A day at the dive bars.
Dive bars are magnetic. No matter how bad they may seem from the outside, the possibility and potential of an amazing time, just draws you in. The smells, small spaces, strange stains, and of course, the characters that grace the walls, seatsand floors of dive bars. Flies to … honey. The sea-friendly town of Genoa, Italy, is no stranger to these cesspools of never-ending stories, cheap drinks, bad music and long nights.
I made friends with one of the locals, a travel writer no less (lucky me!) and of course told him for my love of the less glamorous. What a treat I was in for. He of course knew all the caruggis or alley ways. These meandering streets of yesteryear were fashioned in this way to prevent attacks from enemies coming from the sea. Soldiers could barricade narrow steps and form a sort of fort, moving defenses from staircase to staircase, protecting what was held in higher ground.
Today, this maze of broken steps, steep slopes and resilient little weeds, are the entryway to small watering holes, littered along the pathways. Entering the first one, I’m taken by the plethora of bottles with labels in languages I don’t understand and colours I’m not used to. It is not your usual bar withvodkas, rums and gins lining the wells. Instead, there are names like Asinello and Corochinato, and of course, I am a moth to the flame. I stare as the white haired Italian next to me is served the tiniest wine glass of Corochinato, and then the bartender adds a splash of Aperol to it. “What is that?” I ask. My host for the day is also unaware of many of the strange alcoholic combinations that the older Genoese wet their palates with.
One drink there, a tiny 2 euro glass of bianchetta, and we continue on through the winding steps. A pause to see what could be one of the oldest buildings in Genoa, the school of architecture, and then onwards. A guitar hanging on the wall of a small shop opening catches my eye. “Why did you stop?” I get asked. In my mind, I am expecting the bartender to pick up the said guitar and break into song. With all the people on the street outside jumping in and joining the chorus. We order a glass of Amaro and sit perched at a barrel and wait, but unfortunately, that doesn’t happen. Two local drunks do come in, but all they do however, is talk about whether it rained or not, that day.
Our day ends at around 7pm, when the sun is still high in the sky during summer and the people with actual jobs are starting to hit the streets after work. There is much left to be explored in Genoa’s old town labyrinth, but that is a story for another day.