Living in Messina, Sicily – A Day to Day Experience
This is my second week in this beautiful city. I am trying to immerse myself among Italian speakers so I can learn the language better. I do think I am improving. Ciao. 🙂 I can communicate better than I thought I would. I am staying in quaint B&B near Antico Centro, a block from the Duomo with the mechanical show at noon every day. There have been fireworks the last few nights on the hill by Chiesa Montalto. My purpose has been to live through the seasons here in Messina as my Dad’s Great Aunts and Grandfather and their parents did many years ago and to discover as much as possible. I don’t expect to meet family but I know I am crossing paths that they crossed so many years ago.
I discovered that it is important to try to have a purpose for each day. There is an artist from Belarus in Messina who has made sidewalk mosaics. When I saw the story, I was so impressed, I reached out to her and we became friends. It is nice to know another person in this large city. I visited the large cemetery in Messina and was overwhelmed with the expanse and may visit another time. I visited the museum and was so impressed with how much art has been preserved, many of the artworks adhered to wooden boards that have withstood time. Again, it is an expansive museum and I will return to see it all. I hope to help Irina leave a little art here in Messina too over this next year. She has a project with a poet society for Maria Costa and I attended their meeting and it was good to see and hear this history. I hope to find a book of Maria Costa poetry somewhere soon. Her poetry tells the story of Messina’s strength, beauty and fortitude through so much adversity.
From Wikipedia:
Costa 1926 – 2016 lived all her life in the neighborhood of Case Basse (Deep Houses) in Paradiso (Paradise, a village of fishermen near Messina). In her poems, most of which are written in the Messinese dialect, she defended the cultural heritage of a town which was destroyed by a catastrophic earthquake in 1908.
Her verses are gathered in different volumes, such as Farfalle Serali (Evening butterflies) (1978), Mosaico (Mosaic) (1980), ‘A prova ‘ill’ovu (The egg examination) (1989) and Cavaddu ‘i coppi (Cups Horse) (1993).