Superga

September 23, 2008

The previous Sunday was longer and more enjoyable than usual. It wasn't the usual chilled out routine that it could have been, thanks to the weeklong ennui. We (Vardhan, Saurabh and I - the Indian trio at Italy) decided to hit the slopes (exaggerated). Saurabh's place is about a kilometre from Porta Nuova (city centre, Torino). We walked from Porta Nuova and knocked at Saurabh's door at 11:00 a.m. We decided to take lunch and head for the hill (Superga). Lunch we had at a place with a name too complicated to be remembered (my memory is quite volatile though). It was the worst lunch I ever had - thanks to my vegetarianism. It was plain pasta with tomato sauce poured on it. But for the whole delicious chocolate truffle with the amazing strawberry after the meal, I would have puked.

We then took a tram and I managed to travel the entire day with a ticket whose time had lapsed. Trusting that the European principle of not working on Sundays applied to checkers as well, we made our journeys with expired ones. No Tabacchis (multi-purpose shop, or potti kadai in tamil) were open for us to get a bus ticket.

There was this huge, mad gang of street hooligans with tattooed bodies and pimpled faces that managed to obtain permission to have a festival in some street enroute to Superga. So, our tram driver gracefully stopped before the place and told all of us to go ahead with the trip. We got down, only to find these people with hot chicks, driving Harleys. Each of them wanted to beat the other in the amount of noise his bike generated. So, all revved like crazy! Some of them wanted to generate smoke from the wheels and so, they did some good untreading exercises, only to leave the entire place stinking of burnt vulcanized rubber.

We managed to follow directions on boards and finally reached the correct stop for the next bus that would directly take us to the foot of Superga. We did get one and after forty minutes, we were there. Tickets were bought and we joyously boarded the hill-tram. This was different in that it was only guided on rails. There was an endless rack that engaged a pinion and drove it. It was a nice ride uphill and the temperature dropped sharply. Finally, we were atop.

There is this graveyard of an entire World cup winning football team on this hill. Apparently, the plane in which they were returning crashed into a building on the hilltop. So, they have made a graveyard of all victims (none in the plane survived) and have placed memoirs of the team, like the shoes of some footballers, their jerseys, etc. in the adjoining museum.

There is also a laboratory built inside the hill at its foot. I only heard so, couldn't take a look. The hill is a beautiful place to chill out. It's very cool up there and the breeze can get at you at times. In particular, for a typical Chennai resident like me, cold weather is a curse.

I also caught sight of very very cute little kids. This one in particular, was the most active. The others were being pushed in prams, with their little mouths gagged with a rubber nipple.

We had coffee with some cookies on a cafeteria up there and started the journey back. It was obviously quicker than the climb. The museum at the station at the foot of the hill was full of great old inventions. The most fascinating thing preserved even today over here is a horse driven carriage, which was used for trams for the first time in Italy.