Home, via Siena and Roma

Pictures in reverse chronological order. I'll never figure out this technology.

At the Pantheon in Rome.

Hall in the Vatican museum. We couldn't go that way.

St. Peter's, Vatican City

Il Campo in Siena, during the Palio. We got a spot right at the starting gate.

Flag twirlers at the Palio.

I've made it back to Vermont, where the hills are greener than anything I've seen in Italy. I should start from where I left off, though.

The goat farm in Bologna continued to be great. I got to make cheese, got a bit closer to the owners, and had some good practice preparing Italian cuisine. From there I went south to Siena for the Palio, a famous horse race. What a crazy event. I've never seen so many people so deeply involved in an event. The race itself only lasts about 2 minutes, but the build-up goes on for hours. We arrived around 11am for the 7pm start. The parade started around 4, with each of the contradas (sections of town competing against each other) presenting their best armor, weapons and flag twirlers. Some pretty remarkable acts. At 7 all the horses come out onto the track and start to line up. They get randomly placed in the starting gate and all start making deals with each other, bribing each other to slow down their enemies and help out their friends. When everyone is lined up, the 10th jockey can choose to start the race whenever he likes, based on the positioning of the other horses, which ones are ready and which are not. Once he starts, there is often a false start, which I think happens when one of the other horses starts too soon, or something. Anyway, with much prancing around and jostling for position and three false starts, the race ended up happening around 9pm. Two minutes later the Owl contrada had won, fans rushed the track and the losing horses and jockeys were quickly ushered away so as not to be attacked by the enraged crowd. The crowd is always enraged because the nine losing teams are furious.

I ended up spending a week at Spannocchia, relaxing a bit, making focaccia, meeting the summer intern group and playing quite a lot of ukulele. It was strange to be back, especially in a non-working capacity. It is really a magical place, especially being able to see past the farm politics and drama that started to get to me towards the end of the internship.

I booked a hostel in Rome and ended up staying there for 3 nights and 2 full days. Of course, not nearly long enough to see perhaps the greatest tourist city in the world, but I packed in just about as much as possible. This was the most I felt like a tourist during my whole trip, but it's hard not to feel like a tourist in Rome. At the hostel I immediately met a great group of Brits and Canadians, including another ukulele player. We spent our nights wandering around the Spanish steps area and the Colosseum. Monday we went to the Vatican, which was mind-boggling. St. Peter's is the most lavish building I've ever seen, just unbelievable. The Vatican museum is packed with artifacts from all over the world. They have so many sculptures that they just fill rooms with them, lining all edges and not even labeling anything. It's almost as if they're showing off the vastness of their collection without allowing you to actually appreciate any of it. We spend the rest of the days stopping at the rest of the major sites on our way back across town, the Pantheon, Trevi fountain, etc. Tuesday I wandered around the ancient ruins and had a more reflective day, since it was my last in Italy.

The flight home was remarkably easy, quite a bit smoother than most of the travel I had gotten used to around the Mediterranean. British Airways provided three meals in two flights, so civilized. So now I'm back in Vermont, adjusting to wide roads, huge cars, being able to communicate with everyone I see, individualism and progressivism. I don't plan to continue this blog now that I'm back home, but thanks for reading. It's been a good way to organize and archive my thoughts.

Bologna, Goats

New Pictures!

Bologna, the red city.

My couchsurfing friends admiring some frescoes.

Fattoria i piani, the goat farm. This is typical landscape in Emilia Romagna.

Baby goats acting sheepish.

It turns out sheep herding skills are transferable to other ruminants.

I've made it back to northern Italy. It's quite a cultural shock, and the weather has been cooler (as low as 60!) than I've experienced since May. I would guess the average midday temperature for the past 3 months has been between 80 and 85. I spent a few days in Bologna, which is a beautiful city. It's usually packed with students (150,000 out of 500,000 total residents), but they're all on vacation right now, probably at the sea in southern Italy, so the city was quiet. I couchsurfed with Mario, and English professor from Australia at the university, along with 4 Polish girls and 2 other Americans. It was quite a party, really terrific. For the first time I felt like a real tourist, seeing most of the big sites in the city. A fun change of pace, gorgeous cathedrals. It's strange to be back in the north, it almost feels like Austria or southern Germany here. Everything is very (well, relatively) clean, organized and on-time. I'm definitely more comfortable in this environment, Bologna could practically be a US city. On the other hand, my horizons aren't expanding quite as much as they did in the south.

Now I'm on a goat farm about an hour out of Bologna. This is the first farm I've been on that is actually making money (or at least trying to) by selling its products, which is a very nice change of pace. Work seems much more real and necessary. The farmer works more than any of the other places I've been, which is inspiring to see and makes my work feel more valuable. I haven't made cheese yet, but I'll probably get a couple chances to in the next 10 days. I love the goats, though. It's great to be with animals again, they're so calming and funny. The goats are much smarter than the sheep I worked with in Siena (not as smart as the pigs, but they were a little bit TOO smart, I think), and much more friendly. The baby goats are adorable, they like to lick my hands and chew on my T-shirt. I've done the milking a few times now (it's all by machine since there are about 150 goats), I think it's work I naturally enjoy, being from Vermont. Today we're digging a big ditch, good hard work. So everything is going very well, and I'm still adding to the list of things I've never done before this trip. And after this, I'm going to go to the Palio in Siena!

Sicily to Greece

New Pictures!

Watching the sunset over the Adriatic.

Meteora, Greece. Rocks and religion.

Clearest water I've ever seen, Greece.

Parthenon, Athens. It's always under construction.

Temple of Hephestus, Athens. Best preserved ancient Greek temple.

It took me 50 hours to get from Sicily to Greece, but the journey was great. I got dropped off from the farm at the local bus stop around 4pm last Wednesday, took a bus into Catania where I caught a train to Messina where they put the train on a ferry at brought us across to Calabria. In my train car there was a Sicilian, two Americans (me and another WWOOFer who left the same day as me), one Colombian and one Mauritanian. That was quite a fun and interesting train ride. I played them some songs on the ukulele. Next I took an overnight train from Villa San Giovanni at the tip of Calabria to Taranto in Puglia where I changed trains to Brindisi, arriving at 8:30am on Thursday. With the help of a British girl who was doing more or less the same thing I was, I found the ferry and booked a ticket to Patra for that evening. I got on the ferry around 4pm and we pulled out of the harbor at 6:30pm, ETA 10am in Patra, Greece. It was really a beautiful ride, I got to watch the sun set and rise over the Adriatic (actually, it probably isn't the Adriatic the whole time. It's hard to tell where certain seas start and end). I rolled out my sleeping bag and slept on a life jacket bin, which was surprisingly soft (or I was surprisingly tired). We arrived in Patra at 10:30am on Friday, but it was actually 11:30 am because there is a time change. I asked around and found out that there was a train strike for one day, but that the train isn't very good anyway, so I went to the bus station and caught the next bus to Athens, leaving 12:45pm and arriving at 3:30pm. Greece is great, the people are really friendly and everyone speaks English. It's a totally different experience to be in a place where I can't read the signs or even attempt a conversation in the native language, though. I feel a lot more like a tourist here. So, I arrived in Athens, took a city bus to the main square, then a subway to the end of the line to Kifissia where my friend Alexandra lives. I walked to her house using the map I had sketched in my journal off Googlemaps, and arrived at 5pm on Friday.

I took a shower and we went straight back into Athens where we met Jagu (my physics professor from Amherst), Daniel Hall (Amherst creative writing prof., ), and Bill Miglore (Amherst '06). We all went to the new Acropolis museum, then to a nice dinner at some fancy club where Alex's uncle has some special position. It was very fun to have a little Amherst reunion, and completely out of the blue.

Now I just got back from a 3-day road trip around the northern half of Greece with Alex and Bill from Amherst, and Alex's sister Katy. This country is really incredible and much less settled than Italy. We left Athens heading north, passing by a number of cities familiar from ancient myths and stories: Thebes, Thermopylae, Delphi, Corinth. We stopped a number of times on the side of the road to swim in the Aegean, and later the Ionian seas. The water here is unbelievable, incredibly warm, clear and salty. If I didn't rinse off after a swim I'd be coated in salt when I dried off. We stayed in Trikala and Ioannina, two cute cities filled with Greek (but very few foreign) tourists. They have much nicer and larger parks than I got used to in Italy, probably because there is so much more space to expand. The highlight of the trip for me was seeing the Meteora, a group of monasteries built on top of some remarkable cliffs. It really looked like something out of a story book, the classic impossible-to-reach holy place. Even without the monasteries, the landscape is one of the most spectacular I've seen, and those just made it that much better. We've also explored Athens a bit, which has been fun, and may go to an island in the next few days.

I've put all my pictures up until leaving for the road trip onto this computer, so I'll put some on the blog now. If possible I'll add them to the appropriate entries, so go back and see if there are new things!

Bella Sicilia

New Pictures!

A main square in Catania, Sicily.

On Mt. Etna, you can almost see towns and the sea in the background.

On top of Mt. Etna. I'm not sure we were supposed to get so close to the crater.

A view of Etna from the terrace at the farm in Sicily.

Digging a hole is Sicily. This hole was the source of much anxiety.

Ah, Sicily. It's beautiful here. Of course the rest of Italy is beautiful as well, but there's something about the shape of the land here that's a little bit more rugged, less refined. The cities are a little bit dirtier, the people a little bit friendlier, everything is quite a bit cheaper and the food quite a bit fresher. I'm staying with a friend I met WWOOFing in Calabria, Andrea, which is great. It's really nice to have a home base again, a few days to catch my breath and do a load of laundry (it's been 5 weeks now?). I hiked Mt. Etna a couple days ago, which was also quite refreshing. It's a beautiful mountain, though like the rest of Italy, very settled and ready to accommidate any traveler. There is a gondola part way up, then some bus/jeep things a bit farther (if you're willing to spend 50 euro. It seems silly to spend so much to miss the whole experience of getting up a mountain). Only the very top (officially 'forbidden') feels like actual hiking, and it is definitely the most beautiful part. There are sulfur vents all over the place, and you have to be careful not to breath in the fumes. The ground is yellowish white all over, and the wind is spectacular. The summit is about 10,900 ft, making it the tallest mountain I've climbed yet. I went with a guy I met at the hostel who had climbed 11 of the 52 14,000+ ft peaks in Colorado, which was a bit humbling. I guess if I live in Colorado I'll have to get more serious about climbing mountains. I'm in good enough shape from biking and farming that this one wasn't a problem, but the air does get pretty thin up there! I'm staying with Andrea for a couple more days (so far we've made homemade pesto with basil from his garden, lasagne with besciamella (no idea how to spell it in English, beshmell?) sauce, and crepes), then I'm going to a farm near Catania which advertises meditation as one of the common activities. I'm excited to give that a try for a bit, I hope I have the will power to do a bit every day while I'm there.

Under the Calabrian Sun

New Pictures!

The Amalfi Coast. Biking on these cliffs was incredible. The road was winding but not too steep.

The town of Amalfi. We went on a hike up the cliff between these two towns.

This is Atrani, our little town on the Amalfi Coast.

Maybe my tractor driving was part of the problem?

I am in a tree watching the sunset on my Calabrian farm.

Well, a lot has happened since my last update! I spent a week in Atrani with friends from Spannocchia, which was great. The Amalfi coast is gorgeous, filled with enormous cliffs. We took lots of walks to Ravello, a little town where Virgina Woolf and some other famous artists worked. I can see why. Also did a lot of sitting on the beach and cooking. All in all, a great week. Next I took a train down to Catanzaro in Calabria to work on another farm. I was pretty much on my own the whole time, which was a cool experience. I don't think I've ever had so much unfocused time to myself (i.e., not biking all day). I started writing some songs, drawing some, doing yoga and meditating a bit. Another WWOOFer came for a few days, and that was also fun, and a nice change of pace. He's from Catania in Sicily, and I'm actually on my way down there now to meet up with him and hike Etna (if all goes as planned, he hasn't gotten back to me yet and email in Sicily is apparently really spotty). Any way, after several days of not showing up to the farm, the boss-man, Antonio, finally had some free time on the weekend and wanted me to basically work the entire time, 8-10 hours a day. I was not into this idea. I was already upset with him for leaving me hanging at the farm, always having to be ready for him to arrive, and him never coming. I was perfectly happy with the work (I still had things to do while he was gone), and I learned a lot about gardening, olives, vinyards, and handyman type stuff. So yesterday after working 8:30 to 1, I told him I was ready to be done working for the morning and he started telling me about how I wasn't happy there, and told me to go eat if I really wanted to. So I decided to leave that evening, half kicked out, half leaving on my own. A surprisingly bitter end to a pleasant time in the countryside. So I took a train back to the west coast and slept on the beach, which was quite pleasant aside from some mild showers. Now I'm back on the road with my bike, heading south. I'm in Tropea, a cute little tourist town with tons of Germans, English, and Italians. I'm going to keep heading south and plan to arrive in Catania around Wednesday evening. Then about a week of visiting the area, two more weeks of farming, then off to Greece!

Biking the coast

New pictures! Reverse chronological order.

On the northern side of the Sorrento peninsula. The Amalfi Coast is on the other side.

Most of the coast looked like this.

This was one of my favorite places on the coast. Very tranquil, little castle, beautiful sea.

Blue Crush on the shore near Civitavecchia.

The road flattens out after the hills of Tuscany.

I arrived in Atrani, a small town on the Amalfi coast a couple days ago at exactly noon. Five minutes later some more interns from Spannocchia showed up on their way from Napoli. Pretty remarkable timing considering that we had decided to meet in a town none of us had been to at an arbitrary time a week earlier, and hadn't talked at all since. The bike ride ended up being about 300 miles, and totally fantastic. I left Spannocchia last Monday in the afternoon after the heat cooled down and rode about 50 km through the hills of Tuscany. It was the hardest days, partially because of the hills and partially because I was sad to be leaving the farm. The ride started to level out towards evening and I got very excited about biking. I ended up sleeping next to a nice basil field outside of Grosseto. Tuesday I rode another 15 km into Grosseto, then 10 km out looking for the route south, but ended up having to turn around when all the coastal roads dead ended. Rather than take the superstrade (fast road), I hopped on a train and went to Civitavecchia, about 100km south on the coast. I grabbed a bite to eat and left south. The riding for the next few days was unbelievable, spectacular views of the Mediterranean and surrounding cliffs. I stayed in campsites along the way and went about 100km a day. I woke up early each morning (pre-7) and started riding quickly to avoid the heat, then took a 4 hour siesta from 11 to 3 to eat, nap and stay cool. The afternoon rides tended to be a bit better and more energized, and at times I really got rolling. Friday I rode along the coast near Napoli, which was the most stressful part of the trip, especially because of the cobblestone roads. It was still gorgeous, though. I slept on the tip of the Amalfi peninsula that night, then rode the last 40km into Atrani that morning. This ride was definitely one of the top two or three adventures I've ever had. I can't post pictures now, but will when I have a better internet spot. Now I'm relaxing with friends near Amalfi, making delicious meals and enjoying the beach. Next week, I'm off to Calabria. Ciao!

Moving On

New Pictures!

Here Tyler plays a traditional bag-throwing game for Derby day (Kentucky Derby!) in front of the Spannocchia Villa.

Riccio (the boss) and his band play for the Mayday celebration.

San Galgano monastery near Spannocchia. They claim to have the sword in the stone from the King Arthur story.

After cooking class, enjoying our handmade spinach ricotta ravioli.

A random beautiful church in Genova where we visited for the Slow Food event "Slow Fish." Summary of the trip: DON'T EAT FISH.

Yesterday we finished our last day of work at Spannocchia, and all the interns are leaving this coming Monday. It's a bittersweet departure (like most), I'm delighted with all the knowledge and skills I've gained, but disappointed I couldn't do more to improve the farm and make it more viable. My plans for the next few weeks are solid, then things get a bit vague again. First, I'm biking down to the Amalfi coast in southern Italy, which is about 450 km. It should take about 4-5 days, then I'm meeting some of the other interns from here and we're renting an apartment on the coast for a week. I've been working on my base tan, so I'm well prepared to sit on a beach for a while. We actually took a field trip to a much closer beach today and it was gorgeous. The water was the perfect temperature, actually a bit warmer than the pool here that they just opened (and the salt feels tremendously better than chlorine). After the week on the coast I'm biking a bit farther south to Calabria, where I'll be working on a farm with someone named Antonio. He sent me some pictures of him in his artichoke patch, and he looks quite friendly. I'm hoping to do more in the vegetable garden and learn a bit of wood frame construction. I'll be there for about three weeks, then probably take a brief trek south to Sicilia to see/climb Mt Etna, then back north. I'm looking for a dairy farm in the north to spend either my July or August, but it's too early to know how that will pan out.

There was a funny moment yesterday evening which I think captures the essence of my experience here and shows how my comfort level has changed. I was sitting on the top of the 12th century tower in the center of our villa playing ukulele and noticed that some of the piglets were rooting around outside their pen. I got Kate, another animal intern to help me put them back inside. She was already dressed for dinner, wearing a nice black skirt and shirt, I was barefoot in my boxers. A couple of the pigs were easy to round up, but one was being stubborn and kept running past the open gate without going inside. We trapped him in a corner and I grabbed his back legs. Pigs are very strong, and when you first grab them, they keep kicking their legs which makes your arms piston back and forth. I dragged him along the ground wheelbarrow-style and Kate helped me direct him back into his pen. It was quite a sight, one formally dressed and one hardly dressed intern wheeling a pig around in the evening light.