'Overstanding'

The day starts in earnest northeast of Turin in the village of Sassi, where a train will carry me 9,000 feet up the hill to the Superga Basilica. (soo-PAIR-gah)


The steep ride takes just 12 minutes.


Whadda jewel. Remember Pietro Micca and the battle of 1706? Well, a prominent duke promised the Virgin Mary a big architectural shebang if the French were defeated. They were, and here is the payoff.


The interior.




A “Hall of Popes” (portraits of all 241! Whee! Trade 'em with your friends!) and the burial chamber of the Savoys are here. You can also go up into the cupola.


The church is Filippo Juvarra’s masterpiece. He, Guarini and Carlo di Castellamonte (the only Turin native of the three Baroque visionaries), are really responsible for Turin’s look to this day.


Perhaps the saddest spot in Italy. The entire Torino soccer club was killed here on May 4, 1949, when their plane crashed into the basilica’s embankment. The tragedy shocked the world and threw Turin into an almost unspeakably painful period of mourning. I honestly don’t think the city has ever gotten over it. Thirty-one people died.


At the time, the team was Italy’s best. They hadn’t lost a game in nearly three years. Every May 4, thousands of fans, even those of their hated Juventus rivals, climb the hill to pay their respects. The reasons for the crash still aren’t known.


A garden in the shadow of (cue Ricardo Montalban) the basilica's "fine Corinthian columns."


At the bottom of the hill, I see a bus heading in the right direction and jump on just before the doors close. It takes me to Turin but then veers off toward the airport. Yikes! I quickly get off and look for a landmark. Eventually I see the spire of the Mole Antenolliana and all is well.

For the first time in eight days I allow myself to have a seat and be served. I have a clinical aversion to spending money. (Thanks, Mom! Thanks, Dad!)


Wait, I hear objections.
Q: Did you swim to Italy, Pete?
Q: Having arrived in Italy, do you now sleep under a bridge?

One at a time, please! These are fair questions. Yes, it cost $1,083 to get here. And I’m paying 350 euro a week to stay at 40 Corso Turati. This numbers game aside, I really have no interest in anything other than being here, where the ambulances sound funny and you can get hazelnut-and-canteloupe yogurt in the supermarket.

In superficial ways, Turin and I aren’t a good fit. I don’t like chocolate; coffee to me is nothing other than a way to get through a long night at work. But these considerations are beside the point. I like being off-balance. I like the fact that I will have to steel myself to enter one of those impossibly Baroque cafes in Piazza San Carlo, where everyone is suited and polished and where the Piedmontese dialect bounces off the walls, sounding like an army of argumentative children about to cry. (Walk into a roomful of Italians, watch them jab one another in the chest and stress every penultimate syllable and tell me you don’t hear the same thing.)

Case in point: As I write this, someone has slipped a note under my door. I can’t make heads or tails of it. Am I invited to a party? Are noxious fumes enveloping the building? The confusion is intoxicating.

Even as I am humbled, my perspective broadens. And though I make too much of the language differences, I wear my own language like armor. A panhandler won’t stop pestering you? “Beat it, asswipe.” A clueless driver almost runs you over in the crosswalk? “Fuck off, clownfish.” These retorts stop people in their tracks. Why? Because the panhandler and the driver lack understanding. Having lashed out in your native tongue, you now command the “overstanding.” Hey, that’s not a bad word. It cuts both ways.

My pizza arrives. Yes, I am one of those tourists who takes pictures of his food. Surprisingly, I was able to finish the whole thing.


Il conto: 6 for the pizza, 3 for the Coke, 2 for the privilege of sitting on the sidewalk and watching the world go by. Hey, I should do this more often!


On the way home I stumble across this piazza. Does any city have more equestrian statues? The square is named for an editor, Giambattista Bodoni (1740-1813). Solidarity, man.

sept.9 from Sluggh McGee on Vimeo.