When you leave for Sahara, never do it on a Monday morning, with a late Sunday stop-over in Rome.
Sunday evening all of Rome is asleep. It couldnât care less that weeks of ascetic living lie ahead of you, and that you may long for the now nagging rain drenching the bloomed plum trees of Rome. So, you walk out for a stroll. It is too early in the year for a visit at Fontana di Trevi or at Piazza di Spagna, so you take cover in one of the empty bars and engage the bartender in a conversation he politely seems to be interested in.
Smoking inside public places is banned, so you are left with sipping low heartedly from the Italian beer, though you are sure it canât be good, as Italians do not have a name for making it right. You can only hope that on your return trip the restaurants and bars would have opened their terraces, and so you would be able enjoy a better weather and finally, a cigarette with a glass of drink.
The bartender rests his head in his palms and gives you a look which seems to tell you that since you are leaving for Sahara, you might as well get soaked, in and out, of the water in abundance here. During my train trip to Palermo the rain keeps on pouring. There I am to join, on board of the Eurostar ferry taking us across the Mediterranean Sea, the eight biologists and archeologists which will make the Punia expedition of the all-Romanian scientific team exploring Sahara.
I have little things to tell of Palermo. I tried to discover the Al Pacino flavor and the one of the Sicilian mafia Clans, but I did not succeed. The 2006 version of the grandson of such characters is less concerned with family honor, as he gangs up with friends in bars, smoking American cigarettes and listening to Cuban music. I kept a vivid memory of the short customs official, who was not really tanned, and nor really white, with round black eyes and a mou
