First Sicilian visit confounds expectations … and makes me wonder if I'll bother with Tuscany again

This is the first of a series of entries on Sicily, written upon my return but backdated to stretch across the dates of the actual trip.

A little over 100 years ago, Carmela Ferrara locked the door to the family farmhouse in Novarra di Sicilia for the last time.  She was stereotypically Sicilian, stout and olive skinned, with a shock of prematurely white hair.  All attributes her descendants would inherit.  She balanced her toddler son Giovanni Pietro on her hip and headed off to the port of Messina for the long trip to New York City, where she'd join the rest of the family that had gone on ahead to establish a new home in New Haven, CT.  Administrators at Ellis Island anglicised the boy's name to John Peter, an arbitrary stripping of ethnic identity that quite possibly helped the lad to get into medical school later.

Though he never completely lost his Sicilian roots (most notably his love for his homeland's food), my grandfather John P. Ferrara MD was always resolutely American first.  He never pushed a return to the old country.  When I first had the chance to visit Italy, he suggested I go north, to the cradles of the Renaissance.  Art took me to Florence, history to Rome, work to Milan.  I didn't learn Sicilian as a child in the home, but Tuscan as an adult in a classroom.  Somehow, while I'd visited all the other origins of my DNA, I'd never made it to the one that put the biggest cultural brand on my soul.  I decided I couldn't hit 50 without addressing that omission.  And thus, finally, I stepped off a plane in Catania and became the first of my line to return to the mother country since Carmela and Giovanni left it.

A complete return to Novarra wasn't in the plans.  There's little to see there and it's tough to get to.  An isolated, mountain village at the end of tortuous, twisting roads that are slow going … turns out that, despite being from the heart of the Mediterranean, my ancestors were as land-locked as the Missourians they came to be.  My plan was to do the standard intro tour, covering three points of the triangle:  Palermo, Agrigento, Taormina.

The entire trip was a delight and leaves doubting I'll be back to Florence any time soon.  This is a whole new world to explore.  Like a distorted reflection of the mainland, it's Italian, yet completely different.  It confounded almost all the expectations I had of it, and has left me hungry for more.  (And I don't just mean cannoli.)  Here were some of the surprises.

It's not nearly as rough or dangerous as I expected.  Immigrants' experiences of their homelands stop when they leave.  (I know.  For me, it will always be 1993 in the USA, and pro baseball doesn't exist in Florida.)  Perhaps that's why the Italian-American community hands down a vision of Sicily as crumbling, dirty, dangerous and Mafia-infested.  I'm not going to deny it's a long way from the commuter villages of Milan, but things have moved on a lot and I saw plenty of normal, middle class life with pockets of real affluence.  Yes, there are more derelict buildings here than elsewhere in Italy; WW2 still casts a long shadow.  There's more random rubbish scattered along country lanes than elsewhere in Europe, and the abundant warnings about auto theft when you pick up your hire car are a bit daunting.  Yes, being this close to Africa there's an immigration problem, but Siricusa was the only place we noticed a lot of beggars, and there no more than Paris.  Overall, if you've done a fair bit of travel and keep your wits about you, it's no worse than other parts of Europe.

It's not all about the coasts.  Sicily has a total area of more than 10,000 square miles, of which just over 900 is coastline.  Even my childish grasp of mathematics can deduce that leaves a lot inland.  But you only ever hear about the seaside.  This fact confronted me within half an hour of arriving, as we headed cross-country on the Catania-Palermo highway.  Through mile after mile of spectacular highlands with broad expanses of wheat, lush forests, contented herds of cattle and sheep and very few people.  That night's restaurant drove it home when it served us some exceptional beef.  Closer to the coasts, but still inland, are miles of intensive agricultural land filled with citrus, vines, fruit trees and polytunnels producing a riot of vegetables.  Including those famous tomatoes.

Driving isn't the nightmare you're led to believe.  Here are the three things you have to overcome:  signage is rotten; lots of mountain roads mean you'll be doing frequent, repeated hairpin turns; roundabouts are a free-for-all in which the pushiest get through.  Master these things (having a good navigator is essential), and you'll be fine.  The highway network has clearly had a lot of money put into it recently.  In most cases you'll find the main roads between the big towns to be in excellent condition and not very crowded.  And there are far fewer toll roads than in the rest of Italy or France.

The food.  So many surprises, they will have their own entries.  Of course.  Sicilian food can be subtle, elegant and delicate … not attributes I attributed to the comfort dishes of my family kitchen.  There are ingredients and combinations I'd never imagined; mint, for example, turns up as much as oregano.  They don't put tomatoes in their caponata.  You can have the disappointment of an average meal (I admit, I thought every bite I put in my mouth would be superlative), but you probably won't have a bad one.  Cannoli taste pretty much the same here as they do anywhere else.  And the wine?  An undiscovered country of delight…

It's the Americans who are obsessed with the Mafia, not the Sicilians.  Sicilians are getting on with their country.  With a growing economy, partial autonomy from Italy, increased sophistication in their tourism and export markets, there's a sense of optimism here.  Sure, the mafia is still a factor, but locals were far more likely to complain about current politicians or immigration pressures than organised crime.  They wish Americans would get over their fascination and celebrate the joys of the island.  And yet … clearly to feed the American tours market … we saw "Godfather" souvenirs wherever we went, heard the soundtrack played constantly as restaurant background music and saw tours advertised to Corleone.  Clearly, it's a tough balance for the Sicilians between an image they want to shed and tourist dollars they want to collect.

It's a land of floral abundance.  The Sicily in my head was hot, dry and brown.  That might be the truth in August.  But in May, it's an astonishing display of yellow, purple, blue, magenta, dusky pink and bright reds against verdant green backgrounds.  I've never been anywhere with more beautiful and abundant wildflowers.  They make every roadside a garden worth observing.  This is clearly one of the best times of the year to come.

Other things, of course, were exactly as expected.  The people are exuberant, friendly and clearly in pursuit of the joy in life.  The intersection of cultures … Greek, Roman, Arabic, Norman, Spanish, etc. … makes for a fascinating mix of history and sightseeing.  There's a lot of faded, crumbing grandeur.  The seafood is magnificent.  They speak much less English here than further North, so my basic Italian was very useful.  The food markets … especially the produce and the fish … are filled with such quality you want to drop everything to cook.  The coastline is so beautiful you'll want to weep.

So … ready to explore?  Let's start with Palermo in the next entry.