Strasbourg. Tales from a year abroad.

I leave Ghent to make my way to Strasbourg via Brussels and Paris, arriving to a tiny room on the 5th floor without an opening window that is so claustrophobic, I go back down and ask if another room is available. Maybe I’ve been spoiled by the beauty of my room in Ghent. The girl at the desk is Pre-Raphaelite, all red waves and alabaster skin, blue eyes; as she looks to see if there’s another room, she rubs her stomach which is slightly rounded. I don’t usually notice these little details, I am always on my way to and fro but now I have the time. Is she pregnant, does she not feel well? Maybe I will find in myself a different persona, one that observes. She has found me another room, small but with a window I can open onto Kleber square. I look out, it’s a strange square, there seems only a couple of cafes, one of which is a Starbucks. In Italy and France, the squares were made for dining and drinking. It’s late afternoon and I haven’t eaten but there are few places open at this hour. The soft light of dusk makes everything glow. I’m given a map and head off to the old centre along the River Lye, I quickly find the Instagrammable medieval houses, gelato coloured, cross hatched with darkened tudor beams; the water is perfectly still, the light is dusty mauve now above the golden sunset, lights are twinkling and everything is reflected without a wrinkle in the river.

By this time I’m starving and finally find a restaurant that is open. It’s chilly now, and I love that the restaurant is old and warmed with a large emerald green tiled heater, checked tablecloths and a couple of old men already eating. This is a place for solo travellers and residents. I order wine which comes in the typical green stemmed glasses I find everywhere in this region, it arrives with a bowl of pretzels. Under the Bridges of Paris is playing, I think it’s Dean Martin. I feel like I’m back in the 1950’s. The waiter doesn’t question my solo status and I order chicken in riesling sauce with mushrooms and it arrives with a side of multi coloured carrots glistening in butter. My day is almost My day is almost done. Just have to talk to my partner about our respective days and then sleep.

I awaken thinking that I’ve booked one too many days in Strasbourg. Maybe I’ll make it a day of food, feed my inner child who, because of the insecurity of her life and the constant changing of houses and schools, became very controlling about her diet, it was the only thing I could have power over. I find Le Petit Venise cafe. So many towns like to label themselves - Little Venice, none are remotely like that fabled city but it probably beckons tourists. The cafe is gorgeous, there’s a little gondola swinging at the front, teapots and cups hang from the ceiling, plates adorn the ruby red walls, there’s a voluptuous nude painting, boobs pointed and perky. I order a ginger hot chocolate which arrives accompanied by a huge meringue and nestled in the sugar cubes is a couple of candied violets. More photos, more food and I am reevaluating Strasbourg’s attraction. Even more so in the afternoon, after listening to a brass band in the main square, I eventually decide to follow a crowd of people, past a flower shop with a wagon full of scented mimosa and suddenly I am in another part of the city that boasts more medieval buildings sitting in between newer ones and I hear the sound of a double bass, Following the music, I come across the Cathedral Notre Dame de Strasbourg; I am absolutely astonished. I look up and up, it is so high! A gloriously gothic pink and beige marbled stone creation, lacy and full of statues of women, it's exquisite. I linger, I wander and I come back to stare. It's dusk and everything is turning a rosy quartz glow. The double bass is playing a modernist piece that is edgy and is echoing through the old town eerily. I am so intrigued I look up the history of the cathedral. It was built on the site of a Roman temple in 1015 but that was later destroyed by fire. The second coming was in the 12th century and was completed in the Gothic style in 1439. Up until the 19th century, the cathedral was the highest building in the whole of the Christian world. I am surrounded by medieval taverns and restaurants aglow in the dusky light, the windows letting out a gold glow through leadlight windows. I chose one and have the famous flambe tartlette, a thin crispy disc with cream, onions and bacon of course. I feel like a busty wench should be serving me a pitcher of beer but the waitress in tiny, slim and friendly. They must stay healthy by walking or cycling everywhere because the menus at most places I've looked at are heavy on carbs, especially the famed spaetzle which is like think gnocchi and is often fried. Everything comes with bread and a serving of chips. I walk out into the cold night and call my partner so I can talk on the way home and then have an early night. I realise that my anxiety, which has been following a few paces behind me, steps back a bit.

Ghent - Tales from a year abroad.

I alight at #Ghent station (pronounced Hent) and am transported to another time. The station is beautiful, painted ceiling, intricate woodwork, tiled scenes. I feel like Mary Poppins, suitcase, umbrella and flowered hat. I am taxied to my hotel. I went all out for this hotel, I searched for something cheaper but in the end, I booked the #1898thepost hotel. It was the old post office built for the World Expo, a mix of Gothic, Renaissance and Art Nouveau. It's image in reflected perfectly in the still canal in front. I walk up the beautiful staircase and check in. My room is amazing, with gothic windows overlooking the cathedral. I have a small bar with a Negroni mix, an orange and a peeler, star anise, cloves and a cocktail shaker. I then go on a tour of the rest of the hotel. A staircase convolutes down to a honesty bar, and in front of the hotel there's another shabby chic bar that is completely my style, full of old book,s vintage portraits of Flemish people, crystal and comfortable armchairs. I order a coffee as I look out over the canal.

I walk until dusk that afternoon and then take a canal tour. We tourists are gloved, hatted and rugs are handed out. It's icy on the canal but the waters are tinted blush pink and soft metallics. The guide points out the one remaining medieval wooden toilet perched precariously over the canal. Once they were everywhere and the canal waters were putrid, so water was taken and herbs added and then it was fermented into a beer which was drunk instead of water, much more hygienic so the guide says. I wonder about that fact but it could be true. Then we're shown a building with two swans looking away from each other. Swans here are a symbol of love as they mate for life so when they don't look at each other, it's a sign of infidelity. In the middle ages, this building was a brothel for the many businessman who came to Ghent and used the Guild houses opposite. It was a major city for the cloth the and the storing of wheat.

I find a restaurant by the canal and take the waiters advice and order the fish of the day, which appears with potatoes (of course) but also with a flavoursome ratatouille. The waiter looks like a burgher from a Jan Van Eyck painting, florid, balding but friendly and he tells me he speaks five languages that he's picked up in his life throughout the countries he's worked in.

Well fed, I walk out into the night that has settled in. The buildings are lit up and shine diamond light onto the canals, students are sitting drinking and eating on the steps of the canal. Rule-fuelled Australia doesn't allow the freedom of alcohol consumption in public places. Oh, how I'm loving the freedom of Europe's relaxed laws.

Up in my room, I look out the window to see a full moon perched on top of the cathedral spire, framed by my gothic window. We have full moon ceremonies back home with a group of girls who want to come and release issues they have, give gratitude and write about things they want to manifest in their life. This will be the first full moon in many years that I've been alone.

The next day I wander past the old fashioned food carts along the streets and decide on a waffle, slathered in thick milk chocolate with a little Belgium flag stuck in the middle. After that I pass by another cart with the famous #Neuzeke, little candies that look like noses. A chemist in the 1800's discovered them when medications he was making became crystallised on the outside but remained liquid inside. Today, they are jellied inside and come in many different flavours but the original ones are purple with raspberry inside and they look like tiny amethyst geodes.

I walk until I can't walk any more, exploring the canal areas, the castle, the University quarter with quaint beer cafes. No matter how much beer and potatoes that are consumed here, everyone is relatively thin, I think it's because they either walk or ride. Everyone is on bikes, but I think I'm finally mastering the art of not getting hit by one. So nice to have no cars in the centre.

I eat that night in the student quarter at a cheap chicken and chips place and I don't feel alone. For someone who is used to having the daughter and a partner around, I'm not looking for company, am enjoying my alone time. I ring the partner and the daughter when I arrive back home and my time in Ghent has ticked away quickly but left me with beautiful memories.

The Hotel.

The Passing.

I'm writing about the matriarch of the family who left this planet yesterday. She was in hospital and she died alone because of Covid. She was the feistiest person I know (apart from my daughter who I feel has inherited her spirited demeanour). She ruled the roost with strength, generosity and had no filters but we loved her nonetheless.

The first time I met her, she had a beautiful little apartment in Palermo, in the days when there were armoured tanks parked close by and she recalls watching from her apartment window when a helicopter and police came down on ropes to take out a top member of the mafia. She had no fear.

She taught me how to cook roasted capsicums and pasta with a cold tomato and basil sauce and lots of beautiful green olive oil, (from a friend, everything special in Italy comes from a friend who knows someone who makes their own olive oil, dries their own tomatoes, makes their own sauce etc, etc). I remember that as I left Sicily (it was my first trip overseas and I was so naiive), she took me to the train station, gave me a beautiful fan (it was the days when there was no aircon in trains), a big bottle of water and some food and booked me a beautiful hotel in Florence (recommended by a friend of a friend of a woman who owned a little hotel). She was an organiser and had lived through things that I will never know of.

When my late husband and I would arrive every year in the hometown in the Dolomites, she would arrive from Palermo with a suitcase that was half clothes and half food. I remember being in the kitchen as she unpacked boxes of Sicilian delicacies. There were little tarts, coated in chocolate and filled with watermelon jelly and tiny choc chips. Different shaped biscuits of hazelnut, almond, pistachio, crisp on the outside and soft and gooey in the middle. There were packets of different nougats covered in lemon, orange, pistachio flavoured chocolate that I loved. Jars of her homemade marmalade (even just before she died a friend sent her a box of the special Sicilian oranges that she used for her jam). Twice a year a friend would send her an incredible Cassata topped with candied fruits, filled with the softest ricotta, draped in a thin green marzipan shawl, presented in a gorgeous tin.

She was born in Italy but came to Australia at the age of five and lived through her mother's death in childbirth, the death of that child, and was put in an orphanage in Queensland during the depression, eating toothpaste and orange skins because she was so hungry. Then the family returned to live in Palermo. She was eighteen and knew no Italian. And yet, in all the years, I never heard her complain about her life. She had a wicked laugh, loved her cigarettes, Coke and cats.

She left Sicily when she retired but I think her heart remained there. She loved the beach, the heat, the incredible food. She was the Queen of the Tiramisu. There was always one waiting for us upon arrival. She would get creative and veer from the traditional by adding her marmalade and amaretti which I loved (although the late husband's, her brother's,I think was the best as he was heavy handed with the liquor); they were slightly competitive about it. One year she made a batch of her famed Tiramisu for some of the neighbours with home raised eggs from a friend of a friend and ended up poisoning a few people- but that's another story. She once arrived in Australia with a block of parmigiano in a sock in her shoe! She got away with it. She also was found with half her brother's ashes in her handbag at the airport and argued her way out of the fact that she needed a letter of approval to take them back to Italy. She could talk her way out of anything.

Her generosity knew no bounds. She gave and gave with no thought of reward. I can't imagine life in Auronzo without her; the smell of her Moka coffee in the morning; her steady supply of special treats when we arrived, shouting through her door

"permesso" (can I come in), catching her smoking and watching all her favourite serials, standing and leaning her elbow on the table, always with a beautiful smile. I thank you Maria for giving all the family memories that we'll treasure. RIP to a Vecellio woman of character.

Maria in Palermo on the set of the movie Crossed Swords with Errol Flynn, famed Hollywood Aussie bad boy actor, in 1954. Somehow my late husband managed to get Maria and a friend on set for some photos.