Hannibal

January 31, 2001

HANNIBAL

The story of Hannibal bringing elephants across the Alps fascinated me from the first time I heard it. Now I have just been fascinated to have my machine downloading a new program, while I started typing, then interrupted myself to open www.refdesk.com and ask Google when Hannibal did this. Answer: during the Punic wars, 218. (When I first heard of Hannibal I had to use the Colorado Rockies as a reference point, but eventually I saw the Alps, by train at night, coming into Italy from Paris, and by VW bus, in brilliant day light. Of course, I knew Heidi almost from memory and could see her going "up the steep path from Mayenfeld" and on up from Dorfli, shedding layers of clothes as she climbed, and climbed, and climbed, but the reality is beyond imagining.

Hannibal "slipped out of Spain", crossed the Pyrenees, crossed southern France, on foot, always with those elephants. It seems to me I could have enjoyed Latin if I had read this, either in Latin or in English, with a teacher who could have made me stop to think what this really says.

"He slipped northward, avoiding Roman sentries, and crossed the river (Rhone) on pontoons and by swimming. …. Most remarkable about the crossing was the elephants. The river was too deep for the elephants to wade, and no pontoon bridge would hold them. So he had bladders filled with air -- elephant water wings -- and floated the beasts across, not without loss.
"Once across, Hannibal marched quickly south again and caught the Roman army entirely by surprise. He won a resounding victory, and now nothing stood between him and Italy. Except the Alps.
"…. The mountains themselves were dangerous, of course, but they were made even more dangerous by the fact that local tribes cheerfully fought anyone who entered their mountains, so Hannibal had to fight his way over the mountains. He arrived in Italy with only 26,000 men and about two dozen elephants. So, while it is true that Hannibal brought his elephants across the Alps, he did so only at great loss. Most died either at the Rhone or in the Alps." I can't visualize 26,000 men walking across a field, let alone going up and down mountains, and then try to add elephants to the picture!

[ref. http://history.boisestate.edu/westciv/punicwar//07.htm]

I was in Europe for seven weeks, headquartered in Firenze. (Florence) .In about the fifth week my Air Force son called from Bari, in southern Italy, to ask if I would like to ride over the Alps with him. Of course. The USAF ran a Medicvac plane around to all the European bases, picking up expectant wives on Tuesdays and Fridays. Son's wife's doctor ordered her aboard the Friday plane, promising her a baby before Tuesday. Son had been through all the breathing lessons et al, and was determined to be present at the great event. So he took off about as soon as the plane did , headed for the hospital in Weisbaden. He slept in the bus on the street in Firenze, wearing the ear protectors issued for use in firing practice, which is all you need to know about noise levels in Italian cities.
We must have had pizza for supper. There were very small pizzerias on every block serving a great variety. There were also gelato stands at most corners. I still prefer American ice cream, but gelato was cold, a great virtue in a country where ice was considered an unnecessary extravagance.
We crossed into Austria through the Brenner pass, north of Bolzano, one of the places in the world I would like to go back to and stay a while. At the border son handed his pack of documents and my passport to a young Austrian soldier. A young woman in Red Cross uniform stood beside him. He held the documents firmly and said very pleasantly in clear English , " Like to help the little lady?" Son handed some lire out the window, the soldier returned the documents, and wished us well.
The postcards are true, the high peaks shining with ice and snow, the great green meadows sloping away at the bases. I waved to a family raking hay and hoisting huge forkfuls, and they waved back to me.
We wondered at the bumper to bumper traffic heading south, while we drove with hardly any traffic. We learned that in the countries north of us most of the businesses closed and sent all their employees on vacation at the same time. While Hannibal had no road before him, we were on a four lane divided highway, widely divdided. We saw an immense machine which appeared to be building a new section of highway over empty space, but we couldn't stop to watch. We had to hurry on to meet the baby.
At the border with Germany, I had an involuntary and momentary reaction of apprehension. It was 30 years after the war, but the indoctrination had been strong, from parents who lived through the first world war, and from newspapers and radio through the second one. In the next second I looked at the gorgeous scenery and wondered why anybody who lived in a place so beautiful would want to mess up the world with a war.
We stopped in Garmisch, inside a circle of Sound of Music "hills" , and considered looking for lodging at a base there but the dad-to-be decided to sleep a little where he sat and then keep driving.
We found Weisbaden. We found the hospital.. We found Mom. No baby. Mom and all the other moms were allowed out on leave, as long as they checked in every three days. We took Mom and set out to find a camp site. Mom and Pop were to sleep in the van but Grandma needed a tent. The Sergeant found a supply Sergeant and acquired a sleeping bag. Then he went out into the center courtyard of the enormous hollow square hospital and proceeded to dump out the contents of a few immense plastic trash bags. I worried that he would be shot at sunrise or courtmartialed or …. " but he said, 'Mother, this place is so big that nobody knows what anybody is supposed to be doing or not doing."
We found what seemed to be a city park no longer in use, with functioning rest rooms. Experienced campers all, we strung a rope between two trees, draped the plastic bags over it with some more rope, and all went to bed. In the morning I woke, dry and comfortable in my fine, free, down filled sleeping bag, but with a strange sensation of floating. That was because I was. We had settled Grandma carefully in a small gully that drained a wide area, and the night's rain had lifted me off the ground. Not to worry. The sergeant took the sopping wet sleeping bag downtown and laid it outside a laundromat vent. We found two other trees for my tent ridge.
Mornings, before the young parents woke, I picked bowls full of perfect black berries along the road. We carried them into the hospital where breakfast was cheap and good, and poured them over our cereal. And each morning we saw a once-in-a-lifetime scene. About twenty Air Force wives trooped into the cafeteria in a line, all grinning, and all of them ready to give birth at any moment.
Or so they thought. I don't know about the others but our baby was not in a hurry. We went to a wine festival, where the houses each had a pine branch on the door to welcome the new wine. We sat on narrow benches at foot wide tables and drank wine and listened to an oompah band. Outside there was bratwurst and a 2 story merry go round. No baby. I took a ride on the Rhine and saw the rocks where the Lorelei sang. My father and I had played that song over and over on piano and violin. No baby. I went to Mainz and saw the Gutenberg Bible. No baby. It was time to leave to rejoin my group. No baby. The sergeant used up his regular leave, religious holidays leave, paternity leave, emergency leave, but he was there when the baby came, exactly thirty days after mom boarded that plane in such a hurry. She was named Heidi.
I rode a bus down the Romantic Road, past Hansel and Gretel houses, walled towns, half timbered houses with window boxes full of red flowers, and met my group in Munich. An experienced Alpinist now , I persuaded a friend to go back to Garmisch by train, so we could have a whole day to see the mountains. We had coffee in a fine hotel, in china cups, with heavy silver, and heavy damask napkins, and I still have no idea what we paid in German money. We took the inclined railway up through fog and clouds to the top of the highest mountain. We barely caught the train back to Munich and I treated my friend to my latest discovery, Tobler chocolate in a triangular box.

In Munich we drank beer from huge steins, and ate radishes because everyone around us was eating radishes. At first we shared a mug, sure that we could never drink a whole one each. But that one went down so easily that we had a few more apiece. I could never drink that much here. Something was different - the beer, or the ambience, or the radishes, or the songs.
I ate liver balls in broth, which I hated when I tried to make them here later. I ate bratwurst from street stands. We have a fine German meat market right here, which makes brats, but they never taste the same.
In Florence we lived in a spartan hotel attached to a monastery, where the food was plain and dessert was always frutta. We livened up the meals by shopping for different wines to share. If I ever go again I will set aside money for a few meals in great restaurants. I had to come home and take Italian cooking lessons from some one who had studied with Marcella Hazan , to learn about fine Italian food.

[Treasured cookbooks: The Classic Italian Cookbook, Knopf, 1976 and More Classic Italian Cooking, 1978 by Marcella Hazan.]

All I remember about dinner in Rome, in a hotel run by nuns, is that our bus driver taught me to say Grazie alttretanto when someone said Buon' appetito. We saw Aida at the Baths of Caracolla. . I was less impressed by the music than by the audience who called Brava for the soprano, Bravo for the bass, and Bravi for duets. It is hard to believe that children learn to use all those endings correctly, with no effort.
In Paris I ate baclava and other sticky Greek desserts on the Left Bank. I ate couscous in a serving big enough for three people. I learned about true Continental breakfast , half a cup of coffee with half a cup of milk, and a long roll laid across the cup. One of our group upset the maid for the rest of her day by taking a second roll from the cup of a late comer. I bought Coquille St Jacques at a bakery around the corner from the Cathedral, in Chartres because I liked the name. It's seafood in rich cream sauce, in a pastry shell. Not great for a cold snack.
Compared to Chartres Cathedral, or the poppy fields, or the David or Michelangelo's unfinished works, or Ghiberti's doors, or the bridges in Venice, or the Medieval processions for the Palio in Siena, eating didn't seem very important. I didn't learn a single new thing to cook in seven weeks but I collected memories still vivid after 30 years, and I crossed the Alps.