The Meaning of Everywhere: Trieste

Jan Morris’s book about Trieste is entitled the Meaning of Nowhere, and since I am yet to read it, I cannot necessarily elaborate on why, nor can I disagree with anything therein contained. The only thing I can say for sure is that upon arrival in Trieste I felt something which is either the complete opposite, or basically the same thing formulated in a radically different way: Trieste is everywhere.

Or at least enough things rolled into one as to make the Wikipedia entry which claims it has only little over 200 000 inhabitants seem a silly joke. Surely it must be bigger than that, sprawling majestically down along the coast in that bit of Italy overflowing into the Balkans like a geographer’s hiccup.  The rush hour in the centre is a typical Italian purgatory of pocket sized cars and Vespas vying for the last elusive parking spot or that almost space between two vehicles which allows you to be the last one to make it through the intersection before the lights change. (Not that lights changing are necessarily binding for Italians).

Its buildings, however, make it look like a slice of imperial Vienna or perhaps an odd Budapest-by-the-Sea. Empress Maria Theresa was very fond of her Mediterranean port, amongst other things, since she was a woman with a large heart, and lavished Trieste with funds. The Viennese feeling extends to many coffee houses and beer halls- though in case you make the novice mistake of arriving during Italian kitchen closure hours (roughly 2 to 6 PM) your beer can only serve you to wash down a tramezzino instead of some hearty Germanic sausage.

All of the city’s neighbourhoods still maintain Slovene names as well- the city and its surrounding territory was hotly contested after WWII by Italy and Yugoslavia. In one of those brilliant bureaucratic solutions of which the world has seen too many, the area was first declared the Free Territory of Trieste, then divided into two halves creatively named Zone A and B, of which A, comprising the city proper, later became a part of Italy, with B, comprising mostly villages, a part of Yugoslavia. In a rather Triestine fashion, this period saw one local football team play in the Italian first division, and another in the Yugoslav one. Sadly none of the city’s teams make it to any first division these days, with the twice reformed Triestina loitering in Serie D (Girone C- and like this we’ve got the first four letters of the alphabet covered in one paragraph.)

I must say that one of the city’s particular charms, besides being an amazing melting pot of the Balkans, Mitteleuropa and the Mediterranean world, is that there’s actually nothing particularly spectacular to be seen, no Colosseum, no Eiffel Tower, no Statue of Liberty, therefore no stress. You simply set off from point A, if we’re into this letter thing anyways, let’s say the Grand Canal (naturally built by a Venetian, with the purpose of allowing ships to reach the city centre for unloading their wares) and then casually walk around until reaching point B, perhaps the Piazza Unita’ d’Italia. The name of the main square is a further Triestine idiosyncrasy, as the town was not a part of Italy at the time of its unification- in 1861 the place would still go by the name of Piazza Grande, which is befitting to this day. In the Piazza you might consider becoming altogether stationary, perhaps on the terrace of the historic Caffé degli Specchi, enjoying an espresso while peering out into the endless blue of the Mediterranean.

One of the characters Trieste is oft associated with is of course James Joyce, and he was a lover of small (to greater) epiphanies, of which the city has quite a few. Walking about in the old city you bump into the Arch of Riccardo, dating back to 33 BC, of which folk legends claim to have been crossed by Richard Lionheart. Somewhat further one encounters the well preserved Roman amphitheater casually blending into a busy street. The inland end of the Grand Canal is overlooked by the Serbian church of Saint Spyridon which unlike many Belgrade churches is totally finished, while further afield you can find the Trieste Synagogue- it's quite telling of the city's historical diversity that besides these two, and naturally several Catholic churches, Trieste also has Greek Orthodox and Lutheran places of worship as well.

While Italy is more famed for its insistent chattering, Trieste is also a city which likes to read, not only books, but newspapers as well- local daily Il Piccolo had an estimated circulation of over 40.000 copies in 2014 which is quite a staggering number even if counted against the population of the entire region, not only the city. In a world where your phone can be buzzing with the latest news at any time and in any place it's somehow reassuring to see triestini carefully studying the Piccolo's headlines posted outside the newsstands.

Trieste is of course not always singular. Like so many other Italian regions it also has its local dialect, and used to have another one: today's Triestine is a dialect of Venetian (either a dialect of a dialect or the dialect of a difficultly classifiable Romance language, welcome to fascinating Italy), whereas until the 19th Century the prevailing one was Tergestine, now extinct, a dialect of Friulian. To the city's luck, its name is similarly sounding, even if differently spelled, in all its languages. Trieste, Triest, Trst, Trieszt. A place of many names is a place of many hearts. 

Barlove: Caffé San Marco

These days cities are awash with coffee shops, brew bars, specialty coffee houses and the likes, many of which function as so-called 'coffices', spaces where people engage in all sorts of mostly laptop based work alongside their espressos, flat whites and chatter. It would be pretty hypocritical of me to complain of such places though, since I am a faithful patron of many, yet in my heart of hearts I have always longed for an establishment which harks back to the old days of imperial coffee consumption and of which Budapest unfortunately has none.

Several coffee houses have attempted to recreate the atmosphere of those halcyon days of caffeination, but the break in tradition remains painfully obvious. These places do not continue a lifestyle as much as reconstruct an idea of said lifestyle- which is a nice postmodern endeavour, but not the thing I’ve been looking for.

The thing I’ve been looking for can however be found in Trieste- now a bustling city in Italy’s North, but once, of course, the major Mediterranean port of the Habsburg Empire and as such the point where coffee entered the bloodstream of the giant state. The fact that Trieste is still enamoured with the black liquid is vastly evident from the number and diversity of establishments offering it- and also by the quality of the end product.

Some places do however stand out even in such sea of excellence, and Caffé San Marco on via Cesare Battisti 18 is one of them. (Don’t be confused by the silly Italian numbering, at 18 you will find something akin to an appliance store but next to it, under a rather unassuming guise is 18A, and inside it Caffé San Marco.) Its history started in the fateful year 1914 and still in the bosom of the Empire- albeit one of its main activities was hosting pro-Italian irredentists, for which it was duly closed the next year. It later gained a new lease of life in the now nominally Italian but culturally still very diverse city and in both periods served as the 'coffice' of some ‘modest’ literary figures such as Italo Svevo, Umberto Saba and James Joyce.

Joyce had auto-exiled himself on the continent and had sought a teaching job in Zürich, but was finally offered employment in Trieste. Here he penned most of the short stories which were to be collected as Dubliners, and befriended one of his students, Ettore Schmitz, better known as Italo Svevo, who served as an inspiration for Ulysses’ Leopold Bloom and whose works Joyce enthusiastically promoted when the Italian literary establishment initially failed to grasp their value.

Inhabitation by writers is however not only a thing of the past for Caffé San Marco: in 2013, when the building’s owner, insurance company Assicurazioni Generali, threatened to close the place and reallocate the space for more lucrative undertakings, whatever those meant, the campaign to preserve it was led by Trieste based writer and translator Claudio Magris, who often works from the San Marco.

Thankfully the campaign proved successful, and Caffé San Marco continues to serve the citizens of Trieste, for unlike many famed locales, the San Marco is not a tourist trap with expensive cakes but a real coffee house, with pleasant woodwork and many mirrors, neighbourhood regulars storming in for a quick shot of espresso at the bar, groups of elderly ladies out for a chat, solitary poker faced readers, students toiling over assignments or artists brainstorming over projects. One of its wings hosts a bookstore and the entrance area is plastered with posters advertising upcoming events. And if anyone had a doubt about it, the coffee is excellent too- no fussy concoctions, no matcha latte and pumpkin spice frappucinos, just the Italian trinity of espresso, cappuccino and caffé latte- old world charm for the present and hopefully for the future too

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