The orange speckled sunset was magnificent as it dropped into the Adriatic. There I was in Trieste! Back home in the suburbs of San Francisco there is a place called Cafe Trieste, and I used to love going there and smelling their rich coffee brewing and their cinnamon pastries baking. Finally I was able to taste the flavors of this special city in person.




Trieste history was already imbedded in my consciousness just prior to taking this trip to Europe. Especially after meeting a 90 year old neighbor who was from there and who walked by my apartment near Ocean Beach every day with his equally old, gray and slow moving dog. We talked about Italy and he mentioned that Trieste, his hometown, was once a free territory. When I asked him to explain his thick accent and lack of precise vocabulary prevented him from conveying the exact message to me. But I was curious.

With that curiosity still peaked as I thought of the talks with my neighbor, we left the hotel and searched for food and a place to watch the Italian national soccer team playing in the Eurocup. If the Super Bowl happened over a several game tournament, you would know how big a deal this was for the Italians. Or so I thought. Near the center square there was a huge festival event with booths, tents, a stage, and tons of food vendors. The band was jamming out funk tunes that made me have to get up and dance a bit. But there did not seem to be much interest or care for the Eurocup game occurring simultaneously.




Eventually we found a Greek family slicing off the lamb shwarmas and they had a rickety old TV set plugged into a generator that had the game going. Good enough! Best damn shwarma I think I have ever eaten. In Italy no less?!




Trieste had the look and style of a different kind of Europe, a gothic, heavy ornamental, big stone block kind of Europe. Much more Austrian than what we saw in Venice or Firenze. But when I did my research, thanks again to wikipedia among others, I found some interesting history on Trieste, this city of many cultures, this place dubbed a "free territory", as well as the less-than-flattering moniker of "Adriatic Littoral Operation Zone".

Part of the Austro-Hungarian dynasty before WW I it was transferred to Italy after the empire disintegrated. But this incredibly eclectic and major port town already had so many different lenguas and ethnicities mixing, it was hard to really define it as a truly Italian city.




During the nastiness of WW II the Germans annexed it from Italy and gave it that crazy name (ALOZ) above, as you might imagine, there was even a concentration camp at one point. But in 1945 an anti-fascist Italian lead a ragtag army of 3,500 volunteers into Trieste, ultimately freeing the city from the Nazi grip.

Now here comes the weird part . . . after the war started to wind down it became an independent state in 1947, literally a FREE TERRITORY. What does this mean? A city with no jurisdiction, sovereignty nor allegiance to? Just a wheeling, dealing, artistic, mixing of cultures at the head of the Gulf of Trieste on the northeastern side of the Adriatic. Sounds kind of cool. James Joyce resided there post-Dublin and took out his angst about being exiled by penning The Dubliners among other works.

Seven years of glory. Then the dream dissolved in 1954 as the city of Trieste went to the Italians and all the area south of there, including the Istre region, went to the Yugoslavians. The Treaty of Osimo in 1975 made the agreement official as Zone A and Zone B were adopted on the books. In order to appease the unhappy Yugoslavs who did not want to give up such a major port, the agreement also stipulated that they would have unfettered access to shipping and receiving.

ER Harris