Travel diary
Friday 6 October 1995
We left at 11.OO yesterday morning from the Vigna Clara Station, but only today have I reached that minimum of tranquillity necessary to compose a travel diary.
It was nine in the morning and we woke up in a small soccer field; it must be the work of a community of Albanians who live nearby in a couple abandoned buildings.
Andrea, our "Sherpa," should have showed up by now, with his little red Fiat wagon, the "red flower," to take out our tents and sleeping bags. Before he arrives I will try to list a couple things that happened yesterday.
The departure from Vigna Clara held no surprises, and there was a lot of satisfaction over the photo article published in La Republica4 even if the contents of the article, not to mention the photo (children in a nomad camp), were highly inaccurate with respect to the operation we had planned to undertake. We were, however, enthusiastic that there appeared together in block cap ital letters the words "ART" and "NOMADS."
Having left the station the ten of us followed a section of the incomplete ring of the railroad, counting on meeting Gregorio with his sheep. The shepherd was not there; maybe he had begun his urban transmigration most likely towards Roma-Sud, the south of Rome.
We arrived at the bank of the Tiber and called to Alfredo the fisherman with a whistle. He appeared immediately with a motorboat, and he asked us to wait a half hour while he got out his flat-bottomed boat to ferry us across to the opposite bank.
He got back much sooner, and with extreme ease we crossed the river.
We followed along the curving flood banks of the Aniene. Between the river and the bank, where the compact part of the city faces, there were a little less than ten meters of thick cane growth cut by a trail marked with larger clearings, framed by vaults of cane, inhabited here and there by a tent or a barrack.
We only encountered one small family. We said hello, then asked them for directions that we did not follow, since we continued where they told us it was impossible to pass.
Piccio went on ahead of us. We found him some ways further up spreading flour on twelve large cylinders of cement that we would eventually have to cross. When everyone in the group caught up, Piccio opened a bottle of wine and poured it out overthe whole row of flourcovered cylinders. Having celebrated this"gate," we passed through it, trying to draw energy from the sanctity of the act just completed. Someone did not miss the chance to express less than mythic impressions on the quality of the wine.
We encountered several bath tubs, which we rattled violently to make them sound like drums.
Up ahead a few dogs blocked our road; we succeeded in passing anyway, but not without a good fright. We arrived at a drainage bridge, which we intended to climb to get across the river Aniene. The operation was not very easy, as we had to hoist ourselves up with a rope. Once on the other side, we faced new complications; we found ourselves five meters above ground level and did not know how to get down. We asked for help, and from a nearby shack a man came out with a ladder to help us down. Now Andrea has arrived, and it is time to leave for the day's walk. One last thing. Yesterday we arrived an hour late for our scheduled meeting with Andrea at six, and it was almost all dark. We had just enough time to enjoy the spectade of all those huge blue and yellow cylinders that serve as air vents and elevator towers for the Quintiliani Metro Station. They stick out from nowhere in the middle of a green valley and create a sound that is rhythmically timed to the passage of the fast trains below.
