Footloose Scot Read Free Page A

seemed to recover more slowly than Germany after the war. To a naïve newcomer there was even beauty in the poverty. The warmth of the colors in the buildings and the noise and gesticulations of the people, often poorly dressed, remain as memories more than any painting or sculpture. Memorable moments were not in a museum but watching street theater: an argument between a shopkeeper and a customer, the police intervening.
    There were few tourists around, and seldom a line to enter a museum or gallery. Arthur Frommer's ground-breaking
Europe on $5-a-Day,
which would encourage generations of American tourists to travel cheap and be smart, would not come out until the following year. The millions of tourists from northern Europe buying package tour holidays to the Mediterranean countries were still to come. It was also out of season.
    En route to Naples, a large black limousine with a British flag on the front stopped as I flapped my hand. It contained an official from the British Embassy in Rome and his wife, who were taking diplomatic papers to the consulate in Naples. They questioned me with interest about my itinerary and bought me lunch at a small seaside restaurant. I said that I was travelling as far and as cheaply as I could, and described it as an adventure before going to Oxford. Too polite to ask, they must have wondered how this travel-worn hitchhiker had gained entrance to Oxford. I had spent the previous night sleeping in a vineyard after drinking half a liter of red wine, and had had little opportunity to clean up.
    In the Naples youth hostel a German girl gave me a rail ticket to Palermo in Sicily. She had to go home suddenly due to family illness. So, after one long train ride, I found myself at my ideal destination: a small hostel near the small resort town of Taormina fronting onto the Mediterranean. I stayed for 8 days, basking in the warm sun and doing very little. I washed my clothes with the village women at the public washing place. I swam sometimes and most evenings cooked pasta in the hostel kitchen. I took trips on local buses just to see how far they would go. Each day there would be a new intake of hostellers with whom to exchange information, spend time on the beach or share cooking. This was the lifestyle which I had come for.
    I found out that I could get back to Naples by a regular ferry service which left Palermo and stopped at the Aeolian Islands before making a straight run to Naples. I booked deck passage, and went on board. The boat, which had cabins and a bar and restaurant, was almost empty. A young Italian fellow got into conversation with me in the bar and sometime later, seeing I was about to stretch out on one of the seats, suggested I take one of the empty bunks in his cabin, where there was only one other occupant.
    I took him up on his suggestion, relishing a comfortable berth. The trouble was that I woke up to find the cabin steward staring at me from the door. From his gestures and speech, he seemed to be asking for my ticket or some money. I got up quickly, brushed past him and through the door, and went up on deck. We were right in Naples harbor and about to dock. I ducked behind a lifeboat, then nipped down a stairway as I heard his voice shouting at me. Coming up at another part of the ship, I found the gangway right in front of me, just on the point of being secured, so I jumped onto it and was first off the ship.
    I was soon absorbed into the dockside crowds and felt free from pursuit. Looking for a place to eat, I saw a tiny hole-in-the-wall pizzeria, an eating place for the locals I assumed. Inside, the aroma of the cooking cheese and the warmth from a wood-fired oven filled the small space. I ordered the smallest pizza on the menu and soon had a crisp pie crust with sizzling tomato sauce and some sardines on top in front of me. Straight from the oven, rich, tasty and simple, I ate it, my first ever pizza. Then I ordered another. Thirty years later, mindful of my experience