This text comes from the star archive and first appeared in January 2024.
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It is bad that we do research, i.e. to work. Some villagers shake their heads to greet. They sit at Jerry, on the basket chairs that belong to the bar and from which they look into the bay over the fig tree. You have to go on vacation here, they say, but don’t work! The setting sun dips the ridiculously beautiful place in orange light, a wildly grown shrub is swaying on the church tower in the evening wind. At the bottom, a woman picks nimble capers from the bush. Pollica in the Cilento, 2200 inhabitants, two and a half hours of car from Naples down the curvy coast. The region bears the Italian word for slowly in the name, Lento. This is how life works here.
And it runs pretty long. According to one count, there were more than 300 hundred year olds among the approximately 90,000 inhabitants in the area in 2019. According to the mayor of Pollica, there are even up to 400. Sure, some die. Pandemic, pneumonia, a heart that simply stops beating. But new old people always come after.
We, the most modern people, track our steps with apps, optimize our rest phases, invest in cures for body and mind. And in Pollica, where in the alleys between the thick walls of the Palazzi the reception, where old men pound the playing cards onto the table in the evening and the women cross each other every time they walk past the church, will they end up older? Life healthier? How is that possible?
Source: Stern
I have been working in the news industry for over 6 years, first as a reporter and now as an editor. I have covered politics extensively, and my work has appeared in major newspapers and online news outlets around the world. In addition to my writing, I also contribute regularly to 24 Hours World.
