Summer.
Those days with the light-blue sky without any flaw, with the blazing sun and the people who look for fresh air under the colonnade, the Pitosforo’s scent and it’s white and plump and strong flowers.
I admit it, Bergamo has never been one of my favourite cities but today it seems different, with that glimpse up there, with the colonnade full of cafes and the lamppost that seem precious eggs suspended in the emptiness of that warm but not at all muggy afternoon.


It’s Sunday. The ice-creams, the cotton candy, the bicycles. And the Giro d’Italia. The seventy years old people grasped to the barriers, standing for hours with the cycling shoes and the sunburnt face, ready to tell everyone that that one is the Selvino, that they know really well that little wall there or that bend over there. That it would have been cool to see them passing by Città Alta but it was truly impossible with that many people. Better to stay there, to try to peek the screens after the finish line, taking care of the bicycles of their friends who are in the bars, shouting for a fall and then for another one. Quintana with his bad luck and Dumoulin that tells to his men to slow down. A brief gesture with the hand that explains what deserving the pink jersey means. It is called fairplay but that is a bad and cold word to say that you ride like a gentleman.

There is the descent before the long arrival boulevard, the cyclists come down that static glimpse like a painting in the light-blue. You understand who won by who exults, the masseurs or the press agents hurtle away like thunders. Bob Jungles disappears, kidnapped from his people, I look for those damned instants before they go away, I get stuck in between the bikes of the people who assail them before the buses, that ask for bottles, that expect to stop them for a picture. Matter of minutes then slowly they all thin out towards the stage, the boulevard is empty apart for three children who remain there jumping around like crickets with the Barhain Merida’s jersey which reaches their knees, the cyclists keep coming in little waves but none is never who they are waiting for.
They seem to count them one by one. Until when from far appears Kanstantsin Siutsou, “Daddy comes”.
They run towards him, the grasp him. How many scenes like this I’ve seen already, but everytime I get convinced that the only place where disappointment, fatigue and tiredness can truly rest is in the hug of those who love you without reserves.

I come back without rushing this time, not even forty minutes without traffic, a typical Sunday trip. And like the children who look outside from the bus’ window while it flows on the freeway, I can’t expect anything outside of this going. Deep down I don’t feel that I have a safe place where to rest and so the only thing to do is to avoid to stop.

Translated by Martina Meroni.
Original Version here → #GIORNIDIGIRO | BERGAMO