Scribbles

In Brunico, a town nearby, there is a bridge over the Rienza river with hundreds of padlocks on its railing. We thought these had a romantic meaning: love pledges or “lost loves locked into ones heart”.

The guy at the gas station had the answer: Up 2004, there was a military camp in Brunico where youngsters came for their military service. After finishing their tour of duty, it was a tradition to hook the padlock of their trunk to the railing, and throw the key into the river.

 


Delving a bit deeper into the “Italian padlock mysteries”, revealed different connotations and other traditions:

Originally, the Italian men drawn into military service, took a lock from their home and hooked it onto a monument or a structure, as a public vow to return back home. Some say, it was a vow to return safely back to their loved one..

There is also the Roman legend that lovers will spend their lives together if they write their names on a padlock, place it on the Ponte Milvio’s third lamp post and throw the key in the Tiber. (This story had a funny spin last year when Rome’s Mayor Walter Veltroni introduced fines for anyone leaving a padlock on a lamp post.)

In Florence thousands of young lovers attached their padlocks to the famous Ponte Vecchio bridge. Back in 2006, the council set a team of metal cutters to work removing the 5,500 locks on the railings. It took them five months to finish, as new “lucchetti d’amore” accumulated too fast. Also in Florence, the city police has been told to slap a 50-euro fine on anyone who tries to attach a lock to the bridge.

But the issue is not confined to Italy:

The city council of Pecs in Hungary also seems to fight a loosing battle against lovers’ padlocks. More of the same on the Szinva Terrace’s railing in Miskolc (Hungary), Guam’s “Two Lovers’ Point”, in Huang Shan (China), and Riga (Latvia), and Tokyo (Japan), and, and…

HELP: it seems that we have a worldwide padlock problem. Or is it a worldwide love problem?

Luckily, in Brunico, the padlock problem was resolved by replacing the enforced military draft service by a 100% voluntary force. Clever people, those Italians!

On the road from the hotel in Cairo to the airport, we took a local taxi. The concierge had warned us: “70 Egyptian pounds, not more!”…

Our driver took off, cutting off a roundabout by driving in the wrong direction. He rolled down his window, snorted up and spit whatever came up from deep, deep inside his throat with a well expressed Arrghaaat-[spit]. Mafoud, my colleague sitting in the back behind the driver, pulled away from the open window, hoping the snot would not hit him.

The driver introduced himself as Mohammed and asked if it was OK if he would smoke. We are all smokers and of course we did not mind.. We joked around with the little English he could understand, and the little Arabic Mafoud could come up with. We cursed at the bad drivers (the other ones), laughed at the near-hits as Mohammed cut off other cars, cheered as we passed yet another taxi, but loudly protested as he pulled in at a gas station to join a queue of twenty cars. “Petrol, petrol!”, he smiled at us. We answered. “No petrol, airport, jalla!” So he reversed, with two pedestrians trying to avoid hitting us, and Mohammed continued to the airport.

He explained he had ten kids, was a poor man, and needed “baksheesh”. “Baksheesh” is a word you often hear in the Middle East, and South-West Asia… It means anything from a fee, a tip or a bribe…. Somewhere a way to pay for services rendered, let’s say.
Mohammed did not mean the negotiated 70 Egyptian pounds, but money on top… We kind of liked the guy, and agreed on 30 pounds baksheesh.. He seemed happy as he kissed us goodbye when we arrived at the airport… I think next time we will pay 40 pounds and ask him not to kiss us. (I don’t know how you women can do this.. Yak!)