Trieste and the Meaning of Somewhere

So – two reasons for writing this. First, I’m moving (back) to Trieste this summer. Second, we’re reading Jan Morris’s Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere for our monthly Book Club meeting at The Rocket this Sunday. 

I am loving this reunion with Trieste. As I’ve said in an earlier post, I first lived in Trieste from 1990 to 94. Back then I was teaching English as a Foreign Language at the British School of Trieste, run by the indomitable Peter Brown (who is still there, I hear:  a kind of towering yet bumbling entrepreneur with his fingers in lots of pies, a Brit who has embraced networking the Italian way….). I had never taught EFL before (but had enjoyed teaching Clear Writing to first year  American undergraduates at the bucolic, idyllic Marlboro College in Vermont). I was up for anything – and most of all, wanted to get away from the intensity of academic study (I’d just spent two years writing a Masters thesis on ‘Historical and Sexual Marginalisation’ in three women writers …you understand why I needed a break). And this EFL was hands-on stuff. 

I did a month’s training at another British School in Udine (with the wonderful Richard and Marjorie Baudains – wonder what they’re up to now?) and then it was a baptism of fire – an intensive (as in every day from morning to evening) course for Italian railway men. We practised all the relevant vocabulary (I loved translating the – for some reason – hilarious and ubiquitous E Pericoloso sporgersi…) and rehearsed improbable conversations:

‘What time is it?

‘It is quarter past eleven.’

‘What time does the train arrive?’

‘It arrives at half past twelve.’ 

There was an overtly flirtatious dynamic: a young female teacher and a group of five (fortyish I suppose) Italian family men enclosed in a room for seven hours a day. They would often buy me presents and take me out for expensive meals with spectacular views of the Gulf. I would cruelly mimic their pronunciation (Iya wanta to-a be-a a- pop-a star-a) while they would solicitously praise mine. I can remember three faces (one square face, one moustache, two deep crevasses instead of dimples), only one name (Roberto) but a general sense of their kindness, gentleness, thoughtfulness, generosity. My first surprising introduction to the Italian male en masse. 

At that time we were living in a flat in Roiano (mid-way between the cobbled promenade and pineta of Barcola and the deeply polluted city). For one month (or was it three?) we shared the flat with our friends Juno Lamb (a student from Marlboro College) and Eric Demers (from the International summer camps Stef and I were involved in – more of which later..). And at some other point we shared the flat with Etienne Schelstraete from Belgium ( we met at the Youth Hostel where we first camped out – he was writing entries for encyclopedias, or translating, or just passing the time) and Michiel Blumenthal from Holland (another friend from summer camp – and guess what – not having heard from either of them for years, Michiel and I are doing summer camp together this July!! And Etienne is coming to visit us in Trieste this autumn…the circle closes).

Anyway, our conversations (with Etienne and Michiel in particular) I remember most vividly. They were all about Trieste and its lost sense of identity. How it was once an important port for Austria, and then switched nationalities (once. twice)..how there was a general sense of emptiness, of faded grandeur, of indefinable longing..both for the past and the future. I know it sounds unlikely (and pretentious of course) but this, truly, was an almost daily topic of conversation between us. Mostly steered by Etienne who had a historian’s curiosity and Michiel who had a dramatist’s sense of romance…and myself who had..a confused sense of identity typified by an overwhelming sense of longing for something indefinable. Stefano was less immersed..being the only one of we itinerants with a ‘proper job’ – and thus proper preoccupations (such as do Lorenz attractors really attract? etc etc How do mathematicians get away with studying this ephemera??!) Insomma, we felt at home in Trieste. This Nowhere was Somewhere to us.