Cypress trees line the narrow road that runs along the foot of the "Monte Pulciano" on which hilltop the small but famous city of the same name (Montepulciano) is located. At the roadside you find the likewise famous church of the Madonna of San Biagio, which throughout the centuries served as a pilgrimage place to many believers. Nowadays the believers are rather profane, they come to eat the best steak in the world. What looks like a plain T-Bone steak is known all over Tuscany as "la Bistecca Fiorentina", which refers to its noble background in the city of the Medici rather than the origin of the meat itself that usually comes from an area 50 miles South of Florence called the Val di Chiana. The valley has given the special beef critters their name, "Razza Chianina". Even at first glance, the white Chianina beasts look exceptional, they are not only the oldest breed of cattle in Italy but also the largest in the world. With the pronounced shoulder blades and their almost haggardly looking body grazing the day away you can´t but get the impression of "sacred animals". Let´s slaughter the sacred cows! Christiana, while putting a magnificent 1.4 kilo steak on the grill, candidly admits that it is not her but the butcher, a certain Signore Maselli, we should praise, for it is the animal, its pasture and right aging that makes a perfect bistecca. Like a flat living sculpture, the shiny surface gleaming in different shades of earthy colors the bistecca is brought to the table and immediately cut into chunks of bloody beauty by Davide who then adds only a few drops of olive oil and some salt crystals. Ecco la Bistecca! Fire, meat, oil, salt, basta! In the beginning there was fire, the culinary illumination of mankind, which is still lighting the kitchens of the world today, but nowhere more beautifully than in the form of a Bistecca alla Fiorentina!

The Strada Provinciale 21 leads from Trapani to the most South Western town of Sicily, Marsala. When you take that road you suddenly realize that even though the distance between both cities is only 30 kilometers you actually travel into a different world. Africa. With its colorful facades, the almost tent like apparition of the one story houses along the road, everything changes on this little stretch and reminds you not only of the Saracen heritage but also the simple fact that Africa is so much closer than Rome.

There are so many mythical things you hear about Corleone before you get there that you instinctively think you will be disappointed. It is a matter of expectation. If you expect to see anything particular or even beautiful, forget it and think about your expectation again. Why should a place like Corleone be beautiful, why should it be outstanding, remarkable, even special? You honestly expect a place where modern crime was invented to be beautiful? As most of the boys I was of course fascinated by the Mafia. Everything seemed to be allowed and secret and life as a member of the Mafia seemed like an eternal extension of boyhood, what else could a 10 year old ask for? When I first saw pictures of real Sicilian Mafiosi of today (mostly in handcuffs on the way to jail or already in) I noticed that they, contrarily to their U.S. relatives, were all dressed in a conspicuously inconspicuous way, as if they had to show the world that the Cosa Nostra (our thing) of the mafia is much more important than having money and show it. When they caught Provenzano, the last great capo di capi and ruler of the Mafia world, just outside of Corleone, he was dressed in a simple jacket and wore 2$ glasses, just like the town he had lived in all his life. Corleone.

Only the hippest of the hip cats can afford to not even put their name on the cover. Even Warhol had to put his name next to the Banana, so people would know. He didn´t care. A record cover cannot come any closer to a piece of art than this. No typo, no catalogue number, nothing is distracting from the picture itself, printed in deep black & white on heavy 12x12 inch cardboard, perfect understatement, a true masterpiece artifact of the 20th century. 1955. Simple as that. The music is the same. No pretension, no fancy concept, just straight ahead, beautiful blowing by the inventor of Cool and his favorite rhythm section. That´s the great thing about most record covers, with or without names, titles or numbers they still give you an idea of what to expect. 

Miles Davis.

On the Southside of Piazza San Marco which Napoleon called the living room of Europe and the locals simply refer to as „la Piazza“ you find the Procuries, an arcaded structure of almost 200 yards that houses the oldest café on the European continent, called „Caffe Florian“, founded in the year of 1683.

320 years later I am sitting in the Florian taking my eyes off the tourist flock on the sunny Piazza looking at the arcades in the shade...

It has always struck me that walking through Manhattan does at times feel like walking through a giant mirror labyrinth, from every angle you can see the high rise buildings reflected, thus without having to tilt your head you have a horizontal image of a vertical city which is pretty exciting.

Nowhere have I seen a city where children are worshipped the way they are in Napoli. In the city under the volcano children are treated like noble family, little kings and queens who have all the rights and privileges their parents lost a long time ago. In a city where the plague of corruption and poverty is more sensible than in any other Italian city the kids are the future.It even seems like every child can not only have its own fantasies about the future but is also projecting the ones of its parents who, dressed themselves as ordinary citizens, are looking up to their offspring in near submissive entrancement.