"Italy without Sicily doesnt make a picture in the soul:
its the key to everything", noticed Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe more than 200 years ago. But Italy isnt Sicily and
Sicily isnt Italy. If you had been to Italy you cant
say you know now Sicily. Sicily is different.
Sicily is a modern "land" with an ancient tradition that
has remained alive, a land with lots of faces. Poverty besides wealth.
Seldom you are so close to the European
origins as here at the former boundary between eastern and the western
world. The Greek and the Romans struggled with the people of Karthago
about the possession of the island, the Arabs could achieve to form
out of Sicily a cultural landscape in broom, which finally was reconquered
for the Christian belief by the Normans.
All these sovereigns had an influence
on the island, but it never gave up its tradition and uniqueness.
"Sicily, the environment, the climate, the Sicilian scenery.
These are the powers which, probably more than all foreign rules and
violations, have at the same time formed our minds: this scenery that
doesnt know any middle between rich pasture and dead desert",
thats how Tomasi di Lampedusa characterised his home country
in the novel "The leopard".
Why not experience this scenery, its
inhabitants and the weather in a different way by bike?