And when they have the occasion to drink Corsican rose wines, they wistfully say that you can taste the sunshine in them. With its near-perfect climate, beautiful landscape, picturesque villages unspoiled by modern architecture, and its long list of culinary specialties, Corsica seemed an ideal place to spend a vacation.
I wanted to visit Corsica since moving to France three years ago. My French boyfriend, Antoine, spent most of his childhood there, and he and his family still talk about the island as if it were paradise on Earth. I knew from them that Corsica is a wild land where the peoplefiercely guard their heritage, language and way of life, and try to protect their environment from mass tourism. And Antoine often described this mountainous island, situated just off the western coast of Italy, as a land of large rivers, deep gorges and brilliant red cliffs overlooking the sea.
Although only one track runs through Corsica, he maintained that this alone was an overwhelming achievement. It flew to the northwestern coastal town of Calvi, one of the two starting points for the train. The other is Bastia on the northeastern coast. For two weeks, our only agenda would be to ride the train and get off when the mood struck us. Later we planned to rent a car in Ajaccio, the most populous city on the island,to visit as much of the rest of the island as we could.
Within an hour after our arrival in Calvi, we boarded a two-car train that was just old enough to be uncomfortable, but not yet old enough to be quaint. When the ticket collector noticed my surprise at the antique wooden controls, he assured me that the train ran fine. Nobody bothered to close the train car doors as we pulled out of the station, and some very impressive creaking and cracking noises came from the wheels.
I was contentedly watching the coastline, listening to the fat, gray-haired conductor sing a traditional Corsican folk song something I would later hear often in village cafes , when I realized that everyone else was looking out the other side of the train.
