Disaster in the North

The weather system that we had here 2 days ago has moved north with shocking consequences .

The dramatic death toll continues to rise and at 3,30 this afternoon stands at 9 . Among the total includes a poor woman who was dragged by the fury of the waters from Cesena to the sea and a man who was overwhelmed by a landslide in Casale di Calisese, in the province of Forlì Cesena. There are 13 thousand displaced people, 50 thousand homes left without electricity, 21 rivers have burst their banks and have flooded the surrounding areas . The rain has now stopped but many many hills are likely to slide down onto the towns in the valleys .

It is a little known fact that Puglia has no rivers. The limestone rock means that the water travels underground in vast caverns and then bubbles up though the sand into the sea . Sometimes we have to be thankful for this as it saves us from these kind of events.

I was going to write a light hearted piece about the way supermarkets and other large stores treat the checkout area where you do the checkout yourself but I’ll leave that for another day.

So There We Were ………..

Arriving in Bari in late January 2008 in a hire car that made the Piaggio Ape seem like a sports car . Running through my mind was the advice given to me by a retired Army guy in Cyprus when we were doing a recce for a run around the hills. Mike time spent on a reconnaissance is seldom wasted . That was to be our mantra as we toured around the heel, insole, toe cap and the shin bone of Italy . Copious notes, photos and place names and we can’t go wrong.

Of course we hadn’t made a reservation in Bari, after all it was January so nowhere would be full and Bari was obviously off the beaten track so the hoteliers will be waiting with open arms to be able to fleece a couple of Brits wouldn’t they? Well actually they weren’t, in fact the ones that were open were full. It seems Bari was a ferry port of some size and the boats sailed in the early morning so , well you can figure it out. Now in my day of hitch hiking to Greece all the ferries went from Brindisi was my excuse. The rather grand looking Palace Hotel did have room but the poor old pound was in one of it’s free fall times and they were charging London prices so I about turned grabbed the suitcase and we marched proudly back out. Where to asked my wife . Up the coast I said showing leadership qualities I had seen in films and we fought our way back out of Bari and headed down the coast as I took the wrong exit.

Look for somewhere with more than one exit off this racetrack I yelled over the noise of our engine at about 8000 rpm in fourth gear whilst watching the fuel gauge visibly sinking towards zero. Turn off here then shouted my copilot and after missing that one I turned at the next . There’s a method in my madness . Five minutes late we were in Polignano a Mare and fortuitously outside the Covo Dei Saraceni Hotel

That’s it in the centre of the picture with the terrace on the roof and guess what the manager did appear amazed that a couple of tourists had turned up in January looking for a room for 2 nights . Indeed he offered us the best suite for a normal room charge . The only shame was the suite was mainly outside terrace space but we had at least found a bed.

Polignano a Mare, Italy – October 1st, 2018: Scenic view of Lama Monachile Cala Porto beach in Polignano a Mare, province Bari, region Puglia, Sauthern Italy

Polignano a Mare is quite a stunning place to be fair and well worth a look and if you happen to be passing on July 02 this year you can join thousands of others watching the Red Bull Cliff diving World Series which is always held there. This is the board !!!

It’s actually better to turn up and watch the competitors practising before the event. It is petrifying just watching them walking around on the board . My god what happens if they accidentally fall I stupidly said but that’s how you feel. Nothing absolutely nothing this would get me up there let alone walk out onto the board.

There is also a restaurant in a Grotto which I can tell you from just looking at the menu most definitely takes credit cards , nobody would dare carry that much cash !!!

Mind you it is pretty spectacular to be fair to them and the kitchen is way up in the hotel above it so there is a lot of carrying stuff.

I don’t know if you know the song Hello Muddah Hello Fadduh by the comedian Alan Sherman about a boy on an american Camp in the summer hols called Camp Granada. It’s raining cats and dogs and he’s writing home begging his parents to take home. Then the rain stops halfway though the letter and everyone is out playing and sailing etc. He then writes that they should ignore this letter.

Well you saw yesterday the weather that was forecasted . But we have gone from this this morning

To suddenly this a few minutes ago

And it is a glorious evening . Sorry but like Alan Sherman I’m off to Il Bar to celebrate. Chat to you tomorrow.

L’Italia è il prosciutto nel Panino

Two high pressures giving us a squeeze

And it isn’t going to change for sometime .

But who cares it’s only a little wind and rain what’s a 70kph gust amongst friends . Life goes on and one cycle race the Giro D’Italia most certainly is . Now some of you long term sufferers of reading this blog will remember on one of my early blogs I wrote about the start of the Giro when it was in Monopoli down on the coast . It hadn’t been down here in Puglia for years and I don’t think it’s been back since ! I have to say there were certainly more people in the garage coffee shop than out on the road waving at the riders that day and I had an exciting brush with the security police as well .

Pugliese have a healthy distrust of anything that emulates from Rome and most certainly from further north which is home to the political party Lega Nord which reckons that the North should breakaway from the Central and South of Italy. They think the Greco Roman population to the South just spend the money the Lombardia population earn for Italy.

Anyway the Giro mainly focuses on the North for most of its stages more i would think because professional cyclists seem to spent all their time climbing to the top of huge mountains and then hurtling down the other side and there are much higher mountains up there than down here . It’s not a sport that has ever interested me but hey what ever rocks your boat .

However my reason for mentioning it is the Giro website http://www.giro d’Italia 2023 and no I haven’t found out yet how to put a link on this new WordPress site but trust me I’m working on it.

When you do load the site hit on Percorso or route you will find a list of all the tappa or stages , hit one of the arrows under each stage scroll down to info turistiche and tap on that and the information you find there is so detailed its fantastic. You learnt so much about the places the riders hurtle through without so much as a glance. The blurb tells you about the history. The important buildings, the food and the wine. I did Naples Stage 5 and Salerno stage 4 and am an expert now.

Obviously like me you quickly hit the translate button to get it all in English but Wow is it impressive. I’m already planning a trip to Avellino near Naples to sample the white wines made solely from the fiano grape that is made there based on the info on the Giro site and the fact that 2 years ago we found a superb hotel in the centre of Avellino with an excellent restaurant alongside it.

To finish of the blog today I’ve been looking for a sign to go on my gate that carries a bit more weight than just the usual Attenti Al Cane ( beware of the dog ) not because I’m worried about robbers as I’m pretty sure having broken in they would take pity , probably leave me a €500 note and tell me to buy some decent stuff . No I just think if you are going to put a sign up that is supposed to scare people off it should do just that. Most thieves here know that Italians have their dogs in cages anyway so they best that they are going to do is bark so the sign needs to have a stronger message. wander in here and it might be dangerous. Well I found this one !

I think that should do the trick !!

The Italian Bee

No this is not going to be a study of entomology ( not to be confused with Etymology as my English teacher used to say ) . But let me set the scene.

We have the grandchildren arriving in July and so we needed some black out curtains for their room. So we went to IKEA up in Bari as they have ready made curtains that fit standard Italian windows and the high ceilings most Italian houses have.

To get to Bari from where we are up on the plateau of the Val d’Itria we head into Locorotondo and then down the steep hill that takes us 400 metres down to the coast and the SS379 up into Bari .

It takes about 45 mins to do the 25 km(15Miles) to the SS379 and then just 40mins to do the 57Kms (36miles) to Ikea . The reason used to be because of the Italian Bee but one of the changes we have noticed is that the bee is dying out which has certainly helped my blood pressure .

The bee is , of course , the Piaggio Ape the ubiquitous three wheeler that must have caused millions of accidents since it was invented .

We have Corrradino D’Aslanio to thank for it. He was a top Aviation designer and engineer during both WW1 and WW2 but at the end of hostilities in 1945 Italy signed a 10 year agreement with the Allies to cease development of any military weapons. So Corradino found himself unemployed .

Enter the man who was to change the world in terms of cheap transport Sr. Piaggio , Over a plate of pasta he outlined what he wanted Corradino to design for him. Give me a motorbike designed for two people to sit comfortably on and not get filthy dirty from the road . I want women to be able to drive it in a skirt but not be embarrassed or sit safely sidesaddle if on the pillion and it must be very affordable so almost anyone can have one .

Corradino went away and came back a few weeks later with the drop dead gorgeous Vespa motor scooter a veritable icon of Italian style. Not bad for a man that a year before was designing helicopters for the army.

Then 1947 Sr. Piaggio over another plate of pasta said what about a 3 wheeler version for transporting goods and Corradino produced this :

Yes ladies and gentlemen I’ve cracked putting photos on the site !!

To be honest I reckon it was a bit of cop out by old Corra as he basically just stuck a flatbed on the seat of his Vespa and gave it an extra wheel .

It was 1964 and Carro had long gone back to designing helicopters before anyone thought about protecting the driver from the elements when Piaggio produced this

And this is the bee that used to drive me mad as without fail on that hill either going down or worse coming back up used to be one of these. It would be grossly overloaded and in the cabin would be husband and wife squeezed in. Its 49cc engine was capable of about 30 kph downhill and 5 kph uphill . Never once did the driver pull over to let traffic pass a bit like tractors on the main roads in the UK actually.

Most Ape are now made in India and shipped back or sold locally. Amazingly in 1986 when I was posted to Bombay they were already banned there in large cities as a pest to traffic and pollution so it was quite a surprise in 2009 to find them swarming err like bees around all the major towns here in Puglia . The latest version is this electric model

Bit smart isn’t it ? Can you still buy them I wondered and yes you can. I’ve actually always threatened my wife that i would buy one so we could hop out for a meal or visit friends in it but as the Bible said some fell on stoney ground !!

However it seems loads of tour operators have developed them into sightseeing vehicles and you can rent them to tour Chianti , Tuscany , Rome , Florence and much nearer to home Matera

Looks quite fun .

Those of you who have ploughed through this waiting to hear why we picked Martina Franca to live in will now realise that my promises carry as much weight as do Boris Johnsons but maybe tomorrow ?

Mea Culpa

Firstly could I thank the hundreds , well tens, well the five of you that welcomed me back to the blogosphere . It was much appreciated and I was so overcome that I haven’t managed a blog word since then !

In my defence events dear boy , as Harold Macmillon used to say when Prime Minister have worked against me . What events you ask and it is here I venture on to dodgy ground . You see the weather since we arrived on April 24th has worked against us or to be frank it has been pretty awful . So what is the dodgy ground well that goes back to 2017 when I was President of the Episcopi Hash House Harriers in Cyprus and in my introductory speech I made mention of Puglia and the fact that we had a house there .

At the end of the speech one of the runners, an ex Major in The Green Jackets and his wife came up to me and said we’ve just realised you’re the guy that wrote a blog called HereInPuglia. I preened a little and waited for the plaudits . Well , he went on, we’re not sure if we should thank you but you certainly convinced us that Puglia wasn’t for us. I was stunned by this prolegomenon ( I can’t tell you how long I have waited to use that word !) Why I asked and he told me that my references to the weather and the issues it created put them off even exploring Puglia and they had headed to Cyprus .

So when I decided to start doing the blog again I committed to putting more of a spring in my step and a certain optimism in the blog especially about the weather. . Yet on only the third blog here I am again bleating on about it . That said we did come planning an assault on the exterior of the house and the rain has worked against that.

My wife makes the point often that at the tender age of 75 I should have stopped worrying about it and just take it as it comes . I , however, tend to look at it from the other end of the telescope. My first Mediterranean holiday was in 1955 when I was 7 years old . We went to a then small fishing village south of Barcelona called Sitges . Before then we had holidayed in Exmouth in Devon and in Sitges for the first time I felt the hot sun on my back and could run into the sea without flinching or running straight back out. I was home, I was definitely cut out to be warm and had clearly been born in the wrong country .

The following year it was another Spanish fishing village called Torremolinos which in those days was full of rich British expats in smart blazers, knife edged pressed trousers and brilliantly polished brogue shoes drinking buckets of local gin and tonics and discussing the news from Blighty. I understand things might have changed a bit since then , though probably not the buckets of gin !!

I on the other hand have hardly changed. A few more wrinkles perhaps and yes I have on occasion put my breakfast bowl of porridge in the freezer instead of the microwave but beneath all that still beats a love of hot sunshine and warm seas .

But I do promise to try to be more upbeat and indeed today the sun came out and it did stop raining just don’t ask me what the forecast is like for the weekend because I’ve err got a spring in my step.

Tomorrow I’ll return to the topic of why we picked Martins Franca and I’ll have plenty of time to write it because ………………………no I’m not going there don’t worry.

In The Beginning Was The Word

And that’s about all you will get I’m afraid —— Words until I figure out this technology .

People have often asked how did you come to pick Martina Franca and indeed why Puglia. Well we retired to Cyprus in 2007 after I’d had a heart attack and triple bypass whilst working in Florida and yes I did have insurance now you ask and the bill since your interested was US$ 187,000 way back then !

It was quickly clear that the things I had hoped to do in Cyprus like make olive oil and maybe make wine was way beyond my pension in terms of buying a house and land and so we thought of buying a holiday house somewhere cheaper having bought a postage stamp of land to build a house in in the foothills of the Troodos mountains in Cyprus.

We had lived and worked in Portugal for 3 years in the early 1980s and loved it but felt we couldn’t go back as it had changed so much . Spain wasn’t for us so it was Greece or Italy . Then I read a story in a newspaper about an unspoilt area call Puglia which I have to admit I had never heard of but did find on a map . So off we set in January 2008 to Naples to look all around the bottom of the boot that is Italy .

For once we were incredibly organised . We had a journey plan worked out and a large map to write notes in the margins of assessing each place visited and hoped to arrive back in Naples 2 weeks later with a place chosen . We reckoned if we liked a place in January we must really like it in the summer unlike so many people we had met in Cyprus who had visited it each summer and then bought only to regret it the first winter.

Naples airport for those of you who haven’t been there is built almost in the centre of Naples and if it were in the prosperous north have been closed and flats built on it whilst some huge airport would have been built miles from anywhere probably to the delight of Ryanair who love flying to airports like that.

We negotiated the airport and the strangely named Sicily by Car rental desk and patiently waited for the shuttle bus to take us to the rental lot to pick up said car , though Sicily didn’t feature on our agenda we hoped. 15 mins later the bus arrived and we fought our way on board rather like the railway station scene in Doctor Zhivago ( at this point you should be seeing that clip playing here but instead please imagine it or look it up) . 3 mins later we found ourselves fighting our way off the bus having come about 750 metres ! What should we have expected we thought at an airport the size of an aircraft carrier.

The car when we got in it had , shall we say, seen better days , many, many better days . But stoically I declined the advice offered me from the left hand seat and declined to get a real car . Instead opting to press on with what we had got . A decision that I was secretly to regret whilst openly saying it was great to be driving a car that was clearly older than any of the wrecks being driven a incredible speed along the first Autostrada we hit about 4 minutes after leaving the safety of the aircraft carrier .

We had already dismissed Naples and the surrounding area which contains Amalfi and Sorrento etc as any town that has had a song written about it was way beyond our means so we were to quote another song , this one by Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, Puglia Bound . They were actually Morocco bound but let’’s not quibble. ( Again please lookup the song and hum it)

Now this was my first introduction to Italian driving with me at the wheel and I was reminded of driving with my mother in Rome way back in 1960 when we drove around and around a large roundabout with her screaming at the top of her voice too scared to cut across to our turn off whilst thousands of Fiat Cinquecentos like bees swarmed around us. . However things quietened down after we hit the Bari road but not before several cyclists had over taken us on a hill as our “ character” car rental wheezed its way up it. Some 2 Hours later we found ourselves on the outskirts of Bari .However getting from Naples Airport to the Bari road across three Autostrada had reminded me where the saying See Naples and Die must have come from !!

Back In The Saddle Again

Well I’m back in Puglia though not for the first time since my last post in 2019 I have to admit . But certainly for a decent amount of of time as decreed by the Brexit terms which take a genius mathematician to work out . Indeed they have had to put an official website up just to help people work out when they can arrive and leave to conform to it.

If there is any one still out there who used to read this blog I feel like the guy played by Tom Hanks in the film Sleepless in Seattle or Insonnia d’Amore as the Italian version called it who decided to start trying to go on a date again.

Firstly WordPress didn’t recognise my sign in as clearly cobwebs had gathered on it making it impossible to read . Having overcome that I’m faced with a new format and as yet no way to add stuff to the blog other than the written word but I shall persevere .

The big question is has Puglia changed since those heady days when my wife and me drove around Southern Italy in January 2008 looking for somewhere to buy a holiday home that we could live in .

Well has it ? The answer is of course it has , where hasn’t ? but more on that each day from now on.

Chat tomorrow after I have read editor in WordPress , wish me luck

Murder In Matera

Oh boy, I love it when you can link stories on the blog and quite by chance there I was reading an article about researching ancestry in Southern Italy last night  and no I don’t have any  but the article caught my eye for other reasons.

Living in Puglia I have certainly tended to just accept the place and why it is like it is , the people the cucina povera etc.  Yes  I have read several histories of Italy and the reunification without to be honest really thinking about it just in terms of the South. However this article described quite clearly how difficult  it is for later generations to research the people who actually got on a boat and went to the USA or South America or Australia or indeed other parts of Europe. Not the actual birth docs etc but why they made such a life changing and dangerous move and what kind of life they were leaving behind. And let’s face between 1860 and 1921 there were literally thousands and thousands of them from Southern Italy.

The reason is simple, even by 1921 less than 5% of the population in most of Southern Italy was literate and therefore most were unable to write down their experiences . There is a real dearth of books about life in the Mezzogiorno during those years. The blame for this rests firmly with first the French from Anjou and then the the Spanish who between them for 4 centuries of ruling Southern Italy kept it in feudal servitude with literally ,for the majority of the population, no advancement at all not even in agricultural improvements. Compare this to the City States in the North, Florence, Siena, Venice , the Duchy of Milan etc and their amazing wealth and culture.

Puglia at the time of re-unification in 1861 was the same as it had been in say 1261, nothing but a daily grind for survival and the reunification did nothing to improve their lot until, perhaps surprisingly, Mussolini .

So there, seemingly, are no books to help the would be researcher discover about life in those times. But as always when faced with a insurmountable problem there is always someone who grasps the issue with both hands and does the impossible . Step forward Helene Stapinski, a journalist by trade, but also a descendent of one of those families that upped and left for the States but this one with a secret .

From the age of four, she had heard lurid yet inspiring tales about her great-great-grandmother Vita, a loose woman back in Southern Italy who fled to America in 1892 with her three children after committing murder ! See I told you the article caught my eye !!

“Gripped by her family’s story, she embarked on a decade-long fact-finding mission, making numerous trips to Basilicata, where she comes to learn what really happened and how far one woman would go in search of a better life , not only for herself, but for her children and the preservation of her family”.

All this she has written in her book Murder in Matera which you can buy at Amazon and on Kindle too.

Is it any good well here are a few reviews:

“The style is streetwise Hemingway, the theme is Faulkner in a nutshell.” (New York Times Book Review)

“ A thrilling detective story ……..Fascinating and informative . . . Stapinski’s description of the near-feudal life in southern Italy in the 19th century is compelling.” (Newsday)

So I’ve bought my copy on Kindle .

I’ve also been spending time doing more research into those dastardly French and Spaniards as well as learning more about Denis Mack Smith the British historian who is considered by most as the numero uno authority on Italian History and  his assertion that the reunification was always going to be an unsolvable problem because of the feudal nature and poverty  of the South compared to the riches of the North.

 

From City of Shame

So reads most of the headlines about Matera becoming the 2019 European City of Culture an award that has been running since 1985 for countries who are part of the European Union. Quite why it has taken the press so long to catch up with this award is beyond me. I can tell you that in 2023 Veszprém (Hungary) is the European Culture city and indeed can tell you which member states are able to put forward cities in 2033. No, one of them isn’t the United Kingdom, behave yourselves at the back of the class .

The reason for making the award is apparently to highlight the richness and diversity of cultures in Europe and Increase European citizens’ sense of belonging to a common cultural area amongst other equally floaty objectives but let’s not take it away from Matera or indeed Veszprém a place I have to admit I have never heard of though given all the auto parts , plastic and pharmaceutical plants there it might be in need of a bit of culture.

Matera is , of course, also a UNESCO site for it’s caves in the Sassi part of the city hence the city of shame headline because in the 1950s when the rest of the world discovered that 15,000 people were living quite happily in the caves there was an outcry and 15.000 cheerful inhabitants found themselves being moved to high-rise apartment blocks on the edge of town .

The real irony is, of course, that once Mel Gibson used the town to film his movie The Passion of Christ in the 1990s and the travel writers followed him there in their swarms the place was put on the tourist map . Initially tourists could spend a few lira visiting the caves that contained shop mannequins dressed in local costume but now many caves have been converted into luxury hotels with the bedrooms and bathrooms in the caves. So in July a tourist can spend upwards of €350 a night to er ,well live like a local did for 9000 years until the early 1960s when the cave was condemned as unfit for human habitation . Maybe in 100 years tourists will be paying to try out the East German style concrete high-rise buildings do you  think ?

I have been to Matera several times with visitors and dare I say it is  a real tourist trap with expensive bars, very expensive restaurants and crazily priced hotels but hey if living in a cave with no windows is your bag , go for it. I tend to suggest people go, look and come back to the house in a day which is easily done from Martina.

However there is one caveat in that they must bring back a 1 or 2 kilo loaf of bread not just for me but for half the guys in my local bar as well as for all the bar staff. Pane di Matera is recognised throughout Italy as the finest of breads especially at breakfast with various jams and so we along with most of the bar customers tuck in the next morning   whilst  chuckling about all those tourists sleeping in the caves.

The bread of Matera is a world patrimony ( no me neither but it means something handed down generation to generation ) . The secret of it’s flavour and long preservation of 8-9 days (Italians from the north always take loafs home with them in the car to give to neighbours) is the special preparation of the yeast base made with the local spring water and fresh fruit to macerate. The yeast is used several times and Matera housewives used have set days to bake based around the yeast life. The bread would then easily last until the next yeast making. The long preservation is believed to also  come from the various wheats used especially the durum wheat, which is also used to make pasta.

Let’s hope Matera has more success with being the city of culture. Paphos in Cyprus was the winner for 2017 and most of the improvements are only now being finished 2 years late and most were cancelled when it was discovered that the E.U. budget was far less these days.

 

 

Toes

I got my toes in the water, ass in the sand
Not a worry in the world, a cold beer in my hand
Life is good today, life is good today.

So sings Zac Brown on his song Toes .Now I won’t say I lost sleep last night about the end of the fly flop holiday or the barefoot holiday as luxury operators call it. As an aside I did stay on a magical island off the Kenyan Coast where, when you arrived at the dock, the hotel manager went through your suitcase and confiscated all your shoes which he locked in a cupboard and you only got them back on departure .  But it did worry me. I remembered a travel writer saying that no travel writer worth his salt would write about beaches as there is no story on a beach.

Personally I have always loved beaches . I cut my teeth on Exmouth Beach in Devon as a child dressed in woollen swimming trucks that almost drowned you with their weight when wet. Luckily my father met some of the river pilots who used to guide coastal  tankers from the bell buoy up the Exe Canal to Exeter and I used to go with them most days .

That’s me with Percy Bradford the Chief River pilot.

But soon I graduated to the shores of the Mediterranean ( my father was an airline pilot ) every summer in the 50s and 60s and in the 70’s when I joined a British Airways to beaches much further afield.

So last night I wondered if those beaches told a story and realised that deserted ones don’t  the Puglia ones most certainly do. There is nothing boring about a beach full of Italians in July and August .

Those of you of a certain age from the UK might remember an advert on the telly and in cinemas for Strand cigarettes . A look-a-like Frank Sinatra walks at night along a completely deserted wet London Street. His raincoat collar is up and his hat turned down  against the elements . He then stops takes out a packet of Strand cigarettes and lights one as a voice says ” Your never alone with a Strand” and you could equally say your never alone on a Puglia Beach as the Italians love to sit as close to you and each other as humanly possible.

The Strand ads incidentally won lots of awards but failed to sell an extra cigarette in fact the campaign was a total disaster. The fault of an unsophisticated 1950’s market said the ad agency but more realistically why would anyone want to buy  a pack cigarettes that turns you into a Johnny-No-Mates was the public reaction. The brand was renamed Embassy and the new ad showed a man at the centre of a party offering his pack of cigarettes to a group of laughing friends. Embassy became the best selling cigarette in the UK.

I reckon if you sat on a beach in Puglia for a week in August you would have enough material for at least one book let alone a single article or short story. The men standing  in circles in the shallows talking about buying food, preparing food and cooking food and the women when not kissing their own little boys  moaning about their mother-in-laws who still dote on their sons and hate their daughter-in-laws. The smell of suntan oil, the cool boxes containing snacks, lunch and dinner to be eaten by vast families and friends. The noise of raised voices, the football games, the beach tennis , the budgie smuggler swimwear on the men, the bikinis on ladies lets just say weight challenged !

It is an experience all in its own rite and one not to be missed when in Puglia.