Remote places - visiting Italy - How To Forget The Election - Cover Story

National Review, Nov 25, 1996 by Alistair McAlpine

A CAUTION for those planning their election-escape travel: you might think that the more remote the place the safer, but that is not always so.

Northern Australia, for example, would seem an ideal place to hide from politics. In Arnhem Land especially there are wonderful jungles and dark rivers filled with giant crocodiles -- no politician would face such hazards. Furthermore, outsiders are allowed into Arnhem Land, home to many of Australia's Aboriginals, only if they have the appropriate permit.

On one occasion I traveled to Rammagin, a small settlement, to visit a tribal elder. The first night we camped on a narrow track high above a dry river bed. When traveling in Australia, never be tempted to sleep in dry river beds. They are sandy and soft to lie in, but unbelievably dangerous: a storm a hundred miles away can send a wall of water rushing down a river that has been dry for years.

As it turned out, the track was not a sensible place to bed down either. In the middle of the night a car came by with approximately 12 Aboriginals on board. Luckily they had ghetto blasters playing at full volume. My party, woken just in time, scrambled into the bush. The Aboriginals went on their merry way unaware of the narrowly avoided disaster. Now, if we had slept on a road near Sydney or Melbourne we might have expected to be run over, but this was a track in an almost inaccessible jungle.

The next day was hell in miniature, as we crossed 130 rivers of different sizes in about a hundred miles, and not a bridge over any of them. On the third day we reached Rammagin and asked for the elder whom I sought. I was told that he was gone. "Gone hunting or fishing?" I asked.

"No. Gone to Geneva for a conference." A conference of native people to discuss among other things how to become politically active. So I give this warning, that in the heart of even the darkest and most beautiful jungle you cannot avoid politics.

Christmas Island, a remote rock in the Indian Ocean between Indonesia and Australia, has nine varieties of bird seen nowhere else, but the place is pure politics. In Afghanistan the political parties campaign with machine guns and missiles, so that the country, while being remote as few places are remote, is not recommended. In South America the nations seem to change governments as most of us change shirts. As for Europe, the whole place is seething with politics; indeed, a great fight is beginning between the unelected bureaucrats and those who believe that people should decide their own futures. All riveting stuff for political junkies, but tedious in the extreme for anyone else.

However, I have discovered a haven in Europe: Italy. Now, considering that Italy has had more governments, and therefore more political campaigns, than there have been years since the end of World War II this may seem a bizarre choice. The fact is, however, that although I live there, I do not understand a word of the language, so I am generally immune from the politics. But I had a nasty shock the other day in the town where I reside, Venice. I was having my habitual sandwich of tuna fish and boiled egg for breakfast when suddenly the immensely beautiful Campo Arsenale was filled with girls and boys all wearing green shirts. The Boy Scouts and the Girl Guides are in town, I thought -- how wonderful that so many of Italy's young people are serious enough to join these worthy organizations.

Then my day was ruined. I spotted a placard written in English, for, I suppose, the benefit of the American media. I realized that there I was in the midst of a demonstration by the curious Mr. Bossi's political party, the Northern League. They were declaring independence for Northern Italy. In the time it took to eat my breakfast I was transported involuntarily from living in Italy to living in Padonia. I now know how Garibaldi must have felt when, having campaigned remorselessly for the uniting of the many separate Italian states into the nation of Italy, he found that his own part of the state of Piedmont was given to the French. At the moment of his triumph Garibaldi was suddenly a Frenchman.

So do not go to the great cities in Italy. Go instead to a secret place, Apulia. Apulia is the heel of Italy, a quiet place where foreigners never go, prices are cheap, and nothing much ever happens among the tobacco fields and olive groves. Stay in the baroque city of Lecce, visit the ancient town of Otranto, and look out toward Corfu and Albania -- both can be seen on a clear day. Wander in the narrow streets of towns that deny a changing world. Visit churches, look at fine sculpture and important paintings -- the air is fresh and the people polite. Politics surely can never have been here?