Channeling Fellini on the Island of Napoleon
By Dale Patrick Myers
It takes me two years to get to Elba after seeing it for the first time, although I have never even set foot on the island. My quest began from 30,000 feet in the air after asking an Alitalia stewardess what island we were flying over. “L’isola d’Elba,” she replies in that what-else-could-it-be Italian way while leaning over me and looking out the window. The only thing I knew about Elba is it was once a place of exile for Napoleon. Nevertheless, I know just from this aerial view flying over it at 500 mph that I have to return and explore the island which grew from a jewel that slipped from the neck of Venus into the turquoise Tyrrhenian.
Fast-forward two years and my brother and I are on Elba waiting for the bus to Capoliveri, yet after an hour the ghostly Elban bus fails to materialize. Daunted but not defeated, we retreat to our hotel where Maria, the hotel dignitary, shuts down reception and offers us a ride in her tiny and battered Fiat Cinquecento (500). “I can take all of you,” she nonchalantly states while pointing to two intrepid travelers already standing by the car that looks like it can only transport two at the most. “Non problemo,” Maria reassures us. Our fellow exiles are a tall, transparently pale woman and a tanned, benevolent-looking man who stands but 4-feet tall — a German couple en route to Capoliveri via Cologne. The first thought I have as our family of five enters the Fiat 500 is “How Felliniesque.”
Visions of a seamlessly never-ending string of clowns piling out of a miniscule car also come to mind, seeing as we consist of one stout Italian woman who can barely fit between the driver’s seat and steering wheel; a 6-foot, 200-pound American male (myself) in the front who has to press his knees on the dash just to fit; another behind me (my brother), whose knees are pressed against the back of my seat shoving me ever forward; an almost-as-tall-as-us frowning fräulein; and the featherweight German man who swallows his pride and sits diminutively on his paramour’s lap. “Guten morgen,” he says and introduces himself as Bernd. “Is vunderfull to meet you.”
With primal and hesitant Italian, I attempt to communicate with our driver who speaks at an extremely rapid pace with both mouth and hands. Her inflated fingers fly off the steering wheel with each new incomprehensible sentence while the toy-like Fiat swerves all over the serpentine road. I try to ground by meditating on the hilly Elba countryside but can’t stop thinking we’re soon going to be wrapped around one of the trunks of the umbrella-shaped Mediterranean pine trees that line the road. I’m trepidatious about joining the conversation in the back seat, only knowing a few words of German (mostly swear words taught to me by my half-German grandfather) but have to smile at the broken-language-of-your-choice conversations that are taking place in half German, half English and half Italian, half English but steel myself and simply say to Bernd, “Kölner Dom.” Without hesitating, he says “The best in Europe,” referring to his hometown’s famous Gothic Cathedral. His equally Gothic-looking partner remains stoically mute and as far as I know only speaks Frisian, if she speaks at all. But being part Italian and German, I feel a strange kinship to all my car mates, even the one who we will never learn her name. Castle-like Capoliveri looms in the distance like some Mediterranean Camelot high atop the hill. We are dropped off near its liveliest square, Piazza Matteotti, after which Maria motors away with an earth-shattering backfire and sincere “addio.” Bernd secures a Vespa for himself and his girlfriend to share as they are off back down the hill to a nearby beach. He offers us a ride on said singular motor scooter. “We can all fit. I don’t take up much room,” he jokes, while the ever-present scowl on his partner’s face turns to a look of complete exasperation. We politely decline, although while in Italy we have seen what looks like entire families tooling around on one Vespa, and say our reluctant farewells.
We find our feet again on Capoliveri’s cobblestone streets and make our way to the piazza where the spirit of Fellini is not done with us. A crowd — mostly Italian, mostly children — is being instructed in the finer arts of the Macarena, which makes me wish I was still at that age of reckless abandon before “embarrassment” was even part of my vocabulary or psyche. In that moment I wish to feel free like a child again and exorcise that adult demon inhibition so enter the melee as the once-popular paean blasts from a boom box and I can’t help but mouth the words of the song in unison with two dozen children, “Heeeeey Macarena. Aaahaa!”
About the Author: Dale Patrick Myers is a travel writer, journalist, editor and novelist from Ventura, CA. He was the editor of MotorHome magazine and is a frequent contributor to Global Road Warrior and The Circumference.
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