Holiday memories
At the end of July, I returned to Palermo, Sicily, the place where I'm from.
My memories of this trip were meant to be about the beach. The sea. The ice creams and pizzas. My kids playing happily together. Seeing my family.
Except they aren't - or not entirely.
Let's start with my flights. EasyJet, economy, me and my son. CO2 amount: 1.5 t.
This already triggers my anxiety and shame just typing it here.
We land there. The place is way worse than I remembered it.
The humid heat is almost unbearable. I keep asking family and friends: is this the way it has always been? Because I don't remember feeling that panicky because of the heat when I lived there. Or maybe it's me getting old...
So we spend a lot of time indoors, air conditioning to full blast to avoid dropping on the floor because of the heat. Another pang of guilt and shame.
Then, the rubbish. Even elegant tourist areas by the seaside are filthy with rubbish popping out from the unkept hedges and broken pavements: dog droppings, plastic bottles, uneaten food... It's like air ride sirens went off and the city has been abandoned all of a sudden.
The sea in the afternoon is pistachio green (as opposed to crystal clear and light blue) and brings back ashore all sorts, from sanitary products (sorry if this is too much info for you) to (again) plastic bottles.
People don't move a step without their cars or motorbikes, so the hot air is filled with petrol fumes.
I go to the supermarket and buy a white melon. It is wrapped in clingfilm. I complain to the young fella who sold it to me. He shrugs and says: "the barcode label doesn't stick to the skin of the melon, so I wrap it in film". Do British melons have stickier skins that don't need cling film, I wonder??
I turn around and everywhere I look, it's a nightmare. Or is it me, looking at everything through my environmentalist glasses? Or perhaps through the lens of someone who suffers from solastalgia, and can't recognise the place she grew up in and has so many fond memories of?
My friend, I don't have a lovely half-full glass morale for you this week.
I only have a sad (and guilt-ridden) story to share so that, perhaps, you feel less alone in this journey.
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