It's my last week in Italia and I'm starting to get anxious. Anxious about saying goodbye to the terracotta-olive-lavender-mandirino landscapes and the goosebump-inducing feeling of walking upon the dust of history everywhere I go. Anxious about getting back to my new/old hometown, putting on my grown-up pants; and finding a job, a place to live, and new friends. Anxious about having to watch Fox news again and be surrounded by a country where everything moves in fast forward. I'm the only WWOOFer left on this farm and the sense of finality is so tangible I can taste it. The other two went off to Berlin and Boston to begin their lives again. I feel like a left-over right now, in limbo between this dream world and the real world. It's a bit lonely, but a good time to reflect on this amazing trip.
Allow me to descibe the last few (6) weeks... I last wrote during the end of my stay in Chiavari. So much has happened since then! I'm going to write about it as I remember it, with only brief and colorful flashes. I will try to leave out the little details because there's a lot of ground to cover. I last mentioned something about my heart. In Firenze. So we'll start there.
FIRENZE: I met Ryane's amazing family. They adopted me. Ate too many truffles. Dances and kisses in Babylon. Too much smoke, too many lights, heart confused again. Halloween was a wet, cold and sparkly night. The cobblestones glittered. I wore my tiger hat. Went on a wild treasure hunt for the only Vegan restaurant in Florence and after much wandering, found it. DOLCE VEGAN: glowing in the middle of a deserted street. The owner was a sweet and quiet 26 year old girl who didn't hand us a menu, but simply asked us what we felt like eating. We stuffed ourselves with delicious vegan homemade pasta and chocolate cake. Then made friends with some American film makers who bought us wine. Said goodbye to Firenze for what I thought would be the last time.
AREZZO: Miso, Miso. Went to work with Dario on a miso-lentil-wine-soy sauce farm. Big red vats of fermenting soy beans. Stirring, splashing, pressure washing and being generally wet and cold all day. Big ochre sunrises and pomegranate sunsets over the hills. 10 hour days. Big blackish rubies of dried grapes clumped and stiff after the wine pressing. Everything smelled fermented. I was all alone on this farm. The only succor for my lonliness was a book called The Monster of Florence and an iphone game called Zombie Farm. Needless to say I didn't last long. Went with Dario to the farmer's market in Firenze, and skidattled. Back to Ryane's house.
FIRENZE, again: Spent a week here looking for a new farm. Sleeping foot to foot on Ryane's giant gold/green leviathan of a couch. Caught up with all the shenanigans of Sookie Stackhouse and Rachel Barry. Had too many Tegan and Sara sing alongs. Ate truffle-infused sausage. Yes. Sausage. Stirred up a pot of broken hearts and drama, and decided to leave it there for good. Cut all the strings, except the one attached to Ryane and together we went to find some new adventures in....
BOLOGNA: Couch surfing with Aurelio, who wondered why he couldn't find a girlfriend with similar interests: computer games, chain smoking, and quantum physics. Beats me. We cooked for him his first taste of Mexican food, which he loved. Then we played dress-up and took him to his first gay club, Il Cassero, which he also loved. Bologna by day is an intricate labyrinth of colors and music adorned with art deco metalwork twisting through all its nooks and crannies. We tramped around and made some new friends and on the last day, we woke up and impulsively decided to seek out my relatives in...
VICENZA: With only 4 hours notice, my relatives graciously arranged for us to come visit. Heart thumping with anticipation, I pulled out my cleanest dirty clothes and and tried to look like a nice girl. (The key word here is TRY. It's a bit tricky when one has been farming and living out of a backpack for 3 months. They could have cared less.) We arrived at the train station, a sleek black BMW with a Dolce & Gabbana leopardprint-clad Indonesian super-model in the passenger seat pulled up. Thinking this couldn't possibly be my family, we kept walking. That's when Lucca got out of the car and looked at me expectantly. Long blonde hair, big blue Della Valle eyes and a designer cardigan. Ryane and I looked at each other and shrugged, then slid into the warmed leather seats. This trip keeps getting better and stranger. He took us to his parent's house in Sandrigo and I met a whole new side of my family. Another cousin, Daniele, looks almost more like me than my brothers do. Laura, the nonna, is a knitting and crocheting machine. She should have her own label. Ferdinando showed us around the homestead and when he found out I had been farming, got excited. They make their own prosecco and marmalade there. Milena is an excellent cook and made us eat at least one plate of cookies each. Later that night, Lucca and his girlfriend Sari took us to Marostica and Bassano Del Grappa. We played on the life-size chess board and climbed to the top of a darkened castle. Then we drank the local mezzo-mezzos, which taste a bit like rum and coke, but are sneaky if you lose count of how many you had. Later they insisted that they pay for our hostel. Oh, famiglia! We ate lunch with them the next day and met another cousin, Matteo. Then Ferdinano gave us a quick tour of Vicenza and we hopped a train to Firenze.
VIBO VALENTIA: I said my final goodbye to Firenze and went to meet Mirte in the toe of the boot, Calabria. It was an 9 hour train ride and when I got there, it felt like another country. Everyone in the north warns you about the south. They say it's poor, dirty, dangerous, and conservative. Well, most of that is true. But it's also real. And beautiful. And the mamas there actually yell at you if you don't eat two of everything. They also tell you that tattoos give you cancer. Mirte and I drifted around for days by the sea; weeding, eating, walking and dreaming together of all possibilities life has to offer. We hatched a plan to bike from Amsterdam to Berlin. Once you've had this many ridiculous adventures, anything seems possible. Mirte and I become conquerers of our own imaginations when we wwoof together. We took a little trip to Tropea one day and when we tried to buy a ticket on the train, the ticket man told us to 'vieni qua!', to come up to the front of the train! Not only did we get a free train ride, I got to drive the train. We farmed our little hearts out at San Giorgio and saw the place where the wwoofers live in the summer: two little shacks covered in murals, rooftop lookouts, tree houses, random furniture scattered everywhere and chickens. Lots of crazy chickens. It was a Lost Boys paradise. I always wanted to be a lost boy. I need to return to San Giorgio next summer.
REGGIO DI CALABRIA: Mirte and I continued the adventure into the southernmost tip of Italy. From here you can see Sicily and Mt. Etna clearly across the narrow straight of Messina. As we rode the train along the coast, there was a giant dark cloud just over Sicily punctured only with a few burning laser beams of sunlight. This surreal view made it obvious to me why this is where Homer chose to write about the terrifying Scylla monster. It was a a magical place. We stayed with a couch surfing host and explored the big white decorative seaside town of Reggio di Calabria. Two new pals took us to the nearby ghost town called Pentidattilo. It's on a mountain top with rock formations shaped like 5 fingers, hence the name. It's a 2,000 year old village and the inhabitants still speak their own Greek dialect. Our friends have started a project to restore the ruins and keep the history alive there. They hold an international film festival there every year too. There are several artists who live there in the old ruins and make stuff all day as well as continue to make the traditional art from the village. At the end of our time here, I got on the night train to go back up north to my new farm, OZU. As the train was getting ready to depart, I leaned out the window and told Mirte I felt like Harry Potter on my way to Hogwarts. I know, I know. But I had to say it.
MONTELEONE SABINO: is a tiny little town with Roman origins perched on the top of a mountain along the salaria road. There are still lion statues all over the place, their faces indistinct blobs from being exposed to the elements for a thousand years. The name of the farm is OZU. It's actually a cultural center run by a photographer, Enrico Blasi, his partner, Paola Simoni, and their 3 year old Ettore. It was originally built as a candy factory. The candy makers started production and then later realized the roads were too narrow for the trucks to drive on. So they closed. And now it's OZU. It's near Roma. In the mountains. I've been here for 2 weeks with 2 other wwoofers. We've been picking olives in the cold, on slopes so steep, you have to lean like Micheal Jackson just to keep from slipping down the hill. Whenever one of us almost drops the 20 kilo box of precious olives, I have a flashback from the Princess Bride where Wesley rolls down the hill yelling 'Asssss youuuuu wissshhhh!'. It's that kinda steep. I love it here. When it's too cold or rainy to pick olives, we cuddle up with our huge blankets and watch a film from Blasi's huge collection and wait to get fed. As I said before, it's getting lonely here! I'm the last wwoofer left and I have ants in my pants.
It's the last week here and I have 2 days left on my eurail pass. I might try to see Pompeii! On to the next adventure!
bacio
Rosa
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