Catania is known as "the black city" because of the color of its buildings, blackened by the soot and ashes of the Etna volcano, whose eruptions have often damaged and even destroyed the city, which has always been able to rise again from the her ashes becoming more and more beautiful. Etna is the highest volcano in Europe and every now and then you can see magmatic explosions and fumes coming out of its lava mouths.
I know you expected to see the poster for this famous movie. But I won’t show it because it’s bullshit. Nomads do not receive a pension and those are the real nomads. But the people in this movie travel because they have a monthly income that allows them to do what they want. A story written by a pensioner, and not by a true nomad! So I would like to say that yes, it is a beautiful thing to travel the world but if you are rich or have a pension you cannot go and advise others on how to survive. You are a false nomad. If you want to see the real nomads go to Mongolia instead where they can give you real advice on how to survive. It pisses me off all these people who have put themselves on a camper or van and already have money and want to believe that they survive only by traveling and selling bracelets. Come on?!!! Can we believe such fake people?
The term nomad is really overused today, and we often forget that there are people who live this lifestyle out of necessity or culture, as the only reality they have and not as a choice.
Once very many, today there are few people who still live in this way: the nomads of Mongolia are one of them. In the arid Mongolian steppes there is no room for cultivation, the main means of livelihood is livestock, and to always guarantee new pastures for the cattle, families move with their gers and their trucks, which represent all their possessions.
Living this life is not easy, there is no hot water (not even cold water to take a decent shower), no toilet, no power outlet other than solar panels for the cell phone, no fridge and no entertainment. We tried to live like this for a week and it was pretty tough. Between the food always based on the strangest meats, the lack of hygiene and the most absurd behavioral rules, nomads live a truly crazy life.
You cook on the floor, eat on the floor, sleep on the floor ... but if there is food placed on the ground and you try to climb over it, walking over it with your feet, you will hear it screaming! Nomads really eat everything: from sausages made of guts emptied of excrement, to the head of a kid with delicious eyeballs, but the most absurd thing we saw presented for dinner was a… marmot !!! Not just its meat: a marmot emptied of its entrails and used as a "pressure cooker" to cook its own meat!
Thank goodness there will be something good to drink, right? Obviously not, because what they usually drink is salty tea. Yes, salty. They are people used to riding for hours and hours, they will have a very comfortable and soft saddle ... but no, their saddles are made of wood and, in order not to miss any inconvenience, their stirrups are very short, so that you always have to ride raised from the saddle. An infinite pain. The ger is a concentrate of ancient engineering, a real portable miniature house. Once disassembled, it is transported entirely with all the furniture in a pick-up. Do you know how long it takes to assemble one? Two hours, counted.
A nomad wakes up every morning at 6, milks the cows and then accompanies the herd of sheep on horseback to pasture… then he stands there watching them for 4 to 7 hours, with a nap attached. The horses are not tied up, nor in the pens. They are left free but with the 3 legs tied by a rope, so that they can graze and move but… do not stray too far.
What we would call spoiled milk for them is a delicacy in which to dip cookies or add to soup. Nomads eat a lot, it will be to stock up for the harsh winter. And they expect you to eat the same. The problem is that grandma's delicacies aren't exactly what they offer you. And they are almost aggressive in insisting that you do an encore, forbidden to say no.
"I am proud to be born in the taiga," says Tumursukh sitting at a table in a cafe in Ulan Bator, the capital of Mongolia, a stone's throw from the offices of the Ministry of the Environment, for which he works. “My father took me there since I was a child, and he taught me to know and love her. When I left to study in the capital, I began to miss him. I waited several years before my dream came true: to be appointed by the Ministry of the Environment responsible for the protection of the Hovsgol region. So in 1987 I was able to create the first protected area and safeguard a part of the region from mining. In the 1980s, the first industries began to settle down, digging the mountain to get phosphorus. We fight to preserve our nature from this type of threat because the taiga, which is home to rare flowers, elk, bear and ibex, is precious and fragile. The government understood this and decided to keep it ”.
Ulaanbaatar (Ulan Bator), the capital of Mongolia with just over a million inhabitants, has become the most polluted capital in the world, surpassing Beijing and New Delhi, which both have 20 times the number of inhabitants. In December, when temperatures drop to as low as -40 degrees, air pollution levels are five times worse than in historically polluted Beijing, largely due to the number of coal stoves that poorer residents rely on.
Agence France-Presse reports that Mongols are turning to drinks like "oxygen infusions" and "lung tea" to try to strengthen their bronchial ducts and protect themselves from the polluted air they breathe every day. Advertisements for these probably ineffective drinks promise that "an oxygen cocktail is equivalent to a three-hour walk in a pristine forest" and grocery stores sell canned oxygen that they swear will turn ordinary glasses of juice into oxygen-rich cocktails.
Meanwhile, producers of so-called lung teas such as Enkhjin, Ikh Taiga and Dr. Baatar claim that their products are capable of filtering pollutants from their customers' airways. "It first removes toxins from the blood, then turns them into mucus, and then all the plants contained in the tea help strengthen the human immune system," said Baatar Chantsaldulam, CEO of Dr. Baatar.
Unfortunately, it is becoming an increasingly far-fetched prospect. Over the past 30 years, 20% of the entire population has moved to Ulaanbaatar, and many of them are displaced farmers, herders and rural residents who have come to the city to find work. They are too desperate to live in the Gobi desert, but too poor to afford housing, so they live in gers, one-room tents heated by coal stoves that can be built, or dismantled, in a couple of hours.
According to Newsweek, there are more than 180,000 gers in the city, and all that coal (or wood or trash can be burned to warm up during those freezing winters) is responsible for most of the air pollution; WHO estimates that 80 percent of Ulaanbaatar's airborne pollutants come from ger stoves, compared with 10 percent from transportation, 6 percent from power plants and 4 percent from "solid waste."
The Times reports that Prime Minister Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh announced in January that the transportation and use of raw coal in Ulaanbaatar will be banned after April 2019 (this has generated a lot of concern as it will cause another economic crisis among those mining, selling and transporting coal). Meanwhile, the Ulaanbaatar Clean Air project is doing what it can to help, trying to replace Ger residents' coal stoves with cleaner, more energy-efficient models. It is also trying to pressure the government to seek affordable permanent housing options for this section of the population.
"Ulaanbaatar may be the coldest capital in the world, but it doesn't have to be the most polluted," said Coralie Gevers, World Bank Country Manager for Mongolia. "Improving air quality management in Ulaanbaatar and reducing pollution concentrations would prevent disease, save lives and avoid huge health costs."
If you present yourself with a naked soul to a person, you are presenting yourself unarmed and defenseless. You are giving him all of you: hidden truths, your emotions, your soul. As you do this you need to be aware of it, you need to know that there can be an after-effect of ashes. You must know that if and when he goes away there will be nothing intact inside you because you have given him everything, but believe me when I tell you that there is nothing more beautiful than doing it totally without limits or inhibitions. Without putting a limit on your being. But while you do it you must not underestimate the consequences, the taste and the quantity of the tears of the after, of how much it could hurt the end or discover that it was only “lies of words” to enchant you and make “Strip” your soul. If you introduce yourself to a person with a naked soul, do not underestimate anything because afterwards it will be too late “to get dressed”I think it’s in our nature to want to try to the end. We are not made for lukewarm emotions: when we choose, for better or for worse, we do it with the heart and soul, and we do not give up until we have given our all, even what we did not think we had. Pain does not scare us, this is our problem, so we are willing to throw ourselves into the flames … All in a desperate attempt to keep a balance, something as abstract as love, which we women continue, despite everything, to believe that it is concrete and stable.
I like the idea of the station, of the train. If I stopped even for 5 minutes at the station, my whole life would pass from there: my life in the past and that of the future. I don’t know why but the stations have something magical about them. Sometimes I would like to go to the station and stop there for hours, just to observe the people, try to understand their gestures, their lives and their thoughts. Because only if we stop to observe can we capture the details. Also, I think it’s the only place that can give me the answers I’m looking for. For example, I could talk to a bum: after all they are nothing more than people who need someone to listen to them. I could find myself in front of scenes of children leaving their mothers to go to work or college or mothers leaving their babies to their husbands because I have to leave for work. I might meet travelers getting on and off from train to train to get around town. Or I could witness the kisses: the real kisses and the goodbyes, the real ones of two young lovers. Who knows maybe I could also find some crazy kid (like me) who has decided to escape but who in the end can’t because he knows that what he leaves is too precious for him and if anything one day he will take a train, it will be the one for eternity.Or maybe the person I really imagine I’m meeting is a woman. I don’t know what age, maybe around fifty, or maybe younger, I don’t know, I know for sure that I could share my whole life with her. I know that I would not hesitate so much to tell him all the things I have never told anyone, everything I have inside and I know that behind his silences his answers would be hidden. A person who would be able to undress me, in short. To strip myself not of the clothes, but of the masks that society obliges me to wear, that I manage to strip my soul: to dig inside myself. I love this type folks. But I don’t just love the people I can find there, I also like the objects, the sounds we find in the station. For example, his bell always reminds me of the school bell, and how at school it rang when the time changed at the station it rings when a train arrives. The benches make me reflect on how sometimes it is bad to wait for someone or something that does not arrive, and then all the tiredness that we carry with us. Then there are the time tables that remind me that everything has a time: life is based on time and it is up to us to decide how to occupy the waiting moments.Then there are the tracks … well I love those. You never know where they end up, you only see infinity in front of you and behind you, and then if you see them at dawn, what a strange effect they have on you. And then the tracks made me understand that coincidences are nothing more than a pause: you stop, parallel to something else and after a while you leave. And since for me life is made up of coincidences, because I don’t believe in destiny, I realized that every time I stop I leave with a different baggage, richer or poorer, ruined or healthy and shining, but the fact is that that coincidence has changed something. That’s why I don’t believe in destiny, we are the proponents of destiny… at every coincidence we stop and it is precisely in that waiting time that we decide our future.
Near Trieste, on a rocky spur overlooking the sea, stands the Miramare Castle, once the southern gate of the Austrian Empire. A place of wonders where Princess Sissi stayed during her long travels in Europe. A treasure trove of history and legend that tells the tragic story of its founder, Maximilian of Habsburg.
Here Princess Sissi saw the sea for the first time and was captivated by its beauty and impetuosity; characteristics in which the empress probably found herself.
Panarea, a view from the highA corner of the townA beach in PanareaBradley Cooper and Lady Gaga in PanareaBeautiful seaSome marine caves in PanareaVery beautiful cavesPanarea townA street in the townAnother street in the townRaya Summer Fest
Clear water of the sea in Mondellosome picturesque boatsBeach in MondelloTipical octopus salad (stret food)Seafront in MondelloMondello by nightMondello’s tower and seagullsMondello FestMondello’s CircolettoYoung people at the beach
I love to travel but at the same time I find it stressful. Above all, pack your suitcase, arrange things in bags and backpacks, try not to forget anything, queue at the airport, get up very early to catch your flight or late in the evening, look for places where you can eat local food (because they are nowhere to be found ) and then walking around and around, and you get tired after a few days and you want to go home but you like that place, it’s inspiring. We have never brought our cats and dog, both because they are used to the garden and therefore would suffer to stay in the hotel and because we usually have someone to leave them to take care of them. I don’t like always going to the same places but I like to discover different places. I hate the scorching heat and love milkshakes. Especially in the summer, my day starts with fresh fruit blended with rice or oat milk. Strawberries, kiwis, watermelon and grapes, peaches and melon. In the summer I only like the sea. Hornets and wasps of all kinds arrive and I can’t stand not being able to stay in my garden and I can’t keep the windows open and it’s a stressful mess. I lived in London and had contact with English people (of English origin) of a certain age who explained to me the right way in which they made tea. Sachets are never used but only dried leaf tea. The teapot must first be heated with hot water, which must be left inside the teapot for 6-7 minutes (never rinsed and never cleaned). Then after you remove the hot water from the teapot and put about 3-4 teaspoons of dried leaf tea, cover with the lid and wait 5 minutes for the whole teapot to take in the aroma of the tea. Only then can you pour in the hot water and wait another 5 minutes. Then you put the strainer hanging from the spout of the teapot, or on the cups, and pour the tea as it is. The teapot is never cleaned, it is absolutely forbidden to touch it and the more the years pass, the better the tea made in the same teapot becomes. In the English style, slices of lemon are never combined but only milk. And it is drunk with a cucumber sandwich or with typical English sweets.
THE PRODIGY OF IDEAS 