Wishing to know how far are Modena and Mantova from Motovun as the crow flies, I googled the World Wide Web with this quaint expression. On the first page of search results I found the Free Map Tools website that computes the distance between two places both as the crow flies and along the shortest road connection (www.freemaptools.com). Both Modena and Mantova are about two-hundred and forty kilometers away. As I have learned last night, one can feel a big earthquake quite well at this amazing distance. But then I searched for the distance between Milano and Motovun. They are some three-hundred and sixty kilometers apart. Which means that the Dolomites behind Milano, which can be seen from Motovun when the bora blows especially hard, are some four-hundred kilometers away. Amazingly, one can see that far when conditions are right. One way or another, I felt kind of thankful to the proverbial crow.

Addendum (March 11, 2019)

This evening’s sunset was amazing to behold from my house in Motovun. The sun set behind Vižinada, which lies just south of the sea stretch that opens toward Venice. The whole sky was bright red. Thanks to the bora, the silhouette of the Dolomites in the middle of the sea stretch was very sharp against the burning sky. Glued to the window next to the dining table in my livingroom, where I spend most of my time reading and writing, I kept shaking my head at the spectacle right in front of my eyes. “What luck,” I mumbled under my breath over and over again, “what luck!” Thanks to the northeasterly wind, four-hundred kilometers shrunk as if by magic. If I did know any better, I would bet the mountains were within twenty or thirty kilometers at most. What luck to be living close to the top of the Motovun hill, indeed. What amazing luck!