TGV & Artesia   From the ferry arrival in Saint Malo in France we made our way to Rennes to take the TGV to Paris (Gare de Montparnasse). Once again, it is amazing how the high-speed trains "fly" you across France in a couple of hours. As usual, the SNCF (French national railroad) is very helpful with getting wheelchairs on board. Bev sat in her chair in an empty space next to mine. We then had to take a taxi between stations in Paris, to the Gare de Bercy.

Bercy Station seems to be a newer one. It actually is next to, and uses the tracks of, the Gare de Lyon, but seems to be for special trains. For instance, the French autotrain leaves from Bercy. People were just driving up their cars right in the heart of Paris. Aparently though, it works differently from Amtrak's Autotrain, since no passengers travel on the same train, but make their way to their destination separately, either on a passenger train, or, I suppose, by plane.

We were using Bercy because we were using one of the special trains that the French and Italian railroads had set up to connect the two countries via a special company, Artesia. This was the Paris-Rome Night Train. We were in the Excelsior sleeping car on this train, and therefore got to use the VIP lounge at Bercy (which was a surprise) and will also be able to use the one in Rome when we go back from Rome to Paris.

The Excelsior car has several regular rooms and one larger one in the middle referred to as a suite, but which is just a larger room. When we got to our planned room we could see that it was quite small. The porter was very nice and let us use the suite instead, which is considerably pricier, free of charge. When we got to Rome I immediately booked the suite for our return, for my own peace of mind.

All the rooms on the Excelsior sleeper car have toilets and showers, and include a welcome drink, which turned out to be champagne, and Pol Roger, no less; well, in France, it's just local stuff, It also includes breakfast served in the room. Since we couldn't get Bev to the dining car for dinner, once again it was great to have the larger room, since the porter and I went down and got two dinners to carry back. There was a coffee table in front of the sofa to serve as our dining table.

Every sleeping car compartment I've ever been in, including the Orient Express, has had bunk beds, including all the other rooms in this car. But this room had something unique. The entire wall behind the sofa came down like a Murphy bed, and there was a regular double bed, which used the coffee table structure as a support. We had a pleasant ride.

Paduli   The only places we've ever been to in Southern Italy were Rome and Naples, so the other areas are new to us now. We got our car at the Rome station, Stazioni Termini, and drove the 500 kilometers/300 miles on the Autostrada (toll) to Bari in Puglia, on the Adriatic, which covers the heel and spur of the Italian boot, where we've spent this weekend. We made only one stop, in Paduli.

Bev has always known her relatives in Sweden, on both sides. The family has always kept up good communications. As a matter of fact, we got engaged at Christmas 1961 while visiting her father's mother in Sweden.

On my side of the family there is next to no knowledge of relatives in Europe. Part of the fact is that all my grandparents were illliterate, and had no records to keep. They were also eager to assimilate in America, and little information was passed down. My mother's parents came "from Minsk" in Byelorussia. First, we're not really sure if they were ethnically Byelorussians or Russians, although the difference is not great. Also, they were farmers, so it couldn't have been literally from the city of Minsk that they were from, but surely some village in the countryside. We were in Minsk years ago, but just to "be there", not to find any specific town.

My father always said his parents came from a place near Benevento. I got it from his sister once years ago that the town was called Paduli. Driving from Rome to Bari we passed right through the area, so we stopped. Of course, things have improved greatly in the past century since they emigrated, even in the traditionally poor south. The main highway went right next to the provincial capital of Benevento (“Goodwind”) and we could see from the short distance that there seemed to be some prosperity. But when we drove the 14 kilometers into the hills to Paduli, it looked, well, scruffy. There were plenty of apartment buildings and a few people in the streets, yet the word scruffy kept coming to mind. Well, at least I was able to "be there".

I remember my father telling me that when he was 20, his father was going to take him "back to Italy" for a visit. I assume that meant to Paduli. But my father turned 20 in 1929, and with the stock market crash, that visit never took place. So my grandfather never made it back. My father never saw it in 1929 or at any other time. At least I made it there in 2003.

Bari   Bari, and all of Puglia (English uses Apulia; it's the heel of Italy, but up to the calf), is Saint Nicholas territory, as the whole story comes from here. It seems every other man is named Nicola, and the hotel is called the Sheraton Nicolaus. We're getting two hotels later free on points, and I had just enough points left over to cover two of the three nights here. When I e-mailed them that we're coming with a wheelchair they said they'd upgrade us to a suite at no extra charge (here we go again). The hotel is a 14-story modern building with a huge N on one wall outside. Our suite is on the 12th floor, and roller skates would be helpful in getting around it. We have two balconies. There is an entrance hall, a full wet bar (with unopened bottles), a dining area, a living room, a king-size bed in the bedroom, a marble bath with jacuzzi and separate stall shower. I am presently sitting at the marble dressing table in the bathroom extension, since that is where there is an outlet for the laptop. There are three full-size TV's, in the living room, the bedroom, and one facing the john. There was a bowl of fresh fruit near the entrance. It's all nice, and kind of grand. I suppose a factor in giving us the upgrade is that we're here on a weekend when things are less busy.

I Trulli in Alberobello In our time in Puglia, we drove north to the Gargano Promontory, that spur that sticks out into the Adriatic, and south to the historic city of Lecce. But most interesting is our visit in between to Alberobello, the center of the trulli (Photo by Marcok). A trullo (singular il trullo, plural i trulli) is a stone hut with a conical roof, very typical of this area through the 19C, with quite a few surviving structures remaining. This is a model of a trullo (Photo by Marcok) showing its construction. We were tuned in to this area by having talked to the owner of a favorite restaurant in Manhattan, called, appropriately, "I Trulli", which uses a model of a trullo in its open kitchen as a pizza oven.

Transportation Articles   I've lately read three articles of interest concerning transportation.

Eurostar At the Artesia lounge in Bercy station the hostess served a variety of papers with the espresso. The Times (London) had an article about improving the Eurostar. When it was built, it was high speed in the Chunnel and in France. The Brits were behind as to high-speed rail and the Eurostar goes on conventional tracks in the UK, behind other trains. That's why it takes three hours between London and Paris. In September though, the first half of the British high-speed line will go into service. In test runs, they broke a high-speed record on that stretch. When the last half to London is completed in a number of years, London to Paris will be only 2 1/4 hours. The point of the article was that, when Brussels and Paris were connected by high-speed trains some two dozen daily flights between them were reduced to two. It is felt that when London is only 2 1/4 hours from Paris, the number of flights will be reduced similarly, or they may all disappear.

Routes East In the lounge I also picked up Corriere della Sera (Evening Courier), the respected Milan daily. They had an even more interesting article about connecting high-speed routes to Eastern Europe, to further draw the new members of the European Union to the old. At present, France, Germany, and Italy (and others) are developing high-speed routes, but with the exception of Eurostar, they are all internal. Corriere reported that a number of major east-west international routes are being planned, to be finished by 2015. It told about two (I'd like to know what they all are), one north of the Alps and one south. North of the Alps a route will connect France, Germany, Austria, Slovakia and Hungary. Here (in Italian, as presented in the article), are the cities it is expected to connect. See what you can figure out:

South of the Alps the other route will connect France, Italy, Slovenia, and Hungary:

Which are: Lyon--Turin--Milan--Venice--Trieste--Ljubljana—Budapest

Even more interesting was the otherwise unexplained dotted line on the map connecting both routes ending in Budapest with Kiev in the Ukraine. Now that's what I call going east.

The Strait of Messina I said we've never yet been to Sicily, but we have seen Sicily. In 1965 we were returning from Israel to France on the Israeli ship Bilu from Haifa to Marseille. I didn't realize what our exact route would be, and I was surprised to find us sailing through the Strait of Messina, with the headlands of Sicily on one side and mainland Italy on the other.

Tomorrow we'll be leaving Bari and driving down to the toe of Italy, where we'll take the 20-minute car ferry to Sicily across the Strait of Messina crossing our Bilu route. I had heard some time ago that there was talk of a bridge to Sicily, but hadn't heard anything else about it. Then, by pure chance, I picked up a local paper in the hotel lobby yesterday, La Gazzeta del Mezzogiorno (The Gazette of the South). The bridge has passed another planning hurdle and is now being planned for operation in 2011. It will be the biggest suspension bridge in the world, with rail in the center and cars on each side. It will have the longest span because the currents of the strait will require both towers to be on land. The span will be twice the span of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, which is 1.29 kilometers; the Verrazano Narrows Bridge in New York is the next larger with a span of 1.30K; then come five other larger bridges, then the planned Strait of Messina bridge with a span of 3.3K. Each tower will be higher than the Eiffel Tower, and Westminster Abbey would fit under the bridge.