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TRAVEL - ITALY
ANTONIO FEMIA
WHY ARE YOU HERE ? WHERE ARE YOU FROM ?
It seems the foreign tourists ’ image of Italy is created by pictures of the Coloseum , postcards of Michelangelo ’ s David , and Milano Fashion week . Tuscan countryside comes to the fore when you speak of landscapes , so clean and orderly , looking like it was designed by an architect . Yet , the south of the nation offers stronger emotions and , if you decide to ride it , you ’ ll feel the same sensations as if you were travelling very far from Europe .
For a long time , Calabria , the foot of this boot-shaped peninsula , remained isolated from the rest of Italy because of political and historical reasons . Notably , the southernmost tip maintained a wild and unexplored character until recently . Its name is Aspromonte , which translates to something like “ The Rough Mountain ”.
More than a geographic definition , Aspromonte is a state of soul , whose essence escapes inhabitants of other Calabrian regions . Wrapped in a halo of imminent danger , the terminal stretch of the Apennine Mountains represented an inscrutable land like its people . It was the 1980s , a time of the internal war of ‘ ndrangheta ( the local mafia ), when the mountain roads were patrolled by the army , attempting to put pressure on a dark enemy which kept the entire territory in check and came to the light of the world by kidnapping rich industrialists from the north with the purpose to gain independence and its own capital .
Many things have changed since then , and the threatening atmosphere seems to belong to the past . Though what remains is the sense of an unexplored land , the charm of border , the end ’ s fascination : the end of the Apennine range , the end of Italy , the end of that undefined stuff we call Europe .
Although my family comes from that area , I never delved deep into it ,
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