It would be difficult to undertake a more symbolic journey than this. At least not in the Mediterranean: The Italian travel writer Paolo Rumiz and three companions set out from the city of Tire in Lebanon on a sailing ship that is more than a hundred years old Moya, put to sea. Their journey, which Rumiz tells about in his book “Europe. A Song”, goes through the Levantine, the Aegean and the Ionian Seas to the Tyrrhenian Sea on the Calabrian west coast. So past Cyprus, the Turkish Riviera and the Cyclades, through the Gulf of Corinth further to the Apulian coast to the Strait of Messina. Shortly before the quartet sets off, a mysterious woman comes on board and stays; an unknown that will still be discussed.
Tire is one of the oldest permanently inhabited cities in the world. In Greek mythology it is considered the birthplace of Europe. The continent to which Zeus abducted her – the most problematic “Me Too” case of antiquity – is named after this Phoenician king’s daughter. From the Levant, what is now called Western culture spread through the Greek city-states and their spin-offs along the Mediterranean coasts and finally through the Roman Empire.
Rumiz and his companions follow one of the oldest trade and travel routes and at the same time see themselves as a part of this European cultural history. Everything they experience on the road has a history, a reason, and is connected. Everything has a connection to the idea of Europe. For Paolo Rumiz, Europe is less a geographical category than a cultural and social one. Internal boundaries anyway, but external ones are also fluid.
The small crew of the Moya is a symbol of this unifying Europe: There is Paolo Rumiz, born in Trieste and living there and in the Slovenian Karst, then Petros, a Greek living in Great Britain, Ulvi, son of a Turkish father and a German mother, and Sam, a French one Jew. And then there is this woman who Rumiz introduces as a Syrian who fled the civil war in her homeland, wanted to reach Western Europe via the Balkans, but was sent back, was ravaged in Lebanon like Europe by Zeus – and now the four of them Men were taken by surprise to take her with them as a stowaway. Its name, with which the author introduces it, is: Evropa.
It is doubtful that there is actually a woman on board the Moya was on this trip in spring 2017. It was initiated by the ship’s owner Petros out of great anger over the outcome of the Brexit referendum in his adopted home the year before. Petros did not want to forgive the British who had dared to “spit on the womb of their ancestor and progenitor.” This is what his friend Rumiz quotes him as saying. While England broke away from Europe, this Europe at the same time sealed itself off from the many refugees who wanted and still want entry – especially via the Mediterranean.
Without the impulses from the Eastern Mediterranean thousands of years ago there would be no Europe, at least not the one we know. Paolo Rumiz is seriously worried about – nationalism, isolation, bureaucracy, and the cultural oblivion of many residents. He shudders when he witnesses the excesses of mass tourism, on Mykonos and Rhodes, for example. The all-inclusive holidaymakers, flown in on holiday jets that fly over the Moya jet away, “the Greeks were reduced to service personnel and plundered the soul of every place”. Or they come in gigantic ferries, says Rumiz, “which destroyed the myth of the seas.”
But he believes in Europe, which is why he chooses its embodiment – not as a person, but as a mythical figure – as his travel companion. That is entirely legitimate. “Europe. A song” is not a travel report, it is travel literature – not a novel, definitely not, but a condensation, an exaggeration, a visualization of what has actually been experienced, which is combined with thorough knowledge. About history, current politics, the many refugees who drowned in the Mediterranean, fun and mass tourism, the freedom or lack of freedom to travel, depending on your nationality. “Europe. A Song” is a book that doesn’t care about borders.
Paolo Rumiz: Europe. A song. Translated from Italian by Maria E. Brunner. Folio Verlag, Vienna/Bozen 2023. 283 pages, 25 euros.