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Karen Mickleson | profile | all galleries >> Galleries >> Joy In Beauty Travelogue: One Response to a Terminal Cancer Diagnosis | tree view | thumbnails | slideshow |
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This website is a version of the travelogue I wrote home to friends and family in the form of emails from March to October of 2000. The photos didn't really 'happen' until I got home and saw what I had accumulated on handsfull of Canon Elph APS film, and have been integrated after the fact.
Techno-drags were much worse in 2000. I was plagued with lack of internet connections, computer problems and cell phone malfunctions which took me from exasperation to discouragement to loneliness to downright depression at times, and also led me to interact with sundry helpful and comforting souls. One of the great disappointments of the trip was my loss of many photos to the use of a primitive Sony Digicam (DCR-TRV10) which I thought I could take still pictures. They didn't even list megapixels then, and when I returned, I found they were garbage. This is why some places are not represented with photo pages. (I have replaced what should have been with others from different locations.)
The inspiration for publishing this travelogue came when I began to make plans for a return trip from 23 August to 14 November of 2006. Along the way I discovered the forums at a wonderful travel site called Slowtrav, where a community of great people encourage renting apartments and living in places we visit instead of darting around fearing we’ll miss out on something. The incredibly generous and knowledgeable people on these forums, and the separate Slow Travel site are treasure troves of useful information. People at Slowtrav write up Trip Reports with stories, photos and helpful, delicious discoveries about every destination.
Slowtrav didn't exist in 2000. If it had, I'd have learned from its wisdom to plan a different kind of journey, as I am for my upcoming trip. As it was, my stays in important cities like Venice, Rome and Florence were too short. I stayed in hotels or apartments in cities, and chose B&B's in rural areas, with visits to old and new friends and a week long rental of a charming stone cottage with a pool in the Lot of France thrown in. Parts of the trip evolved in response to my health and unpredictable events. Sometimes I had no plan and pulled over to consult Sawday's for a spot to rest my head, leading to wacky and wonderful surprises.
There were times when I didn't write at all because I was too preoccupied with living, or sick with a cold and URI, or exhausted or crabby or just plain missing my muse. In this report, I'll occasionally fill in with a reconstructed memory written after the fact of what was going on in the time gaps. (Summer, 2006)
March 14, 2000
Saturday, March 18
I head off down the curvy Romantic Road to Rothenberg in the rain, where slopes and fields were dressed in fresh greens against gunmetal grey skies, bounded by trees still bearing the death look of winter. Despite the rain, I'm delighted to be heading into the land of quaint. Arrived in Rothenburg about 4:30--a charming medieval walled city. My room--actually a suite with a separate bedroom--is in pink with a panoramic view across the Tuber river. Pink taffeta wallpaper, pink marble in the bathroom, pink carpets, all offset by cream French repro furniture--or, perhaps they are real antiques.
Another domestic note concerns a subject near to my heart: the beds. Once you enter Germany, all hotel beds come with a fitted firm mattress, on which is artistically puffed up a down comforter and featherbed! They look like fat soft sausages on the bed and invite serious plopping, which I of course do, as soon as the porter has left. And, DOWN pillows! Man have I missed my down pillows. But how do you justify bringing down pillows in your suitcase?
Dinner at the hotel cafe across the street is delicious: Lamb saddle in black-olive sauce with vegetables: pleasantly steamed brussels sprouts and cauliflour and “potato-noodles”--these cute little torpedo shaped potato pastas which had been pan browned after parboiling, and made delicious tidbits when taken with a bite of the lamb dipped in the sauce. The varities of noodle please me, carb freak that I am.
I set out on this overcast day with still and video camcorder to try my hand at this filming thing. Rothenburg lends new meaning to quaint. Walked around the town's high wall, shooting picturesque views of colored houses with various shades of orange roofs. Later, I rewound the tape to see what Id’ done and learned some things...one important one is to return the tape to the location it was before you resume shooting, as I had taped over my town shots with ones of a pair of waitresses in the cafe I’d been eating at. Also learned about the back light button. Handy, that.
After about five miles, body said 'Enough' so I napped before going out to find one of few open restaurants on Sunday night. I amble around in awe of the tidy ancient architecture, not sure where I'm going. When I became confused, I asked a woman my most common question, "Do you speak any English?", when she informed me "a little", and then added, "I'm from Bosnia". We chatted and walked along, me stumbling to make a heart communication of my sorrow for her situation. When I got to the restaurant, what a charmer, with romantic low ceilings and candles only, booths, and an intimate atmosphere. Ordered pork loin medallions with spaetzle, yet another delicious form of noodlery which had me umming and awwing.
Spent most of the day driving down to Meersburg, which took much longer than I'd expected, so I arrived exhausted. Meersburg, however, is a stunning lakeside medieval village on Lake Constance. The owner of my hotel, Michael, was to have been "the chef", but alas, I arrived for the 2 nights he is off. He referred me across the street to a dining room of a hotel where I sat in the back room watching a young, blonde, twentysomething waiter navigate life with a very fastidious older waiter who worked with him, and, who the blonde fellow said "gets very confused and nervous and funny whenever there are more than 3 tables full. He can't figure out which way to go first." Anyhow, you had to be there, but watching the 2 of them manage things was quite entertaining. AND, the broiled duck breast in orange sauce with those potato noodles again was delicious.
I’m sitting outside on the corner balcony of my hotel in Garmish-Partenkirchen (say that five times fast!) with cheese and crackers and drink, having come back late to watch the sun go down on the Bavarian Alps. It’s crisp cold and getting darker. The remainder of the sunset looms over there in dark oranges framing sharp peaks whose snow looks blue. Meanwhile, looking for the classical music station amongst the paltry choices, what should I come upon but an American talk show with, guess who, Dr. Laura of all things. No classical music but Dr. Laura. Oy.
Spent the morning in continued efforts to try this or that option within the hotel for connecting to the net to get and send email, all for naught.
Then, I wandered around town down to the Partenkirchen part, which started out in A.D. 15 as the Roman town of Partanum on the trade route from Venice to Augsburg. Its main street, Ludwigsstrasse, follows the original Roman road. Garmisch is appears about 800 years later as Germaneskau aka: "German District". Today they have proud separate identities and take umbrage at being viewed interchangeably.
Along the way to the “other” side, I tried several times unsuccessfully to use my ATM card to no avail. Apparently, Wells Fargo is persona non grata here. This may prove to be a problem, but I’ll figure out something.
While eating lunch, a sweet German woman asked to join me on my outside table in the blazing spring sun, reflecting the snow of the surrounding snowy mountains into a brightness which hurt my eyes. She was waiting for her husband who was in a business meeting they’d driven 4 hours from their vacation site so he could attend, only to turn around and drive 4 hours back. She and I took up a bit together, and shopped the pedestrian street. I let her use my cell phone, and they brought me back to my hotel as I was too pooped to walk back. Then came the GOOD news: I got connected at an internet cafe & was able to send off my travelogue.
I think tomorrow I will venture over to Fussen to see the big castles whose names I can’t now recall. For now, it’s off to a “fabulous” Bavarian restaurant.
WOW!!. The traditional Bavarian restaurant I found last night, where I expected to get just another plate of delicious overly rich food, turned into the total Bavarian get-down-and-be-loud-experience, including an accordion player about sixty who drinks endless quart beers from a humungous glass--which the waitress provides with great flourish--while hammering out “Roll Out the Barrel...” There are busty crusty waitresses in dirndls whose boobies jiggled when they leaned over to take your order, long tablesfull of people (usually, I imagine, a mix of locals and tourists, but this night I sat at the end of a long table of tourists, most from the US). Periodically, two young pubescent boys come out to the middle of everything to do a slap-your-butt-and-foot dance which, as everyone gets drunker, makes people hoot and holler more and more.
A raucous group of squeaky clean, pink-cheeked young twenty-something German kids on holiday were leading the place in swinging & swaying, with people hooking arms and getting progressively more silly than they would ordinarily be. I could kill myself for not having brought my camcorder to this place. The human mix and music and all would have been the best of all my video so far, which, I’m noticing, is mostly buildings and very little in the way of people. I think I’m getting baroqued out.
The trip to Fussen to see Mad King Ludwig II’s Neuschwanstein and Herrenchiemsee castles was a bit trying. I keep getting past a turnoff and then realizing I probably should have gone the other way, which amounts to not being able to find the darn things in the first place. Then when I did, the only access up to the castle was a steep walk I didn’t want to make, and the horse carriages had a 2 block line of Japanese tourists whose bus route up to their parking lot was snowed in. So, my visit to this bit of baroquery will have to wait another time.
Headed over to Salzburg by way of yet another impossibly quaint Bavarian village and shopping mecca, Mittenwald, on the German/Austian border--a particularly cute one where I got a parking ticket and bought my first item: a butter yellow windbreaker jacket with oodles of bells & whistles like special waterproof microfiber fabric, a zip-out thinsulsation lining, sleeves which zip off to provide a vest, and a hidable hood...Only problem is that its color is so beautiful I stick out like a sore thumb wearing it amidst everyone else's black, black and black on black. I left the parking ticket and drove out of town doing nothing about it because I couldn't read it, and besides, catch me if you can.
The hotel here in Salzburg is a bit fancier than I’d expected. My fourth floor corner room looks out over the river, its bridges looking at night for all their worth like those of the River Seine. Took a walk around the village, and WHEW--lots of tourists and elegant shops for them to dispose of disposable money in. But the city itself is a real jewel with much beauty per square inch I’ll explore tomorrow.
Full day. Took the fununcular up to the Hohensalzburg Fortress, which began being built in 1077 under an archbishop named Gebhard during some investiture conflict over whether German Emporor Heinrich IV or Pope Gregor would be the new monarch, in case you were wondering. Very interesting example of early property protection by cannonballs. Waited for teen tourists to move from this or that spot to take a picture and eventually walked down to beautiful St. Peter’s Cemetery and church, saw the Cathedral.
I got back to Salzburg in time to do the four hour Lakes and Mountains Tour--and I’m glad I did as the Sound of Music tour goes in a huge bus, whereas ours was in a more intimate minivan. Tom, our guide, was a friendly German bloke who loved Mozart and was pleased with the mix of customers on our run. He said it’s not so fun when you get a bunch of deadpan, silent types who never react or ask questions. The lakes and villages we saw were lovely, but again, more of the same cute Bavarian style. Went to the church where the wedding in Sound of Music was filmed. You know, I hate to admit it, but I never saw The Sound of Music.
Then the creme de la creme: I went to a Mozart & Hayden chamber music concert in Mirabell’s Marble and Gold room, another tastefully gilded room.
A lovely female trio played pieces for piano, violin and viola by Mozart and Hayden. They were in mid to late 20s, maybe older, and my hotel man had got me a front row center seat 2 feet from them with perfect view of how their faces sang to the music with subtle smiles, aching grimaces, furrowed brows. Their beauty was remarkable, both musically and physically.
Hallstatt is a storybook village of cobblestone and ivy and geraniums nestled into a craggy, forested mountain, hugging the shore of Lake Halstattersee. Sadly, after the long drive, it rains both days I'm here, making my explorations of tiny lanes and colorful houses soggy, cold and dreary. I vow to return one day.
Note circa 2006: I've learned that Rick Steves has discovered Hallstatt, and take some pride in having been there before his discovery of it. I wonder what's happened to its sleepiness since his kiss upon it.
This is a one night stopover en route from Vienna to Venice.
3 April 2000, Evening
I slept today, my first full day in cold, wet Venice, from 3-6:30, tired of walking around freezing in the rain with no particular objective. I'd sent a box of travel guides, books, maps, a huge supply of cancer herbs, and everything I needed beyond Vienna, including vouchers for entry to all Italy museums I wanted to see for $145, to a friend living in Vienna, but it never arrived, testing my capacity to go with the flow, to recreate my structure by finding the lost books. Thankfully, Select Italy called tonight and will re-fax the museum ticket vouchers.
So my focus shifts from narrow cobbled streets full of shops (mostly designer or jewelry shops, Italian glass and antiques; some owners closing because there are not enough tourists in the rain to warrant being there, others staying open come hell or high water--which in Venice is more than a metaphor), to life inside my Antonia Suite. What a place to be stuck in bad weather. It's like I'm in some glorified mountain cabin attic, with the day's steady rain pattering on skylights. Antonia is a little 2 room apartment, except for no cooking burners to brew one's own espresso, and that the minibar fridge is too small to accommodate things.
Meantime, while not enjoying the raindrops, I'm enjoying the little stereo I got--played an old tape of Keith Jarrett's Koln Concert while lying on the firm kingsize bed looking out at rain on rooftops of red clay half arc tiles. I think Jarrett's performance in Koln is one of the most extraordinary pieces of music I've ever heard. It evokes pictures of masses of joyful determined humanity surging across a plain to reclaim their homeland. And now, a CD called "Barbers Adagio", which does the same transportingly beautiful piece of music in umpteen different deliveries by different orchestras. The music turns me to my interior.
Feels like my time so far has been walking to and from St. Marcos Square in the rain except for yesterday afternoon when the sun came out for a few hours. This morning, tho, I did follow directions to get a battery replaced on my currency converter, taking me over to a street with functional stores off St. Stephen's place. The man in this electronic hardware store was so nice...it needed one of two small round batteries packaged by Duracell together. He put the one in and charged me half the price on the Duracell package. Don't see that back home, you know.
Spent today mostly getting lost in the Dorosduro, the area surrounding the Acadamia Museum, which I started out with in the morning. Many fine renaissance paintings which don’t do much for me, except for Bellini’s portraits, which I find entrancing.
I had my first bit of sweetness tonight. Went to eat at a restaurant recommended by one of the young hotel porters and was placed at a tiny table in a tiny room with a table full of five clearly bright Americans sitting across from me who, from their conversation I could tell were from the Bay Area. I even heard one of the women mention San Rafael at one point. I’d sort of dressed up, which for me simply meant wearing a bra and one of those stretchy shirts with black & tan stripes with my long black skirt, so I was out of my usual frumpy mode and found myself feeling odd that I wasn’t in kindred style with the loosely dressed Californians.
I was occupying myself trying to eavesdrop on them when the waiter ushered in and placed two very handsome Italian men at the small table next to me. Like five inches between the tables. One was older with silver hair rising back to frame a tanned face and winsome deep blue eyes, the other a bearded, lovely man of about my age who looked at me with a warm but tethered smile and chose to sit next to me rather than across from me, where he seated his guest. They launched into a lively Italian conversation, with the fellow next to me full of descriptive hand gesturing, touching the older man on his arm to stress a point occasionally, and the older man taking it all in with his own style of vivacious responsiveness.
The fellow on my left was very passionate about his subject, and every now and then I recognized the word “bambinos”, and came to assume that they were father and son. When the inevitable moment came when we exchanged glances and comments, and they offered to share their white wine with me, which far surpassed the red wine I’d ordered, I indicated in broken Italian something like “father and son”? To which the man on my left said, in English, “No, it’s business. He’s a lawyer”, gesturing to his friend. I said, “Tell your friend he has good eyes--I mean eyes of depth” He did. I asked, “What did he say?” “He said he knows”.
He then explained he was an epidemiologist physician who works in Milan at, get this, the major cancer institute there, who is working on the Italian equivalent of a class action suit on behalf of people who got cancers from one or another sort of radiation testing which I can’t specifically recall. And, the other fellow, of course, was the attorney for the suit, whom he’d driven three hours from Milan to meet with. I indicated that this was very interesting as I was a professional as well, and a cancer patient, too.
I was finished eating and got up to leave, thanked the Italians for sharing their wine. But first I couldn’t help but stop and visit with the Californians, who, it turns out, live in San Francisco and were together here for a work project of some sort--one an architect, one an editor, others with professions I don’t recall. The funny Jewish fellow, Mark, took a dramatic shine to my black raincoat, wanted to know where it was from, every detail, and much humor and laughter ensued. By this time, the two Italian men got up and left.
When I finally said my farewells to the Californians and headed out, who should be waiting to buy me a coffee but the Italian man who’d sat next to me. His lawyer friend had left and he was waiting for me, and we talked. There was a very clear attraction between us, and he had this incredibly warm and sincere way of catching my meaning each time I spoke.
I told him what kind of cancer I had, and how lethal it was and he said “I know” with a grave tone which made me believe him. He asked, “Squamous or adeno?”, When I said, “Adeno”, he was quick to say that it wasn’t as bad as the squamous...I told him my story of not wanting the surgery, and he so obviously understood that I felt dearly known for these moments in a far away land.
Soon he wanted to leave, and so we walked--or, he walked me to my hotel, along which way there were warm moments when he put his arm in mine and spoke of the lovlieness of Venice while I commented on the beauty of his passion about his mission. When we reached my hotel, I could have suggested we keep walking to St. Marks Square, but I did not, knowing full well that continued contact would lead very soon to muchas smooches, as my dear friend Sam would say. And I knew full well he had to have a wife and bambinos of his own back in Milan, so didn’t want to “go there”. But he took my hands in his so sweetly and wished me the best of luck with eye contact to beat the band, and I said, “Wait...what’s your name?” “Paolo”, he said. “Paul”. “I’m Karen”, I replied. And that was it.
I floated up to my Antonia Suite in a feeling I have not had for many years, and felt sad that I’d not had the courage to suggest some type of further contact. But, as I said at the outset, it was a lovely time of sweetness which I will cherish as something I’d lost the longing for and was moved to rediscover.
Today was a barnburner of a tourist pleasure for me. First, the sun shone. That alone would have been enough to send me to joy, but I also chose to take the waterbus to visit Murano and Burano. Murano, of course, is the glassblowers’ island, home, now commercialized marketplace. It’s a mini version of a Venetian type island with canals to be walked over here and there to see this or that color or scene or architectural view.
The wider streets and alleys allow more light, and fewer people means less claustrophobia. Murano has photographic charm in a here and there sort of way. Many, many shops selling Murano glass of every size, shape, form, cost, and degree of tastefulness which one can imagine, and there are mosaic designs embedded in the stone walls next to some stores which interested me more than the stores themselves. I found one store which sold individual beads, and, thinking of Fran and Marcy, I got some to play with later.
And then there’s Burano. I lost my heart there. It’s an island originally occupied with artists, added to by lacemakers at some point along the way. We’re talking LOTs of lace stores. One old woman was gracious to let me video her, and I felt half guilty for doing so. But oh the color. A lineup on the canal of complimentary building colors, going from outrageously fresh avocado green to melon orange, to periwinkle blue, to warmed brick red or rich chartreuse or turquoise blue--most with contrasting dark green shutters. It’s a color nirvana for me, and those who know me know how color makes my heart sing.
The vaperetto rides to and from these places were another trip altogether. Boatloads of pushy, noisy, self-absorbed youngsters from every country, city. Even without understanding their language, I could make out the distinct outlines of triangulated friendships and hurt feelings here and there. Subtle, but there. Many Italian kids from Rome, a batch of which I ended up near on the ride back to Venice proper, in the form of pubescent boys, some with pimples, hiding in “Game Boy” and others showing one another crystals and glass dolphins and such which they'd bought for their “girlfriends”.
These guys were curious about me, and when I eventually broke the ice, they all became instantly competitive about being the one to be able to talk to me...with minimal language connection it was hard, but they were blown away that I was from California, and they thought the flowing black skirt with Burano colored flowers all over it I was wearing was “bad taste”. Actually, the old Italian man behind me said it and they all laughed together about it. Italians stick with solid dark colors and elegant lines. I don’t particularly care if I fit in, although I take umbrage with the suggestion of having bad taste.
Long walk to weave my way back to the hotel. Along the way re-bought a Florence-Tuscany Guide which I’d bought one of yesterday and lost somewhere. Got a salami sandwich I just ate, will have an orange, and some Italian chocolate cookies. With Keith Jarret’s new CD which my sister gave me playing in the background. When Jarret plays “Someone to Watch Over Me”, I think of Paolo.
Yesterday I took a ride on the vaperetto water bus up the canal to the end, got off and meandered my way down to Rialto Bridge, which is the central marketplace--many tourist booths, open food booths. The place was jammed, the water full of gondolas with the rich; tons, and I mean TONS of kids lining the canal. It was a beautiful sunny day and all the girls were half naked trying to get an early tan.
Today I took a boat ride over to Lido Island to see what that was like, and was pleased to find out that it was, well, like empty!! Since beach weather isn’t here yet, I had this lovely long island almost to myself. The workers were dozing the sand in preparation for putting out hundreds of these little tiny house-like huts which line the beach in season, presumably to change clothes in. This struck me as very odd, coming from California, where people just wear their suits under their clothes to the beach.
My friend Thomas reminded me that I’m in Italy, where people are still pretty conservative. I wondered if each hut also had a porta-potty, which would make them more worth the work involved in getting them there, in my mind. Walked on the hard, flat sand of the waters’ edge resisting my temptation to pick up a slew of shells and felt a glorious sense of spaciousness which one loses when in Venice proper for awhile.
I walked down to the island’s one spectacular old building to discover it had become a Westin hotel. Sat out on their vast expanse of a patio on the beach in the sun, had a Nicoise salad for lunch and then took a leisurely stroll back to the vaperetto down a street with real trees, shrubs, bushes, and the like. Most all the buildings on Lido are brand spanking new apartment or condo buildings, with a few historic ones tucked into this lot or that. Most are painted shades of common local the terra cotta, but unmistakably square, hard edges, telltale of new construction.
Then home to sweet Antonia to pack, for tomorrow I leave. Packing in my case, of course, is a major endeavor. No comments from the peanut gallery, please.
The drive from Venice began with my usual wrong exits and having to turn around and retrace steps long enough for it to take an hour to get out of town. Once on the right highway, however, my world changed. Here were hills of artistically apportioned plots in gorgeous greens, chartreuses and caramel browns not yet planted, dotted by cypress clusters which look like an artist put them there to paint.
This is what the pictures and paintings show, but they cannot capture the extraordinary sense of light which I couldn’t grasp before seeing it. It is real. A heavenly transparent veil filtering the sun into unseeable glitter. The bounty of the rain I’d complained about in Venice spawned the beauty of a Tuscan spring sprawling out before me.
When I finally found La Volpaia, the B & B I’m to stay at for the next week, I was greeted by my hosts, Silvia and Andrea. Both are Italians who speak shamefully good English--she from Milan and he, an historically Jewish Italian from Roma whose family goes back to 300 bc.
Andrea is a retired architect [or lawyer, can't recall now which] and abstract artist in his 50's with a grizzled beard and an affection for plain old Italian cigars, which he enjoys chewing and puffing on only somewhat discreetly, depending on whose presence he’s in. Of course, everyone asks him if he likes Cuban cigars, and he makes it a point to say “No, just the Italian ones”. I figure he’d get inundated with Cuban cigars if he said he liked them. He had been working in his profession for many years, but during the 80’s got sick of the indignity of the corrupt patronage system in Roma and decided to buy and remodel this property, which, according to the photographic diary, was no simple task. He’d always wanted to have a guest house because he “likes people” and wanted to be out from under the dominance of the clan.
The property was once a typical old Tuscan farmhouse, crumbling down, but now refurbished into a country home of brick archways, dark old wood beams, and a mishmash of furnishings ranging from antiques to economically recovered couches to oriental rugs of unknown origin, which, by the way, need that rubber stuff under them because they slip on the shiny wood floor. First day I fell flat on my butt stepping onto one and in process my little Canon camera hit the wall and appeared to be dead, but was later saved by another guest. A Chinese fellow named Freeman who lives with his Japanese TV commercial producer wife in, guess where, Tiburon--a town in my home county, fiddled with the camera a bit and presto!
The house is filled with Andrea’s sculptures and art. He slices pieces of driftwood with a saw on the horizontal, juxtaposing the smoothness and upward reach of the wood with jaggedness of the horizontal cuts. He is a recycler by nature and several of his pieces are made for practicality’s sake into unusually configured lights or lamps, or tables. The walls are full of his abstract watercolors in orange and yellow Chinese ink. Some incorporate carved, painted styrofoam. Sounds strange, but makes good abstract art according to guests I met. Being an impressionist art fan, his work doesn’t scratch my itch, but I appreciate its intensity and gutty boldness.
The house nestles in a hilly area with multidirectional views of breathtaking Tuscan terrain. There’s a stable and pastures for 6 horses--their prize a beautiful chestnut quarter horse stallion with long flowing mane and tail in butterscotch. The oldest is a mare about nine looking somewhat apolussa.
There are also 6 cats, only 2 of whom have names, the rest numbers, and 2 dogs, although Silvia tells people she only has one dog, which means Paco the lovably spoiled chunky black lab. They both love and treat him like the child they never had, and old photos show her feeding Paco at the table with a napkin around his neck in a way which, if done by a New York dowager would be sickening, but in Silvia’s case, is very amusing.
The second dog, Cuchco, a black and white border collie mix, stays chained up because, as she says, with fierce resentment, “He’s a cat killer”. Apparently Paco brought him home one day and he turned out to treat cats like prey, and they were never able to find a home for him. So they keep him chained up except for daily runs, and while Paco’s in the dining room with guests being treated to amazing bones and scraps, poor old Cuchco is alone outside. I, of course, took him my scraps, making it a jokeful matter. To be fair, he does have a good chunk of freedom during the day when the cats are “put up”, when he runs for miles, and they give him treats sometimes, but not like Paco. Talk about identifying with the underdog.
Silvia’s usually talking about something or other she might do for you in the delightful Italian way where her enthusiasm and energy make her talk over you and it’s hard to get a word in crosswise. If she’s not talking with you, she’s prattling on while she walks around the property working, talking to Paco or a cat or a horse or the air.
Silvia and Andrea together are a hoot, rattling on over each other and then apologizing one to the other midstream, as if they’re really trying hard to stop doing that. Many delightful after dinner conversations are peppered with such antics making the rich history and opinions they vehemently express unclear sometimes, despite their good English. Silvia is by nature a political analyst who sees most issues in terms of politics and economics, while Andrea’s preferred window on things is historical, and depending on the guests, the conversation can become very engaging.
Joseph is an absolute sweetheart Filipino man who lives and works there with his wife, Leta, and their 3 month old girl whose name I forget. They clean up dishes after dinner and prepare breakfast, clean rooms and such. I trudge downstairs sleepy eyed each morning for my cappuccino which he happily makes for me, calling me “Miss Karen”. I think I might have known him before, as the affectional click clearly went off. We share musical tastes and he was thrilled to be able to tape my Beatles CD’s and a compilation CD of soft rock hits from the 80’s.
Silvia fixes everything else, which is a lot of work and extraordinarily delicious. I followed her around the kitchen like a child, taking notes, as she zipped from one task to the next.
Brief story. Slept all day mostly after having felt flu aches all night long, and rainy weather invited same on Monday.
Pork loin w/mashed potatoes:
Tiramisu:
In bowl: 4 yolks & 4-5 T. sugar & w/immersion blender, blend it till it becomes white & soft...Add one T. sweet wine marsala? Blend in.
Put in wider pan on stove w/water, low flame, stirring till water is a little boiling, and hot and swells & let it cool. In same bowl add mascarpone galbani: 500 g package, about 1 cup & blend it in w/immersion blender & pour over lady fingers & spread. & cover w/saran wrap & put in fridge for 2-3 hours, can do day before... Sprinkle w/ bitter chocolate powder liberally before serving.
Best I’ve ever had.
Unable to get connected to internet since Saturday, which is bugging me more than it should. I decided to get out into the Tuscan world even tho it was raining lightly, but by the time I got to San Gimignano, a “main” medieval town to see, it was POURING--big disappointment from photo point of view. Chose not to visit the Medieval Torture Museum, thank you.
But I DID begin my introduction to the extraordinarily beautiful array of Tuscan pottery, plates, vases, etc, which both fill the tourist shops, and are represented by artists who have their own shops. Sylvano, husband of a woman I talked with before leaving, has his shop on the main square, and his work was stunning. The beauty of this stuff is just too hard for me to resist, not that I ever really try all that hard to resist. I got a couple of pieces, vowing that would be all, but we all know how that story goes.
All we guests dragged in to La Volpaia about five all wet and tired. A very dear “normal” American family of 2 charming grandparents, their two handsome, retired military sons with lovely second wives, and a darling pair of daughters of one of the couples had arrived the night before. Nice people not of my page so to speak, but very warm, loving and kind. The grandma Janine took a shine to me, and she and her hubby want me to come visit in Seattle area.
People are taken by my story, I must say. When they hear I'm on a six month trip alone, not knowing how long I'll live, all manner of responses spring forth. "How brave!" or "All alone???" or… I've begun to let myself go wigless, as the damn thing bugs me.
Baby lamb leg baked in slow oven w/white wine & rosemary & garlic.
Juice them, filter juice; add half cup Superfine sugar & some water [half cup] & boil in pan till sugar melts….Let it cool & pour in plastic flat container in freezer...Stir occasionally 1/2 hour...Put in bowl & immersion blender & switch on & return to same container, repeat one hour later. Place one clemintine slice on each serving and go to heaven.
It is now Friday night, 14 April and I am in Florence, installed in a top floor penthouse with a back terrace and 2 huge windows facing the Arno River and the Ponte Veccio is right below me....If I am able to get online, which I'll try shortly, I'll write more later...No rain, but cloudy skies. Who cares?
I arrived in Florence to the Hotel Continental where I climbed the last two curling flights after the elevator’s six to a penthouse in an old stone tower. Salvatore the smiling porter dealt with the stuff problem while I threw open the two tall windows to the River Arno, where I stared down in awe with a pigeon’s view of the Ponte Vecchio.
This famous bridge is an ancient pedestrian shopping zone now occupied by more gold jewlery stores than I’ve ever seen assembled in one place before. The human tendency to not want to miss out on what someone else may have discovered is alive and well here, as tourists and locals still bunch around the windows of these stores ooohing and aaahhhing and jostling for a good position to view this or that particular batch of booty. Behind the storefronts are living quarters of some sort which form a row of colorful buildings, viewed from the river on either side of the central porticoed portion where lovers hang out and over the bridge looking down at the water, kissing.
This hotel splurge directly borders the long shopping street which is a continuation of the Ponte Vecchio, housing the customary array of redundant designer shops for leather purses, gloves, coats, silk scarves, cafes, bars, and oodles of tiny chic stores with tiny chic clothing for tiny chic women. While the traditional style for Italian women has always been high quality items in basic black, grey, and camel, there appears to now be a hot trend afoot towards vivid colors--perhaps mostly reserved for the young. Lavender is WAY in, especially lavender down vests. And skimpy shocking pink or orange or yellow tops to go with the essential black pants and high platform black shoes.
In both Florence and Venice, I compete for space in constant battle with tourist groups of noisy kids wearing black down coats, black pants, black everything. They cram every museum, gelateria, self-serve food joint and pedestrian walkway, lining the sittable outside spaces with MacDonalds’ bags and Quarterpounders in hand. Most of them don't give a whit about the art, and, to be fair, they were dragged here on a trip which promised freedom from home and fantasied partying galore. Maybe my annoyance tells a story about my own youth and adolescence and how unpleasant it is to be reminded of the layers of desperation. The adults who take these kids on tours deserve patience sainthood.
The Uffizi began an experience which, after the Palazzo Pitti’s Galleria Palatina and royal apartments, Galleria dell’Accadamia, Museo del Bargello and the Boboli Gardens really confronted me with my lack of religious education. Not being Catholic, and having cut Sunday school as a kid when sent for “exposure” to the local Presbyterian church, I guess I never developed as much affection for Mary, the bambino Jesus, Joseph, David, the angels and fears of the devils and such--much less an understanding of the annunciation or the pieta or the rest of the stories so beautifully portrayed in paintings and on endless frescos--as the average person. In short, I felt a little dumb, and got bored more quickly than others might with the repetitive themes.
The variety of ways Mary and baby Jesus were portrayed awes the imagination. The only one I took a picture of was one where baby Jesus was squeezing the tit of Mary, as if to extract milk, while looking in the direction of the painter. This struck me as oddly Freudian. But, the magnificence of artistry, the colors, the infinite patience of painters, the breathtakingly tender or fearful or devotional or savage or yearning expressions on the faces of this endlessly repeated cast of characters moved me deeply. I took a particular liking to della Robbia’s sculptures, and captured several lovely ones on my digital video camera.
Once outside, the peace of the museum inside me was lost to a crowded piazza-full of distracting open air market stalls selling an endless array of knockoffs of the same handbags, gloves, and leather coats as those in the fancy stores on Via Porta Santa Maria. And then there are the black guys who unstuff huge canvas bags of yet more purses after the marketeers shut down, hoping to talk someone into a better deal. One time I saw an Italian man talking quietly to one of these guys. He looked so Mafioso, and was speaking to the guy with such a sense of foreboding that I made up how these guys are somehow working off debts to the Mafia to stay alive rather than simply trying to make a living.
It’s unnerving how few blacks I see. Pretty much only these guys who sell purses and black women dressed scantily by Italian standards who look like they’re out to sell themselves. There are exceptions--a black male tourist here or there, often coupled with a white, possibly European woman, or an occasional black tourist couple. But in general it's a Eurocaucasian community. So are Marin County and many other places back home. I’m sure there are historicopolitical sources of this phenomenon different than those in my own country, but I fear it’s another vacuum in my swiss cheese education.
Staring out over the Ponte Vecchio and River Arno this morning, I notice a rolling neon sign across the river saying...”Email anytime...Internet connection available...” Since today’s goal was to research getting online from this penthouse which should, by all rights, allow access, I headed over there with questions and ended up waiting in line for access to one of the 23 computer bays FILLED with American students--mostly girls with the same bright, beautiful round faces with full lips--intently reading and responding to their hotmail.
There are apparently two universities nearby which take exchange students for a semester, so when they get out of class, they cram the place. The guys running the joint, “Internet Train”, had little to offer to my questions except that the Italian dial tone is different, and blah, blah, blah.
Meantime, I’d asked the front desk woman to find out for me where in Florence one finds a Mac technician who speaks English. When I got back, she’d actually found Lorenzo, who works for “Mac Friends”, an apt name in Florence. After a long troubleshooting effort over the phone which got nowhere and left him challenged, he ended up coming to my hotel on his scooter to save the day, because, as he said, “Well, I was on my way home and wanted to see what the penthouse looked like.”
Typical of Silicon Valley techies I’d known, he made little eye contact, settled into the chair, and proceeded to zone into intimate rapport with my Mac for a good hour trying to solve the problem. He was pretty impervious to my occasional efforts to personalize the experience, like, “Where are you from?” or, “Your accent sounds English”, or, “I’m so sorry you’re spending your evening this way...” Anyway, he finally figured it out, grabbed his cycle helmet and was off. I gave him 50,000 lire, about $25, and he was shy about taking it. Back home the same event would cost $100 if a dime, and wouldn’t likely occur in any case.
Most of the day I wandered around taking pictures in alleyways and dropping into interesting shops. One was being cared for by a delightful, blessedly English speaking Italian couple. They were store-sitting for their beautiful 22 year old artist daughter. They proudly showed me a picture of her which will grace an Italian art magazine soon with a feature on her....a gorgeous blonde with long hair in a white Grecian dress, holding a striking still life of lemons, oranges and other fruit done in the late medieval style on an almost black background.
There was a similar unframed eight by ten version I could not resist buying from them. They were warm and chatty, and before long we shared stories. I told them I wanted to color my hair and could they make a referral to a decent salon, and they sweetly said it looked great as it was--coming in curly now, praise be, in my adult dishwater browny blonde, maybe an inch long.
But I’ve got this bee in my bonnet to get it colored back to the blonde it was before I lost it all from chemo. Those of you who know my thin-fine hair neurosis know how much I've longed for lush, curly hair. I'm in heaven running my fingers through it, spraying it with light mousse and fluffing it.
Later, I drag myself back into the hotel, only to find that the elevator up six floors before the two I climb was out of order. Oy. No way I was going to climb six flights. Desk man says it’ll be fixed in an hour, which probably means four.
I decide to wander down the Arno looking for this salon which someone had described the location of a few days prior. When I walk in, a bit of a do ensues amongst the customers and staff as I explain my wish to lighten my little inch long curly hair. An Elton John looking fellow says he can do it, and handed me magazines to choose a color. Well, the one I THOUGHT I chose apparently looked different to him than to me, and I ended up with an Annie Lennox platinum head.
OH MY GOD. A sweet woman there getting her boys’ hair cut comforts me, explaining how important it is when facing such life signals as cancer to change on the inside and not the outside. Other customers smile that it is “nice”, or “not so bad”, and the like. In any case, here I am a platinum blonde. Eeeek!
(From this vantage point a couple of weeks later, I don’t mind it as much as I did before. Except it seems to shock people and make eyes turn away from the urge to stare, I think.)
A couple of days later I ran into the male Italian of the couple I'd met earlier, whose last words to me had been, “Leave your hair alone!” He warmly greeted me and said, “Ah, you did it! It looks great!”......and, a few minutes later, his wife greeted me on the street and repeated this act of kindness with perhaps SOME sincerity to the acclamation of surprise, adding her wish that I come back to see them soon at the store.
Today I leave Firenze feeling I've just scratched the surface. I long to rent an apartment here for a month, and even went to look at a dark, ground floor studio on the Oltrarno side of the river, much more neighborhoodly than the fancy Duomo side. Ah, will there be a next trip?
The drive down the autobahn from Florence to the B & B in Lazio surprised me with shifting terrain and an uncanny new perception. The rows of poplars and other deciduous trees which just two weeks before had been bare winter stick forms now are budding leaves of greens, gold and even a hint of orange, as if I were experiencing the reversal of autumn, right here before me, but in less vivid hues.
Unlike the Tuscan rolling patchworks of greens and fallow caramel plots with their designer cypress reaching to sky in batches here and there, the Lazio countryside brings new beauty, gradually shifting to more and different types of trees of more varied coloration. The area is dotted with outcroppings of sandy colored calanques from plateaued rises, some with ancient stone villages perched on top looking ready to slide down the sandy soil beneath them. This dryer soil no doubt accounts for the somewhat less verdant cast to the landscape than in Tuscany.
L’Ombrolico, my Umbrian B & B, is another refurbished old stone farmhouse, which my wry and dour English ex-pat hostess named Dawne had orchestrated over the past 15 years. As I arrived into the circular dirt driveway, she sat at her outside table under the porch with her long silver-taupe tresses rolled into a casual bun on top of her head, framing a smiling, almost crimson face. She was doing a crossword while sipping on a drink.
Before seeing her, I am overwhelmed by the bountiful riotous mass of yellow Lady Banks roses and Wisteria cascading down over the porch roof and climbing up the second floor windows. The property, which early “before” pictures showed plopped in the middle of a barren wasteland, was now filled with flowering spring trees, expanses of grass, and small fields of grapevines no longer harvested for wine. But the prize which sent me bounding from my car with cameras in hand was an extraordinary pink peony tree, only four foot tall after nine years, now in full delicious pink bloom with flowers half a foot wide.
A charmingly dilapidated old animal barn with the typical curved terra cotta roof tiles sat off to the right by itself. It’s about as tall as me, and once housed pigs, chickens and rabbits in the early years before Dawne’s divorce from the man who helped create what was to have been a family home. Now, with only Dawne to manage everything, only the shell remains, curled over in places with green vines, and a picturesque old blue metal washpot hosting a lemon tree in early stages of life sits beside it.
My first floor room looks out from my bed to a porch with my own sitting table, framed by the hanging roses and wisteria. I look through a huge heavy glass door protected by an attached medieval iron grate. I sit at my porch table in the late evenings falling in love with nightingales chortling a cacophony of songs to one another from one acre to the next.
Dawne had planted many olive trees years ago along the dirt road to her driveway, providing a rich nesting haven near the Tiber river creek across the road. This, my first exposure to these lovely birds, hypnotized me. In California, most of the birds have one repetitive song or sound or tweet.
Not nightingales. They actually converse musically with each other--at least that’s what I invent--in a most beautifully complex and variegated range of clucks, whistles, warbles and such as I’ve never heard before. I guess in the U.S. they mostly live in the south, but, despite the fact it's probably not their correct ecosystem, I want to import some to Meadow Way and see how they do out there in the Fairfax Cascades.
But to begin with, I can barely get to our local town a few kilometers away because I keep stopping to take pictures of this garden or that building or one particularly spectacular peach rose climbing up a terra cotta wall which takes my breath away. The older Italians at these properties look at me and my platinum head with grimly cautious puzzlement, shaking their heads until I smile and holler, “Molto bella giardino!!”, which usually brings a welcoming dentally challenged smile in return.
Once in town, I wind my way around the impossibly narrow cobbled streets, again stopping here and there to shoot a picture, getting the same stone face look of curiousity until I warmed the chill in one way or another.
At the top of one hill in a small plaza behind the church, a drama ensued as I encountered a middle aged woman with a baby in a stroller, a boy about eleven and a wonderful ancient woman with brown leathered skin who must have been at least ninety.
I'm in my car with the window down. The conversation, if you can call it that, starts with a question I ask in fractured Italian, at which point an avalanche of enthusiastic goodwill pours out of the two women towards me, talking over each other in blur of animated instructions, arms flailing this way and that. I laughed and say the one thing I mastered from the Pimsleur tapes: “Io no capisco l’Italiano et le no capiche l’Anglaise”, (I don't understand Italian and you don't understand English!) which apparently registered as a green light to continue in the if-I-just-speak-louder-and-slower-then-she’ll-understand-mode so common here. So on they went, arguing, I think, about which one was saying the right thing to me or not.
The old woman walks over to my car window. Her leathery tanned skin wrinkled around loving old blue eyes and her face was framed by shocks of skewed silver hair which jostled about as she grinned a beautiful five tooth smile right into my soul. She stared at my Annie Lennox platinum hair, gently rubbing the skin on my arm in a grandmotherly gesture I read as a mixture of surprise or compliment, or perhaps even compassionate understanding that I'd had cancer. I'll never know. She kept looking deep into my eyes, repeating a word I didn’t understand, each time slower and louder, over and over, and it drove me nuts because I was loving this woman and could not communicate with her. Eventually I had to sadly give up on the effort, and we were full of mutually affectionate areviderci’s and buena sera’s as they all waved goodbye to me. I drove down the hill with tears in my eyes.
I move on towards Montepulciano, for which I had a village map borrowed from Dawne, and eventually arrive at the local chaos zone just outside a stone archway and narrow cobbled road leading up inside the old village walls. This common feature of Italian hill towns is usually the spot just outside an entry to walled towns in which driving is only permitted, if at all, for residents living inside the wall--supposedly. But, since all the shops and views and sights to see at the church piazza are way up at the top, or on the way to the top, all visitors--whether Italian or otherwise--have an interest in getting a better place to park where there isn’t so much climbing to do.
So, depending on the day and the village, you have many little cars competing to get inside the walls to sneak a parking place at the same time others are trying to get out, all honking at one another and it’s a mess. Mostly the Italians are engaged in this fiasco: except for the real rich Americans in Mercedes or BMW’s who feel just as entitled as the Italians, male tourist drivers tend to resist temptation to join the competitive fray and abide by the signs preventing entry by car. I guess they figure that experiencing the joys of a few moments of this particular kind of male comraderie are not worth risking expensive car damage to regret later on. Ah, but I digress.
This spot is often also where two or three roads converge at a roundabout and one is faced with parking or choosing in short order which of the other roads you want to take, because if you sit there and stare at the list of signs with arrows pointing this way and that trying to figure out which one to take, everyone gets mad at you and starts honking.
Usually there’s a local bar with myriad local folk of different ages, sizes and shapes, and numbers of teeth sitting outside along with the tourists, having espresso, wine, beer, Coca-Lite, cocktails, aperitifs, gelatto or pastry--a pick your poison kind of joint. Little groups of old women or men sit on benches, the men outyelling each other to make a point, the women chatting and watching the local drama evolve.
There is some type of parking arrangement which you are never sure you belong in, bordering, perhaps, a little park of greenery or an administrative building; and, if the place is at all busy, maybe an Italian cop or local man helping to direct traffic. This chaotic, animated spot is where Italian country life converges mornings till one and evenings between five and ten, both in general, and between those who live inside and outside the village walls.
So, on this particular day when I come upon this teeming melange of life, I circle the roundabout a couple of times to try to get my bearings and end up parked amongst a bunch of teenagers socializing near their vehicles by a park while I proceed to study my little map of the village and they all stare at the platinum Americana.
But, I can’t figure out where I am on the map. The street names are different. Thankfully, there is a cop over there, partly directing traffic, partly carrying on conversation with local friends, and partly answering questions for disoriented tourists like me. When I get his attention after a few minutes, I gesture to my map and tried to ask him where I am on this map so I can get oriented. He has trouble understanding me, and after several efforts, gestures me to wait as he kindly calls in to his office to get an English speaker to translate for me.
Meanwhile, all his local Italian friends circle around me, some trying to outyell each other to answer the question, others making indecipherable suggestions to the cop, and still others making noises and gestures to tease him about his eagerness to help this odd platinum blonde Americana woman. When the English speaking lady gets on his police phone, I told her what I was trying to do, she told him, and his eyes lit up with satisfaction! “AHHH, Si, signora”....
And, after trying for several moments to figure out where we were standing on this map, he looks at me like I'm crazy, pointing out that this is not, in fact, a map of THIS town, MonteFIASCONE, but of MontePULCIANO, at which point, the cop and I and the accumulated crowd of curious onlookers around us all burst out laughing while I kept repeating “Ei-yeai-YEI!, mama-MIA!!!...Io stupido Americana!!” The old use-self-deprication-to-avoid-humiliation maneuver. Having realized I wasn’t where I thought I was, I grabbed my cameras and proceeded slowly up the cobbled hill into the village, and took in remarkable views of Lake Bolsena instead of the Lazio countryside.
After a satisfying photo session and a lovely sunset over the lake, I find my way to a popular local restaurant for grilled chicken, and am positioned to observe an initially puzzling group which introduced me to the commonness of interracial adoption. At a long table whose end faces me are three caucasian adults and five kids representing three races and two families.
They all live in Montefiascone and speak Italian, but when the woman on the center of the right side helps me translate with the waitress, I discover she's French, and married to a German husband who sat across from her. Between them they had two caucasian sons of their own, 11 and 3, and an adopted East Indian girl about 8 with a casted broken ankle who kept competing for attention with the 3 year old by leaning into the French woman’s lap. The 11 year old son sat down at the other end of the table, torn between being too old for that mushy stuff and clearly feeling left out, but not wanting to let his father notice this.
An Italian woman sits next to the German man. She is a close friend of the couple, and the adoptive mother of 2 black girls of 7 or 8 who also vie with each other for HER lap space or cuddles when they weren’t enjoying the game of escorting the Indian girl to the bathroom since she couldn’t walk with the cast.
I was touched by the scene of this motley crew, and as they rose to organize the bunch to leave I commented to the French woman, “Bella famillia!” She smiled and said they were really two families and that her Italian friend had adopted the two black girls.
Apparently this sort of thing is very common here, as there are many refugees from Africa, Sri Lanka, and other places to be scooped up by the family oriented Italians, who love their bambinos so very much that I was a bit ashamed at priorities at home, where even loving adoptive parents hold out for white babies.
I got predictably lost on the way home to L’Ombrilico, driving a VERY long way around to get there, since it was dark and that doubled the potential for wrong turns in this country road world.
Deruta is an old town north of Rome where many ceramic artists’ studios are--the ones who make the stuff you see everywhere else, and some you don’t see anywhere. If you take the south exit in, you pass all these huge ceramics stores aiming to get tourists and markups before they get to the little village where all the real studios are.
According to some of the artists I spoke to, even in the village some stores’ proprietors claim to be artists when they’re not. I learned that many of the designs I’d been seeing were ancient ones being reproduced or modified by the current artists, whose work had passed down for generations through the family, while some create original work.
I had already broken my vow, ha ha, to not buy any ceramics on this trip except a few tiles to complete the kitchen, and perhaps a few plates to put up on the walls over the dining table and sliding glass doors. But, as is my wont, I gave in when I’d stumbled upon a lone ceramic artist in a Tuscan town called Certado. She had a quiet, unassuming way, and an assistant who helped her pack things being sent to sale locations, and seemed invested in protecting her from giving away the store.
Everything she had there was original and incredibly beautiful and, according to a pair of young American women who walked in while I was perusing the stock, was the prettiest stuff they’d seen and had the best prices anywhere. And they rattled off all the places they’d been and what they’d seen. They’d come back for more against their better judgement. So, by the time I got to Deruda the stuff I’d accumulated took up needed space in my car, and I’d been looking for a way to get it shipped back home.
I wandered through town drooling over the beauty and trying real hard to just take pictures instead of buy, but of course was only partially successful. When I’d come upon an artist I like and get to chatting with, my discipline got mowed over by my wish to honor my affection for the person with a purchase.
One shop had some beautiful work done by a charming, short, bald man in his 90’s who took great delight in having me take a picture of him at his wheel, something he obviously did several times a day. Later it occurred to me he probably didn't do pottery anymore but sold himself as a tourism feature.
I got an exquisitely painted plate of a woman’s face in profile and a framed set of two tiles from an old design of a woman and man on a country road. The woman is carrying a heavy load of wood and sticks on her back and had just paused to put her her hands on her hips and send a frown back at her man on the other tile, who was only carrying the lightweight bread on his back. This amused me, and the old man, his daughter and I got a good laugh from my things-never-change-do-they observation.
Then, I had a moving experience at another shop, where I came upon an adorable young woman with stark black short hair, painstakingly painting a pot. Her name was Annalisa, and as we talked in fractured Englitalian, she asked about my trip. I told her the story of my cancer, its remission, the possibilities of recurrence and death, and my wish to come and savor the joys of beauty while I still have the chance to do so.
To my surprise, as I spoke her dark and lovely doe eyes gradually filled with huge tears which were soon pouring down her beautiful face. I felt terrible and began to tear up as well, and tried to reassure her. “It’s ok, Annalisa....I’m very happy to be here, and I didn’t want to make you sad”....She replied something like “Le et corragio a forte donna...”--expressing her amazement at what she felt were my courage and strength. I thanked her, said as many reassuring things as I could to help her gather herself together, and proceeded to look around the shop--probably for something to buy for a memory and because I felt so guilty.
She suddenly popped up from her seat, saying “Una momento...”, went over to a shelf, and picked up a beautiful ceramic bell she’d painted, and held it out to me with a huge smile, saying that this was her gift to me, as the bell is a sign of good luck.
I protested, tears welling in my eyes, but I could see that this was an important and heartfelt gesture which meant a great deal for her to make and for me to receive. She took pleasure in writing “Good Luck” and her name inside the bell, and as she happily wrapped it, I told her the story of being embarrassed over my platinum hair, and she said, “No, no, no...I didn’t want to tell you this, but when you came in, I wanted to do my own hair that way--perhaps for the summer I will.” Midstream in all this her husband came in with a friend, which eased the incredibly intense emotionality between us. I left with profuse grazias, my bell well secured in bubblewrap and my heart full of love and gratitude for this moment of life.
Soon after this, I came upon a handsome fellow named Sergio who has a shop in Palm Springs which, combined with his good looks, aroused a doubtful caution in me born of some deep mysterious mistrust. But as the interaction unfolded I came to like the guy a lot. His studio currently opened up onto a massive terrace with a magnificent view, as he was in the middle of a major remodel job with the entire west wall down.
Sergio's whole family--wife, kids, parents, siblings and their spouses--all live in this old stone building built around an ancient stone ceramics furnace which he took me downstairs to see. Buoyed by my interest, he then took me around a corner into his basement studio where things waiting to be fired in the new oven were. Along the way, I noticed the makings of wood crates and thought AHA!, maybe this is the pottery-in-my-car solution.
Before long I was trying to explain to him with the help of his brother’s well-intended but iffy translating, my dilemma of having a bunch of ceramics I needed to ship home, but not knowing how to go about it or who to entrust the task to, since the items were bought from different artists. Sergio eventually got the picture, and was more than happy to to crate and send it.
Once the business was completed and I’d bought a plate I loved from him as a token of my appreciation, we continued sharing--I, my digital pictures of my trip, including sculptures by the Renaissance artist Andrea della Robbia from the Galleria dell’Accademia, and he, his book on della Robbia, showing me how many of the ceramic designs done by he and other artists came from Robbia....And then, some old black and white photographs of the town, it’s central furnace, now in his shop, and one shot of a row of young kids working at potting wheels to produce and paint pots. He pointed to one boy with pride and said, “My padre’s padre”...
I left Deruda with a full heart and an empty trunk, and given my experience thus far with sending anything anywhere to or from Europe, a hope that the crate actually arrives home on Meadow Way.
For reasons I cannot remember, my Rome visit is a haze, but for observing a glamorous wedding on the Spanish Steps. I did not journal there.
Retrospective note: Positano is, of course, stunningly beautiful, perched as it is vertically on a curved set of cliffs on the Napali Coast, bathed in ochres and oranges and turquoise. But I took my life in my hands driving there, being zipped and zoomed around by speeding moto drivers who make sport of risking their lives and terrifying others on the impossibly winding road. I think it's related to testosterone.
My hotel room opened to a breathtaking view out to sea and I left the windows open at night to hear the ocean. Walks down to the beach were over narrow and steep, ancient cobbles passing tourist shops.
Here, I stupidly left my Canon Elf camera on my lunch table, and it was of course disappeared when I returned. This was a major sorrow I regret to this day.
Writing this now, in July of 2006, I cannot for the life of my senior brain remember much of what happened during these first two weeks of April. I know I got sick with a cold, which for me is always followed up by a URI, and was likely too miserable to write. I do remember a harrowing drive to Positano with motorcyclists honking and weaving around me. I remember the breathtaking view from my balcony and bed at Hotel Marincanto. I remember having to track down a physician to get antibiotics while there, and leaving my camera on a restaurant table, forever lost with many photos. There was a friendly episode with a camera store owner when replacing the camera, but dang, his name is gone from my brain.
I recall watching a melodramatic wedding on the Spanish Steps in Rome and enjoying the rooftop terrace at the Hotel Portoghesi.
And, I recall living with the birds way, way up high on a Sabrina mountain at 'Montasola' in a wonderful apartment with a terrace where the swallows swooped at me. It was in an ancient walled palazzo inherited by a zestful Rubenesque woman named Letizia.
Mostly, I rested from antibiotic exhaustion, and made a wonderful heart-to-heart connection with a woman named Adriana. I gave her a pair of earrings, and she gave me a little copper pitcher which lives to this day on my bedroom dresser.
As I gradually reconstruct parts of this travelogue into a retrospective blog, I realize how reluctant I was to write when I was feeling lousy. Maybe because I feel less pithy and entertaining, or because I knew how concerned my friends were about me and my health and didn't want to worry them, or maybe because I didn't want to think myself about the implications of exhaustion, illness or a compromised immune system. As I write now, it comes back that I was, indeed, worried--was this the harbinger of worse things to come? Was I a fool to take off on this grand adventure where if things got bad I'd have to search out a doctor who knows nothing about esophageal cancer in a country where I can't speak the language?
I have since learned that to a person, cancer survivors get scared whenever anything happens in their bodies, for a long time after remission. It's the nature of the bird.
This is what I wrote friends when I came down from the hill: Friday, 12 May 2000
Well, I'm finally down off the mountain where I spent a week in an apartment in a medieval hill town called Montasola, in the "Sabina" region just northeast of Rome. I'm too far behind on journaling to have written yet about the experience, but I at least wanted to check in to let you know I'm still alive. It's been a couple of weeks since I had email access, and I'm on a stopover back at La Volpaia with Sylvia and Andrea before I go over to Cinque Terre on my way into France. By the grace of god and that guy who helped me discover I had a bad computer cord in Florence, I finally got connected and could download email today.
I'm doing ok, perhaps getting tired of the communication problems if I'm somewhere no English is spoken...But, I did have a lovely new friendship with a woman in Montasola, Adriana, who spoke not a word of English and we became very close anyway. I'll write more on that later if I ever get caught up. I got a cold and then a URI in Positano, so have been doing a lot of resting.
My phone seems to be acting up again, in that I've not been able to receive calls, but I do get messages, indicating the number of the person who has called. This is most frustrating, especially if I'm someplace where there is no regular phone, as in Montasola. I finally found out after calling home on my MCI card from a pay phone that my MCI bill last month was $300, which is causing me to limit the calls I make because the tenants at my house are paying the bill and taking it out of the rent.
The next challenge will be finding places to stay along the way from Italian Riviera over into the Dordogne of France without reservations. I'm hoping that once I get into France, I can get the B&B books I"d sent to Vienna but never got, so I'll have more options than Karen Brown places which are likely all booked.
For now I gotta go join the pre-dinner crowd outside in this beautiful place. I'm sending along a couple of journal entries from April which are done, and will send more as they get done.
Love, Karen
Well, I knew things were going too well. This newsflash interrupts the flow of the travelogue thing, but it's been a bad news week for me here.
Silvia and Andrea had recommended a visit to Tellaro over the touristed Cinque Terre, so I ambled over there on Sunday and stayed at a charming old family hotel called Locanda Miranda, which, by the way, served the most amazing fresh seafood meal I've had so far. I spent an afternoon puttering the narrow alleys of this colorful little village, shooting wow after wow of views and scenes which made me smile. I'd been leery of the chaotic scene of Cinque Terre, especially given my compromised physical state, and left Tellaro sated with her delights, and vowed to return one day to the CT.
Next morning I headed northwest into France, and by day's end stopped to look up what would become my first non-reserved stopover--this one a hotel fave of good old Rick Steves in the Cote d'Azure town of Antibes. Rick's choices are often not oriented towards car drivers, and this little number ended me up in a small downtown section of Antibes filled with impossible one way streets. (I'm sure, however, it was perfectly located for train travelers!) The guy at the hotel, once I found it, was a chipper, helpful gay fellow with an Australian accent who assured me I could park for free for the night "over there".
The "over there" I first chose was a lot for the post office, and once in a parking place, I had the feeling it wasn't the right one. On the periphery of my attention I noticed a young black boy in a red and white hooded windbreaker behaving a bit strangely, but figured Oh Well. I got out of the car and walked partway back to the hotel, but then decided Mr. Hotel Guy meant a different "over there", so went back to move the car. The boy was skulking about, running to and fro with no apparent agenda, which I didn't really get until later. As I got in to move the car and leave the lot to go around the block, I noticed him following me around the block, running. I vaguely recall some kind of PC thought along the lines that I ought not assume bad things of black kids.
I stopped to park my car in what I thought to be the correct "over there", and had just pulled into a parallel place. Black kid runs past my car on the sidewalk, swooshing his windbreaker over his head and back, dashing past as if to show he wasn't following me after all. And then, before I could turn off the key to the car, he dashed back, pulled open the passenger door and grabbed my purse from the seat next to me, and ran like hell up the block--gone with the wind, as I jumped out of the car screaming "HEY, STOP THAT KID", running after him like in the TV cop shows.
A group of old men on the corner looked barely concerned and made no move to do anything. When I returned to them a few moments later to ask what direction he'd gone in, one pointed one direction, another to a different direction. Clearly, he was gone johnson, and this was no uncommon event. Another stupid American tourist, they probably thought.
In the purse were: probable equivalent of $5-600 cash of various foreign denominations; my cell phone; my newly purchased Minolta camera bought after I lost my Canon in Positano; my passport; 2 credit cards--one with a pin number-- and my ATM-Masterard; my checkbook with drivers license; my MCI calling card, and sundry other helpful items like my calculator and currency converter, and my little spiral notebook with accumulated phone numbers, notes on people, etc.
When I returned frantic to the hotel, Jean Paul, gay guy, was totally unable to deal with how upset I was, and wanted to reassure me that at least I had my life (hmmmm...irony happens, bud: you don't know the half of it!) and wasn't raped, and yes, I'll have to make some phone calls, but this is nothing to get all stressed out and emotional over.
I took a quick run around the locale looking in bushes and trash on the assumption he'd just take the money out and throw the rest away, but of course, found nothing. Then Jean Paul got his friend to take me up to the police station to file a report, which is the most important thing to do in these circumstances (they say). By now it's 7:30 p.m. and the woman at the front desk was a sweet, but recent transfer to this station who didn't know the area and it made conveying the basics to her difficult since I could make no sense of the map she showed me and she knew nothing of the hotel. Her efforts to get help from a male colleague were met with a bored look. I had to come back the next day to have my report taken. Clearly a useless endeavor.
That night was spent making a gazillion calls to the states to stop credit cards, arrange for a new one to be sent, and such. Tuesday morning, my friend Gisele in Seguret (whose B&B is pictured above), whom I'd called the night before, sent her ADORABLE 24 year old nephew who works in a bank in Antibes over to help me out. He brought me some money and spent a good 2 hours on the phone helping me determine the details of having money wired to Western Union there.
Just having this gorgeous and amazingly sweet and competent guy to help me soothed the edges of my mental frenzy. I was a basket case. So I spent the rest of that day till about 4 dealing with the police report--taken by a tough-woman kind of gal with a good sense of humor who was angry, I think, about not being spelled for lunch, and the experience of communicating with her was another amusing story.
I then went to the post office, where Western Union operates from, and went through a long procedure to collect the $1000 I'd had Wells Fargo wire me...feeling idiotic as I stood in line crying from the accumulated frustration of it all.
Finally left Antibes about 4, totally wiped out and tired, and was intending to head up to Seguret to Gisele, but it soon became clear that it was way too far. Plus, I had to go to Marseille to the Consulate to get my passport replaced.
So I looked up an obscure B&B near St. Tropez, where I was met by a squat old woman whose front entry and much of her property were done in beautifully patterned bright tiles. Not only did she have a room, she helped me immeasurably with getting into Marseille, trusting me to send payment to her when I could.
I then tackled getting into downtown Marseille to this small hotel where I had a reservation, once again amidst a maze of tiny one way streets which had me driving in circles before I could find the place, but ended up blessed again with another sweet and handsome French guy at the hotel who was most helpful. Then, yesterday morning early I did the American Consulate thing to get a passport replacement, and soon left town to head to Uzes, where I wanted to stay for a night or so before heading to the Dordogne for my two week stay there.
On the way, I was determined to return to a small hill village up behind what I'd thought was the Pont du Gard where I'd taken some of my best pictures last year--the one Sarah Lampland has, and one which Donna has in her bathroom. I later learned it was actually Aqueduc de Roquefavor. Approaching this pont, I discover that the whole scene has changed such that I couldn't get to the road which would lead me to Ventebren. On my way to give up and head to Uzes, I was crossing a bridge over the river, and proceeded, in some moment of spaced out exhaustion, to rear-end a small car stopped for a red light in front of me.
Oh my god! Just what I needed: a car accident. The fellow I hit was okay, as was I and his little car sustained hardly visible damage of any kind, whereas the whole hood of my Volvo was crunched up, headlight damaged, barely drivable.
He calmly pulled from his glove compartment the papers for European auto accidents which we both fill out to send to our respective insurance companies, and took the lead in quickly filling his out and helping me with mine. I survived the crisis with yet another new list of bureaucratic phone calls and dilemmas to solve on getting the car repaired while I'm in Domme.
Happily, I stumbled upon a charming place to stay in Uzes (Hotel D'Entraigues) with good internet access, a terrace, two rooms with a kitchenette, all for $58/nite, so I'm going to stay here till Sunday morning and rest, take care of some business and endeavor to gather what wits I still have back about me. Tried to get Wells Fargo to wire me another $1000 to last till my new ATM card arrives in Domme, but they'd only send $500.
So, more than you wanted to know, I'm sure, about my fall from grace over here, but perhaps this can help temper any envy flowing around out there amongst my dear ones. For now I gotta go and make some more calls.
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