A Last Day in Italy

Terontola is a new little town, since the old one was destroyed during the war. The war was bad in these parts because of a last-defense line of the Germans, which brought much Allied bombing and, apart from that, a strong Partisan movement. The Germans behaved atrociously, shooting and hanging civilians; the most moving recollections of that time come from a volume of the memoirs of the country parish priests, parish for parish, detail for detail. Yet all is (or is it not really?) forgotten now, and German tourists and second-home owners are welcome in our parts, near Lake Trasimeno. A nearby village reminds us to this day of the great victory of Hannibal over the Romans: Ossaia, the place of the bones, where the Roman dead were buried.

All the trains are running late, the station master tells me. Why, he does not know, maybe because it’s the end of the holidays and all the workers in Calabria and Sicily are going back to their work in Northern Italy. Rather than wait for the express, I decide to take a local to Florence.

NH

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Nika Hazelton

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Terontola is a new little town, since the old one was destroyed during the war. The war was bad in these parts because of a last-defense line of the Germans, which brought much Allied bombing and, apart from that, a strong Partisan movement. The Germans behaved atrociously, shooting and hanging civilians; the most moving recollections of that time come from a volume of the memoirs of the country parish priests, parish for parish, detail for detail. Yet all is (or is it not really?) forgotten now, and German tourists and second-home owners are welcome in our parts, near Lake Trasimeno. A nearby village reminds us to this day of the great victory of Hannibal over the Romans: Ossaia, the place of the bones, where the Roman dead were buried.

All the trains are running late, the station master tells me. Why, he does not know, maybe because it’s the end of the holidays and all the workers in Calabria and Sicily are going back to their work in Northern Italy. Rather than wait for the express, I decide to take a local to Florence.