Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere

Yes, I'm still Obsessed With Trieste. I was excited when I found Jan Morris's last book, Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere, in the Athenaeum Library catalogue, but imagine my dismay when I searched the shelves and there it... wasn't. The helpful librarian couldn't find it either, but promised to reserve it for me and let me know if it turned up. It transpires that it had been pulled from shelves to be discarded, because it's been ten years since it was last borrowed -- I saved it just in time! (On the other hand, if it had been discarded, it might have been put on the For Sale trolley and I could have bought it for $2... Oh well.)

Reading Jan Morris's wistful 2001 description of the city and its history has made me all the more determined to visit one day. Trieste is a city marooned by accidents of geography and history. At the top of the Adriatic, just opposite Venice, it once served as the major seaport for the Austro-Hungarian empire, and its architecture reflects this Germanic flavour -- majestic squares, grand orderly buildings. But when the empire broke up and Trieste was returned to Italy, it lost its purpose (though in the 21st century, it seems to have reinvented itself as a scientific hub). It was a meeting place for many cultures, the Slavic nations to the south and east, Italy to the west, and Austria to the north. Morris describes a city of 'true civility' and just general niceness (we'll gloss over the brief period of Fascist dominance), and really good coffee.

Trieste seems like a melancholy city, a haunted city, with that air of shabby grandeur that I find so irresistible. More than ever I'm longing to wander the waterfront, to inspect the ill-fated castle of Miramar, explore the medieval old town and fortress, take the funicular up to the harsh wilderness of the karst, stare out over the glassy sea, and shiver in the pitiless gusts of the bora. One day.