A date with James Joyce

Ok, how many of you knew that James Joyce lived in Trieste and wrote "The Dubliners" here? And some of "Ulysses". And "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man". 10 years he was here.

Joyce left Dublin, that he found intolerably suffocating and provincial, with Nora Barnacle, whom he had met only a few months earlier and who would become his wife in 1931. The two moved to Trieste after learning that a teaching post was available at the Berlitz School, but when they arrived the position was not available. However Joyce was sent to the Pula branch that had opened in the Istrian Peninsula, but in March 1905 all foreigners were expelled for fears of counterespionage. Joyce returned to Trieste, where he was hired by the Berlitz School and where he entered one of the richest phases of his literary production.

So not a rant, but a ramble (unasked for and probably unwanted) through some of the history of James Joyce. But I still haven't managed to read Ulysses. Or anything else by Joyce for that matter - perhaps I should try while I am here. Perhaps while sitting in the rather magnificent bar at our hotel, recently converted from an insurance company and, in which, for some reason we do not understand, we have been upgraded to a two bedroom suite.

Sampling the local grape juice

But no time for reading challenging texts yet, what with the brilliant Risiera di San Sabba and the Museo Revoltella to visit. The Riseria, named for its original purpose as a rice husking plant, was in fact a Nazi holding camp for transporting Jews, disabled people, romanies, homosexuals and others they deemed undesirable, to concentration camps in Poland and Germany.

As ever with such places it was a sobering experience, yet another testament to human (actually man's) cruelty to fellow human. But it has been superbly presented in a stark and austere way that reflects its adopted purpose. Huge concrete walls have been erected to symbolise the hopelessness of the place and those internal spaces that remain have been superbly presented to reflect the horror of Nazi genocide. The steel sculpture in the middle background is where the smoke stack was above the crematorium where ... yes, you know the rest.

The Room of Crosses has been so named to reflect the tangle of floor joists once the floors have been removed. This was effectively a four-story human warehouse, for interning people before killing them or transporting them somewhere else ... and then killing them.

And finally before I make this too depressing, the cells where, for reasons I am not quite sure of, some people were held, 6 to a cell. There is barely room to stand alone in one.

One might wonder why we visit such places on holiday but if we don't take the opportunities when they present themselves are we just complicit in ignoring the past, forever to repeat it? As it happens the place took a bit of finding and hadn't to our mind been particularly well signalled in any local tourist literature. But dogged we are and, after negotiating, in immaculate Italian(!), the purchase of bus tickets (after two abortive attempts) from local tobacconists, and establishing which bus we needed to get to the particular part of the city outskirts we needed to get to, we found ourselves surrounded by school groups, but at the right place. I guess we spent nearly two hours there, reflecting on the nature of humanity, past, present and to some extent future. As ever pictures rarely convey the essence of places like this but they do provide an anchor for the memories.

Our first rain of the trip punctuated the afternoon, requiring a coffee and cake stop (though we would probably have done that anyway). But light as the rain was it was no deterrent for our trip to the other "must do" on our Trieste visit; The Museo Revoltella. Former home of the eponymous Barone, its a wonderful exploration of his interest in Egypt of the mid nineteenth century, his interest in modern art and his philanthropy.

The result is a collection of furniture, sculpture and art that is well worth the walk in the light rain to get there. I was particularly interested in the paintings, drawings and maps of the Suez Canal at its inception and building between 1859 and 1869 - which of course led me to look up and reflect on the colonial appropriation of the resources by the French and British, leading eventually to the Suez "crisis" in 1956. But I will spare you that! Inexplicably I forgot to take any pictures - possibly I was just awe struck by the opulence and the maps of the Isthmus of Suez?

So you'll just have to put up with a (pretty terrible) picture of me enjoying a glass of vino and some cicchetti at a canal side restaurant in Trieste. Just in case you thought I was having a terrible time! Must have been taken the day before as the sun is still shining on us. Think we had a long slow lunch, Italian style.

Then followed it up with some damn good pizza in the evening in an unassuming Italian bar, that isn't on any tourist itinerary. Our favourite kind of place.

And so we depart Trieste, and in fact Italy. We are on an Austrian train bound for Vienna, but alighting in Ljubljana, where we will spend our last 3 nights. And from where I will next ramble pointlessly on about everything and nothing. Bye for now.

But just before I go. Seen in the massive Piazza Unita d'Italia in the middle of Trieste. Remember we used to be in this. Leaving has been such a resounding success, hasn't it?! (I just can't resist, can I?)

But apparently they want us back. Although I'm not sure of the reference to the Americans 😂