Exodus from Yugoslavia … for the lucky ones.

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The Lutheran church in central Trieste was built in an austere late gothic style between 1871 and 1874. Outside its west end, in Largo Odorico Panfili, there is a tall cylinder surrounded by transparent glass or plastic. Within the cylinder there are models of people. This artwork is a monument to a tragic era.

The monument called “Momentum”, designed by Jasmine Iannì and Giuseppe Sabatino, is dedicated to the memory of those Italians who fled from areas that had been Italian but had been incorporated into Tito’s Yugoslavia at the e d of WW2. These territories included Istria, Fiume, Dalmatia, and Zadar .

Well, I knew about these refugees, but not about something else commemorated by the monument. What I had not known about were the ‘foibe’ killings – massacres of Italians living in the formerly Italian territories that became part of Yugoslavia. These were, it is said, carrued out by Tito’s communist partisans. According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foibe_massacres):

“The estimated number of foibe victims is disputed, varying from hundreds to thousands,according to some sources 11,000or 20,000…”

I was horrified to learn about this. I had read that many anti-communist Yugoslavs and other opponents of Tito had been killed or imprisoned at the end of WW2. In the 1980s, I knew the wife of a man who had been imprisoned by Tito in 1945 because he was “the wrong kind of communist”, and was still behind bars in the mid-1980s.

However, until I saw the monument in Trieste today in September 2026, I did not know about the Italians who had been massacred simply because overnight in 1945, they were suddenly living in the wrong place.

You should drink the water from taps in Venice

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In Venice and other towns in Italy, we have been told that for hygienic reasons, customers cannot be served acqua dell rubinetto – tap water.

Seen im Venice

Yet, at bars in those same towns, tap water can be served with a cup of coffee.

And on the water buses in Venice, the city council has put up signs – see my photo – encouraging people to DRINK TAP WATER.

IF tap water was to be served in restaurants, the greedy owners might be deprived of 1 to 4 Euros per bottle of the only kind of water they are prepared to serve.

Six decades at the same bar in Venezia (Venice)

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From early childhood until I was 17 years old I visited Venice with my parents every year for 7 to 10 days.

We used to stay at the Pensione La Calcina on the Zattere shore of the Giudecca Canal – the waterway along which liners, car ferries, and freighters sailed through Venice on their journeys between the Adriatic and the port of Marghera.

It was at La Calcina that John Ruskin stayed in 1877. Back in the 1960s, the coffee served with breakfast at this pensione was almost undrinkable. I hope that now the place has been considerably upgraded, it serves better coffee.

Because of the terrible coffee, the first thing we did after breakfast every day was to walk from La Calcina to the Academia Bridge,  cross it, and then after passing two piazzas, reached Bar il Redentore.

Bar Redentore

The bar occupies a corner plot next to a bridge crossing a narrow canal. There, my parents ordered espresso coffees, and my sister and I would be given small bottles of fruit juice.

The Bar il Redentore is still in business and looks very much as I remember it did in my childhood in the 1960s … and before!This September – 2026 – I  have returned to the little bar twice – once for morning coffee and the other time for beer and cicchetti – Venetian ‘canapés.  And on each visit, I  marvelled at the fact that I have been visiting this bar at intervals for almost than 6 decades.

Across the bridge, there is a small shop that sells artisan paper goods. Like the Bar il Redentore,  that has been in business since before I first visited Venice.

I have loved Venice since as far back as I can remember. Much of it looks as if it has not changed since then, but excessive tourism has done nothing to improve it. Many of the city’s visitors – both foreigners and Italians – are what could be described on Italian as ‘maleducati’ – you can look this up – and selfish. And, with a few exceptions, many of the Venetians have become unfriendly and very mercenary.

Although Venice is truly magical, I am not sure that I want to pay another visit tothis city filled with lovely memories for me. I would rather retain these memories than become disillusioned with La Serenissima.

Locks of love unlocked a distant memory

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About 20 years ago, I visited the waterfalls at Sivasamudra in Karnataka state, India. At one viewpoint,  there was a  fence to which padlocks had been attached. The fence was special; it surrounded the tomb of a Muslim saint.  I had never seen anything like this before.

I asked our well-educated driver, Rahim,  about the locks. His explanation was that people  who had a wish that they wanted fulfilled, attached a lock to the fence and discarded the key. Their belief was that when their wish was granted, God would unlock the padlock.

 

Some years after visiting Sivasamudram, I began noticing bridges in Europe to which padlocks had been attached, often in great numbers. Each lock usually bore a name that had been written on it. These locks are known as ‘love locks’. Their supposed origin was at a bridge in Vrnjačka Banja in Serbia in 1914 (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_lock). Loving couples place padlock is on a bridge or railing, and throw away the key. The lock is placed to symbolise their undying live for one another, rather than to fulfil a wish, such as hoping for a baby or  a spouse, or success in some other venture,  as Rahim explained to us at Sivasamudram.

 

Some bridges have had so many locks attached to them that the weight of these attachments can threaten the structural integrity of the bridge.

 

Locks on a bridge over one of the navigli in Milano

Today, 15 September  2026,when visiting the navigli – the canal network of Milano in Italy  – I spotted neat clusters of lo e locks, which looked a bit like bunches of misshapen grapes. Seeing these lo ks brought back memories of my visit to Sivasamudram,  and inspired me to write this.

 

 

Picasso in Liguria: from Genova to Guernica

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During a visit to the monumental Staglieno Cemetery in Genova, I was surprised to see several gravestones bearing the name ‘Picasso’.

In Staglieno Cemetery

The artist Pablo Picasso, creator of the famous “Guernica” image and many other artworks, was born in Malaga, Spain, and died in Mougins, France.

After seeing the Picasso name commemorated in several places within the Staglieni Cemetery in Genova,  I became curious, and did a little research on the Internet.

I found out that Picasso is a family name that is typically found in the Italian province of Liguria, in which Genova is situated. The artist Pablo Picasso’s maternal great-grandfather, Tommaso Picasso, moved from Liguria to Spain in about 1807. The name Picasso is only part of the artist’s full name, which is, hold your breath: Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso. Ruiz & Picasso were respectively his father’s and mother’s surnames.

Whether or not the Picassos who are intermediate in the cemetery in Genova are closely, or even remotely, related to the famous artist I have yet to discover.

So far, all that I can conclude is that in the case of Pablo Picasso one can say it is a case of ‘from Genova to’ Guernica’

A Soviet soldier buried in Genova (Genoa)

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The Cimitero Staglieno in Genova contains a remarkable collection of funerary sculpture. But I will not  write about this now. Instead, I  am going to concentrate on only  one memorial – something I was not expecting to see in this cemetery.

The monument is in part of the cemetery dedicated to those who were killed in WW2. The bodies of these unfortunate people are either in the graveyard or commemorated there because their remains were cremated, or otherwise disposed of, by the Germans in their various camps for prisoners, including concentration camps. The monument that attracted my attention has its inscription both in Italian and  Russian. It is the grave of Fyodor Andrianovič Poletaev (1909-1945).

In Stglieno Cemetery

Fyodor’s biography is described in detail at https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%ABdor_Andrianovi%C4%8D_Poletaev, but I will summarise it here.

He was born in  the Ryazan Oblast in Imperial Russia. At the outset of ww2, he was called up to join the Red Army.

In June 1942, Fyodor was captured by the Germans and became a prisoner of war. After being transferred from one POW camp to another, he arrived in July 1944 at  a concentration camp at Tortona, near Genova. He escaped from this camp, and then joined a group of Italian partisans fighting in the Appenine Hills. He died fighting in a battle at Cantalupa. He was buried in the Staglieni Cemetery in Genova, where his monument can be seen.

Thus, a labourer from the Sovie Union ended up a hero in Italy.

Revisiting old haunts in Milano (Milan)

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Between 1978 and 1982, long before we married, my wife Lopa lived and worked in Milano – Milan.

Today, 13 September 2026, more than 40 years after she left the city, we did a little sightseeing – the Duomo, the Galleria near the cathedral, La Scala, and the Stazione Centrale – and then we headed away from the tourist-infested areas to Via Paolo Sarpi, which is the main street in the district where Lopa resided.

One of the attractions of Via Paolo Sarpi is Pizzeria da Giuliano, which was founded in 1969. With a justifiably good reputation for its pizzas, this unpretentious restaurant was around the corner from the building in which Lopa had an apartment.  She used to collect pizzas to eat at home from this pizzeria. For old times sake, we ate lunch there, and enjoyed the tastier-than-average wood fired pizza slices. The place was filled with families enjoying Sunday lunches.

9 Via Albertini

The exterior of Lopa’s flat at number 9 Via Albertini looks the same as it was when she lived there, but both Via Albertini and Via Paolo Sarpi have been pedestrianised since she left the area. Also, the shop that used to make and sell fresh filled pasta has gone, and has been replaced by a restaurant serving Japanese food.

Revisiting old haunts is always interesting.  Finding that some things have remained the same is satisfying. And in the case of Lopa’s former neighbourhood,  the changes since she left have not caused the area to deteriorate.

The watermelon line and other boundaries

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Sometime in the mid-1970s, I travelled from London to Platamon in northern Greece by road with my PhD supervisor,  Robert, and his wife. We drove a Land Rover and towed a caravan. The trip took eight days, during which there was plenty of time to discuss a wide variety of topics.

One of the subjects that Robert brought up was a series of imaginary boundaries that divide Europe in different ways. For example, there must be a watermelon line that separates parts of the continent where watermelons are grown from the parts of Europe where they are not. Similarly, there must be an olive line, north of which olives are not grown and harvested.

I read somewhere that a French author – I have never discovered which one – proposed that there must be a line south of which Brussel sprouts are not routinely consumed.

Another line proposed by Robert is one that separates the areas where church towers are topped with bulbous onion-shaped, as for example in southern Germany, from other place where church towers are not topped with these domes.

 

One could proposed many other examples, but you should now be seeing what I am getting at.

 

Another line that interested Robert a great deal was that which bounds the northern limit of an an commonly seen in hot desert conditions, Cataglyphis bicolor. Robert became an expert on this insect’s ecology and foraging behaviour.  The place he studied it was on the sandy flats near the sea at Platamon.

 

Drawing these notional lines might be becoming more difficult because climate change is affecting the geography of crop growing significantly.  With summer temperatures in southern Europe rivalling those in the Gulf States,  I would not be surprised if Mediterranean crops such as olives will soon be grown in northern territories such as the south of England. Robert would have been surprised if he had lived to experience the changed climate we are now experiencing.