I didn't blog for a few days because I got sucked into a book. A long book; 927 pages. I'm a bit angry with the author right now, because he dragged me along for almost 1000 pages with a good story, but then didn't close it. It's like he sat down at his computer and started writing, and the story developed and grew, and he just kept going until one day he said, "this seems long enough," and he stopped. No wrap up, no satisfying closure. I did wonder where he was going when he started introducing new characters halfway through the book, and I got plain worried when he was still doing it 3/4 of the way through. The book is Shantaram, and it's written by a guy that escaped an Australian prison and went on the lam. After getting captured in Germany and finishing his prison sentence, he wrote this book. The book is about a guy on the lam from an Australian prison....
Anyhoo, I can complain about the lack of a Dickensian ending, and some of the more cheesy descriptions (you had to skim every time the protagonist hooked up with his love interest), but if there's anything that writing a blog everyday makes you aware of, it is the difficulty of writing. Some days when I'm writing the blog, I confess, I'm just too tired to fix an awkward paragraph or restructure the description. I love to use anyways (notice my switch to anyhoo today), I realize I use the phrase "I realized" almost constantly, loose descriptives like "lovely" crop up too often.
The second level of our house has a segment of glass floor directly beneath the skylights. John has set up his worktable below the glass and I can peek down from the loft where I'm working (the weather has cooled) and watch him scribbling frantically. We've already gone twice to the stationery stor
e to buy him more paper. It's inspiring to see how hard he works, and that usually gets me more focused again. John, of course, feels like he's not getting enough done. The Italian lifestyle does not support his workaholic tendencies. Morning cappuccino runs and afternoon gelato forays last a bit longer than his typical 20 minute breaks. But he looks much better since we left Los Angeles. The exhaustion and stress lines have eased on his face.
I don't know where I'm going with this blog today. Just like that book, I sat down, I started writing, and now I think I'm done. I've got no witty summary statement, no I've come full-circle moral lesson, I think I'll peek over the loft edge and watch my husband for a while....
Before leaving the States, Jack Stephens gave John this book written by a journalist living in Italy: The Dark Heart of Italy by Tobias Jones. I couldn't put it down. It was well written and explained a great deal of what I was experiencing around me. Some of it I probably should have known already, like what happened in Italy during WWII, but some of it can only be known once you really know and understand the language, which is a long ways off for me. Anyway, this is not the typical kind of book I read, but Jones was so interesting, I raced through it quickly.
This is my rather loose interpretation of a few of the points. During WWII, Mussolini and the Fascists came to power. At this point there was still a royal family here, and many people still respected the king's leadership. The King, unfortunately, switched sides a lot, confusing his partisans as to whom to support. Once the allies rolled through Italy on their way to fight the Germans, there was a power vacuum, and what happened was that the Fascists and the Partisans turned against each other. This was the beginning of Italy's next 40 years of Civil War (some might say it's ongoing) . The Allies didn't help things too much, because they were so busy trying to keep the Italian Communists out of power that they let most of the Fascist government, guilty of abominable crimes during the war, right back into power. Through the 60's and 70's there were terrorist bombings by all parties and they've become known as the years of lead (anni di piombo). If you saw that great Italian mini-series, Best of Youth, it was largely about how families were torn apart by politics during this time. Basically all the parties blame all the other parties for the bloodshed still.
So in the 90's, successful businessman Silvio Berlusconi proposes a new anti-establishment party, claiming it will be a clean slate because he has his own money and doesn't need to be bought. Berlusconi made his money first in construction, and then in TV stations. He owns the only channels that compete with the State owned stations (by finding his way around a law that prohibited anything other than local stations, Berlusconi just set up local stations everywhere with the same programming). To back up a bit, according to Jones, Italians respect nothing more than money. If you've got money, you must be cunning (furbo, to say someone's cunning you run your thumb down your cheek like a knife cut), which is the cat's meow. So whether Berlusconi's methods were clean as he became a successful businessman doesn't really matter at all. He was smart enough to beat the system and make a lot of money, and he slid into power easily. So now this guy is head honcho of the government, he owns most of the media (he also owns newspapers, or they're in the family), and he owns a soccer team (the only other matter of power in Italy). He's basically the new Mussolini, and he quickly went about changing the laws to protect his interests (mostly to get court cases against his allegedly dirty business practices thrown out).
Basically, this is just a taste of how ugly Italian politics are. It's not just Berlusconi, most of the other heads of parties also own newspapers and soccer teams. All the power is held by just a few. What it's done is create a culture in which everyone is out for themselves and their family. That's why Italians rarely tip. They don't understand why you would enrich anyone where it won't come back to you. It's also why Italians don't pay taxes. What it does explain is why Italians can be incredibly generous to the people they do know.
There's a lot more in there, about religion, about the illegal building that's happening everywhere and spoiling the countryside, about the beauty of the language. John and I try really hard not to leave tips now, but it's engrained in us. I don't think I'll ever be cunning or furbo enough to really understand it all or fit in. But then again, we are paying our American landlady for this place in cash, so perhaps an American can be converted.
Four nights of the last week they held time trials of just the running portion, one night for each neighborhood. A team, made up of guys age 18-30 (we think, but they all smoke, so maybe they're younger), would spread out along the course like a relay. At the central pier, the boat lay on the ground with the first group. At some signal, they would quickly flip the boat off the ground and onto their shoulders (this was clearly a well-practiced maneuver, as the boats were heavy), and run down the street. The next group would meet them at a designated spot and take over. At some of the trickier points, like at the final turn of the switchback stairs, instead of trying to maneuver the boat up, they threw it up to the team above. I worried about the condition of the boats, because you can imagine how often they bang against walls and such.
But I needn't have worried, because it ends up it's two different sets of boats. And there's a girl involved. We didn't realize that part either. So last night we joined the crowd down by the lake. We're not sure what starts the race, there's no gunshot or anything, and the announcer was as surprised by the start as us, announcing, "oh, they're off!" (or the Italian equivalent). The boats, with two rowers, make their way from the starting point in the lake at one end of town, around a buoy and over to the central pier. At that point a girl jumps out of the prow of the boat with a flag, races down the pier, and hands off the flag to part of the ground team. The ground team quickly flips the boat up onto their shoulders, and they're off. Since we chose to stand by the water, we can't see the runners, but we can see the bottoms o
f the boats above the crowd as they race by. They're going really fast, much faster than during the time trials. Centro Storico came in last in the time trials, but so far they're in the lead.
Finally the first boat is back. It's dropped heavily on the ground, the girl gets the flag and races down the pier literally throwing herself into the prow. It's still Centro Storico in the lead, but now close behind her is Centro Due, and their girl is a really fast runner. She speeds down the pier, and they're off. Olivetto's boat comes back next, but their girl has already given up and does a minor canter down the pier and a clumsy maneuver into the prow. Quick behind her is San Donato, who's still trying hard, the girl's a tiny little thing that zips down to her boat.
The boats pull out for the final turn around the buoy and then to the finish, the shore of a park on the other side of town. It's Centro Storico and Centro Due battling for the title. At this point John and I are trying to figure out where exactly the finish line is. Is there something you cross? Is there something you touch? But I think we're just too exact as Americans. At some point it's just clear that Centro Storico is reaching the shore first, and the entire red team pours off the shore into the water to surround the boat. It's a touching victory moment.
While you might think that the other teams would be sad about losing, you would be wrong. The rest of the evening all of the teams celebrated their achievement, chanting, throwing colored smoke bombs, and generally having a wonderful time. It all ended with a lovely fireworks show over the lake at midnight.
Tuesday night the Palio festivities went on a bit too long for me. The DJ down in the piazza was still going strong after midnight, people were walking around the city drunk and talking loudly. The schedule said the DJ didn't start until Thursday night, so I was in somewhat of a panic- if this was the level of festivities on Tuesday night, what was the rest of the week going to be like? John had been hankering to go somewhere, so in a flurry on Wednesday morning I looked up train schedules and booked hotels.
We decided to go north to Lake Como, hoping for some cooler weather. The 10:30 train from Passignano started us on our long day of train hopping. It was brutally hot in Florence, even hotter in Milan, and even hotter in our train car from Milan to Como, so we were a bit concerned. But pulling into Como, there was a nice breeze. We checked into our hotel and finally relaxed.
John's parents visited the region this May on a hiking trip and had kindly given us their itineraries, so the next morning we took the funicular up to Brunate for a hike from there up and along the ridge, and then back down to Torno further along the lake. It was overcast and lovely. We climbed up old stone mule paths to a little town at the ridge. From there you can climb up some stairs to the lighthouse. At the bottom of the stairs was an older man with many bags. John kindly offered to give him a hand, and not only did he readily take up John's offer, but he gave John the keys to the lighthouse and told him to open it up. We wondered whether he did this 
every morning. The view from the lighthouse was lovely, and then we continued on our way.
The trail continues climbing along the ridge and then enters a forest. It's very pretty and you can catch glimpses of the lake far down below through the trees. We're in the forest for quite a bit, enough to get a bit bored, when the trail finally starts heading down. And heading down. And heading down. At a certain point there are flat slabs of stone pushed vertically into the ground which serve as stairs. We go down, and down and down the stairs. My legs are beginning to tremble a bit from all the downhill, clearly I should be in better shape. But finally we get to the bottom, find a restaurant with a lovely view of the water, and rest. We were both duly impressed that the Stephens' had managed this hike as only the first of many.
From Torno we took the boat back to Como, grabbed our stuff, and treated ourselves to a taxi to our hotel in Cernobbio (since the reviews said it was a 3km climb up from the town). We went swimming in the pool and swore that the next day we would do nothing. But Friday 
dawned and the lake looked beautiful, and of course we decided to get out and see some other towns. We took the trail from the hotel down into the town (ow! ow! ow! as we took each stair) and caught the boat to Villa Carlotta, an 18th Century Villa surrounded by a botanic garden (they had redwood trees!). We got to the town around lunchtime just as a few drops of rain started to fall, so we dashed into an arcade and found a place to eat. As we sat and lunched, the rain increased until it was a full downpour. You couldn't see the other side of the lake, then you could barely see the lake as the rain got heavier and heavier. It cooled everything off even more and John and I had to put on warmer shirts. John and I both agreed it was the best part of the trip.
Now we're back in Passignano. Today is the big Palio, and then everything should calm down here again.
It seems like any local festival you attend is followed by the same street fair. Currently this street fair is down in the little park by the lake with the usual booths selling jewelry, hats, bags, and antiques. The only thing that tells you this is an Italian street fair are the marzipan fruits at the food booths and the amount of Mussolini paraphernalia at the antiques stalls.
One of my favorite things, which are ubiquitous at all festivals, are the inflated animal balloons. I love all the different shapes and bright colors tied to one stick. Somehow they still trigger the excitement and curiosity of childhood. I told John about how I distinctly remember once having not just an inflated rabbit, but also a frog. Maybe the frog was Alex's and he got bored. Either way, I still remember how incredibly happy I was with the two balloons. I asked John if he remembered having a great balloon animal, but he said the only animal he remembers every loving was a stuffed animal called turtle Stephens. Turtle Stephens? I think that's probably the cutest thing I've ever head my husband say.
From our vantage point in the cafe I watch the strollers pass and take note of which animals are chosen by which kids. The youngest little girl chose Pooh, the slightly older girl, a power-puff girl. The boy, of course, selected a power ranger. His family carried motorcycle helmets, and I wondered how a balloon power ranger would make it home.
Finally it was time to do some shopping. I left John at the cafe, went on my errands, and walked home. John followed a bit later, bringing me a blue dolphin. I think it's one of the most romantic things my husband has ever done.
So now Dolphy lives with us, floating around the house, slowly deflating, but totally loved.
This week is the Palio delle barche, or boat competition, born from a 1495 battle. The story is that up in the castle the soldiers of one army were under attack by the two other armies. To escape, they had to hoist their boats on their shoulders, run to the lake, and paddle away. I'm not really sure why you would choose to celebrate a battle retreat, but I guess it was the final one fought, so that's something.
Today the competition is between the four different neighborhoods of the town (population +/-5,000). Each neighborhood has a color shown by the flags which are hung off the houses. The race, which is next Sunday, requires paddling in the lake across half the town, pulling out your boat, hoisting it on your shoulders, running up the switchback staircase, back out the north gate, and around a few more blocks before putting the boat back in the water and paddling the rest of the way. Oof! Our neighborhood, Centro Storico, hasn't won since 1992, but maybe this is the year. Go red!
Off the main piazza they constructed a fake medieval castle front (gray stones with gothic openings, despite the battle taking place during the Renaissance) with a temporary cooking structure behind. In front, they fill half the piazza with long tables and benches. Last night the tables filled up with townspeople and tourists who, for 20 euro a head, could have a full meal of typical dishes and local wine. Some of the tables were filled with this year's contestants, sporting team t-shirts in their neighborhood color. The contestants spent the evening trying to out-sing each other with rousing fight songs. You can imagine the noise with 500 Italians talking, 50 of them young men chanting. It took an hour to get each dish as the small temporary kitchen tried to pump out mass quantities of food. Between each dish, half the table lit up a cigarette. There was a medieval jester rhyming into a microphone trying to incite clapping competitions between tables. There was a large screen TV set up where they were interviewing the chef about the dishes being prepared. It was wonderful chaos.
John and I made it through the antipasti and the primi before our tender dispositions were overwhelmed and we snuck back up the hill to bed.
The other morning I got up early and caught the ferry out to Isola Maggiore. There are three islands on lake Trasimeno, Isola Maggiore (Big Island), Isola Minore (Small Island, so small there's nothing on it), and Isola Polvese (Dust Island, which like Iceland, is a misnomer since the island is actually a regional park). What I love is that the islands have constantly been given as gifts, to noblemen, popes, as a wedding dowry. But yet they were always occupied. I guess the fisherman and their families living on these islands had no claim.
The ferry ride takes 10 minutes and is lovely and cool. Once there I take what my guidebook listed as "an easy pedestrian path" out to the castle. It's steep and dusty and not particularly easy. I get to the castle, and you know what? It's been closed for renovations since 2005. It would have been nice to know that before I forked over 6 euros for the ferry! But that's okay, I'll go see one of the many churches. I take the next pedestrian path, also hot, dusty, and there are these bugs that swarm out at you as you pass. The church is closed. There are some annoyed Italians there as well.
I head to the next church, because even if it's closed, it has a nice portico I'd like to draw. It's closed, I do a drawing. I then take the path along the lake to the other side of the island. Saint Francis spent some time here and there is a statue and altar dedicated to him. It's hot, there are more of those swarming bugs, and when I get out there, the statue is kind of cheesy. I turn around and head back.
Finally in town I find a sign saying that the churches open at 10:30. I head back up the steep pedestrian path to the first church because it's supposed to have some nice frescoes. As I pay my money and enter, I recognize the guide from my ferry boat. We came over together, and then he probably went and had a cappuccino, chatted with some people, went and collected his cash box, and then moseyed his way up the hill, while I stupidly marched around the whole island getting heat exhaustion.
So now I'm in the church, dripping sweat, and trying to decide whether to race down and catch the next ferry, or to stop and draw one of the frescoes. I decide to stop being an over-ambitious American, have a seat, enjoy doing my drawing as I cool off. Then I mosey my way back down hill, relax in a cafe and have a mortadella sandwich, and stroll onto the next ferry home. One of these days I'll get the hang of it.
It's hot. Even the Italians, who didn't seem to notice the heat 5 degrees ago, now greet each other with comments about the temperature, "fa caldo!" or "ma, che caldo?!" The internet says we'll reach 100 today.
We both slept poorly last night because of the heat. We've learned to close up the window shutters during the day to keep out any sun, and we've put all the fans to use, but by noon, you can find both of us on the 1st floor of our house. It's the only floor that stays reliably cool all day. We make forays upstairs to check our internet, but once the sweating starts, we retreat back downstairs.
The first floor looks like a laundromat because John has taken to stripping down as soon as he gets home, tossing his hat here, his shorts there (he presides over the house in boxers). Last night I looked up from dinner to see John slurping up his spaghetti while shirtless. If felt like we had stepped back into the '70's.
You know what else is too hot? My computer. I thought maybe the transformer wasn't quite working, but I had it tested today, and it's fine. Then I thought maybe the upstairs outlets were no good, so I tried John's outlet downstairs, but it was fine. Then I plugged the cord back into the computer. Within two minutes it was hot to the touch. It's no wonder my computer is acting up. Here in Italy, far away from all my computer programs, and from American keyboards which put the @ symbol in the right place, the death of my computer is a chilling thought. For now I'm going to limit my computer use, if possible. Okay, I better go brave the heat upstairs and get this blog posted.
Sancho peacefully left us today. After a strange and undiagnosable illness, a long course of antibiotics, and a brief respite, he stopped eating. All of you who know and love Sancho recognize that him not eating is totally out of character. The Vet told Ivy and Alex that this was a sign of his decision.
Sancho was a really, really, really great dog. He was sweet, obedient and incredibly handsome. He loved chasing balls, tearing apart toys, and if you had any body of water larger than a drinking glass, he would try to go swimming. Whenever I walked him past the horse trough up in Griffith Park, he never understood why I wouldn't allow him to get into it. At daycare he once climbed into an empty kiddie pool and just waited for them 
to fill it up.
Sancho was also brave. He saved Bug's life multiple times, whether it was a coyote or an overly aggressive dog in the dog park.
To love Sancho was to love his sensitive tummy, his allergies, and his penchant for chasing his tail. Those traits were hilarious and somehow endearing. At eight years old he still had the joy of a puppy, whether he was sticking his head out the car window, playing with Bug, Mister Chicken Shrimps, a
nd Harry, or viciously shaking his new toy.
John and I were lucky to have him for a year. Ivy and Alex were lucky to have him for seven.
We will miss you Sancho.
In grad-school structures we learned to calculate the exact center of gravity of a strangely-shaped piece of steel. I guess we used it to figure out where the forces would accumulate, I can't really remember, but it's how I picture lake Trasimeno (tra-see-meh-no) in Italy. Like if you took all of Italy and tried to figure out where it's center of gravity was? Lake Trasimeno.
Passignano is on the east side of the lake, about halfway up. It's an hour or so north of Perugia. At one time that was really important because with all the warring factions in Italy, Perugia had the biggest army and most of the little towns around here swore their allegiance in exchange for protection.
The first pictu
re is Passignano from the water. See the building to the right behind the clocktower? That's our building (although unfortunately not our windows). We're about halfway up the street between the clocktower and the tower of the castle above. Now to get from the level of the water 
up to our house? You have three options. You can take the street or stairs on the north side of the old City which wind up the hill more slowly, but there's no shade over there, so it's an unlikely choice (unless you've just arrived in town with your rolling luggage). You can take the winding switchback stairs (picture 2, showing switchback 3 of 4), which are lovely, but only shaded morning and late afternoon. Or if it's the middle of the day, you take the really long staircase (picture 3) and then walk up the street (picture 4). That's if you really must be out in the middle of the day, which we're learning, you don't want to be. In the last picture, you're on our doorstep looking back down at the water. 
Charles Dickens spent a year traveling through Italy and wrote a book about everything he saw. The descriptions are great, often invoking either fears of savage pre-roman societies, or appreciation of rustic living. I think his descriptions are wonderful, but I'm awfully glad I can describe everything with a few photos instead.
Okay, this is clearly not going to turn into a food blog, because after three days I'm already tired of writing about food. But, I'll talk about dinner, and that will be enough. Basta.
Each morning I start at the produce store. This is mostly because they're really nice and have proven the most patient with my limited Italian. First I insult them by asking, "what's good?" or at least, that's what I did until John explained that I was indicating they would sell something less than good. I should have figured it out because they always looked surprised and said, "tutto!" Anyway, now instead I ask what they recommend, or I just pick out whatever vegetable looks interesting. So far we've really liked fresh porcini mushrooms, these round little eggplants which are a lilac color, and of course, the tomatoes, which come in about six shapes and colors.
After produce, I check on the pasta store, because I can't quite figure out what their hours are. If it's open, we'll get fresh tagliatelle or pappardelle. You have to wait a bit for the women making the pasta in the back to finish their conversation before they realize you're there. If I were Italian, I would just start talking loudly, and they would talk back loudly, and we'd talk loudly as they came and helped me. But I'm a shy American, so I always wait a bit before timidly calling out, "buon giorno?" They're always very nice when they realize I'm there.
Then, it's back the other direction to the macelleria (butcher). Usually I walk in, get totally intimidated by all the cuts of meat I've never seen before, and walk back out. In fact, other than buying some prosciutto, some pre-cut pancetta and some parmigiano, I haven't quite gotten up the guts to buy any of the meat yet. They have some pre-rolled rotolini which I'd like to try. In any case, it's been so hot, John and I haven't really missed the meat. Still, one of these days we'll need to get some protein from a non-processed source.
Until then, great vegetables, good pasta, we're eating really well.
Today I'll talk about lunch, or pranzo (just one more blog about dinner tomorrow and then I'll stop talking about food. for the most part). The first day I made our lunch here in Passignano, we had sandwiches on yummy white-bread rolls which were all that the panetteria had. After lunch, John quickly fell asleep. So we decided to try and make lighter lunches. The next day I made salads with lettuce, cherry tomatoes, some kind of sweet green peppers (which look like anaheim), a bit of ham, and some shredded parmigiano. Delicious! The tomatoes here are so good, that you can pretty much eat anything with them and it's delicious. So we switched to salads for a few days. But you know what? John still fell asleep after lunch. And because we were eating so light, we were always peckish by 3:00, which meant, inevitably, that we needed to go for gelato.
Then finally I discovered a panetteria on the other side of the shopping area that sells black bread (my favorite route into town in the mornings is now the staircase that passes right by the ovens of this bakery! yum!). So then we started making sandwiches with prosciutto, mozarella, cucumbers soaked in vinegar, lettuce, tomatoes and peppers. John calls them Dagwood sandwiches, and if I may say so myself, they are delicious.
The black bread loaves are like small footballs with pointed ends, so I can get a few slices for sandwiches out of the middle, but inevitably you end up with two un-sandwichable heels. Yesterday we struggled our way through chopping up these hard ends, some of them many days old, diced a cucumber and two tomatoes, added some basil, and had a panzanella salad. All these years I've been throwing out french bread when it got hard. Why didn't I know that you c
ould add some oil and vinegar and it would transform into something amazing? Delicious.
We also started buying wedges of watermelon so that we could snack on that rather than gelato. But you know what? The gelato is really good. Unfortunately Ann Rinaldi, the wonderful woman who rented us this place, told us which place in town had the best gelato, and it's fantastic. So despite beefier sandwiches and watermelon slices, we still can't always resist. John typically mixes mint and dulce de leche, or straciatella and limone. I've fallen in love with Zuppa Inglese (like a custard) and Amarena (sour black cherry). Delicious. Okay, enough delicious. Today I'm putting slowly sauteed peppers from last night's dinner on focaccia with a little mozarella. Hopefully it will be up to snuff.
I swore I wouldn't turn this into a food blog, oohing and aahing about every glass of wine and amazing tomato. And I promise I won't, but it does seem like I should talk just a bit about what we're eating.
Today I'll talk about breakfast, or colazione. In the States, John and I like to start healthy with fresh fruit in greek yogurt with a high-fiber cereal mixed in. Here in Passignano we get great fruit and yogurt (banana flavored, a favorite of ours), but high-fiber cereal has proven scarce. They have oats, and muesli-like cereals, but there's often odd things like bits of chocolate in it. Really? Does that still count as healthy? So, trying to be healthy, we skip the cereal and eat just fruit in yogurt in the morning.
But a few hours later? We're hungry again. So we walk down the hill to the main cafe and have a spremuta (fresh squeezed juice), a cornetto (croissant), and a cappucino (frothy yumminess). Now the biggest decision of our morning is what kind of cornetto we're going to get. They have cream filled, jelly filled, honey filled, rice cream filled, and chocolate filled (what's with chocolate and breakfast?). There's probably more options, but this is all we've discovered so far. I try to eat mine neatly, holding it in the napkin like an Italian, but John likes to slowly tear his apart, getting filling all over his fingers and showering his shirt with the powdered sugar sprinkled on top. He then informs anyone paying any attention, "che casino!" which means, what a mess! (I'll include a picture tomorrow) Surprisingly, they still seem happy to see us in the cafe each morning.
Someday we will find a supermarket with a better selection of cereal (perhaps in Perugia), but for now, we feel that the climb back up from the cafe probably works off the extra calories of our second breakfast.
When we first arranged to live in Passignano, I had hoped there would be a path along the lake for walking or jogging. Unfortunately, like most old lakeside towns, the edge of the lake is defined by a road with a constant stream of cars. There is a swathe of parkland between the road and the lake immediately across from town, but it doesn't provide much more than a strolling area where you can eat your gelato. To actually work off that gelato, I needed to find somewhere else to walk.
So the other day I went out the medieval City walls and followed a street up to the hill above. A
couple blocks later, miracolo! I come across a sign for a pedestrian path linking Passignano and some other town! I head off into a grove of olive trees, the lake visible off to my right. Later, after a long stretch lined with cypress, I come to an old farmhouse and an abandoned church which is being used as a greenhouse. The trail heads downhill at this point, past the church, into an area of lusher greenery, and then gets a bit difficult to see. Suddenly I worry that perhaps I have taken a wrong turn. A dog starts barking. I can't see the dog, but he sounds annoyed, and I don't want to run into him, so I turn around and head back. But as I reach the abandoned church, I pass two German hikers. Clearly I was going the right way.
The next day, determined to do a proper walk on the trail, I head out again, telling John I will be back in an hour to join him for his morning cappucino and cornetto. When I get to the church
and farmhouse, I now see the dog whose barking frightened me the day before. He lives up in a loggia attached to the back of the house, and leans out the openings to threaten those on his territory. Today I tell him, "bravo, bravo," and keep going. He's not going to jump down from that height.
The trail is amazing. It goes through areas of wild growth, then emerges in farmlands before tucking into a bit of forest. There are old stone houses, roosters, butterflies, and lots more dogs. Occasionally there are trail markers, typically a red and white rectangle painted on a tree or rock. They're subtle. Finally I arrive in a tiny little town where the road splits. I don't see a trail marker, but it's close to the 1/2 hour mark, so I'm ready to turn around. A woman emerges from one of the houses, sees me standing there and tells me if I want to see the old something (I can't quite understand what it is), I just follow the road up to the left. Now, here's where it's a problem to not speak Italian. I pretty much understand what she is saying, and if I knew Italian I could tell her, "no, not today, I need to turn around, but I'll come back next time." Instead, I nod, say, "grazie!" and head off the direction I've been pointed along. I figure I'll go 5 minutes farther and then turn around and hope she's not there.
But the trail opens up to a great panorama, and then there's an amazing stone house being renovated, and when I finally decide I really do need to turn back, it's been 15 more minutes. And so I turn around and head home. And then I'm passing bee apiaries, which are so neat. But, w
ait a minute, how did I not notice them last time? Maybe I took the wrong road. I try another one, apartments buildings, hmm, that's not right. I spend the next half hour trying to figure out where I came from. I find an old church (ah! that's what the woman was telling me about), there are red and white markers all over, but none of them seem to get me back to that little town where I came from.
Finally I ask a woman walking her dog how to get to Passignano. She says it's easy, just follow that road to the right. Now, if I spoke Italian better, I could ask her if there was a pedestrian trail rather than the main road she's pointing me towards, but I don't speak better Italian, so again I say, "grazie!" and head off down the street. It does take me back to Passignano, just the non-scenic way, back down to the road along the edge of the lake with the constant stream of cars.
Yesterday I followed the trail again. This time I paid better attention. Oh, and following the guy on the tractor also helped.
Wednesday morning I need to return the rental car to Arezzo, so I decide to make a day of it. I get on the autostrada (have I learnt nothing?), but at some point I realize I must have missed my exit, and pull off in the small town of Foiano della Chiana. Yes, I missed my exit, but I can take this smaller road up to Arezzo, which proves, of course, to be a much nicer drive. Soon I see a cow up ahead on my left. But it's not moving. And next to it is a small horse. And a large mushroom? It's a fabricator of all those animals and crazy things you can buy for your garden. If they'd had a plaster highland cow, it would now be in a shipping container headed home.
I get to Arezzo, return the car, and stroll up to the main piazza to have some water and a pastry. It's hot. Only the tourists are moving around. I spend the next couple hours drawing and watching some little kids, who are immune to the heat, run around the piazza, reveling in the large open space. Once I'm done with my drawing, I realize that yet again I am smack in the middle of siesta. Maybe, since Arezzo is a slightly larger and more tourist-y town, some things will still be open. 
I head over to try and see the Piero della Francesa frescos. There's a sign saying you need a reservation, uh oh. But when I walk into the ticket office, there's an American desperately trying to unload some tickets for the time slot starting right then! I buy one of her tickets and stroll right in. I'm feeling so very efficient with my time as I peruse the frescoed stations of the cross, which are great, by the way. Piero has the ability to make everything, even a battle scene, feel calm and well composed. But then he always paints one person looking right at the spectator, and so as your eyes move tranquilly around the scene, there's a sudden shock as your eyes meet.
The next train home isn't until 3:15, so I sit and have a Panzanella salad and read my book (who knew day-old bread could be so good?), which again, feels like a great use of my time. Unfortunately, when I get to the station, I discover that the 3:15 doesn't run during the summer. I have to wait for the 4:15. I kill an hour in the train station. Luckily my train is on time. Then I get to Terontola where I have to switch trains. My connection? Not for another hour. I go have an ice cream, I read about Lindsay Lohan's sentencing in the Italian newspaper, I'm beginning to understand why Italians all seem so good at killing time. Finally I get home, sunburnt from all my sitting around, but happy to see my husband and now sit around with him.
I've realized that in the past ten years my brain has been a bit over saturated with images of Tuscany. Every coffee table books seems to have a picture of rolling hills, with a patchwork of green and yellow fields, cypress trees on a ridge in the distance, and an old farm house with some fantastic plaster color that screams, "yes, I could be in a fresco!" It's really beautiful, and to be honest, I didn't expect EVERY view to be like this, but it is, and I'm a bit over it. Okay, central Italy, you're beautiful, I get it.
But on the way home from Urbino, we found a landscape that bowled us over. We decided to take the autrostrada (I know better, but I just couldn't handle the hairpin road again and neither could John's stomach). Fortunately at Furlo, we took a wrong turn which pulled us off the autrostrada and onto a small road through the town. As we realized later, we pulled off just in time because the autostrada tunnels through this whole area, and we would have missed it.
The landscape, which had been green and mountainous, suddenly started to expose large escarpments of stone. The exposed rock became more prevalent and steeper, and suddenly we were driving through a gorge. On the left, at the bottom of the gorge, a gorgeous river appeared, held back by a lovely dam. On the right, the road wound through an old rock tunnel, past an altar to Mary placed in a hollow in the stone, and continued along the gorge. It was breathtaking.
On Tuesday, we decide to rent a car and drive to Urbino. That sounds so easy, but first we take a train to Terontola, and the car agency there doesn't have any cars. They give us the number to try Hertz in Arezzo. Luckily they do have a car, so we get back on the train to Arezzo and wait until they arrive at the station with a Fiat Punto. Finally, two hours later, we are on the road. First we stop in Sansepolcro, the birthplace of Piero della Francesca, but after the debacle of the car rental we arrive smack in the middle of siesta, and nothing is open. We move on.
Amongst the many books we lugged abroad is an incredibly heavy book of Italian slow-food restaurants (locally sourced food, old methods of cooking). We don't have a guidebook to Umbria or the Marche, so we don't know anything about the towns we're passing, but we do know where we want to eat lunch, Osteria del Cucco in Urbania. So we leave Sansepolcro, and get on the road, which winds up a mountain and back down again. Although, it doesn't exactly wind. They obviously took the old donkey trail and just made it a road, so you have long straight-aways, and then a tight hairpin turn that requires almost a full stop. Unfortunately, again because we're just a bit behind schedule, we get to Urbania too late. The restaurant owner looks at us askance for wanting lunch at such a late hour. He sends us off to a pizzeria.
Sated, but now a bit grumpy, we drive to Urbino. We check out the Palazzo Ducale, which has a few Piero della Francesca paintings (now we feel a bit better about not seeing anything in Sansepolcro). It also has an amazing studiolo with inlaid wood used to create objects in perspective (trompe l'oeil). I've seen photographs of this room in the past, but before, without being able to stand in it and take it in all at once, the experience was somewhat lost. John and I spend a good deal of time in this room admiring the instruments, books, squirrel, armor, landscape, etc... all done in perspective with inlaid wood.
The best part, though, is that John gets a haircut. I guess he's been wanting to get it cut, but hasn't trusted the places in Passignano (with reason), and he figured that in a college town like Urbino he might get a cut that isn't too conservative. John tells everyone who walks into the salon while he's there that he came to Urbino to see the Palazzo and to get his hair cut by Marco. Everyone looks at him strangely until they realize he's joking. It's a good cut (the hairstylist kept saying "e un buon lavoro!" (it's a good job) over and over while cutting), and the whole trip is now a success.
The constantly circling birds, I have now learned, are swifts rather than swallows. If I knew my birds better, I would have recognized the v-shaped fork in the tail rather than the curved fork, but I only have a vague sense of birds (brown, black, little, noisy, etc...). I think bird recognition is a skill acquired later in life. Also, I can stop wondering why they seem to fly constantly with no clear destination- they are eating the bugs in the air. This made them, for a short while, my favorite birds in the world. But then I made a count of my mosquito bites, and now I think the swifts should be working a bit harder.
Italian mosquitoes are really preferable, I think, to American ones. Here they sneak up on you, and it isn't until much later that you realize you have another bite. Somehow I find that better because it means there's no point in being paranoid about being bitten. Once you feel the bite, it's way too late to worry about whether the mosquito is in the room. He might have left by now. Plus, they seem to prefer John just as much as me, which is rare. I have a feeling John prefers American mosquitoes....
We have a determined spider with no short-term memory that weaves a web over our door each night. I, of course, always forget and so have a daily creepy experience of walking through his web. He's probably figuring that since we're renters, we'll leave his house alone soon.
They say vipers and wild boars are rampant in these parts, but luckily I have only encountered spiders, mosquitoes and swifts.
Last night, as I left the house to pick up final things for dinner, I noticed Lake Trasimeno was slate grey, with a patchwork of small wind ripples running different directions. Looking up at the sky, I could see dark grey clouds. 20 minutes later, walking back in our front door, I heard the first rumble of thunder and got excited. I love summer rainstorms that arrive with flurry and bluster, real monsoons. Los Angeles tends to have rather mild rainstorms- rarely is there thunder or lightning, and I miss it.
John suggested we close the upstairs window, but I'm hoping that the rain will cool it down and don't want to lose the cross ventilation (see my attached drawing for a section of our house), . I decide to work by the upstairs window in case the wind starts blowing the rain sideways. 10 minutes later the storm gets louder. I look out the window, and halfway across the lake is a wall of white, and it's moving toward us. I yell for John to come help me close the window (it's a heavy steel one) and we get it closed just as the wall of water reaches us.
For the next half hour it alternates rain and hail, the wind blowing so hard that Lake Trasimeno looks like an ocean with waves. We unplug our computers and anything else nearby because of the thunder and lightning, and John goes around finding our flashlights and putting them in easy to find places (John knows Italian rainstorms better than I do, notice he suggested we close the window immediately...). But the storm passes uneventfully, and we slept wonderfully last night because it was a bit cooler.
Keeping cadavers around is rarely practical. And if you were a medical student during the 18th and 19th centuries it was rare to witness a dissection. So many medical schools ordered wax models for students to learn about the body. One of the most well-regarded artists in this field was Clementi Susini, a portion of whose work is housed in Bologna's Palazzo Poggi. There you could see bodies built up from bone, to muscle, to skin, with partial models showing healthy kidneys versus failing ones, hearts, lungs.
But probably the largest part of the collection was devoted to showing difficulties with childbirth. If you are pregnant and live in a country that doesn't have C-sections, stop reading this. If you are pregnant and live in a country that does have C-sections, be really thankful for them. There were breach babies, babies that were backwards, babies where one arm exited first (just by looking at it you could tell that was a death sentence for mother and baby). They showed how a midwife's hand should enter the uterus to try and rotate a baby, and gruesomely, they showed the hand of a midwife that improperly entered, perforating the uterus and inevitably causing a mortal loss of blood for the mother.
It was both horrifying and incredibly educational. I understand more about the human body during pregnancy than I probably ever wanted to know....
Today, as it was our last morning in Bologna, John decided he wanted to experience the craziness of San Luca's 4km arcade. So, for a second time, I made the trek. When we reached the beginning of the hill, though, we found that car traffic was being re-routed and people were gathering along the arcade to see something. We asked a gentleman what was going to happen, and he said, as we understood it, something about a motor race that was very historic. Great! We're here while there's a historic car or motorcycle race going on! So while walking up the arcade, we kept our ears and eyes peeled for the unmistakable sound of racing engines.
Pretty soon we heard the grumble of a motorcycle, and ran to the edge of the arcade, hoping to be there when the pack came around the corner of the adjoining street. But strangely, as it grew there was still the sound of only one motorcycle. Is it the head of the pack? One guy passes. He's not going as fast as I would expect. Perhaps he's just making sure the course is clear for the pack.
But soon another guy follows, also not going that fast, and this guy is at least 40 pounds overweight. Huh? And then we realize, this isn't a molto historico race (very historic), but a race of moto historicas (historic motorcycles). The bikes continue to pass, and now we can see that the bikes are really old. Some of the riders get into character for it, one dressing as an old soldier on a WWI army bike, some wearing the full leather outfit, but a few riders have a second person with them, and ar
e clearly just out for fun on their old bike.
Bologna is the home of Ducati (as pointed out by my friend Sandy), so many of them were from that revered company. But we noticed that all the cops overseeing the course were on BMWs.
This morning at 6:00am I woke up, and instead of rolling over to go back to sleep (we eat dinner until midnight here in Bologna), I started thinking maybe the morning would still be cool, and if I left now, maybe I could hike up to San Luca before it got too hot. Well, it was already hot this morning, but the hike to San Luca was worth it anyway.
First, you should know that Bologna is the city of arcades. Somebody built the first arcade during medieval times, and the town council thought it was a great idea, and pretty soon they started requiring it, even specifying the height so that riders on horseback could fit (which doesn't sound like such a great idea what with pedestrians and all, but I guess when it's hot even fancy people on horseback want to be covered). Walking through Bologna today you basically pass from one covered arcade to the next.
So I walk about a mile from our hotel, out through the old City gates, past cafe owners just beginning to set up, and finally get to the arcade of San Luca which snakes its way up the hill to the church on top. You can't see the church, all you see is a long arcade. I huff and puff my way to the end. Phew!
But then I get to the top and turn the corner... another long arcade, this one with stairs. Huff and puff. It's just me and the occassional jogger.
Turn another corner, the arcade stretches ahead. At the top a tiny figure appears, oh my gosh, he's so far away! It continues like this for a really, really, really long time. I had read that this was the world's longest arcade, but thought, "really, how long could that be?" Well, it's long, 4 kilometers (2-1/2 miles) long. It starts feeling like I'm in one of those nightmares where you're running down hallways that never end.
But it does end, at an unremarkable church at the top, and then I turn around and make my way back down, and actually enjoy the experience of the endlessness. It's like when I was a kid and I tried to imagine infinity. It was a great start to the day.
I just fell in love with the work of a Bolognese artist, Giorgio Morandi (born in Bologna in 1890). I'd never heard of him before, but went to check it out because my friend Josh insisted we see it (Josh comes every year for the Restored-Film Festival and so knows the City quite well).
It's free, so that was the first plus, and it's in an old palace with gently sloping stairs and a tall ceiling telling me the palace inhabitants didn't get off their horses until they were at the door of their chambers- worth it just for this so far. The first room has Morandi's early still lifes, from the 20's through the 30's. There is a studied akwardness to the arrangement of the objects, as though he is searching for some interesting relationship between them. Great, I like him.
And then I came to Natura Morta (still life) from 1948, where Morandi lines up the tops of all the objects in perspective, so his arrangement of things starts seeming like one thing. Very cool, and I really enjoy the work in this room.
Natura Morta 1957, the spaces between the objects starts to disappear. He has arranged them such that their lines are continuous, one piece melds into the next. You know there's space between them, but the objects read as though they've been compressed, your brain switches back and forth from seeing objects, to seeing a composition.
And by the 60's Morandi has reduced these compositions of objects into solid/void studies. I copied a drawing he does of an urn that clearly has two objects in front of it, but instead of drawing all the objects, he just draws the urn missing two chunks (see my copy of his drawing at right). Brilliant. He died two years later, and I wonder if it's because he was finally satisfied with the arrangement of the objects.
e to buy him more paper. It's inspiring to see how hard he works, and that usually gets me more focused again. John, of course, feels like he's not getting enough done. The Italian lifestyle does not support his workaholic tendencies. Morning cappuccino runs and afternoon gelato forays last a bit longer than his typical 20 minute breaks. But he looks much better since we left Los Angeles. The exhaustion and stress lines have eased on his face.
