Arriving in Sardinia

Olbia

We flew in to Sardinia at the Olbia airport, over tufty emerald and olive rolling land, where rough rock mountains loom in the sea. Our hostess and host for our home exchange picked us up at the airport. So beautiful flying in, I exclaimed. Yeah, it looks good from the sky, said Christine. So green we said. Well, I guess it's spring, she said.

Olbia's remnants of ancient history are buried beneath anarchic concrete, some classic Italian and Spanish architecture and shops.. The most beautiful sight is the Romansque St. Simplicio, of rough granite and barely visible gothic imagery, a primitive Romanesque architecture of rough gritty stone and perfect Roman symmetry from the 11th century. We arrived as a funeral emerged from the church. A coffin was carried through the front portal where up, high above, you catch a rough glimpse of a prehistoric looking face carved in a finer stone. The coffin was encumbered with a feast of flowers, both real and plastic, and a photo of a plain old Italian woman, heavy, with thinning hair and glasses. The crowd was stern-faced. One woman cried, her round eyes red and relentless. People stared at the coffin with hard, worn eyes, dressed in black nylon jackets and running clothes. The priest, young with black hennaed hair and a purple satin robe, recited something that seemed halfway between Latin and Italian and embraced the bereaved. A woman with a sweet face and blond hair, like a middle aged hippy dressed in a monk's habit, fondly blew a kiss to the coffin and waltzed away.

at San Simplicio

We saw the city of Olbia in an hour or so, in the early spring air. Founded by the Carthaginians, occupied by the Aragonese and the Genoans, little remains intact of the waves of architecture. We then visited our hosts on their boat, wine and chips and fromage de brebis in the cabin. Duccio, a tough looking Italian, becomes handsome on his boat, his downturning eyes animated, his Italian/French/English passionate. He told us about being a student in Paris in '68, about the speeches against the fascist tyrants. But he dismissed Garibaldi, Italy's liberator, whose 150th anniversary of unification is now being officially celebrated. They  only want to sell flags. We walked home with the air of the Mediterranean caressing the gentle night.

Now it is morning, and though our quarters are spare, outside the birds are singing, the air is unspeakably sweet, and incandescent sheets of clouds pass over a gleaming sun. The streets are immaculate with pale stucco facades along the narrow cobble stones. We will take a train to Sassari, where Sardinia absorbed an international urban culture back in the 13th century, though all around the rolling fields of sheep remain timeless.