Stone upon stone: an Italian sojourn: Drama in Selinunte

We will remember Selinunte.

We have been here two days and still don't know the name of the owner of the house we are staying in, or where he lives. The key was in the mailbox when we arrived, and where we expected to find it. It did not, initially, open any of the key slots at either the small gate or the large sliding gate to let the car into the drive. Eventually the garden gate key worked, but the gate would only open a fraction: just enough to let in a very skinny person. Negotiation through the front yard was a minefield: Sicilians don't do lawn: they let everything grow profusely: it had done for years, so it was thick and wild. Then the house key didn't work on the front door--until Pete thought to go upstairs and found that we, now, only have half the house, the upstairs half, as someone else appears to be living in the downstairs half, which the booking implies is ours. Not that it matters, there are three upstairs Queen sized bedrooms and two full bathrooms, so the upstairs is huge, vast in truth, albeit impersonal and somewhat bare, like an occasional summer house beach dwelling. Which it is, no doubt. We then realised the tab holding the key was the gate remote. Ah! Brain spasm. So, in came the car and we could unload our possessions.

We, then, could not find the washing machine, which was yet a second quick query to the owner via the Booking Assistant, as we arrived with a giant load of washing. That evidently was downstairs, but as the keys left for us did not open it then we would have to wait till the morning to do the washing when he would ask the 'young man downstairs (who was at work) to unlock it -- and hope for sun so that it would dry in a day as there is only a clothes rack for drying. Sicilians don't do clothes dryers -- or microwaves -- it seems. We have yet to see either: not that they are necessary, in truth.

A wind howled through the night and it took us a half an hour to work out how to turn the house heating on. We haven't needed heating until now, but this house is all concrete, tiles and chilly air. We finally mastered the Italian for that and it worked, and brilliantly, and by morning a strong night wind had blown in sun, and the wind had slowed to a perfect breeze for a perfect drying day, so I sent Pete down to do the first load of washing at 7.30am while I was finishing my blog.

Two and a half hours later it was still filling with water and cycling happily away. Finally--with the help of mobile data as this was our first non-WIFI abode -- after learning a few new Italian words for washing cycles, and swearing, we coaxed that cycle to Fini. I put in the next load on Mini 30, which took no time at all, but, by then, even Bec wanted to have a look at what was going on down in the laundry so left her game in the unit, came downstairs, shutting the door behind her with the only set of keys left inside house, and us all locked out of this concrete fortress.

So, another drama ensued.

I eventually pushed and pushed --hard! long!-- on one of the double glazed balcony doors until it gave an inch or two so I could reach in and work out how to open it. And it opened. Nothing ended up being wrecked, and it still locks perfectly after the fact, though I grazed a floor tile a wee bit with a hanging lock in the process, but was able to polish that mark away, too.

Yet, another drama occurred when I arranged an electronic hub for all our computing devices over on the empty mantle piece in the living room. I needed two plugs for our power boards, so highjacked the only place where they were together, took out an existing Sicilian plug out and plugged ours in. That worked super well for me, but the next morning a team of gorgeous young Italian men, all very voluble, turned up on our balcony with a ladder, fixing things on our roof. It seemed to us from our hand sign conversations that the downstairs television must have stopped working last night for no apparent reason. We don't have one upstairs, so did not noticed. It took them just minutes to determine that my plug-ins had caused the interruption to the downstairs service. So, I had to rebuild my computer hub, and did so, laughing as they all packed up and left. So, all has ended well--we hope: we haven't left here, yet--and despite all the dramas the house has been great. We have fabulously comfortable beds, probably the best yet and a sensational kitchen, and despite shutting 4 doors to rooms we don't need we still have so much space and Miss Bec still gets lost.

So with the washing out to dry we headed off for the day. Just two kilometres to the water and we timidly parked close to the fini of a ZTL, which is a limited traffic zone area which incurs a very hefty fine if you even attempt to drive through when it is operational. Though two separate locals assured us that the restricted zone was not operating until summer, here, at the beach, but we still left the car parked, timidly. Marinella Selinunte is a tight little beach village with relatively modern concrete block-type beach houses tumbling down the hillside to a tight little sandy beach, which, I imagine, is a huge draw in summer.

Today, the narrow docks were filled with fishermen mending their nets. It did not appear as if they had gone out fishing this morning: maybe the big wind last night prohibited that. So, there is no fish auction to be seen on the docks, where they fishermen sell their catch off their boats in a tradition called, the Enchantment of the Fish.

But they are still there, with local men watching and chatting as they ever do: eternally mending their puddled pile of nets.

As well as a late coffee, we ordered an early fish lunch. We should have known better, given that there was apparently no fish catch this morning. We ordered separate items on the menu, but when they arrived they looked similar -- just calamari and prawns: no fish at all: that only then did we realised that that was all the seafood in the restaurant, without the fishermen enchanting the fish and the buyer enchanting the boatmen. Still, it was all thoroughly delicious: salty seafood under the sun in Selinunte. And has likely been on offer here since the first ever settlement.

One of the earliest settlements here were made by the Greeks, who colonised many sea locales around the Mediterranean, this being one of the most spectacular. Over time, starting some six hundred years BC, they built an entire city to support their sea trade: first their homes and their docks and commercial mercantile buildings, then, their market place, or their Agora, and glorious temples for adoring their gods.

The site for their ancient trading city, Selinunte, spread over several hills fronting the water, and took us the entire afternoon to explore: with us even driving to connect two of the sites. The city must have been magnificent viewed from the water. The temple colonnades have remnants of stucco, so very likely they were painted and under the sun, from the sea, would have stood tall and elegant and imposing. Stacked as close together as they once were it would have been a sight of majesty.

The stone, used to make many of these amazing buildings came from a rocky cliff face of Cusa, just 11kms north west of here, where massive colonnade pieces were cleverly cut from the earth in cylinders, then moved on site when needed. Some sixty stone column pieces still sit at the Cusa quarry waiting for removal: a tale of tragedy interrupted their development.

Like many small coastal settlements the Selinunte Greeks were at war with others playing for power in the region. Among them was another competing group of Greeks at Segesta, not far up the road to the east, and the Carthaginians, just across the water on the African coast, with all their Phoenician history and ties.

An invasion was always a threat, and in 409 BC the enemy came in vast numbers and interrupted the Selinute folk in their eating, praying and pottery. Small finds left at burned out buildings show that the locals were not in readiness for war, but they fought bravely for nine days until it was all over.

Some 17,000 of them died: many women and children who had fled to the temples were spared. Some 5,000 were taken as slaves. And gradually, though some Punic settlers moved in over time and rearranged the dwellings and the fortifications to suit themselves, the majesty and beauty--the glory days of Selinunte ended right there.

And slowly time took its toll, and earthquakes. Massive columns, larger than usual, toppled stone by stone, resting as they fell, in situ. The wind blew, the sand swept in, and the ruins were coated in earth and wildflowers, then forgotten, until a Dominican monk read of them in ancient texts and went searching on his donkey. He found them, which is why today we can walk around the city in awe. And locals can sell their hand-crafted ceramic ware, to remind us of the colours that were once used to decorate the temple arches.

Post note: As we said farewell to our house today-- a house we had become quite fond of: solid and strong, with huge potential--it gave one last kick in its tail: the fortress-type gate would not respond to the remote. We were locked in and no one home downstairs and no way out.

Its final drama.

But, then, like the patio door upstairs, one strong push and the electronic light came on and the remote worked.

Selinunte, you have given us a workout in more ways than one.