Turkey to Italy, 1953 After crossing through the tiny area of European Turkey, I left the train at the last station on the railway line. Ahead, lay the frontier post which was set in open farmland. Nobody was manning the border and I was soon happily marching through endless open…
* You are walking through Rome and all of a sudden you hear a bang. What is it? What’s happening? Nobody seems to show any concern and people go about their business as usual, except that they look at their watches. It’s midday! And the bang you heard is the 12 o’ clock cannon shot fired every day from the Janiculum Hill. This is a tradition that started in 1847 to give people a time signal to set their clocks and watches by.
