I left the cold and dark Hamburg winter and escaped to Palermo for two months. Here’s how it started!
What happened so far
I had to get out of my (way too expensive) apartment, the Hamburg winter was brutally cold and wet again, and I had been to Sicily before—specifically Catania last January. I had learned Italian for a year back in university, so I could at least read and understand most things.
Other than that, I had no, zero, nil idea what I was getting into. My experience from Catania taught me that Lidl has a rough equivalent of everything I need to survive, so I searched for an Airbnb close to a Lidl and an Ashtanga yoga studio—yay!
It turned out that the yoga studio had moved, and the Lidl is a lot like the “Penny on Reeperbahn”—plenty of wild characters and, yes, condoms at the register. But it’s an amazing location in the middle of churches, workshops, construction sites (i.e., one old Italian man with a chainsaw), shops, bars, parks, crying babies, the botanical garden, a few yoga spots, and best of all: the Mediterranean Sea.
First: Move
I thought deciding on dates and an apartment was hard. But the real challenge had just begun: moving out.
And this was only the first batch. We had to come back.
Night sky in Löptin:
Back home
For one week, I moved back into Hotel Mama & Papa (5/5, would recommend).
Der Löptiner See
Ebenfalls der Löptiner See
You guessed it…
In this part of the world, it takes two hours to get dark.
But it’s a beautiful dark.
Flight to Palermo
07:00 breakfast
08:00 departure
09:20 bag dropped off
09:40 at the gate
11:00 boarding complete — with a free seat next to me 🕺
Then we had to wait 100 minutes in the plane because the weather in Zürich wouldn’t allow us to land. I would have preferred waiting at the gate, but at least I had internet access.
Welcome, Alien
The worst part of traveling is when you leave the airport and have to figure out everything. Like this machine:
I managed to get to Palermo Centrale by train, and my host picked me up from there.
I seem to have some sort of shop-door which directly opens to the street alley.
I like the bathroom.
The kitchen works. I love gas stoves for vegetables, but I still can’t make scrambled eggs properly 😬
My Vicolo Forno Ai Maestri D’Acqua (“Bakery Alley of the Masters of Water” — yeah, doesn’t explain much, does it?)
I covered my basic needs and went to bed.
