Echoes of Trieste. Four trips and four versions of myself.
I’ve been to Trieste four times in eight years and over that time my life has changed shape. During my first visit, I was a young girl in a short dress with long brown waves, who has since grown into a pregnant wife and now the mother of young children running full speed across the piazza.
Trieste is an Italian, Austrian city that sits on the edge of Adriatic Sea. Not many people know it, which adds to the appeal. There aren’t many tourists, just normal people living their lives: Italians, Slavs, mutts. Going to work, meeting friends for espresso and Aperol spritz. Buying boots and stationery on the streets in between 19th century Austrian buildings. Baroque marble facades, elegant but sturdy enough to survive the Bora that blows North Easterly through the autumn and winter.
2013
My first trip was in the heat of July. We stay in Grignano, in an old hotel that’s been repurposed to house visiting physicists. Andrew, who became my husband, was there for a conference about the cosmic microwave background and visiting his colleague, Carlo. I took the week off work and joined him. They assigned us a sparse room with a soviet ambiance. Single wooden dorm beds pushed together to make a double. “Andrew, I think the bed is coming apart.” We didn’t care. The orange and yellow hues were holdovers from the last renovation in the 70s. But there was a view of the flickering Mediterranean from the sliding doors that we kept open for lack of working air conditioning. We slept naked and after-dinner tipsy, on sheets of white cardboard. While Andrew worked, I swam around the corner to Miramare Castle and read Jan Morris while nursing local prosecco. On a free afternoon, we took the boat Il Delfino Verde to Trieste with no agenda but to find some octopus.
2017
By my next trip to Trieste three years later I was pregnant. Pregnant with my second daughter, so me and 18 month Tallulah had the run of the city while Andrew was working. In London, I was working full-time and had survived the sickness of my first trimester. Lingering dizziness and nausea subsided as we walked the Cinque Terre before taking the train to Bologna and then to Trieste. I was at the stage of my second pregnancy where I looked uncomfortably fat, without any clear indication of why. And my strong-willed toddler did not let up. The only way to get a break from Tallulah’s daredevil runs across the marble stone pavement in Piazza Unita was to buy delicious snacks. We had the Millefeuille at the coffee houses, the Stracciatella at Gelato Marco, the focaccia at Eataly, the chateaubriand at Suban. It was a cold Easter. The Bora was still blowing when we took a boat to Muggia. There, we protected ourselves from the wind while colouring in a cafe with a weak cappuccino. I had found some stray crayons in the bottom of my bag. “We need to get back for bedtime.” It wasn’t yet 5pm.
2019
My second daughter Olive was toddling by 2019. This time we approached Trieste on the long curved trainline from Venice that follows the Mediterranean, spotting our friend Carlo’s house as we pass through Barcola. From here, Trieste’s cityscape is visible as it terraces up to the Slovenian plateau above. Carrying the accessories of babyhood, we pushed our stroller loaded with diapers, spare clothing and dummies to meet Carlo and Gabriella for drinks near the Grand Canal. Lined with restaurant terraces full of happy chattering Italians with drinks that flash the colour of maraschino cherries. It’s a warm April Friday night. I held Olive in a carrier while sipping an Aperol Spritz, rocking her calm while balanced awkwardly on my chair. “How’s work? And your brother?” “Oh, uh, I’m not sure. What?” My head is fuzzy and Olive is fussy. Her hand is down my shirt for comfort. She arches her back and her arm knocks over a water glass. Nothing is simple this trip. While Andrew is working, we walk along the seawall to the aquarium. Past the boats, I can see Miramare Castle in the distance and can barely remember how warm the water was that day in July when I swam up like a mermaid free-spirit.
2021
We peel off our facemasks as we exit the airport in Venice. Carlo drove from Trieste, with two car seats to pick us up. It’s autumn half-term and the covid cases are higher in the UK than Italy. We wonder how it will be to see Carlo because during Covid you never know – everything is unclear. He holds out his arms and the girls give him running hugs, nearly pushing him over. After all the paperwork, we’re armed with our green passes and cautiously ready to return to our favourite cafes in the city. The sky paints everything grey but the city is reassuringly familiar. Carlo drives along the marina in Trieste and drops us off in front of our apartment;“a table is booked at da Pino for 8:30”. Conversations are closer, more intimate, eyes flashing over candles and glasses clinking, catching up on the years in between. The luxury of being around the same table and sharing a bottle of wine and pasta is not lost on us, so dinner runs late. The girls get endless hugs for their endless energy. But they start to rebel against the parade of special evenings that happen every evening by waking up at night. Accidents happen and we’re all tired. When you don’t have young children, you forget how hard 8:30 dinners can be.
Andrew is invited to a work event and we all go. Giorgio Parisi who won a Nobel prize this year is giving a talk on the value of science. He begins with a Richard Feynman quote: “Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.” The same is true about travel. For some people, it doesn’t feel like a choice.
After dinner in the dark we walk back though Piazza Unita, through the narrow streets of old town, holding hands in a chain: Andrew, Olive, Tallulah and me. We’re still warm and giddy against the late October night in a city that has begun to grow into a home.