About tourism
…it couldn't have ended any other way!
I, who in forty years have never gotten lost in the mountains, despite fog, snow and night, could not help but get lost on my first excursion with the local expert, with the native!
We must always be wary of experts, because they inevitably fall into the trap of the most insidious deception, overconfidence , which has claimed many victims, not only in the financial markets.
My friend told me: we'll make a ring!
I, who have energy reserves (too many), had taken water reserves, and with my oversized backpack I was ready to face a fairly wide range of weather conditions, had not spent too much time in informing myself. It might have seemed that I did not trust, and in fact I did not trust, for the simple reason that when it comes to my skin I only trust myself (or my doctor, more precisely one of them …). But precisely for this reason, so great (and so little known) was my delicacy that I had not asked "exactly" where we were going, partly out of fatalism, but above all because for work reasons I would not have had the time to neurotically study the maps and itinerary directories of the area, beautiful (i.e. Abruzzo) but unknown to me. For once I wanted to know less than the native, or, to put it better, I wanted to give the native the satisfaction of knowing more than me, in short I wanted to let myself be surprised.
Ironically, we were at the foot of a mountain whose existence I had denied to a friend from a region that doesn't exist (Molise): Monte Meta, which for me was only this , while for him it was also this .
He was right (but only up to a certain point, because the first one is actually called "the Meta", tout court ).
The friend (the local one) wanted to go around it starting from the end of the dirt road and probably going back there, but without a map, without a compass, without a GPS. After all, it doesn't take much, what do we need: it's a hill of 1784 meters (one hundred less than the Secine) and we just had to go around it.
I'll explain briefly how it went, with the help of this slide:
taken from here (that is, from one of those sites that I usually consult first when, as a humble non-native, I organize myself to bring my skin back home…).
Having parked the car at the end of the dirt road (red dot below), in the Vallopiana area, we set off following the sign for Valle Strina:
with the idea of following a clockwise loop (the one highlighted in fuchsia). Excellently marked path, we soon arrive at the Valle Strina, secluded, solitary, beautiful. At Capo di Serre we find a sign that shows us on the right the deviation for Vado di Focina, that is this one:
traced in purple (Vado di Focina is the "ford", the hill that overlooks the upper Val Pescara, precisely the homeland of the arrosticino: Villa Celiera), but we continue along the valley continuing towards the North, until, at a narrow point, the mass of the Prena appears:
Never seen so many gentians:
and so much other vegetation that I won't bore you with. Continuing, the view opened up more and more onto Campo Imperatore, seen from the south, with (from right to left) Camicia and Prena:
The little Tibet of Abruzzo, but also the setting for many spaghetti westerns. At a certain point we turn north-east, following a side path, and we stop to eat at the northernmost point of the ring, near a rose garden, from which we enjoyed a magnificent view of Campo Imperatore, with the Mucciante restaurant, Fonte Vetica, and all the things that those who know will see and those who don't know are not interested in:
Reassured, we set off again, and here be careful, because the error comes. We move towards the South East following the red arrow:
but I was convinced that we were moving towards the South, because I had not realized that from the main ridge, highlighted by the light blue line, a secondary ridge, highlighted in yellow, was branching off, which was moving, precisely, towards the East. So, while I thought that we were staying on the western edge of the Voltigno plateau, in reality we were travelling along its northern edge in an East direction (that is, towards Vado di Focina – Villa Celiera).
Now, as the #authenticAbruzzesi and the #parliamentarianswhofrequenttheterritory know well, therefore, ça va sans dire , not me, the name of Voltigno is associated with sad memories . This is to tell you that if everything predisposed me to optimism (the dazzling weather, the lush vegetation, the comfortable and well-marked path, and the many little creatures of the good Lord
that accompanied our walk), a certain subtle uneasiness still pervaded me, that tension with which every episode of the American series that so lull me to sleep begins, at the beginning of which, invariably, one or more unaware and carefree characters stumble upon, when they least expect it, the macabre vestiges of some horrendous crime. And anyway, we go and go, and I expected (thinking of going South) to sooner or later come across the path that started from Capo di Serre and that would allow me (I thought), crossing towards the West, to return to the Strina Valley, and from there to the car. It would have actually been like that if the whims of tectonics had not put the yellow ridge in the way! Following it, we arrive at another signpost, in the locality of "La Zingarella":
and there I didn't know what to do, because on the right I would have expected the Strina Valley! However, with the expert, we decided that it was better to go right (that is, we thought, West) than left. Instead right was South, because we were rotated 90 degrees! We entered a solemn beech forest, populated by columnar beech trees:
and extremely little frequented. At a certain point, I think that even if there is no signal, the compass on my phone should work. I take a look, and I realize that we are proceeding towards the East, that is, to be clear, towards Villa Celiera (home of the arrosticini), not towards Villa Santa Lucia, in short: towards the edge of the plateau opposite the one where we had parked. A path opens up on the right (which at this point is South) with white and red signs, but also blocked by some branches. We decide to go South following the signs, until the signs end and the path ends up on a steep meadow, populated by mulleins in full bloom:
which finally allows us to understand where we are: not on the western edge, but on the northern edge of the plateau, towards which we must descend to then go back up to the western edge which is now on our right:
We were where we shouldn't have been, but at least we knew it. It's not without its advantages, after all. My friend, whom I let go, sees a large wild cat in front of him (a nice experience: I was watching where I put my feet), a clear sign that no one ever passed by there. With a little caution, because the tall grass doesn't make it easy to pass (and can hide some surprises) we reach the bottom of the basin, which has features of Irish moorland:
On our right, the shepherdess Giulia with her sheep (this is another story that I won't go into):
and in front of us a lake of lush, flowering grass: the scabious was flowering, the mullein was flowering, above all the plantain was flowering:
a plant that, with its prodigal pollen spikes, always manages to move me. And, in fact, only thanks to a minimum of antihistamine coverage do I manage to get alive to the edge of the plateau from which we had to regain the car. I look back:
we climb the two hundred meters in the shade, but there the tears and sneezes start (which is always better than tears and blood):
The problem wasn't even this, but the fact that the dear friend who had brought me with him, being a few years older than me, had suffered from some illness that I presume was also waiting for me (but it must be said that my relationship with clinical analyses is like that with geographical maps: I use them to avoid surprises, while his relationship with clinical analyses is like that with geographical maps: he doesn't use them, perhaps because he loves surprises, which however in the case of negligence are rarely good…). In short: when it was time to face the climb he told me that it was the first excursion he had taken after a non-trivial operation. A thought crossed my mind: "I found someone who is more of an asshole than me! That's why I like him. But now how do I get him back up?"
With a few breaks (and a disaster recovery scenario that required me to quickly go up to get the car and then go down the dirt road to get it) everything worked out for the best, and at the top of the edge of the plateau we witnessed the spectacle of the fog that drizzled and rose on the steep hills:
A cool conclusion to a day that was not hot and shaded, luckily, since I had forgotten my sunscreen (no comment: on Monte Amaro I would have peeled off my bark like a birch).
The moral of the story is that it's worth keeping an eye on the compass anyway (by the way, I also have a very luxurious GPS but I have to learn how to use it and I'm a bit of a neophobe…).
However, although this 15.6 km long anecdote contains interesting lessons, that is not what I wanted to tell you about. Instead, I wanted to satisfy this curiosity:
KitKot3 left a new comment on your post " European Suicide (Still on Productivity) ":
Good morning, as per your request I remind you:
>I apologize for going off topic, but could you explain the last sentence of your tweet in a short post?
Thank you.
TW @AlbertoBagnai 7:41 AM · 11 Nov 2024
Posted by KitKot3 on Goofynomics on Nov 16, 2024, 07:44
It seemed to me that I had been quite explicit:
but I can try to be more so, based on the well-known principle "better to lose a friend than a good answer".
It is not because the attack on private property is left-wing that overtourism must become right-wing, because the defense of cultural identity is also right-wing.
I understand and politically support the political battle so that those who own apartments can, within certain rules, dispose of them as they wish, but I would not associate this battle with the denial of the fact that overtourism is objectively a problem in places like Rome, and could potentially become one wherever there is nonsense about "tourism as the country's oil". Among other things, the masses of lobotomized barbarians, remote-controlled with headphones by bored and hasty guides, I do not believe stay in B&Bs. We can therefore defend short-term rentals without denigrating those who defend their right to be themselves in their own world, and those who denounce the absurdity of certain totally unbalanced development models.
Maybe it's because, as a Tuscan, I happen to be a stranger in my own country, a country devastated, disfigured, mutilated by hordes of tourists and by the suicidal desire to offer them the Tuscany that they were thought to imagine and ask for, in a sort of perverse Keynesian beauty contest :
( here for the neophytes), rather than, simply, the Tuscany resulting from the being and wanting to be itself (and therefore, among other things, not particularly hospitable) of every Tuscan! In fact, when Claudio tweeted, in a breath of sincerity from which I would exclude any intent of captatio benevolentiae :
I would have had (as a Tuscan) the immediate response: "I know what it is, it's just that you weren't born in Tuscany!" (but I bit my tongue and didn't say it because it didn't seem very nice).
For me, Tuscany will never be happiness again, but only mourning. The center of Florence gutted by tourist factories saddens and depresses me as much as the idea that here we will soon find one of those 24-hour carbonarerie, where Slavic bouncers attract new wealthy Chinese enticing them with a nice plate of overcooked pasta to eat while sipping a cappuscheeno at any time of the day or night (I understand jet lag, but goodness me!). In fact, to tell the truth, Florence depresses me more than Rome, because I have always and only endured and managed Rome, while after all, Florence was my home until I was eight.
And the paradox is that now I see esteemed exponents of proudly indigenous political classes building for themselves "on the territory" a destiny of uprooted people, going in search not of themselves, but of what they believe "the tourist" might desire. As proud of belonging to the square centimeter in which they were born, and only to that, as they are anxious to let it be devastated by a horde of standardized automatons who sip a spritz with a pizza margherita at 10 as they gorge on spaghetti bolognaise at 5.
Now, for goodness sake: just like the right to private property, the right to mobility is also sacred and inviolable.
But do we want to take into consideration the right not to be pissed off, for a future draft of a fundamental charter?
It could open up innovative perspectives.
Because in the end, mobility is also that of the Roman who would like to be able to go from point A to point B without testing the principle of impenetrability of bodies countless times, or would like to be able to return to quality places not displaced by Gresham's law (in the version according to which bad catering drives out good).
This is a hypothesis, which I submit to you abstractly, because for me, who goes into nature, and who reads its simple and plain language, it is quite clear that the world below a thousand metres will soon become unhealthy: so let them do what they want to it, and let us equip ourselves in a defensible position .
That's all from Roccaraso, now go wild, I'm sleeping. Tomorrow (that is today) I'll go to Monte Zurrone for a beautiful ceremony, but we'll talk about that another time.
This is a machine translation of a post (in Italian) written by Alberto Bagnai and published on Goofynomics at the URL https://goofynomics.blogspot.com/2025/06/sul-turismo.html on Sat, 28 Jun 2025 22:35:00 +0000. Some rights reserved under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license.