Touring Turin

Friday's train trip to Turin was uneventful. There was a minor scare when I got to the station in Nice to start my trip, finding the place very over crowded and struggling to work out which train to get on. It turns out my ticket required two train changes along the trip, and I had to find out what the intermediate points along the way were. Once this was shown to me I slowly made my way towards Turin (these are not the high speed trains), missed one of my changeovers and got delayed by an hour, but finally arrived around 6PM.

At the station in Turin I was waiting by the information booth to get a map, standing next to a young group of Brits doing the same. I struck up a conversation with what has become the standard travellers conversation of "Hi, how you doin, where you from, where you going, etc", and they asked if I was here for the festival that night. Of course I'd heard of no such festival, and upon enquiring about the entertainment to be given at said event, found that the Arctic Monkeys would be playing, and that it was free to boot! Once again abandoning my plans of having a proper nights sleep and a relaxing couple of days, I joined them in interrogating the information booth employee about the shenanigans, and she showed us where the event was and the free shuttle bus to get there. I quickly took my bag to my hotel (I couldn't find a hostel in Turin city, and got a cheap hotel instead, again, trying to have a quiet evening of effective sleep), dumped it, showered and hurried off to the bus depot. I got on with many other people, but the bus didn't seem to be leaving any time soon. The Italian weather is hot and humid, even way up north, and rather than sweat on the bus with the other peeps, I decided to stand outside the door. However, I think this bus was being driven by the grumpiest guy on this earth, as he stepped on the bus and shut the doors immediately, when it was clear that there were several people standing outside waiting for an indication to get on. A few Italians threw some stern words his way and the doors opened for long enough for us to shoot through, and then we made it towards the park where the festival was being held.

Grabbing a Corona, I made my way to the stage square, and one of the Brits I'd run into at the station spied me and brought me over to their group. I spent the evening rocking out with them, the festivities starting with a band known as "Art Brut", which were a bit shit to put it mildly. The music itself was ok, fairly generic English rock, but the singer just kind of spoke the words in a cockney accent, and the lyrics themselves were completely inane garbage. After about 45 minutes of this they finally left the stage to be followed shortly after by "The Corals", who were again an English rocky kind of band, but actually had a bit of talent. Their music had overtones of Americana rock. Think of a cool grungy rocky version of the theme from Bonanza and you'll be getting close to what I mean.

They finished up and were followed about 20 minutes of stage setting later for the Arctic Monkeys. I remember wanting to see these guys when they toured Melbourne, but between the $80 ticket price hesitation and the thousands of people wanting to go I missed out. This gig was excellent, and they played most of their songs from the first album and several from the second. They had a great stage presence, and I was surprised to find out that they're all only about 19 or 20 years of age. The Brits I was with couldn't understand how they could go from playing at the biggest music event in Britain not more than a month ago that cost 150 pounds a ticket, to a free concert in Italy. Their set was longer than the others, continuing on to just past midnight. Once the applause died down I bid farewell to my British companions, who were planning on bumming around Turin until the first train out of the place to Venice arrived, and got on the shuttle bus back to the center of town. Unfortunately the bus didn't stop where it had picked me up from, and after a bit of confusion and a lucky encounter with an English couple who were able to point us out on the map, I finally made it back to my room by about 2AM. So much for the good nights rest, I hit the sack and made ready to meet Paul the next day.

My bags deposited in the train left luggage counter, Paul spotted me halfway up the platform and we began our tour around Turin. We had a wander through a couple of squares and decided our first real stop would be, as Paul decribes, "The Holy Tea Towel of Turin", better known as the "Shroud of Turin". This is basically a big old rag that Jesus was apparently wrapped in after his crucifiction, which has an image of his body somehow imprinted upon it. The actual shroud is carefully locked away in a large sarcophagus, and a replica is on display in the church. Paul noted that if the scale was accurate, Jesus wouldn't have been much taller than about 5". The church itself was very basic to say the least, especially compared to others I've seen along the way. I would have thought a place containing such a holy relic would be better adorned, but apparently these guys are going for the spartan look. Perhaps it's to less distract away from the Shroud itself...

After a quick Greek snack of some kind of cheese filled pastry, we headed into the cinema museum. This turned out to be a great decision, and the next 3 or 4 hours were spent looking at the history of cinema, from static images right up to the latest special effects. There were several floors in chronological order, with some cool cinema relics of their own. I was most excited about one of Charlie Chaplins' hats that were on display. Honestly though, the first floor which contained all of the really old stuff like the first steps of motion pictures using such technology as the Magic Lantern I found quite dull. Some of the stereo images were cool, which also included some of the first recorded pornographic images (I'd never seen porn in stereo), but overall I didn't get that interested in the exhibits until it started hitting stuff like the silent films.

Once it got to this point I became much more interested in the exhibits which showed the different techniques used to create a movie, from shooting to editing to sound production, showed various famous actors (there seemed to be quite a love-in affair with BridgetteBardot, who I'd never heard of) and there was one section of the place that involved walking in a square around the whole building where famous movie posters were hanging. There were also several areas with examples of cinema of different themes (Horror, Romance, Western, Sci Fi). Paul and I sat through some of the more interesting ones, and each of these sections was decorated in relation to that theme. One of the more interesting rooms was filled with about 10 toilets which you could sit on, and one of the movies presented in the room consisted of a family sitting down to their evening dinner, however instead of sitting on chairs, the sat, pants down, on toilets. I cannot remember the movie this scene was from, and it was either in Italian or dubbed in Italian, so I've no idea what they were talking about, but it was quite bizarre.

There was also a small section which superimposed your moving image onto a small part of the lobby scene of The Matrix which Paul and I spent a bit of time have some juvenile fun with.

The cinema museum took us to about 5PM, and it was time for the main reason Paul had come to Turin, which was to see the Beasts of Bourbon (Tex Perkins + Friends) playing at a local festival. We walked at least 3 kilometers to find the venue, at which point my body had started to rebel from the increased amount of movement it had been subjected to recently. Unfortunately Paul had mixed the day or the dates up somewhat, and after an entertaining conversation through the fence with one of the security guards, we were to find that the concert was actually scheduled for the following (Sunday) evening. Paul was most dismayed at this eventuality, but being on no particular timeline myself I suggested that we stay here a night and catch the festival at its scheduled time. Paul agreed, and we slowly walked a further 3 or 4 kilometers back to my original hotel, much to my bodies complaint, booked another room and headed out for dinner.

Paul was excited to show me some authentic northern Italy cuisine, but we found that we'd happened upon a Napolese restaurant, and so just stuck with the common Italian food of pizza. My compadre explained the local custom of eating, which usually involved an entre and main, or simply pizza, but almost always followed by a coffee. Unfortuntely by the time we'd had our pizza, it had hit about 11:45, and the left luggage at the station closed at midnight. We declined coffee and got a rather unusual look from the waitress, paid our bill and scurried painfully down to the station to get my bag. Luckily the staff hadn't decided to knock off 5 minutes early, and I was able to retrieve my belongings and take them back to our domicile, stopping at a pub on the way of course. We passed the first pub which had a clear sign "Discogayfashion" (wait for the photo) on the window and went to one a few doors up which seemed a little more low key and more our style. Eventually we made it back to the hotel and quickly crashed out to sleep.

Luckily the following day the hotel staff, whom were very excited to hear we were going to a concert in their fair city, agreed to take care of our bags until the we hours of the morning, and we set about on a second day of Turin wanderings. We headed down to one of the main piazza's, Vittoria, and ended up spending a couple of hours there over some beers discussing all manner of things and catching up on each other's lives in general. This liquid lunch was followed up by checking out the large, Pantheon-esque building at the end of the piazza, which Paul had estimated to be some form of goverment building, possibly chamber of commerce, whilst I had gone with department of justice. It turned out to be some kind of church, and further to this was closed. Taking a few photos and continuing down the river, we eventually happened upon our actual destination that was a replica medieval village, which Paul aptly described in his blog "in a country of medieval buildings, a 'replica' is as lame as it sounds". The whole place was very sub-par and not worthy of the time taken to walk there, and we quickly left the place.

Next on the list were the "Gates of Hell" which were described in Pauls guidebook to be a place of very black and evil energy. This was abundently clear by the pretty flowerbeds and fountains in the area, and we delighted in taking some photo's of each other being smote down by evil demigods in front of a bunch of pansies that apparently marked the spot. After tempting fate for a while we again walked the several kilometers to the festival venue, had a hamburger-ish meal at a cool little shack by the road. I've dubbed this place since as the "Melon Shack", as it did a roaring trade of selling primarily watermelons. Every few minutes a car would rock up, someone would get out and request a melon of certain volume, and the supposed owner of this place would walk over to his large crate of watermelons, slap a few of them (I assume to test their ripeness, though further observation seems to disprove this), and hand one over. It was a very unsual little situation, but the people who owned the place took good care of us and made a very nice meal.

Eventually we made it into the festival, which wasn't very large by any stretch of the imagination, got a few beers and waited for the shows to start. Paul managed to get photo's with a couple of the band members who were wandering around, Charlie Owen, the drummer who barely gave us the time of day, followed by Brian Hooper the bass guitarist who actually stood around and chatted for a while. About 9:30, the Beasts of Bourbon were brought forth to the stage and started busting out their blend of "Swamp Rock". The crowd wasn't huge, probably a few hundred strong, pretty much all Italian. The music was pretty good, but the lead singer, Tex Perkins was, to put it midly, quite a lot of a wanker. During the half hour set he managed to hurl a mostly full beer can between two security guards, shake one up, crack it slightly so it spewed forth its foamy contents, and launch this a good ten meters up in the air above the crowd to come crashing down on one unfortunate girls arm and drop a microphone stand on one security guards head. He wore a button shirt that become more progressively undone as the show continued, and to my minds eye was trying to strut around like Mick Jagger for the entirety of the show, something he impersonated very poorly. He then left the stage at the end of the lyrics of the final song, however the band still had a couple minutes of actual melody to bang out, at which point the Beasts of Bourbon's performance was apparently over.

The band was the supporting act for a more popular grunge group known as "Mudhoney", so the only person there who actualy seemed to know any of the BoB's lyrics was Paul and one other chick who was down the front. As a result I'm not sure how the Italians took the performance. The music itself was quite good, as far as hard rock goes, but the performance itself? I dunno. I'm not that into the rock scene, so perhaps this is just how they go down, but to me, the talented musicians that make up the sound of the Beasts of Bourbon might want to look into getting a new lead singer.

Mudhoney by contrast were quite good, and a little more composed. They performed a great set (even though I didn't know any of their songs), and contrary to usual practise in Australia, kept coming out for a total of 3 encores to the crowds cheers. The crowd, who'd obviously come specifically for this performance, had grown by several hundred by this point, and the entirety of them were very into the music. It was during one of their songs that the lead singer / guitarists suited up Spencer P Jones from the Beasts of Bourbon with his guitar, and motioned for him to come crack out a ripping guitar solo with the headlining band. Spencer came out and proceeded to rip out the worst guitar solo ever heard by human ears, completely out of musical tone with the rest of the band (though the crowd still cheered as loud as ever for the novelty factor) and then made his way back to the sidelines. The reasons behind this became clear after Mudhoney had finished, as Paul, who was intent on getting a picture with each member of the BoB, called Spencer over for a photo opportunity. Spencer did so, along with another member of the band, Brian Hooper, and they were both so drunk that Spencer could barely stand and Brian could barely talk, except to describe slurringly to Spencer how proud we all were of Paul studying his physics PhD, a fact he astonishingly remember from a previous conversation earlier in the evening. Paul described to me later how Brian and he were basically holding Spencer upright, as he stared vacantly towards the camera, barely moving between a couple of snaps.

Not long after this, Paul waved over the drummer of the group, Tony Pola, who exclaimed "Are you blokes Austraaaalian?" and a couple minutes later Tex Perkins strolled past and we grabbed his attention. Paul got a shot with these two, also very drunk musicians, and before we had a chance to move away, Tex pointed in my direction and slurred "What about that guy?!". Not wanting to dissapoint the man for the unique opportunity to have his photo taken with me, I swapped positions with Paul, Tex wrapped his arm around my throat not far from the choking point, and Paul quickly snapped a photo. The guy was disgustingly sweaty, and to say I was glad when released from his hold would be an understatement. Instead of making you wait, dear reader, for me to organise all of my Turin pictures for you to enjoy these wonders of photography, I have created a special album of them here.

Shortly after midnight the festival was over, and after souveniering a poster from one of the barricades, we made the long walk back to our hotel to pick up our bags. Even past 1AM, the lady was very courteous in allowing us entry to recover our belongings, and we slowly walked our sore, tired bodies over to the train station. We then proceed to have some slightly drunken ramblings until about 5AM when our train to Padova finally arrived.