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· 9TH OF AUGUST, THE YEAR 2004TOSCANA
I spent the last two weeks in Italy (well, two weeks ago from last weekend), and I have returned in one, slightly more massive piece. After a grueling 25 hours of traveling on trains, planes, and automobiles, I finally found myself in little town called Colona del Grillo in the middle of Tuscany with my family sans brother, and my aunt Anne, my uncle Buster, and his family, Amelia and Julie. We were all staying at this resortish tourist place called Borgo Monastero, which was pretty damn nice (pools, tennis court, nice apartments, etc.). We did a whole mess of things, most of them standard tourist fare for the region. I’ll try and relate some of interesting aspects of the trip here.
Siena and Almost Every Other Tuscan Town
As far as I can tell most Tuscan towns follow the following guidelines:
- Inhabited for over 2000 years
- Possess one large duomo (cathedral)
- Duomo contains historically significant frescos/sculptures/chunks of dead saints (aka reliquaries)
- Piazza placed at central location, where ancient tradition(s) is practiced on a nearly annual basis
- Flooded with European tourists who all speak English
- Narrow cobblestone roads
- Gelaterias
Siena’s ancient annual tradition is a horse race in the piazza where riders get knocked off their horses by ramming into the walls, and opposing factions frequently sabotage each other and kidnap jockeys. Their duomo is large and elaborate, with layered white and dark green marble that gives the whole a prison striped look reminiscent of Beetlejuice. Upon viewing it from afar I said too loudly that I was afraid it was going to steal my hamburgers. No one laughed, even though I know they understood English!.
San Gimignano was unique in that it had a museum of historical torture instruments. Ak and I checked it out and kind of regretted it given they decidedly gruesome nature of most of the devices, many of which were to designed to enter various orifices and expand. The dungeon was a relief from the heat, though. Not sure it justified nauseatingly twisted hill roads we took to get there.
Firenze (Florence) was fairly amazing, mostly due to Michaelangelo’s David. Some famous works of art seem to disappoint in person, but David is mind-blowing. You first see him from the end of a long, high corridor, lit from the cupola above him. Then you approach and realize that he is big. Not just his oversized hands and feet, but the whole of him, five or 6 meters tall. Get closer, and you see that the illusion of verisimilitude never breaks down, until you see the veins in the marble running across his skin. The level of detail , the weight, the balance, the veins, the bones, the bumps, depressions, really have to be seen to be believed. Somehow photos can’t convey the impression that he isn’t stone carved in to the shape of a man, but a man rendered perfectly in solid marble.
Firenze also had all manner of sculptures and famous buildings strewn about the city. I saw the graves of Machiavelli, Galileo, Michaelangelo, and Dante (conveniently clustered within a single church). I saw Galileo’s middle finger in a jar, and a few telescopes he’d crafted. There were even a few homeless people in Firenze, which reminded me of home.
Italians
Last time I went to Euroland was a French exchange in high school. I had hosted a chain-smoking, shower-hating, long-haired, tight-jeaned but exceedingly affable and generally unobjectionable metal-head from France, and then he had the misfortune of having to host me, the uncool, untalkative American nerd boy who didn’t even smoke weed. The whole trip was like being drowned in a molten vat of French people. Fortunately (and, ok, maybe a little unfortunately) visiting foreign lands in a more traditionally touristy manner doesn’t require quite the same level of interaction. Nevertheless, Italy is, in fact, filled with Italians, as I discovered in the airport. We generally agreed that the Italians weren’t exactly overly hospitable. They were just kind of normal: some nice ones, some who looked at you like they were planning on spending their next vacation hunting tourists for inclusion in their fine, artisanal salami.
One true test of the Italian mettle is their approach to driving. To each and every Italian, the road is a personal playground, adorned with pretty, meaningless dashes and lines. You want to just drift around the whole road? That’s cool. The cops don’t think you’re drunk because there are no cops on the road! The only standard to which Italian drivers seem to adhere is that if you are in the left hand lane, you must be traveling over 90 miles per hour. Even minor deviation will result in an irate Italian in a tiny little Citroen hatchback rammed way, way up your ass. Even when you pull over into the right-hand lane far in advance of any rectal lodging, the Italian driver will inevitably gaze at you in complete disbelief as he passes you, as if you have just fundamentally challenged his understanding of the minimum possible velocity achievable by an automobile, a standard applied not by law, but by physics itself.
Italians also don’t seem to do anything between the hours of 1 and 6. Stores clam up like anemones at low tide, and the streets empty of all but the sun burnt foreigners. You would think that since these are the prime touristing hours, Italian store owners might actually benefit from remaining open, but no.
Most Italians speak some kind of English. In fact, most Europeans speak some kind of English. Em tried to tell me this before I left, in a vain attempt to assuage my xenophobia, but I didn’t believe her. It’s funny when waiters ask you in accented English whether you’d like your mineral water “with gas, or without gas.” There’s also something strangely gratifying about getting Italians to respond to your ‘grazie’ with their ‘prego.’ It’s like they can’t help it. You could just keep saying ‘grazie Grazie GRAZIE!’ and they’d just have to keep saying ‘prego.’ Oh language.
The Land
When the plane finally passed over Italian soil, I thought we’d gone a little too far, because it looked like California. Well, like Napa, anyway. Tuscany especially: rolling, golden hills, vineyards, drab forests. The only large scale difference is the architecture. All the Tuscan houses are cubical, and all the towns are on top of hills. I’ve never seen buildings that match the land so well, both in color and material. I don’t know why they don’t build like that here in Cali. The sun shines all the time, afternoons are hot, evenings are cool, no humidity. Very CA.
Italian Wall Lizards (Podarcis sicula) to be specific. They were on our patio, down by the pool, and all over the dirt road that lead into the woods. They were damn fast though. The first one I caught I just jumped on the first day I was there, but I neglected to bring my camera on that little walk. I noosed another one later but he struggled so much while I was getting him out of the noose that his tail broke off, and I didn’t have the heart to take his picture. I also think I may have seen a Green Lizard (Lacerta virdis) along the trail, but it may also have been a greener morph of the wall lizard. There were also snakes around, and although I jumped in a whole lot of bushes, I never laid hands on one. I’m pretty sure they were Grass Snakes (Natrix natrix), though, given the markings on their flanks. I kind of wished I’d learned the Italian names for these things because the English ones are so boring. Last herp: a big, fat Common Toad (Bufo bufo) that sat on our patio every night.
The woods themselves were neat. Mostly oaks, but also some kind of locust. Boar is commonly hunted and consumed in Tuscany (or so I read), but unfortunately I didn’t see any. We did see some small deer. Birds were fairly limited, but I did see European Goldfinches, a European Jay, Serins, Black Caps, Pied Wagtails, a Buzzard Hawk, and a magpie or two.
Broad-bordered Bee Hawk-moths (Hemaris fuciformis). There were also some interesting beetles around like stag beetles (Lucanus cervus) and this weird thing I found on the trail one day.
The Food
Obviously the primary draw for me was not the art or the churches or the museums, but the food! Indeed, the Italians do eat well. The first thing I had to eat in Italy was a biscotto Anne gave me. It was crumbly and delish. The Tuscans eat their biscotti with the local dessert wine, Vin Santo, which proved to be an excellent combination. Pecorino cheese is also a very Tuscan thing, and we were able to sample both the fresh and aged varieties. Tuscans make a hand-rolled spaghetti called pici, and their Chianti wines are made from a grape called Sangiovese. Tasty.
To celebrate my parents’ 25th wedding anniversary, we went to this tiny little restaurant (Il Botega del Trente) in this tiny little town (Villa a Sesta) that served truly amazing food, with an incredibly friendly, homey atmosphere. We later discovered that they have a Michelin star, which is a first for me (I think). Hi-lights were the Chianti pasta that tasted more like wine than any wine sauce I’ve ever had, the giant ravioli with a runny egg and ricotta filling (amazing less gross than it sounds), and the wine. We had a Brunello di Montalcino, which has the most amazing smell off it. Very heady and deep, just as good as drinking the wine itself. There was also this weird little ritual to go along with serving it: the sommelier poured a little bit into the first glass, gave it a swirl, and then poured that into the next glass, and so on around the table, until he got to the last person and discarded the bit of wine, leaving a film in everyone’s glass. Supposedly this helped aerate the wine. The glasses we had were also specially designed for Brunellos, as they have a notch protruding into the bottom of the glass, so that when you swirled the wine it got even more aerated. It was all very cool.
Gelato was also big. Every tourist center was packed with gelaterias, which was a good thing because it was damn hot. I’d never had gelato before, but it is distinctive. In some ways it didn’t feel quite as rich and creamy as the ice cream you’d get from a good rural scoop shop in the States, but it definitely had it’s merits, and all kinds of flavors. It definitely hit the spot on a hot day.
I could probably go on about this vacation, but I’ve already written way too much. I mean, it’s next Sunday already.
4 COMMENTS
You think you’re so special by remembering the one thing you picked up about Italian and saying biscotto instead of biscotti. And yet, in the very next sentence, you describe it as “crumble.”
You’ll nevew fiww de duomo. It’s too big.
Hah! I fixed it. Now you look dumb!
The pictured toad was mistaken for a cooked Thanksgiving turkey for some time. I found it strange that such an item would be in the corner of a concrete room.
Mmmm… turkey…
Also, posting the species name does not make you sound cool, only that you spend way too much time looking stuff up; if you have them memorized, then I am truely scared.
Regards,
Bufo bufo