Grassing

Our primary job while Guido & Co. are on vacation is to weed the vineyard. Don't be fooled (as we were) by the simplicity of that description. This is a very, very bad job.

When Guids (pronounced "Gweeds," as we like to call him) asked us to "weed the vineyard," we went out to have a look at it. We saw 14 rows, each about the length of an Olympic swimming pool, and we said "No problem. We can do that in one day." We were a little bit concerned by the steepness and rockiness of the hill upon which said vineyard resided, and by the gusting winds assaulting that hill, but we still felt pretty confident. Our confidence was largely due to the weeds we could see, which were indeed thickly overgrown. They were those wonderful tall, leafy weeds that completely cover the ground. They probably take the cake for the best quality weeds on Earth: they easily accomplish any ambitious weed's top priority, which is to annihilate the beauty of a garden, but they are also quick and easy to remove. Thus, both weed and weeder are happy at a job well done. We think that combination makes a weed very high quality.

Once we began weeding, we realized very quickly that the weeds were not the true adversary. Oh no. The real problem was much deeper, underneath those innocuous weeds. To best explain the challenge we faced, you'll need a bit more backgound.

The *root* (bit of gardening-pun humor) of the problem was that the vineyard borders Guido's lawn on three sides. Due to the fact that Guids neither mows, weeds, nor edges with any regularity, the vineyard and the lawn have surmounted their respective barriers to become one. After we merrily pulled up a patch of weeds in the first row, imagine our dismay to see that archenemy of weeders everywhere: a healthy bed of grass. That had to be pulled up. By the roots. By hand. For 14 pool-length rows and wearing gloves we suspect are ancient Roman relics (Guids is nothing if not authentic). Today we did not weed. We grassed.

We have completed 8 rows and hopefully can finish the rest by the time they get home tomorrow. Luckily tonight it started getting dark and we had to feed the idiots (aka foul fowl aka chickens) so we had to stop.

The upside to this story is that now the word is out: for the most authentic Tuscan experience any time you need a little escape from daily life, you don't need cypress trees, wine barrells, clay roof tiles, or even rolling hills. Just a nice healthy patch of grass. Preferably on a rocky hill. And maybe a strong fan; the influence of those gusting winds can't be ignored.
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Happy Halloween!

So we've now been at our new farming position for a few days now. Our host family has left us to finish their olive oil orders and vineyard weeding since they have gone on holiday in the Alps.

Now we are drinking their wine and contemplating dressing up as them for this auspicious occasion. Since we have have no tricker-treaters though, I think we have decided not to do so.

At this point we have realized how lucky we are to have had our first host family, since it's been a little more difficult with this current family. Guido is just a little bit too snobbish. As a consolation though, he is not here so now we're just enjoying the Tuscan countryside and pretending that we live here.

We are also trying to download some pictures but for some reason, this upscale family has dial-up, so you all might have to settle for about 4 pictures.

We have also spoken to our parents today and would like to tell them again how much we're looking foward to seeing them this month!

Love you all and posts are appreciated!



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Tuscany

This morning we were very sad to pack up and leave our cozy apartment in Vernazza, it is just such a beautiful place. We took a train to Pisa where we had planned a 2-hour stopover to see the tower and it was a lovely day out today so that was fun. The only disappointment was that we forgot the camera (left it in our checked bags at the station) so we won't have any of the requisite holding-up-the-tower pictures. Quite a shame. Our train ride took us straight through Carrara so we got beautiful closeup views of the marble-laden hills, that was exciting. Wish we could have gotten out to take.a hike there - it would be so fun to find a rock somewhere in the hills that would be an actual piece of Carrara marble. 500 years ago could have been right next to the block that became the David or Pieta! That would be a great souvenir; hopefully we'll have a chance to go back.

We got to our final destination, a town called Empoli, and Guido was there with his daughter Hanna (age 4ish) to pick us up. His wife, Rebecca, and one of his daughters (age 13) are away this weekend and we haven't met the other daughter (16) yet but she'll be home for dinner.

Guido seems like a pretty interesting guy. He was born in Florence and studied there, in Paris, and in NYC to earn a PhD in archaeology. He specializes in the Middle East and throughout the past decade while he's been trying to get the farm up and running, he has made most of his living writing journal articles. We have a bedroom in their house and in it there's a chest with about two dozen artifacts that are a mixture of things he dug himself and a copy of an artifact that he made during his time working at the Louvre! His wife is from the Boston area originally (funny coincidence) but studied in Paris - we assume that's where they met. Guido is also a painter and our room is full of his paintings. Most of them are pretty good.

Guido told us a lot about some of the scary and surprising things that are commonly added to wines during production. Ever notice that there is never a list of ingredients for wine, even though it's required on everything else? He said sometimes the list of ingredients would fill the whoke label. Kind of gross. He was telling us that a lot of what he and his neighbors learned about cultivating grapes and making wines comes straight from old Roman texts - washing out the barrels only with salt water, etc. So interesting to think about how long the traditions have been passed down!

We went for a little walk this afternoon. It is so gorgeous here, it feels like being in a movie or a novel, wandering the gently rolling Tuscan hills all full of olive trees abd lined with lovely cypresses. The most exciting part of our day was when we turned to head back from our walk and a PACK OF WILD BOARS ran right across the road in front of us. There must have been 12 or 15 of them, all grunting and snorting. (All larger than our favorite little pig, Stella, at Schnepfendorf but smaller than our least favorite, Big Ugly Dinosaur). So that was an experience. Guido said they're kind of a problem here because there are so many of them.

Guido made a delicious dinner, with bread soup (fresh pressed olive oil poured directly on top after it's served) that he said is traditional to this area, some kind of yummy meat and roasted fennel. Then of course biscotti and homemade orange-cello for dessert (I made up the name orange-cello, but it's limoncello made with oranges instead of lemons because none of his limoncello was cold).

Two loud-and-clear signs that this house is inhabited by a New Englander: LLBean winter catalogue, USA Today with the Red Sox on the front page.
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La dolce vita

We thought it would be an appropriate time to write another post as we sit in our little kitchen eating a delicious pizza dinner. Our diet here in Italy has consisted almost entirely of carbs (perhaps not surprisingly) with the occasional addition of extra-large gelato waffle cones, which is quite a welcome change from the 70% saturated fat meals we had every day in Germany.

One other totally random thing we noticed that is every different here than in Germany is the attitude towards jaywalking. In Germany, to walk when the little green man was not visible was strictly forbidden, on pain of audible tsking from those on the sidewalk (who of course know better) and immediate branding as a culturally-insensitive American tourist. In Italy, the rule seems to be as follows: jaywalk as often as possible, even if it means crossing the street when you have no other reason for doing so, and preferably at a time which poses the maximum safety risk to you and everyone else in the immediate vicinity. This is possibly the best-loved sport in Rome after football. Upon reflection, we think this may be due to the Germans' national reverance for their cars (explained to us by Tobi), which may result in them avoiding any behavior, such as jaywalking, that could potentially result in damage to an automobile.

Our time here in the Cinque Terre has been just wonderful. We hiked through the other four towns and everything is so postcard-beautiful. Today it rained all day and, as it is expected to rain the rest of the week and there is little to do inside here, we briefly considered spending the rest of the week in Pisa or Siena but decided to stay put instead. It's so relaxing and we love our little apartment so we don't want to leave any earlier than necessary. Tomorrow we may take the train into the nearest city (or at least large town) to see War and Peace (in Italian) at the movies! Ed is especially excited.

Our only real challenge here has been grocery shopping. We're trying to save money by shopping instead of eating out so we stock up on cereal, bread, fruit, nutella, and other essentials at the tiny (only) neighborhood groceria. The problem has been in attempting to order sandwich meat at the deli counter from a disgruntled woman whom we suspect does in fact know how to speak English but chooses not to. We've encountered this situation with her twice so far and it usually goes something like this (please imagine a line of people already waiting behind us as we try to figure out names and prices of mystery meats):
Us: buon giorno
Disgruntled woman: hm.
Us: uhhh... Prosciutto cotto (cheapest thing we can find)
DW: si (starts slicing). Quanto? (How much)
Us: uhh... Half... Er, um, mezzo kilo
DW: mezzo?? Un mezzo kilo?!
Us: um, si
DW: mezzo kilo?? For two people?? (Her only English phrase so far)
Us (now embarassed since apparently no other two people in Italy would think of consuming that much prosciutto cotto): uh, si
DW (shrugs): ok... (Lays 0.25 kilos on the scale) Ancora? (Or something similar meaning "more?")
Us: si, mezzo kilo
DW: (adds a few slices so it is 0.32 kilos) ancora?
Us: si
DW: (makes it 0.39) ancora?
Us: no, grazie
We have yet to make it all the way to a half kilo, though we request that every time, since we eat ham sandwiches for two meals a day. At this point we dread going back, especially after two other embarassing incidents, one of which involved a pile of apples accidentally rolling on the floor at the front of the cashier line, and the other an accusation of attempted theft from an 80-year-old man (for the record, we were not trying to steal chickpeas).

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Vandal turns water in Rome's Trevi Fountain red

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5228889.html
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Venice to Bologna to Rome to Vernazza

It has been such a busy few days! It seems like our last post was forever ago, so much has happened since then. To get up to date:
We spent Tuesday in Bologna, thanks to Julie's recommendation, and had a fabulous time. We agreed that it wsd our best day in Italy so far, we just loved the city. It is beautiful and romantic with lovely arched porticoes on all of the buildings, most of which are bright yellow or orange so everything is so cheery and pretty. We did a tour and they said there are 23 miles of porticoes in the city, so they really are everywhere! We had a fun time walking through the university district - it's the oldest university in Europe (or the world?), dating from the 11th century. There were some outdoor markets and we explored one of the school buildings, which was all old stone with an interior courtyard, it's hard to imagine gping to class in such a beautiful place! It was just a great day and we would highly recommend Bologna to anyone visiting Italy.
Wednesday we took the entire day "off". We spent the whole day at the campground except for taking a walk through the neighborhood nearby and going out for pizza. Did laundry, etc. It was actually a pretty fun day.
Thursday we were up at quarter to five to catch our train to Rome. We had an unfortunate incident on the bus to Venice involving bus tickets (we didn't have one - oops), a crotchety driver, and public humiliation but otherwise our trip to Rome was fine. The trains are so easy to use.
That afternoon we met up with Aunt Linda and Uncle Bob at the Spanish Steps and spent the rest of the day with them - it was great! They were leaving the next morning after 3 weeks in Italy so we were so lucky to be able to meet up and it was fun to swap travel stories. It was also kind of nice to have some other English speakers and familiar faces for a few hours! We had a lovely lunch and then went back to their room, which was at the home of a really cute old couple named Luciano and Maria. It seemed like such a nice place to stay! We were going to head out to a cafe for some wine but Luciano and Maria insisted that we all stay there for their "vino della casa" so we had snacks and chatted abd it was really fun, mostly because the four of us spoke English, Luciano spoke only a little bit of English and otherwise Italian, and Maria spoke no English but Italian and French and I speak a little bit of French so there were lots of approximate translations and hand gestures going on! Then we went out for dinner before we had to catch a bus back to our hostel. It was a wonderful night and we were sad that they had to leave the next day but so glad we got to spend some time together.
Over the next two days, we went to the Vatican Museum, Sistine Chapel, and St. Peters and then the Colosseum and Roman Forum, all of which are of course magnificent and amazing. When we were at the Trevi Fountain all of the water was red for some reason and there were lots of police officers and TV camera crews there so we suspect it was not red on purpose, but we have yet to figure out what happened. We had planned to stay in Rome for over a week but actually ended up being there only two nights because our hostel was awful! Very icky and in a scary part of town and we couldn't find another place to stay, so we decided to leave. It was a little disappointing because we both really liked Rome a lot and would have enjoyed being there a few more days just to wander and take it all in. Also a little disappointing because we had a goal to see all of Michelangelo's work in Europe while we were here but since we left Rome early we missed two frescoes and one palace facade, but hopefully we'll be able stop over in Rome for a few hours at some point to see those.
In the end, it seems to have all worked out for the best because tonight we are in the breathtaking town of Vernazza in the Cinque Terre and we are staying in a small apartment! We haven't had a chance to explore because it was already getting dark when we got here but we're excited to see everything tomorrow and enjoy the next week here before we go to another farm!

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Venezia

We spent Saturday and Sunday wandering around bella Venezia. It is one of those places that in reality actually does look as beautiful as in movies and paintings, if not even more so. Saturday we really just walked all day and got lost way back in the side streets away from the main tourist area. Maybe it's just because we've been out in the boonies for the past 3 weeks, but Venice struck as us almost overwhelmingly touristy and crowded. It was hard to move in the Piazza San Marco and the lines were too long to visit any museums. When we were exploring the backstreets and little neighborhoods, though, it was beautiful enough to make up for the congestion of the main square. Sunday morning we got up early and went to mass at the Basilica San Marco, which was incredibly beautiful. Listening to the service in Italian, in an enormous gilt church feels like you've gone back 500 years in time.

Today we took the train to "fair Verona" for the day and had a lovely time. The city is picturesque, the weather was perfect, and we visited an art museum in the old castle as well as "Juliet's house". Verona was the setting for Romeo and Juliet, and in the 14th century there were feuding families named the Capulets and Montagues (or something very similar) so this was an old house that belonged to the Capulets and has a lovely balcony and all that. Okay, very touristy, but still fun.

It should also be noted that we've been eating pizza at least once a day and the pace does not seem to be slowing in the future.
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