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In Which We Discuss The German Divorce Rate
June 24, 2008 by Mike
Tropea
It's a beautiful, storied, historical town -- narrow streets, old decaying palaces and defensive walls intact. There's a church on a little outcrop right on the beach. It looks very pretty. The only museum is the Church Museum, so I content myself with walking the narrow streets of the town and -- wonder of wonders -- checking my email in a real, genuine cybercafe. (It masquerades as a gift shop: maybe that's why Berlusconi's Thought Police haven't shut it down yet.)
It's beautiful, then, but Tropea fails Mike's Patented Too Touristy? Test. There's 100 shops where you can buy Tropea t-shirts and Tropea teatowels, but nowhere (for the locals) to buy tea. Everything is geared to the tourist's spending power. And even if half the shops are selling 'local specialities' they're the same local specialities -- the cheeses, the wines, the fiddly little thingummyjigs -- on sale in 'local' shops from Norway to Spain and all points in between.
But who am I trying to kid? I'm being as touristy as the next tent. I just prefer to spend less money than them!
My kind of touristy involves lying on this incredible beach, swimming in this sublime sea, and buying 30cent postcards instead of 30€ ceramic doodahs.
What has made Tropea a bit special is not the beach, though, or even the postcards. I met a young family in the campsite who I think are doing the most brilliant thing. Little Zoe is nearly a year old and has been travelling in a camper van with parents Melanie and Sasha for almost all of her life.
How? Thanks in part to munificent German maternity and paternity regulations, but mainly because the family had the energy and the guts to do this.
My circumstances all pointed towards doing something like this trip: divorce, the flat sold (nowhere to live but money in my pocket) and work reaching a natural break.
Sasha and Melanie, on the other hand, gave up work and set off just as they had a new-born child.
Fanbloodytastic. They both spend far more time with their child than other parents who go back to work. And all three are gaining experiences they'll never forget. (OK, so the baby doesn't realise it. And won't remember, as such. Consciously. But you know what I mean. They were in Barcelona at the same time as me (and thousands of Manchester United fans and have already been to Croatia. They go where the wind takes them and stay until they decide it's time to move on. Zoe cannot stop smiling and gurgling with pleasure.
"Every family should be forced to do this when they have a new baby," I tell them. I may have had a glass or two of red by this stage.
"Then the divorce rate would go up very fast," Sasha tells me, ruefully.
There was a pregnant pause.
But then he and Melanie both laughed, and looked each other lovingly in the eye. They'll make it, and they and their child will be all the better for it. Three cheers to them all.
--
Melanie has also shown me some exercises for my back. She's an alternative therapist and acupuncturist. The exercises do not involve sticking needles in me. I am, on all accounts, extremely grateful.
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