Live your myth on a deck
Photos & Short Story by Zak Varvaresso
Travelling by boat on the open deck from Patra to Ancona and backwards, it has been something like a ritual all these years as it is the cheapest way to find your way to Italy in case you are not lucky or anticipatory enough to book your economy flight in time.
During the winter season and the 20 hour windy journey your only fellowship mostly consists of truck drivers who are heading alone to north europe and you can always pre-book carefully a co-driver’s seat for a free ride on the italian autostrada.
Moreover there are students from the italian universities who travel back and forth, small business people and immigrant people traveling in steerage towards Europe hidden usually inside the truck vehicles after having payed a pre-arranged fee for the drivers.
But socially speaking, things change on the surface notably in summertime as you find yourself sailing with hundrends of tourists of any type, along with the familiar ones: students who return to their home place for vacation and immigrant people keep trying to find their new homeland as always. The privileged ones are permitted to enjoy the sun along with their fellow co-passengers as the rest of them who lacking papers are still hidding somewhere away from all of us. As a famous economist put it down:
“Sometimes we’re just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic…”
varvaresso 