A week retracing the Mediterranean sea route from 20 years ago

The moment I entered the port of Genoa, the smell on the wind summoned memories first. That distinctive blend of diesel fumes, salt, and heat rising from the dock concrete. I smelled the same thing the day I first boarded as crew at twenty-two. Back then it was half nerves, half excitement; now a strange sentimentality has settled into the space where the nerves used to be.

This voyage follows the same route as that one. A western Mediterranean loop departing Genoa for Marseille, Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca, Naples, and back to Genoa. The ship is different, my rank is different, and even the view from the deck has subtly changed, but the route itself remains the same.

Genoa to Marseille

On the first evening out of port, the crew mess served minestrone, roasted chicken legs, and potato gratin. The menu was similar on my first voyage twenty years ago, though I remember the soup being saltier and the bread far drier. These days the crew mess even has vegetarian options and a fairly varied salad bar, unimaginable back then.

We arrived in Marseille at seven in the morning. The port had been completely renovated. Twenty years ago I used to walk out between run-down warehouse buildings and have an espresso at a café near the Vieux-Port, but now the Euroméditerranée redevelopment district has turned the area around the docks into an entirely different neighbourhood. Glass buildings line the waterfront and the tourist information office is sleek and well-maintained. The cafés around the Vieux-Port, however, were unchanged. When I ordered an espresso at the same spot, even the cup size and the position of the ashtray on the table were almost exactly as I remembered. The only difference was that the price had nearly doubled.

In the afternoon I returned to the ship and dug out some old photographs in my cabin. One shot of Marseille's port taken with a film camera in 2006. The resolution is terrible, but the hull colour of a ferry moored in the corner of the frame and the degree of rust on the dock bollards are vivid. If I took a photo from the same spot today, the background would be completely different.

Barcelona, and Palma

The Barcelona stop was again a full day, morning to evening. Twenty years ago I walked down La Rambla with four fellow crew members, watching street artists draw caricatures. I still laugh remembering how one of them, Marco, asked an artist to draw his caricature for five euros, was corrected that it was ten, and ended up walking away without getting it done. Marco now runs a small boat-tour company in Croatia.

This time I walked alone. La Rambla was still packed with people, but it felt like souvenir stalls had replaced most of the street artists. I ducked into the side streets toward the Gothic Quarter, trying to find the alley bar where my crewmates and I once drank beer, but I never found it. The buildings were there, but the signs had changed, or the spaces had become different shops entirely. That peculiar sensation of not knowing whether a place from your memory has vanished or whether your memory is simply wrong. The real texture of nostalgia lies in exactly this kind of uncertainty.

In Palma de Mallorca, the port call was too short to go ashore. Twenty years ago I couldn't disembark in Palma either. The crew schedule was too tight, so all I did was look out at the port from the deck. What has changed is that back then I found it disappointing, and now I find it rather peaceful. Leaning against the deck railing, sipping coffee while gazing at the silhouette of Palma Cathedral. It seems I've reached the age where that beats rushing around on shore.

An Evening in Naples

Arriving in Naples is always dramatic. Mount Vesuvius slowly reveals itself behind the ship, and the clamour of the chaotic streets around the port drifts up to the deck. On my first arrival in Naples twenty years ago, a senior crew member told me, "When you're in Naples, you have to eat at least one pizza," and dragged me to a pizzeria in an alley right off the dock. A Margherita was about four euros at the time, I think. The memory of that pizza, thin, slightly soggy dough with scorch marks along the edge of the crust, mozzarella sliding off the top, is strangely vivid.

This time I found my way back to the same alley. The name of the place had changed, but the oven was in the same spot (at least I chose to believe so). I ordered a Margherita. It was excellent, but honestly, I can't say whether it tasted the same as that pizza twenty years ago. Food in memory is always more intense than the real thing, so a bite in the present can never beat a bite from the past.

A bit more on the crew mess: the biggest change over the past twenty years has been dessert. It used to be nothing but canned fruit or plain pudding, but now dishes like tiramisu and panna cotta appear fairly regularly. There's even wine service now. The gap between the passenger restaurant menu and the crew mess menu has narrowed considerably. There's still a difference, of course, but mealtime has genuinely shifted from something you endured to something closer to something you enjoy.

The Way Back

On the last day, during the overnight passage back to Genoa, I went out on deck. The wind was quite strong and it was a night with few visible stars. On this same leg twenty years ago, there had been a night when the stars poured down overhead. On the final night of my first voyage, sitting on deck with my crewmates and looking up at the sky, I remember asking, "Will I do this for the rest of my life?" Someone said, "You'll be sick of it in three years." I never got sick of it. Far from it. The fact that you see something different every time, even sailing the same sea along the same route, is the essence of this work, and it took me twenty years to truly understand that.

I started collecting vintage travel posters for a similar reason. The Mediterranean depicted in 1950s Italian state shipping line posters has deeper colours and wider skies than reality. That exaggerated palette is actually closer to the Mediterranean in my memory. Posters are more vivid than photographs; memory carries more vivid colours than reality.

On the bookshelf in my cabin, a few old postcards I brought along for this voyage are tucked in. A 1990s postcard of Barcelona's old port, a black-and-white postcard of the Naples coastline. Comparing these with the actual places has become a kind of personal sailing ritual. Checking the gap between the scenery on the postcard and the scenery before my eyes. That gap is the surest proof that time has passed.

Return to Genoa. I stepped onto the dock and smelled the same smell. Diesel, salt, and concrete. Twenty years is a long time, but the smell hasn't changed. Back where I set sail, breathing in the same smell, I check the schedule for the next voyage.