Italia

Travellers abroad

by Jim

Travel. Pilgrimage. It is one thing to read a travel magazine, even an honest one like the Lonely Planet guides or Rick Steves guides. It is another to be in a city part way around the world from your everyday walks. There is no familiar bed with the familiar odors, odors that you only recognize exist when you return from a prolonged absence.

You’re an American. The bed you are sleeping in is hard and lumpy by your standards; the room small, cold and the bathroom, the bathroom! Doesn’t the rest of the world know? The bathroom is not a closet with a hose on the wall. It does not belong down the hallway. One should not have to park their car a twenty minute walk from the hotel. Why do people have to walk up the middle of the streets? Why are the sidewalks so narrow, the motorcycles so fast, the cars so small, the gas so expensive, the language is not english, why, why, why … ?

This is not America. That alone is a reason to go. Even “civilized” Europe is not America. While even driving to another state is an adventure, a cultural learning experience (we did go to Wyoming & Colorado this year also), the opportunity to visit Italy arose.

I spent many months reading Italian history, art history and novels set in Tuscany as preparation. But how do you meet people when travelling, especially in Italy? I failed to study the language ahead of time. Maybe there is a single answer, probably not even one, but many. Speak the language. Stay longer. Or just do it, go, don’t be embarrased, just talk to everyone. Perhaps there are many irate Italians, upset that I tried to speak to them, in some wierd combination of Fran-Eng-Span-talian. Then again, a lot of them decided it was ok to talk with me.

Marta, the 9 year old girl from Mantua - Romeo’s hometown, I believe, started by watching the girls perform gymnastics on the concrete barrier along the Strada in Camogli. Soon (I had studied a little Italian each day) we got a few words out and then there were three girls doing handstands and round offs. We met again later in the pizzeria and then at the beach the next morning.

Travelling seems to be rewarding for the people you meet, like the propietor in Colle di Val d’Elsa with his Cuban wife who apologized profusely when they were out of food (Actually, we were quite late in arriving and they were out of the kind of food our dear daughters liked, our daughters not yet entirely accustomed to eating whatever is available).

Even fellow travellers on a similar pilgrimage find life richer for meeting. A chance encounter with Peter, a Torontonian and retired professor of French philosophy digesting Florentine art at close quarters led to several delightful finds. We met in a small trattoria where he asked if we might be staying at the Hotel Boboli as he had heard the sounds of young girls chatting in the room next to his. As it turns out we had been heading back to the car for the evening when we wandered past the Hotel Boboli and just checked on rooms. They had one and happened to have been placed next to him. We met again another night, shared gelato by the waterfront and discussed language, travel and art. The following week we crossed paths again in a monastery. I told him my wife Susan, who grew up in Canada near his home, had now joined us and was out in the courtyard with the girls. While I was still looking at the frescos, he called out the girls names and Susan, not knowing him, just about died that anyone in Tuscany would know who her daughters were.

Peter gave us a wonderful tour of cathedrals and back alley workshops the following day. It pays to be flexible and to talk to everyone when travelling. We again went to Trattoria da Ginone that night and soon there was french, spanish, english and italian flying around as we met some medical students from Spain at the table behind us. The cook welcomed the girls back for a fourth night and encouraged them to try something different, but they stuck with the tried and true spagetti with meat sauce. Of course, they wanted the olive oil and balsamic vinegar for dipping their bread. The were used to the Orangina and wanted gelato (Fragola & Cioccolato) after dinner.

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Olive oil. An essence. An essential. A daily ingredient in our cooking now. After our visit to Provence last year and now to Italy, olive oil which would hold its own anyway in cooking occupies a central place on our table. Smell and taste have come to the forefront of our senses as the years pass. Perhaps that is the reason for the surge in wine consumption from age 30 to 40. I find that little odors identify places and experiences pulling a surge of memories from the mind's recesses back into the present.

So, it is not just olive oil that we are drizzling on our pasta. It is not just Balsamic vinegar that we are dipping our bread into. It is not just goat’s cheese that we are setting out on a cutting board. It is not just a ripe tomato squirting into our mouth as we bite down or a cool, freshly plucked fall apple we are slicing. It is not just lavender that I strip off into a tray as I harvest our flower garden.

The lavender takes me back to a monastery and Gregorian chant in the Vacluse of Provence. The crisp apple takes me back to an autumn in college picking fruit.

The olive oil takes all of us back to Florence to Trattoria da Ginone in Oltrarno where we dined and laughed and mixed Italian, English, French and Spanish each night. Where the cook came out and pinched the girls cheeks each night as if we had been coming there for years. The Vin Santo takes me back to La Pergoletta, in an alley after a half hour out in a downpour beside the Arno where Leonardo da Vinci may have strolled in Pisa. The Cantuccini alla Mandorla takes us back to our apartment in Tuscany, in Colle di Val d’Elsa along the Via Romana where the crusaders passed, where we share the narrowest of cobblestone streets with the old and shuffling and the rush of cars passing with inches to spare.

We opened several bottles of olive oil all at once on our arrival back from Italy. Each was subtly but definitely different from the others. Olive oil is not incredibly sweet though it can slide sweetly down the throat on a fresh piece of pasta and sun-dried tomato, not incredibly strong like garlic but it can meld the pasta to the parmegiano reggiano, not incredibly pungent like white truffles can be, though it can lift the truffles on its back and carry them throughout the dish. It can be clear or cloudy yet be delightful on the tongue.

Memories of the travel, of the pilgrimage, the history, the friends are packaged now in nuances of smell and taste. The next time I lift that Chianti to my lips, I'll be thinking of you, ...