Dispatch from a Train

Our saga through Italy continues by saying goodbye to a week of cooking school in Amalfi.  The graduation dinner was a real spectacular.  Enrico, the head chef, surpassed all former menus, and then entered triumphant from the kitchen in full uniform - starched whites and sashes and ribbons won in his numerous cooking battles since apprenticed into the trade at 14.  Surprisingly, all of the lady students graduated. One by one, they received their sheepskins while I, the lone male, watched.

I was summonsed up last, and honored as the class Magnum Cum Lardo, (Latin for “He who ate most”) kneeling to receive my chapeau of office and the ceremonial apron.  All the ladies were duly deferential and quickly started asking me to pour their wine and take away the dirty plates.
 The weather has turning purr-fect and, so with a day to burn, we opted for a boat ride to the legendary island of Capri.  Several ferries make the trip even from the little towns on the Amalfi coast, and some serious big ones from Napoli, including a hydrofoil that flies on water at speeds breathtaking to an old rag sailor.

Capri was also the isle of choice for Caesars on vacation, and the ruins of the villa built by Augustus and Tiberius was worth the whole trip.  Nero may have fiddled around here too, while across the bay, Pompeii buried. Up the steep paving, put down over 2000 years ago, we follow a local man whose 18 month old puppy, Hercules, is the biggest Great Dane I have ever seen!  The dog bounds around the halls trod by the past masters of the known world. He is not impressed.  He feels the need to supplant his powerful predecessors by raising a long leg against an ancient marble column.

As we continue to the Imperial residence, we find the central living area of this historic Roman villa, coated over with concrete and a boxy 1700’s church.  Even this blight was later surpassed, in 1976, with a 40’ tall bronze statue of madonna and child.  Someone has continued the process by magic-marking in blue, “Matt 2000”  on the base of the statue.  Seems dogs are not the only animals that feel a need to piss on those that came before.

Old, powerful, holy, priceless or just big and vertical - Popes, boys or dogs - all must make their mark.  But none of these marks could stain the vast vista of the Bay of Naples, stretching out for us blue to the horizon, just as it did for the Emperors ... and even Matt.

Next day now and we sit on the Eurostar train from Napoli to Florence, a distance the length of California.  This ain’t clickitty-clack and the boys hangin out of the boxcar door.  This is modern, clean, quiet electric bullet train - and I am feeling like a poor yokel from the third world.  The USA has nothing that can compete.  We stroll up a wide isle, just seconds before a guaranteed, on-time departure. Place all our bags near plush seats by a picture window.  Smoking or non, bikes, dog and cats cages are all aboard.  Jean sits facing me reading the Herald and sipping red wine.  She has been up looking for cooking classmates and to the bar car for a snack.  People chat over a sit-down lunch in the diner, with linen and stemware.  Ol’Mac is firm on the large table between us, and I listen to one of several music channels as my fingers ramble on.  Soccer on the TV in the club car.

Baggage, phones and fax all can be accessed during the entire trip, as landing and navigational interference, along with weather delays, and seat belts, are not a factor.  A relaxed 700 seats, flying past the farms and fields of Southern Italy.  It could just as well be Germany, France, Japan, and the other countries that can plan ahead enough to see that growing population and shrinking fuel supply, not to mention airspace, will not allow every trip to be made by airplane.  San Francisco airport alone is looking to spend another $2-4 Billion to expand while most of its domestic flights are taken up by those just bound for other points in California.  All over our country, the aviation industry exercises its monopoly, taxpayer-supplied infrastructure and leverage with Congress, to build more and more runways.  We tried the same with freeways but rush hour didn’t go away.  What about some fast trains like this one?  Election time - where are our Augustus and Tiberius?  We seem to be blessed with too many Neros!  Maybe I should shut up and run for office?  Is Dictator-for-Life taken?

- Rodius Publi-cuss Maximus