17, 15) killed in an horrific traffic accident. Q.E.D.

pp7-10 Remembering a TV journalist who was falsely accused, imprisoned and hounded to death because he was too close to uncovering state corruption.

p22 Mafia extortion -- can't get the gist of the story, but the sums quoted are astronomical.

Welcome to Italy. Welcome to the South of Italy.

Italy lost to Spain in the European Championships last night. I got a good night's sleep, free of drunken loons blaring their car and bike horns all night long. I feel old, but grateful.

Paola was home to Saint Francis. That's St Francis of Paola, not St Francis of Assisi -- you know, the famous one. St F of P was a devout and good man, enough to be canonised just nine years after his death, which is pretty quick by Catholic standards (unless Pope John-Paul II is on the throne) though in every picture of him.. OK, they're all the same picture, endlessly reproduced on postcards, posters, books, wall-hangings and leaflets around the town.. he looks like he's apologising for having just stood in something.

I visit the Basilica above the town -- it has a rushing stream running beside it and, err, a church next door, and a hotel for pilgrims -- and the house in which he was born (closed during opening hours) and remain none the wiser.

There's an old heart to Paola. Wandering down one old street, narrow and grey and dusty and hot and dry unpainted and slowly falling to pieces, I felt for a moment like I was walking down the same street 500 years ago. There were no people to be seen. But as I crept along, the 21st century bit me on the nose: there was the unmistakeable sound of a TV soap opera blaring LOUDLY out of more than one of the windows.

Is there some kind of Darwinian explanation for Catholicism? (Oh, the irony.) Is the reason Italy has embraced the Roman Catholic Church a subliminal, visceral need to produce large families -- knowing you're quite likely to need spare heirs as so many people here drive so badly and may die before they reproduce?

Has any research been commissioned on the chariot-driving habits of Imperial Rome? Did the death-wish pre-date Christianity?

But - wouldn't the 'stupid driving' gene be predisposed to wipe itself out, if Darwin's right? So maybe the god squad is right after all?

I'm confused.

The seaside in Italy is different. It's largely private. Bars, lidos, fitness centres or lifestyle centres get first dips on the beach in front of them.

Why?

Well, who knows. But it works: people flock to the beach where they have to pay to sit down, but can buy expensive drinks and ice-cream, rather than moving 50 metres down the beach to where everything is free (but it looks like they haven't paid to be there. Maybe that's it -- some weird uninverted snobbery?)

Where would you rather be...?

Whatever. The coast today can't compete with the excesses of the last couple of days. Piedigrotta, a small community to the north of Pizzo, could have been interesting but the grotto itself -- now a church -- was closed for lunch. (God was hungry?)

Pizzo, I've been told this evening, is supposed to be one of the ten most pictresque towns in all of Italy. Coulda fooled me.

Which leaves Tropea: also recommended by the old man in the petrol station, but unlike Paola he's spot on this time. Another town on a hill, only this time the hill finishes in cliffs that drop just a few metres from the sea - the turquoise sea. That's just enough space to fit a beach and campsite.. and that's where I am tonight.

The sea at Tropea, as seen from the City Walls. It REALLY is this clean....

Beside the Seaside

In Which I Host A Brief Debate Between Darwin And The Catholic Church

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