Au revoir, mais pas adieu (1)

When a man tires of Antibes, he is not necessarily tired of life. Colin Berry, Salut! Forum's latest contributor, explains his decision to leave, though not for ever, his home on the French Riviera in search of fresh pastures. He also weighs up the choice between Pisa and Girona

Jane and I have been living in Antibes for close on five years. While we love the place, and are happy to see it as a long-term base, we both felt the need for a change and a challenge, before our recently acquired status among the senescenti became too apparent.

The current fashion for long-haul holidays appeals to neither of us. We have both lived and worked on other continents, dislike long flights, and are both aware of the sheer richness and diversity of culture that exists within Europe within relatively short distances. Despite the best efforts of Brussels, language is a barrier that prevents us becoming a culturally-bland EU-standardised homogenised purée.

While US citizens may consider it a cultural shock to cross the border into Mexico, it is nothing as compared with that on crossing the few miles of the Straits of Gibraltar from Spain to Morocco – said to be the most abrupt economic and social contrast on the planet between two adjacent nations.

I need hardly say there are gentler but nonetheless challenging differences within Europe, say between France and Italy, or France and Spain, reflected in climate, scenery, architecture, cuisine … Thinking back, it started by our resurrecting an idea for owning a camper van and having, intermittently, a roving existence, as and when the fancy takes us .

But we kept running up against the same problem. Where are we going to park the thing in Antibes ? Large garages are rarely up for rent, or sale for that matter, and a stroll round town shows a depressing number whose access is obstructed by parked cars. Who wants the hassle of getting their owners to move, especially if returning late at night ? That’s when we made a quantum leap in our thinking about lifestyle.

We did initially think of the nuclear option of selling up in Antibes, and relocating somewhere different but resented the hefty estate agents’ fees that would be incurred. Being far higher on the Continent generally than the UK they are a consideration, as is capital gains tax.

So why not rent a villa for a year, probably in Spain or Italy, with space to park a camper van, and maybe even a patio or garden or swimming pool?

There was another factor to consider, namely to take advantage of the low- cost airlines before the anti-global-warming fascisti prevent us from leaving our trail of dirty carbon footprints across the skies.

(My ideas and position on man-made global warming have not quite crystallized. I’m still not entirely convinced about the science, and am a little sceptical about the so-called consensus among scientists. I recall conferences I attended as a working scientist at which some self-appointed guru for this or that would brandish a petition and suggest that no one with a conscience could leave the lecture theatre without signing it. Did not our forefathers burn witches as a matter of conscience … ?)

There are many places within Europe we wish to see , or see more of, while still mobile and compus mentis : Scandinavia, Greece, south of Italy and Spain, the Mediterranean islands, Prague, Warsaw, Bratislava, the Baltic states etc etc. But our nearest airport, despite having a handy low cost airline for flights to the UK, is not a low cost hub, and it’s not served by Ryanair which has developed the concept of the Continental hub to a far greater extent than, say, easyJet.

Ryanair has two main hubs in southern Europe, in places where the climate conforms to Goldilocks criteria. That rules out those that are a bit too far north, eg Milan, or a bit too far south, eg Rome, for us environmental sybarites.

They are Girona in Catalonia and Pisa in Tuscany.

Girona seemed the obvious choice, because of its impressive choice of Ryanair destinations:

It’s also a fairly easy five hours drive from Antibes, at least at weekends when the HGVs are off the road. We did it recently, collecting out daughter off her flight from East Midlands airport, and taking her to our mystery destination (Cadaques), the subject of a post on my own blog. We did not call in at Girona itself, but everyone has nothing but praise for its history, atmosphere, general tourist appeal. We were also very impressed by the resorts we visited on the Costa Brava - good roads, friendly engaging waiters and hotel staff, excellent seafood etc.

The downside (ah, that inescapable downside) would be the need to learn some Catalan if staying for a whole year: we’re told that the locals are deaf to French or Castilian Spanish.

Aye, there was the rub. You see, Jane has been learning Italian for the best part of a year, so we opted provisionally for that other Ryanair hub, namely Pisa, which is good, but not quite as comprehensive as Girona.

The drive there was thought-provoking. But how may times would I want to drive through that fractured concrete pipe if I needed to get back to Antibes? It’s OK at weekends, surprisingly, but it’s purgatory on weekdays, trying safely to overtake convoys of HGVs in the tunnels with a tailgating Mercedes a millimetre from one’s rear bumper, headlights blazing.

The hotel on the outskirts of Pisa was fine – one of the best I've stayed at in fact, and we enjoyed our evening excursion by public transport to Lucca. That jewel of a town is admittedly a museum piece, behind its ramparts, ideal as a tourist destination, but hardly a place for living all year round.

The next day we took the bus to Pisa, and went to visit you know what. It was like visiting the Great Wall of China. I’ve never been there, but feel as if I have. One has a strong sense of déjà vu, through the mental imprinting of thousands of images in one’s lifetime. I had not realized it was starting to lean even while being constructed, or that a few half-hearted attempts were made to correct the lean – unsuccessfully needless to say. Or should that be successfully?

But the biggest disappointment was still to come. Our tourist guides were strangely silent about Pisa the town, outwith the Campo dei Miracoli, so we asked the waitress at the overpriced café in the shadow of the tower is she could direct us to the main shopping street. Her eyes lit up, as if she was not asked that very often.

It's the other side of the River Arno, she said. Great, I thought. We’ll cross a bridge and see the real heart and soul of Pisa, away from this tourist trap. After a few hundred yards of non-descript streets, with a somewhat dingy, uncared for aspect, we reached the embankment road on the river, and felt strangely alone as we trudged towards the nearest bridge, jammed with nose-to-tail traffic. We looked at the stretch of river, with what in their day must have been handsome desirable properties. Sad to say, the whole scene felt strangely deserted and desolate.

There were (presumably ) prestige shops on the ground floor, but no customers visible, no life, no vibrancy. It was an urban grave yard, despite appearing on picture postcards. Even the famed riverside chapel that features on picture postcards of Pisa looked out-of place and forlorn. No wonder they decorate it with lights for the festivals.

The main shopping street is called Corso Italia. I’m glad it was described as such, so I did not ask a local to direct me to the main shopping street. It had a Zara, and there was one small department store, and a few boutiquey kind of places that Jane scrutinised closely but which I normally do not give a second glance. So this is it, I thought. Here we are in the nation of style, a myriad of private-enterprise establishments all turning out highly-desirable designer-labels that people would die for(or more probably would seek out counterfeit versions at a fraction of the price) and here we are on this pokey little street which our waitress would no doubt regard as Valhalla on her mean earnings.

Thereafter things just got worse. Where were the piazzas, the fountains, the pedestrianised areas, the feeling of being there at the cultural heart of Europe ? All we saw were peeling frontages, dark forbidding side streets, impatient motorists, a feeling of being in a town that had fallen on hard times – about two centuries ago. This was not the place that I wanted to invite my children as Mum and Dad’s new home, albeit for a year, chosen with love, care and a modicum of discriminating intelligence.

On getting back I tried entering a few, admittedly loaded adjectives about Pisa into Google, and found a resonance in the cyberspace, adequately summarised by one commenter with the expression “Pisa is the pits”.

I’ve rambled on far too long and must release you, dear reader, for more important tasks, like retiring to your beds for refreshing slumber.

As you will have gathered, Pisa is not our kind of place. We did see others we liked: Lucca I have mentioned, and Rapallo where we called in on our return has a pleasant old-world feel to it – just the kind of place for negotiating and signing treaties. I mean to say; whoever heard of the Treaty of Eastbourne, Skegness or Clacton-on Sea?

to be continued/............

Comments

[louise]

My favourite place in Italy is Rome. Have you ever thought about Croatia? We were going there this summer but plans changed and we ended up in Brittany! Rather glad as I believe it was horrendously hot in that part of the world this summer.

[Colin Berry]

Yes, there's been a huge temperature difference between the top and bottom halves of the Italian boot this year apparently, which rather put us off Rome as a base, despite its good airlinks. But after the queues for check in at Nice and Stansted these last few days, typically an hour or more with easyJet (a misnomer if ever there was) we are now thinking of deserting the airlines where possible, and simply choosing somewhere as a good base for exploring with a camper van.

Croatia should be great in theory, Louise, but I can't get out of my mind some of the atrocities committed in that part of the world by a supposedly Christian nation, and the failure of NATO forces to intervene, and prevent it happening, despite being there in force.