It is going on midnight, and I am on a train heading from the Sicilian town of Catania to Messina and the Strait, where the train will drive onto a ferry ship to cross the waters separating the island of Sicily from the boot that is the mainland of Italy before carrying me onwards and northwards through the Southern province of Calabria to Naples.

I left Stromboli five days ago and spend the last four in the wonderful baroque towns of Modica and Ragusa, in particular in Ragusa Ibla, the historic old town, whose beautiful piazzettas overlooked by imposing baroque churches and palazzi are the location for the IblaBuskers, a festival of street artists, that has taken place here now for the twelfth consecutive year.

I had had little success trying to organize a room in one of the many Bed&Breakfasts in the historic center, since it was unsure if the festival would come together until just a few weeks earlier, due to difficulties with funding, and since I was unable to make a informed decision with out knowing the town and it's layout, particularly relating to the festival. I was very fortunate to be hosted by a girl I had met in Stromboli, discovering that she lived in nearby Modica.
This turn out to be a wonderful arrangement, since she, obviously from a very affluent family, had a whole, large, empty, fully furnished apartment, complete with a large soft bed, kitchen, television, a bathroom with bathtub, one of the simple luxuries I miss most in Stromboli, as well as a balcony affording a stupendous view of the old town of Modica and the steep valley it is situated in, that she and her family was kind enough to host me in.

Since the festival and performances took place at night, starting at about nine and going on until well after midnight, I had the chance and luck to take advantage of Chiara's extreme hospitality, which included outings to the nearby town of Scicli, another baroque jewel, and visits to her family's country home, a large Sicilian farmhouse complete with old farming and equestrian equipment, and also site of a lovely Sunday lunch with the whole family, as well as introductions to many of her friends and local knowledge. All this afforded me a much closer and intimate contact of Sicily and local culture than I would have had the opportunity to experience on my own.
Despite visiting Stromboli since my earliest childhood I have to admit that I had never gotten around to exploring Sicily and knew nothing of it except hydrofoil and ferry ports, train-stations and airports. Not counting faint memories of a trip to Palermo in my early childhood, mostly of the for me at the time very impressive catacombs.

After spending ten relaxing, and weather wise stupendous, days in Stromboli alone, having returned from dropping off my parents at the airport in Catania for their flight back to Vienna on the 30th, I delayed my departure from the island by a day after being surprised by a message via tribe from a girl I had met five years ago in Bali informing me of her presence on the island for two days. Lena, who is originally from the U.S. and her new husband Chris had chosen Sicily and the Aeolian islands as the destination for their honeymoon. Remembering me having told her about Stromboli she googled Gusti, Bali, Stromboli and came up with my tribe.net page, using it to contact me and inform me of her presence on the island.

We had last seen each other in 2001, at the Maha Kumbh Mela and in the time we spent in Varanasi afterwards, so it was strange and nice to meet there in Stromboli, in the cafe in the piazza San Vincenzo, and after spending too much time catching up and chatting it was obvious I would have to postpone my departure, to give us a chance to have a relaxed dinner the next evening at my friends' Andrea and Neva's restaurant, "La Locanda del Barba Blu" . It was nice to catch up and reconnect.

Having closed the house up for the winter and against the sea, whose biggest storms launch surf and spray right on to the terrace and over the house, I melancholically caught the early morning hydrofoil to Milazzo on Sicily, and from there, with a chain of busses, via Messina and Catania, to arrive in Modica and be met by Chiara, who I knew only very superficially at the time, having met her as a friend of a friend, in Stromboli, who lives near Ragusa. Traveling through Sicily was particularly interesting since I have been reading "Midnight in Sicily", by an Australian named Peter Robb, who lived in the mezzogiorno for fifteen years, which, besides talking about the Mafia, is filled with many interesting social , historical and cultural background information on the area, and driving through the changing landscapes and towns my feeling for my reading was deepened by seeing the land it grew from.
My final stop and arrival in Modica was in the Piazza Falcone-Borsalino, named for two heroic antimafia prosecutors, that lead one of the major inquiries into the Cosa Nostra and it's involvement on political levels, that were both, to no ones surprised, assassinated. I had just finished a chapter about them in my book.

Soon I was very excited and happy, having discovered Chiara's hospitality and kindness, including the bathtub , having gone for a little walk, guided and commented by Chiara, through the fabulous old town of Modica, complete with a welcoming present of famous Modica chocolate, cardamon flavored, and in general thrilled at the sudden increase in stimulation from an urban environment.

But I had seen nothing yet. After giving me a couple of hours to re-civilize myself, Chiara, and her friend and bro', Raffaele, picked me up and we drove about 25 minutes to Ragusa and, after having parked the car outside, walked up some steps into the historical old town of the city of Ragusa, Ibla.
Ragusa is one of those towns built on the steep slopes on both sides of a deep ravine, the Valle dei Ponti, meandering back and forth through the arid, granite hills. It's houses are terraced along the narrow roads that follow the contours of the steep slope like altitude lines on a map. The buildings are made from the same grey rock that makes up the rest of the landscape and in dim light the town hugs the grey slopes so tightly that it would be easy to miss it at a sweeping glance, where it not for the shapes of the many opulent and massive cathedrals clearly standing amidst and towering above the more humble buildings.
Many among Sicily's towns, amongst them Ragusa, suffered large scale destruction during a devastating earthquake of 1693, leaving many older, norman influenced, buildings in ruin and giving the chance for large scale construction in the then flowering Sicilian Baroque style.
Money, in these times, being all in the hands of the aristocracy and the Church, was poured into the construction of the palazzi and especially cathedrals with their sweeping staircases and balconied facades, overladen with sculpture and decor, coming to resemble extravagant wedding cakes.
While, in also not un-sicilian fashion, the poor, farmers and laborers, rebuilt their hovels in the same primitive fashion as before.

As we were taking a hearty snack of a mixed piatto of "rustici", local rural products, cheeses, ham, sausage, olives and bread in one of the piazza's, night fell and we could see colorfully dressed and costumed folk darting about, making preparations and readying for their performances. As the stage was set the piazza and the surrounding streets started filling with spectators, as the artists launched into their shows.
Right next to where we had eaten, we sat back down, on the ground, and watched "Otto Panzer" a supposed German circus owner gone bankrupt! He later on revealed himself to be from nearby Bari, after carrying off a pretty believable accent throughout the show, in which he very entertainingly mixed some clowning with simple, but charming, magic tricks and lots of audience participation.

This was only the first of many magical shows we saw over the next few evenings, in the 7 different set up performance spaces, in the small piazzas and alleys and an enchanting garden next to a Capuchin monastery. Three of these spaces had rigging set up for trapeze, rope and tissue work, the last of which seems to be particularly popular at the moment, due to it's exceptional beauty and grace not difficult to understand. Nearly all the companies presented their acrobatics within a narrative, from delightfully whimsical to refreshingly social-critical , thread and many accompanied themselves musically, some even using projections on the fantastic facades that served as backgrounds.
Over fifteen ensembles, Otto Panzer's act being nearly the only one man show, took part in the festival, some numbering up to eight members and hailing from as close as nearby Bari to as far as Argentina.

That first evening, after Otto Panzer, we saw Mirrumba , a duo of women from Spain and Argentina that presented wonderfully playful tissue and rope work and some clowny dance numbers. These were embedded in a story of two women that are driven to play and use their imagination, when the normal center of their lives, their worshipped television, suddenly fails them.
In the beautiful little park, some of it's pathways lines with "bancarelle", stands, selling all kinds of crafted wares, jewelry and leather-work, we caught Mi fa vo la re , an all italian trio of an accordion player, a mime and yet another aerial artist, working on the ring and tissue. Poetical, visually stunning and musically harmonic they enchanted us with their funny and graceful antics. It seemed when ever we passes a show going on we were drawn in, no matter where we had been heading.

The performances went on until around one most nights, and on this first outing I was back in my cozy little apartment in Modica by two. The next morning, going on noon, Chiara picked me up in her car and took me to see her family's house in the campania, the country. After a beautiful drive out of the valley in which lies the town of Modica we arrived about twenty minutes later. A classical sicilian farmhouse, actually two adjacent ones, one now inhabited by Chiara's aunt as a summer house, the other by Chiara's parents as such, and by her brother the year round, though he was currently out and in fact both houses were empty.
They were obviously ancient squat buildings with meter thick walls of granite stones, and the barn and out buildings were still full of old corroding farm equipment, ploughs and pitchforks, troughs and saddles, in midst of olive and fruit trees. It all felt very peaceful and strolling through the cobble-stoned courtyard with it's bougainvillea it seemed as if I was getting another glimpse inside Sicily.

By that evening, being Friday, the festival was really starting to warm up. Obviously more people from the surrounding area had come to town and the streets were noticeably more populated and the audiences larger. Amongst the arrivals were three friends from Stromboli, and it was very fun and strange to see these guys in such a different environment, in fact one of them remarked to me "oh, so you do exist off the island !" when we first met.

That evening I particularly enjoyed Theatro Agricola , a troupe of four that presented a medieval play, critically dealing with prosecution and inquisition. The were beautifully costumed, wearing comedia del'arte masks, some on stilts and others playing music. Their play included some skilled fire-play on diavolos and devilstick, though it relied and accented heavily on the actual acting and reciting . Seeing that the girl in their troupe, who portrayed a woman accused of witchcraft, before her emotionally moving closing monologue, did a bit of very simple and basic fire poi, I hung around after their show, as Camillochromo, a jazzy ensemble of tuscan musicians playing accordion, horns and percussion, started heating up the crowd.
After introducing myself and complimenting Alice, as she turned out to be called, on their whole play, I came around to offering my help with some poi lessons, since she mentioned being a complete novice and wanting to improve. This was the opening I had been looking for to make contact with some of the performers and get an inside view of the organization and manifestation and we exchanged numbers, loosely agreeing to get together within the next days. The second evening ended in a general street party, to the sounds of the Brassmati Aw!rkestra Marching Band, a ten men ensemble leading a freeform street parade through the piazzas and streets. Until late night we were dancing and doing tricks, truly entering into the festive spirit.

The next day Chiara, ever the perfect host, took me to the nearby town of Scicli, another Baroque jewel, where we had a tasty lunch, and then I took a bus to Ragusa around four, hoping to connect with some of the artists, or possibly Alice. Sadly it was on this day that the weather decided to turn, and when I arrived after over an hour Ibla was near deserted and drearily drizzling. I spent the afternoon mostly with my friends from Stromboli, after talking to Alice on the phone just to discover that she had been invited to a big Sicilian family lunch at the relatives of one of her troupe companions, in Modica.

We did hook up when she got back to Ibla in the evening, and luckily the rain, that had remained a drizzle, stopped. I got to see where she and the other performers were housed, gave her some basic lessons on the three beat cross follow and some pointers towards the fountain and we went for tea. It was interesting to hear from her about the whole street artist scene and the many different festivals and places they had performed during the summer.
Besides finding out about a lot of interesting things to do next summer, I also learned a lot about the IblaBuskers. Typical for Sicily it seems the Associazione culturale that has been organizing this manifestation for now twelve years has very little financial help from the region or any other government funding. They therefore have to woe the performers by pitching the festival as a pleasant way to end the season, connecting and playing with friends, in pleasantly warm Sicily despite little financial reimbursement.
None the less the festival has been getting smaller in the last years, with less companies participating and some of the performance spaces having had to be abandoned due to dearth of funding. So if you are in the area in October, and willing to help out, donating your time and effort, by performing or otherwise, contact the organizers at www.iblabuskers.it

What was definitly not missing on this Saturday night was an audience. The narrow streets and squares were thronged with people, also from further afield, having driven down from Catania and Palermo, and often it was not so ease as the other evenings to get a spot close enough to afford as intimate an experience of the performances as I had gotten used to. I managed, none the less, to catch a lovely show of aerial arts on trapeze and tissue,by Kanbahiota Trup from Spain. With their wonderful black and white costumes and make up they placed their show in a cabaret in Berlin in the 1920ies. Also about were the members of the Commedianti theater troupe, hailing from Naples, entertaining the crowd with their clever, satirical and funny sketches and hilarious characters.
A duo of blonde girls, from Germany and the Netherlands, by the name of Nonsencirque did an acrobalance act, highly energetic and nearly frantic in tempo, with one of them remaining still in the middle of the stage while the other one ran endlessly around when not being lifted by, climbing and balancing on or jumping off her partner.

The weather held until just about one thirty, when all the shows had finished and Chiara drove us home to Modica with the landscape being momentarily illuminated by lightning. Back in my sixth floor apartment it sounded like the thunder would rattle loose the windows. I was quite tired and passed out and slept deeply.

The next day was Sunday and, as I found out when I got a call from Chiara, I was invited for lunch with Chiara's family in the county side. I felt honored and it was a classic Sicilian family scene with the obligatory friendly urging of "Mangia, mangia !" (Eat, eat!) . After the delicious lunch of typical Modica style Ravioli, grilled meats and sickly sweet deserts dad showed me around all the other buildings and explained to me how they used to be used.

This being the last day of the festival we made it to Ibla in the early evening, knowing that this night the shows were planned to start earlier. In fact, when we met Alice for tea she told us that the shows would start around six and every troupe would only do their show once before all gathering in one of the piazzas for a big finale where all would do their show, or at least a little taste of it.
Alice also invited us for dinner after, with her and all the artists, which she hinted might turn into a festa.
Before the big finale I managed to catch Paramo Cero, a company from Mexico, Spain and Argentina. They presented a magical show, including everything from a electric band, dancing and singing original compositions and tango to projections of live footage on the facade behind and highly sensual aerial duos on tissue and ring. They, as well as Adrian Bandirali , an Argentinian Puppeteer that followed them were amongst the many high points of the festival. More on him later.

By the time we got to Piazza Pola, where the big finale was happening, it was already so crowded that I climbed a couple of feet up one of the buildings to get a clear view. During the finale all the companies presented short excerpts of their performances and then everything dissolved into a pleasant street party with everybody dancing in the street.
As this was slowly starting to drift apart I got a call from Alice, inviting us to join the artists back at their quarters for dinner.
This was very fun, in a big room with domed ceilings on long tables, that were soon moved against the walls as the accordion came out and everybody started singing and dancing and smoking until the early morning hours. And as the sky began to brighten, Adrian, the puppeteer, speedily through up his screen and treated his fellow performers and us to an improvised, uncensored rendition of his puppet show, that none of us is likely to forget any time soon. His puppets have a way of expressing such a range emotions that nothing I have seen in the field can compare and his sketch where the Grim Reaper is mourning for his mother and asks her to sing him a last lullaby had us all in stitches.

Then it was goodbyes and assurances of returning next year and remaining in contact in the mean time, and then the magic was over, though it surely traveled with us in Chiara's little car as she drove us safely home to Modica. The next day I woke just in time to pack my bag and say more goodbyes and thanks to Chiara, before having to catch a bus to Catania, and there board this train, that is speeding me through the night, now well having passed the strait, and ascending the boot of Italy. I should be in Naples by seven in the morning....

There I hope to stay with a friend for one night before catching my plane to Bangkok in Rome the day after tomorrow and head back to Bali.