Garden

One of the more unusual aspects of our apartment is that it looks out over an overgrown green space full of plants and trees. I mentioned it in passing several times and posted earlier pictures as the colors started to change. Unfortunately, we have no access to it and, in fact, our landlord doesn't even know who owns it. Last week I was startled to hear the sound of chainsaws buzzing nearby. After a short search I determined that it was coming from the enclosed garden space. It took three men working steadily for an entire day to clear out all of the underbrush and junk trees, leaving a beautiful open space filled with fruit trees and some grape vines. We were delighted, to say the least.

Until the next day.

When they came back and took out most of the remaining trees! It seems that the tenants in the building which actually owned and had access to the space were complaining about the shade it created and so they basically leveled the place. That is awkward, to say the least, since nobody lives on the ground floor of any of these buildings. Indeed, now that it is totally cleared out it is obvious that there aren't even any windows except basement casement windows. People, if you are in the basement you don't expect much light to come into the 1 foot by 3 foot window sitting on the ground. The remaining trees have been cut back to within an inch of their life. We just hope they are allowed to attempt to come back next spring rather than being chopped down the rest of the way. There is a nice magnolia, a cachi, several pear trees and what appears to be a citrus tree.

Perhaps the most disappointing part is that now we have a beautiful view of ... a parking lot. Can't wait until next spring when mother nature works her magic and heals the space.

Christmas Fair

Viterbo has a weekly, Saturday market set up in the main parking lot in the center of town near the Valley Faul. The parking area is part of the open space within the walls created decades ago by WWII bombing. There you can get inexpensive and cheap clothing, linens, cosmetics, etc. It isn't a flea market. Most of the goods sold are new. The vendors have a permanent, transient business, if that makes sense. They sell goods out of their trucks in similar markets all over the region and rotate from city to city on a regular schedule which gives them full-time employment without the hassle of a brick-and-mortar store.

Into this mix we throw the Christmas fair or market. Christmas fairs are common throughout Italy and Europe in general. They spring up everywhere. Christmas fairs in some locations, such as Prague, are actual tourist destinations. There is no agreed upon beginning or ending date although most start in late November and run until the weekend before Christmas. Some, such as the fair I described in Ferrara, are a delight. Others, such as the one in Viterbo, (unfortunately) not so much. Rather than being truck based, the Christmas fair stores tend to be slightly more permanent structures. Often these take the form of tents with raised platform floors and plywood display structures rather than tables with bins. The tent city in Viterbo has green tops with vertical red and white candy stripe sides. Four pictures of the Viterbo fair are shown below

I guess the part that disappoints me most is rooted in my own expectations. When I think of a Christmas fair I think of handmade crafts, gifts and food. The fair in Viterbo is just more of the same stuff you can find in the weekly sale in more permanent structures with (maybe) a slightly more festive twist. In other words, while trying not to be too disparaging, it is a crapatorium. I can see the basic appeal, but I don't feel any driving compulsion to visit Viterbo's Christmas fair again.

Roma

On Friday the school took the first of many day-long field trips to Rome. One of the things which attracted us to living in Viterbo was the proximity to Rome. At roughly 50 miles, straight down the Via Cassia, we figured that going there would be a regular and routine occurance. Then a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. We arrived in Viterbo and discovered we REALLY liked being here. Add to that the fact that you can't get there from here except by slow boat to China and we just never went back. This was literally our first trip to Rome since we brushed the edge of it on our train ride from the airport to Viterbo almost 16 weeks ago. In truth, it is easy and inexpensive. Trains run at least every hour and the cost for a day long transit pass is just 9 euros which includes round trip from Viterbo plus all your subway, bus and tram rides once you are in Rome. The kicker is that the main train ride is almost 2 hours long by itself and then you are left far away from the historic center needing to catch a subway train just to get anywhere close to where you want to be. It is an unfortunate fact that the subway in Rome is not extensive. Every time they try to dig a new tunnel they run into priceless archeology buried deep underground. That makes it difficult to ram a system around the city.

The weather was great, yet again. There was a little rain as we rode the train in, but it stopped in time for our arrival and most of the day was spent under partly cloudy skies with temperatures in the mid-60's. We arrived at Valle Aurelia and took the subway from there.

Our trip this time focused on two of the four museums which are part of the National Acheological Museums of Rome. Both sites focused primarily on sculpture recovered from all over Italy. The pieces are almost always ancient Roman copies of Greek originals. Wealthy and infuential citizens would have copies produced for display in their personal homes and gardens. Thus, there are many examples of the same statue which display minor differences. Unfortunately, very few of the statues exist entirely in their original, pristine form. The first stop was at the Piazza Massimo where Amy led a discussion about the Tivoli General (below).

We also viewed and discussed one of the best preserved Roman copies of the Discus Thrower (below).

In addition to statues, this museum also had examples of wall frescoes and mosaic floors which had been removed whole from their original locations to help preserve them from complete deterioration. The picture below is actually a piece of mosaic floor which is approximately 2 foot square made up of thousands of tiny individual tiles, each a few millimeters in size or smaller. This gives the finished work an incredibly detailed, almost painted quality.

Over lunch I had an hour and a half to negotiate the mile plus between that museum and the museum at Piazza Altemps. Along the way I managed to pass the Trevi Fountain.

I ate my lunch on the steps of the fountain in front of the Pantheon. Inside, there were temporary barriers up where the floor was wet from the morning rain. Yes, that is a REALLY big hole in the ceiling and water DOES come in when it rains. There is a system of drains in the floors to help clear heavy water and any moisture that is left is allowed to evaporate.

And the Piazza Novona, just a few meters from the museum I was headed for.

Unfortunately, I have no pictures inside the second museum. The rules regarding the taking of pictures change from museum to museum, day to day and even guard to guard. This can be VERY frustrating, but it is a fact of life you must simply accept and live with. The museum guard who saw me take out my camera was quite emphatic that I shouldn't take pictures. Interestingly enough, it was apparently all right for the people around me to do a few minutes later, but I didn't want to risk pissing anybody off.

Knockers Two

You might remember that a little more than a month ago I confessed my fascination with knockers. I think my interest stems partly from the fact that they are so uncommon in the US where everybody has a doorbell. Wooden construction makes it simple to drill a hole, run a wire and hook up electric chimes. Here in Italy, we were without a doorbell for a time as ours was malfunctioning. This is a bigger deal than in a single family home since the doorbell does double duty as an intercom and remote door opener for the entryway door. I watched over the electrician's shoulder as he tried to figure out what was going on in a building which is hundreds of years old and made of stone. Not my idea of a fun time. Fortunately, after a month or so, the day before the electrician was set to come and spend a day putting in a new intercom the old one spontaneously started working. Go figure - nobody touched it and we weren't about to open it up to see why it suddenly had life.

Our week-long trip to Northern Italy took us to two cities which I found to be rich in knockers: Verona and Venice. Verona had a nifty lion theme going. I haven't been able to uncover any symbolic reason for that which is unique to Verona. Of course, lions symbolize power and there is a bronze of a winged lion in the Piazza della Erbe. Viterbo has the lion as its symbol, so it wouldn't be all that unusual or unique for the Veronese to think they had cornered the market on the lion figure. The first of my lion examples is quite ornate while the second is simpler on an older looking, scarred door.

Also from Verona comes a simple ring with an obvious twist.

My favorite knocker from Verona is this ornate, devil-like figurehead on a faded, red-washed door. The wash extends all the way to the knocker itself, which is metallic. This is likely playing on a Dante theme inspired by the Circles of Hell.

In Venice I discovered this small, Egyptian-inspired knocker on a blue door.

And this fish/sea inspired knocker on a slate green door.

But, my favorite sighting of all time, knocker-wise, was a door hardware store on a little side street with display windows full of knockers. No, I'm not talking about the Red-light District of Amsterdam. See the three pictures below of a display of singletons followed by a couple of nifty pairs of knockers.

Unfortunately, these things weigh kilos each and cost hundreds of euros apiece, so you won't see me dragging any back to Springfield to adorn our door on Fairfield Street. Which is probably a good thing since they would be terribly out of place there anyway.

Reflections

During the last week we quietly passed a number of milestones on our Big Italian Adventure. While we were on the school trip we celebrated our 3 month anniversary of arriving in Italy. Just yesterday I passed my 100th blog entry. Although the official total is higher, not all of the entries are mine. Amy and Maggie contributed a handful. Finally, we celebrated Thanksgiving away from home. Each of these events provided a separate opportunity to sit back and reflect on life, friends and the world we live in.

Living in Italy has been a dream come true. It is a goal I had been working toward for almost four years, long before the start of this blog. I would plan and plot, trying to figure out how to make it happen. It got so bad that Amy stopped listening to me go around in circles. We went through two cycles of searches with the School Year Abroad before we finally landed our positions here. At each stage I had to push Amy out of her comfort zone and past her reluctance. Now that we are here, we both realize how wonderful it is and don't regret a single one of the snags and hurdles which needed to be overcome.

When we first arrived in Viterbo, it was with a sense of wonder and excitement. I would literally walk down the street, surrounded by 1000 year old buildings and tell myself, "Wow, I'm living in Italy. I really did it." I still get that tingle, that same sense of awe. But, it is tempered now by something else. When we go to the store, when we leave school and head for the apartment, when we walk out of a restaurant and look at the stars overhead, when we are away on a trip and come back, ... we are coming home. Our little apartment here is now our home.

We are both greatful and thankful for all of our friends, both old and new. While we are far away from Springfield and miss our old friends there, we have met a wonderful group of people who are now also our good friends. We look forward to continuing to mix our old with the new over the coming months and years!

Happy Thanksgiving

Many of you who know us well are aware that Amy and I have had very low-key Thanksgiving celebrations over the past decade or so. The stress of being pulled in many directions and not only wanting to please our families but genuinely wanting to be with all of them eventually got the better of us. For a number of years we disappeared to Spa Eastman, outside of Montreal. After all, the fourth Sunday in November holds no special significance to Canadians. There we were able to relax in the quiet solitude of wide open space, wander miles of hiking trails and finish every day with a hearty, healthy yet gourmet meal. However, the prices rose, the specials and incentives got smaller and the US dollar weakened significantly against the Canadian dollar so that we eventually give that up except under very special circumstances, turning instead to visiting nearby, out-of-season, tourist destinations such as the Cape. This year, we fled the country even earlier and further, landing here in Viterbo.

In Italy, as in Canada, the fourth Sunday in November has no special significance, UNLESS you are an expatriot American! The cultural exchange aspect of our school program goes in both directions to some extent. While the students are here to experience life in Italy, the Italian host families are always fascinated by their American charges as well. In addition, Amy and I are NOT the norm when it comes to the celebration of Thanksgiving. Our students have been here just long enough to really start to miss home and the thought of all of their families getting together without them would really bring them down were there no corresponding celebration here. Thus, the school sponsors a Thanksgiving dinner for all of the students, their host families and the faculty. It is a potluck; the Italian host families bring the food. Except, every year when they do it there isn't any food resembling what students long for = disappointment. This year, to attempt to counter that, the school purchased five turkeys and asked the American faculty to prepare them. Hence, I went from having nothing to do with Thanksgiving to cooking a turkey with all the fixins.  Ironic?!

To start, I had to pick up the turkey on Wednesday. Italians eat a surprising amount of tacchino (turkey), but they aren't available whole in any of the meat markets or stores. To get one whole you need to arrange it ahead of time. Our Resident Director saw to it that the turkeys had all been arranged for. Confident in my ability to negotiate the simple task of picking it up, off I went to Gigi e Mena, the site of our cheese tasting earlier this year. Fifteen minutes later I left, without a turkey. It seems the owner thought I wanted to buy a turkey for myself and there wasn't sufficient time to order one by the next day. Try as hard as I might, I couldn't figure out how to explain that I wanted one of the ones which had already been ordered by the school. Fortunately, the school is 75 meters down the road and I returned with reinforcements a few minutes later and ultimately left with my bird carcass.

The turkey I got here is somewhat different from the ones I have dealt with at home. It was gutted and the head was gone, all good. It was plucked, at least to some extent. I spent the better part of an hour removing left over feathers. After all, the best part of eating a turkey is the crunchy, butter covered, browned skin. Feathers wouldn't work for that. Then there are the drumsticks. They do cut off the feet - mostly. Next, the oven here is significantly smaller than any I have encountered in the US. After trussing up the bird as best I could, it DID fit. The only problem was that it touched both sides, the back and the top of the oven interior. And this was only a 15 pound bird. Much cooking ensued. Stuffing, gravy and cooked turkey were ultimately delivered to a parochial school assembly hall a couple of miles south of the city.

That was where mass chaos erupted. Imagine 200 of your closest friends, a 60 by 7 foot long buffet table, no chairs, no mashed potatoes and no carving knives. As Warren Zevon said in Lawyers, Guns and Money, "I don't wanna talk about it." I will say that I eventually steamrolled over enough people that I got some of the food I cooked and that it was well done. I cook a mean turkey!

Ferrara

The sixth day of our trip, Saturday 19 November, was intended to be a travel day back to Viterbo. The 5 and a half hour trip was too long to do in a single run for any number of reasons including 71 people, any one of whom could use a bathroom break at any time. However, the most important reason was that the bus driver is not allowed to drive for more than 4 and a half hours at a time without then taking a break of at least 40 minutes. We settled on a two-hour, lunch stop in Ferrara, a city in the Emilia-Romagna region between Bologna and Padua and about one third of the way home. We disembarked into a fairly heavy fog that is characteristic of the region. Indeed, every morning of the trip we were greeted by heavy fog, sometimes with frost. Ferrara, in some ways like Viterbo, is not a primary tourist destination. In Italy, as in the US, tourism is a double-edged sword. The locals love the money it brings in to the community but hate what it does to the character of the place they love. As Ferrara is off the beaten tourist path, the people we met in the shops and on the street were very warm and welcoming which was refreshing after so many days in tourist hotspots. As our stay was short (and finding luch does take some time), we didn't get to see that many things. One of the highlights was the Castello Estense. The Este family was a powerful family who made their family seat in Ferrara for awhile. They built a castle, complete with moat. It is the first moat I can remember seeing in Italy that is actually full of water. Entrance to the castle is free, but there isn't much to do once you get inside other than wander around amongst the cannonballs in the courtyard or visit the cafe conveniently located inside.

A second major sight is the Romanesque Cathedral of Saint George. Again, another giant church filled with art and altars. Do you get the sense I might just be becoming a little jaded about such things? One decoration outside the church did catch my fancy. On either side of the main door there were these lions with squat, troll-like figures holding up the columns. This lion has something like a ram's head between its paws.

Lunch, the main reason for our stop, was porchetta purchased at a local street Christmas market. Unlike in the US where we have Thanksgiving to sort of mark off the beginning of the Christmas season, in Italy they just sort of gradually roll into it. Some places are beginning to decorate and a few of the Christmas fairs have begun to pop up. This was the first day of their market which was located around the corner from the cathedral. Porchetta is a whole suckling pig from which the bones and internal organs are removed. The remaining carcas is stuffed with different things, roasted whole and cut into slabs for serving. I had mine with hot sausage, roasted peppers and roasted onions all wrapped in something which resembled a super thick tortilla. In a word, YUMMY! For lunch, Amy and I broke one of our cardinal rules and went into a McDonalds. In truth, we mostly just wanted to be out of the cold and have access to a bathroom. To do that we had to buy something so we each had a 1 euro milk shake. I figure if we didn't get a burger then it was no harm and no foul.

The sun never did manage to peek out while we were there although the fog did thin a bit. As we were leaving, the heavier fog was rolling in again. We returned to Viterbo to spend the night in our own bed for a welcome change.