Viaggi del mondo: Seattle, the Pacific and Us

venerdì 19 luglio 2013

Seattle, the Pacific and Us

Seattle, the Space Needle © Luca Ferrari

The weather may be rainy in the American North-West, yet the atmosphere surrounding me is one of warm human feelings. That's Seattle.

by Luca Ferrari

A city in symbiotic communion with the delicate forest and sea landscapes that embrace it. Its essence, isolated from the rest of the continent, tells a story of multiculturalism which looks at the Pacific and beyond.

The variety of scenarios and landscapes of the United States satisfies all possible tastes. The destination of this journey is a still an unknown region for many Italians. I left my native Venice and stopped in Paris before taking the transatlantic flight that brings me to the Tacoma Seattle International Airport.

A non-stop eleven-hour flight. By the time I think of this, the airplane is already high in the sky and is crossing the Channel and the British Islands, Iceland and Greenland, the Baffin Bay and the Canadian shore. Finally, it is time to go west, towards the Pacific coast where Seattle lies.

The encountering with the city begins as if I were in a small town rather than in a metropolis. I take my time in a cafe in Georgetown. Jazz music on the background and the taste of hot coffee. A bus brings me to Downtown. I just open my tourist guide and a nice officer greets me and asks me whether I need some help. I think that’s his duty but I’m wrong. While wandering through the various avenues more than one recognizes me as a tourist and is ready to help me by answering my many queries. My first stop gets closer. Between Pine Street and Pike Street, I’m going toward the popular Pike Place Market.

Before getting there, I stop at the local Hard Rock Cafe. If Seattle immediately evokes to rock lovers the birthplace of the legendary guitar player Jimi Hendrix, other bands affirmed themselves between the 1980s and the 1990s annihilating the stereotypical imagery of the rock star. Borrowing from different styles such as rock, metal, punk and pop, new sounds developed and affirmed themselves thanks to bands such as Mudhoney, Mother Love Bone, Soundgarden, Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains.

Once I’ve gratified my musical appetites, I need to satisfy a more trivial yet not less important hunger. I need a good meal. I follow the way down to the fish market and finally I find myself on Market Center, a global bazar offering the most disparate merchandise for tourists and small taverns or restaurants. A cultural universe gently caressed by the sea breeze.

American people never lost its conquering spirit. When the pioneers started the gold rush in the Canadian Yukon, many left from Seattle. The city celebrates their stories and ethos in the Klondike Gold Rush Museum (free entry), little afar from Capitol Hill. There the visitor is lost in the epics of heroism, hardship and richness (for very few, though). The items displayed in the museum and the several relics of that age make it possible to feel another epoch, including the freezing rivers that diggers searched night and day in the hope to find gold nuggets.

From the epics of the gold rush to the 5th Avenue, where I board on the Monorail towards the Space Needle, the iconic symbol of the city. A tower of 184 meters built in 1962 on occasion of the Expo. Visitors can get to the summit by elevator in less than a minute. From up there it is possible to admire, side by side with the Seattle Centre and the many tourist shops, the Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame (EMP/SFM).

Seattle, also known as Emerald City, lies between Lake Washington and the Pacific on Puget Sound. While leaving the modern landscape and the Space Needle, I get closer to the sea. From the Alaskan Way that sides the coast, I gaze at the Seattle Great Wheel, the biggest in the US, open to the public on July, 1st 2012, and the red cranes lying along the harbours, a series of structures that inspired Steven Spielberg’s alien monsters in his 2005 motion picture War of the Worlds.

I am almost touching the Pacific waters with my hands. I shiver. From deep down the trees of a hill, I enjoy this breath-taking landscape and find my oniric feeling confirmed. I breathe the fresh air around me. I packed my stuff with no transcendence. Everything is so endless and infinite. In front of the many flowers that look at the bay of Seattle, the pages of human feelings tell different stories and views. It has been said. It is coming.

Watch other Seattle pictures on the Italian article Seattle, l'Oceano Pacifico e noi