Orvieto: Ceramics Capital of the World

4.4

How embarassing – apparently the website said “be sure to bring cash as B&Bs can’t take Visa” and I missed it. So now I have to send them money when I get home. They were so nice to us that this feels truly terrible. Tiziana even gave us a little striped dress for Rose, and a winter coat – “My mother got them for our daughter and she only wore them once. They’re really brand new.” Will have to get down to the post instantly Monday to send a money order.

Train to Orvieto was uneventful. We could have taken the funicular up the hill to the city and to the hotel, but I wasn’t sure where the hotel was exactly and decided to cab it. It’s about 1 kilometer from the station to the hotel via funicular. Almost 6 via cab. This is what you get for building your city on the Italian version of a mesa. The drop is very steep around 3 sides, but not as bad on the 4^th, so the long and windy road does eventually arrive.

Once settled in the hotel, we decided to go out and explore a little. We turned left on the main road and wandered all the way down to the funicular. When we passed a ceramics shop, of course we had to stop (I’m on the hunt for matching pieces for my little coffee creamer that i love so). The shop had a studio in it as well. An elderly man had just started working on a little vase, drawing in the thin black lines of the traditional leaf pattern. He had the vase on a wheel and just turned it very slowly to add more and more layers of detail to the leaves. Rose was fascinated and stood for almost 20 minutes absolutely silent watching. When he finished all the black, he put everything aside and said he was tired, so we continued on down to the funicular. Only one euro to ride it down and back up – after 12E for the cab, ouch. Nice view, but as the cliff is very steep, not a very long one!

The funicular is right next to a public park. It’s kinda cool to think that the place where Aurora and her new friend (because Aurora ALWAYS has a new friend if there’s another little girl in the place!) were running and playing is in the keep of a 13^th century castle. I walked around and read some of the signs about it. Orvieto was a papal stronghold for a long time –Pope Boniface VIII got himself in trouble for putting a statue of himself in place of the St Joseph that used to be over the gate to the city. Someone accused him of idolatry and he ended up not only having to remove the statue but not come back to Orvieto. Some amazing views of the Umbrian countryside from up there. The little girl (whose name I did not catch) wanted to come back and play again tomorrow, and I was all set to make it a date, but her grandmother reminded her she had a ballet lesson. She and Ro were both very disappointed.

As we walked back up, Ro looked in the window of the Fusari studio and saw a woman sitting at the wheel now. She immediately wanted to to watch again, which was fine with me. Signora Fusari was considerably chattier than her husband. She told us all about the shop, the kiln, how the earthquake last year had caused their old studio to be condemned and now they only had this tiny space, instead of a big studio where the “tornitori” (potters) worked and fired things in the HUGE kiln (this one was only about 3x the size of a normal big kitchen oven). She and her husband and their daughter do all the painting; she said most of the shops in the main ceramics area of town buy from artists in the nearby countryside, but few do their own work in-house. She had just finished the black on a different vase, and asked Ro what color she should paint it. (Most of their work is black and white with one color, pink, yellow, teal or cobalt blue, added.) I’m sure you’ll all be astounded to hear she picked pink. So we got to watch the vase go from mostly white to completely painted and ready to fire. They only run the oven once every week or so, since it takes them that long to fill it up. Sgra Fusari fell two months ago and broke her left wrist, so she still has a hard time balancing long enough to do a lot of painting. She was sad that her daughter isn’t crazy about doing the ceramics and her grandchildren aren’t at all interested. The craft will die soon, she told us. Aurora said she would come back someday and paint for her, which cheered her up a little.

As we were leaving, she led us over to one of the tables in the store. It had coffee sets and little ceramic bells all over it. She pointed to the bells. “You should pick one you like,” she told Rose. We found one that was the same pattern as the vase she had been working on, and pink as well! Perfect. I tried to pay for it – it was only 5E after all – but she refused. “I enjoyed having her here. It is a gift.”  I noticed some votive candle holders on a rack in the studio that were lovely – will go back tomorrow and buy a few. As I think about it, I kinda like the idea of votive holders better than candle holders – the light is every bit as pretty and not in the way! You can see some of their stuff here: https://plus.google.com/112784262776878746452/about?hl=en

For dinner we just went walking until we found something. The restaurant we chose was off the main street and empty at 8 pm, but certainly not deservedly so – we both ordered rare steak with balsamic crema sauce and garlic spinach, and I had a glass of the famous Orvieto white wine, and they were all delightful.

The room is a thousand degrees, as usual. What IS it with Italians, that they insist on keeping their hotel rooms at temperatures Bedouins couldn’t tolerate? Fortunately, the windows opened, so we left the windows open all the time. (Before you assault my lack of environmental concern, we tried turning off the heat in the room, and we asked the guy at the front desk to turn it off too. “Turning off” appears to mean, in hotel room heat terms, “reduce from surface of sun temp to merely Saharan.”)

5.4

When we first started out this morning it was raining, of course, but initially this was not too terrible, as we were going to look at the Duomo and then take the Orvieto Underground tour.

When I first saw the Cathedral years ago with its black-green and white stripes I thought it was ugly, but over time it’s really grown on me, and now I can’t imagine its looking any other way.  The mosaic work on the outside – lapis and gold and something red – is almost invisible until you get right up to it, it’s so fine. Even the pavement around the front, in pink and green marble, is impressive.

The inside is almost solid 15^th century frescoes, just amazing. For my money, it beats Sistine Chapel hands down: artwork just as impressive, cheaper to get in, no lines. The San Brizio Madonna chapel was mostly done by Fra Angelico, but finished by Coreggio. Around the bottom of the main religious frescoes there is a series of portraits of… someone (philosophers? Pagan writers? Identifications are not clear) in frames. But instead of being just static portraits, the subjects are looking at each other or at the frescoes above, totally breaking the fourth wall. One is even leaning out the “window” backwards to get a better look at the upper frescoes.

The tunnel tour was a bit of a disappointment because it was so short. Orvieto is built on a mesa of mostly tufa, a relatively soft volcanic rock (you can totally scrape it off with a bit of rock). The Etruscans who originally settled here built wells that go 200 meters down into the mesa to get water, and later built tunnels that included storage, fortifications, and temples. The city was abandoned by the Etruscans, but resettled by the Romans, and its defensibility made it a favorite haunt of Popes throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance (some Popes went so far as to live here rather than Rome, and there was more than once talk of moving Pope Central out of Rome to Orvieto). Meanwhile, there were all these caves the Etruscans had built, and the medieval residents continued to expand them. Today there are over 1200 separate tunnels; most of them are under private houses and are still used for storage, though rarely for wells, olive oil mills, and pigeon-raising as they were by the Etruscans and medievals. The tunnels we saw were an olive mill, a cement mine, a well, a pigeon columbarium, and the waiting room of the underground hospital dug during WWII (the tunnel to the hospital itself had partially collapsed, so we only got to look down in, not actually go to the hospital).

After the tunnel we had lunch, then went on a ceramics tour of Orvieto. The main ceramics district is just off the Piazza Cahen, where the Duomo is. I found the shop where I had bought my creamer 10 years ago, but they didn’t have much to match it other than more coffee service. So I was sad about that. However, I did see a peacock plate, a very traditional Renaissance design and difficult to execute, on a wall that I really wanted. I pulled it down and noticed that it had a chip on the back of it. After looking and looking for one that didn’t have a chip (there were lots of peacock design plates that size, but none in the same colors), I was about to give up. The store owner saw that I was hunting for something and asked me about it. When I told him I wasn’t going to buy a chipped plate, he offered it to me for 50% off. Ok, at 50% I can tolerate a chip that’s not visible when the plate is displayed!

Our last touristy stop of the day was the Museo Faina, a private collection of local Etruscan goodies collected by the Faina family in the late 1800s. The story of how it was collected is almost as interesting as the objects themselves! A lot of what’s here is a hodgepodge because its discovery predates both standard archeological collection practice and laws governing what you can keep of antiquities when you find them. So provenance and dating are both sketchy to completely unknown. A lot of what’s here was found within 15 miles of Orvieto, however.

We went back down to Fusari to get the votive holders, and they were all gone! When I asked, it turned out that the ones I had seen were never for sale anyway – Sgr Fusari had made them all for table decorations/prizes for their grandson Matteo’s first communion. However, Sgra Fusari said I should just call next week and remind her of the pattern and she’ll make me some more (but without Communione di Matteo 14-4-13 written on the bottom!) So I bought a little plate that’s very representative of their work, and will call later for the votives.

6.4

Naturally, since we were on the train all day (after first waiting for it for over an hour when it was delayed in Rome), this was the first uniformly gorgeous day all week. The station store had Magic Pen coloring books (the kind where you have just one pen and coloring with it changes the page to different colors), so I bought two for Rose to give her something to do while we waited and during the trip. They were a great success – will have to look for more for the next train ride. But otherwise an uneventful day. Glad to be home.

As close to Greece as frankly I'm ever likely to get

1.4

As usual, slept not at all last night for fear of oversleeping. If we were to miss the 9:15 train from Fidenza we wouldn’t be able to catch our Frecciarossa south. And we love our Frecciarossa south – direct from Bologna to Salerno. However, not only got out in plenty of time, but in time to forget something in the car and be able to go back from the station to get it (about a 5 minute walk each way).

Our B&B was a longish walk from the station, but it’s CONSIDERABLY warmer here and so it wasn’t terrible. And it hadn’t started raining yet. Beautiful little hotel. Our room is by far the nicest we’ve stayed in all this year. No view except of the interior courtyard, but a lovely room in grey and cream and beige, very soothing. I knew, but hadn’t really processed, that Salerno is a port town; we’re half a block from the sea. We walked down to have a look, but it started to rain again so we cut our walk short. Off now to explore for dinner.

2.4

Dinner was quite delicious – pappardelle with mushrooms and sausage in a cheese sauce – but the owner offered me “a taste” of a local ricotta that I think didn’t agree with me. It was delicious, but insanely rich and I ate too much of it. So I was up all crampy and miserable in the night, bleh. Seemed an inauspicious start to a day that was forecast to have thunderstorms.

However, come the morning and breakfast, things changed. The only other couple in the B&B are Florence and Henri, an elderly pair of friends from Paris. Their respective spouses died 12 years ago, and they have hung out and traveled together ever since. We got to chatting with them over breakfast, and it turned out that they were going to Paestum today! I opined that we should go together, not realizing that they had rented a car for their Italian vacation. I meant go on the bus together, but they said sure, we’ll take you down. They were going further south after Paestum so we would have to make our own way back, but one bus ride instead of two is always high on my list.

She used to teach French to American diplomatic corps folks, so her English is very good, and I got to limp along in a little French with them, which was kind of nice. I understood the majority of what they said, but of course with no practice of any kind since I left Berlitz and not a lot then, producing anything intelligent was rather labored. However, we were all able to understand each other fine in the end.

They weren’t going to be ready to go till 11, so we walked up to the Museum of the Medical School of Salerno, which is just across the piazza from here. It was kind of a bust, as it’s only a series of videos about medieval school, which was fine and interesting, but they were all in Italian and the acoustics were terrible so they were kinda hard to understand. There were no exhibits per se. The only exhibits available are all 18^th-20^th C, boo, and are at the Papi Museum of Medicine, which is in a building that was once part of the 13^th C medical school, and which sits above either the original medical school herb garden or a reproduction (not completely clear from the lady at the Med School museum which it was). If it’s not raining we’ll go up and look at the garden tomorrow. We then walked down to the shore and Ro played in the park near the sea until time to rejoin Florence and Henri.

The whole ride down to Paestum was just lovely – sunshine and blue sky directly overhead, but plenty of threatening clouds on the horizon. Florence drove. I tried to imagine Mamma driving out of Salerno and down unfamiliar Italian country roads, and failed. Henri is a bit more frail, and he argued with her the whole way about the directions. However, they seem to have been accurate enough. I probably couldn’t have gotten any pictures worth keeping on the ride down, but I totally understood looking at the countryside why the Romans were so excited about acquiring Campania, and indeed, why it’s called “Land of Fields”. With the Mediterranean on one side and lush farmland stretching into the mountains on the other, it definitely had its attractions for a nation that believed itself to be composed entirely of yeoman farmers. The poverty was pretty evident as well, which was depressing, but the cherry trees were in bloom, so  I concentrated on that. I do wonder why the Mediterranean was so intensely brown close to the shore but so very turquoise at the horizon. All churned up close to shore I guess, but why. The trees along the shore were also curious: they all bent toward the shore. I would have understood AWAY from the shore. Apparently the offshore breeze is the one that prevails here. And it’s a serious one – all the trees at the road edge of the forest, that basically functioned as the windbreak for the rest of the woods, were bent at about a 60 degree angle to the ground.

Once we got to Paestum they dropped us off, since being young and spry we would be going a lot faster than they would (they’re both in their 80s). We had to walk the length of the zona archeologica to get to the museum to buy tickets. Naturally, within seconds of our entering the actual park the clouds started to gather in earnest. We walked the length of it and looked at what we could, but by the time we were about halfway down, the rain had started. I had only brought one umbrella and Rose wanted to run around, so I stayed fairly dry and she got soaked. The rain just got fiercer and fiercer, so we gave up and headed back toward the cluster of pizzerias to get something to eat and get warm. I wasn’t actually hungry, so Rosie ate while getting colder and colder in her wet shirt. Fortunately I had on a long-sleeved tshirt and a flannel shirt on top, so when we got to the museum we took off her shirt and rolled the sleeves up high on her so she could move. It was a good enough arrangement, and she wasn’t cold anymore.

The museum was very cool, and Rose even liked it. The tomb paintings from the Greco-Lucan portion of the city were amazing. Rose got bored before I could read all the exhibition cards I wanted to, but I took pictures of some to read later. On the top floor, however, there was an exhibit of Neolithic period artifacts that she was fascinated by – the area has been continuously inhabited for sure since nearly 8000 BCE, and maybe even before then. There was a video of how someone from about 8000 BCE would have made a stone knife, a copper dagger, and a clay pitcher. She really enjoyed finding the original objects in the exhibition. Note to self: keep an eye out for similar exhibits in future.

When we left the museum, the sun was out again, so I decided to assay getting to the far end to get pictures of the second temple to Hera (I had gotten a couple of the first one before the rain got too bad). By the time I got to the second temple, yes, it had started to rain again. I snapped three pictures and headed back quick to where Aurora was waiting with the umbrella. Naturally by the time I got to her the sun was back out. Zeus clearly hates me.

We found the bus stop to get back to Salerno. The rain started up again and the temperature started to drop (I had been okay without my flannel shirt until now). Fortunately the heavens didn’t OPEN until after we were on the bus. We napped pretty much the whole way back to Salerno. Got cheap pizza and ice cream for supper and came back to the B&B. We walked the length of the zona archeologica six times in all, so I’m guessing we’ll sleep pretty well tonight!

3.4

We ran into Florence again at breakfast this morning. We seem to have done well to take the bus back – when she and Henri returned to their car in the afternoon, they discovered a flat tire – and then the heavens opened on them! They got soaked and had to wait almost 3 hours for the equivalent of AAA to show up, and by then had missed their dinner party further south. They apparently got back to the B&B about the same time they had originally planned, but with no supper!

Today was “look at Salerno” day. We went to Museo Archeologico, the Duomo, and the Giardino della Minerva. The Museo was very small, but free, and had a couple exhibits that Rosie really enjoyed. I can’t tell you how happy it makes me that she’s interested in all this stuff. Most of the museum’s exhibits come from a settlement just outside of modern Salerno called Fratte, which was inhabited from about 900 BCE, first by an Italic tribe associated with the Samnites, then Greeks, then Lucanians, then finally the Romans. However, the Romans seem to have prefered the sites of Salerno and some other directly coastal towns, and by 300 CE the site was abandoned. This, of course, is good for us students of archaeology, as it is apparently the case that the whole site was pretty much left alone until the 1800s, so there were GOBS of graves and their goods still intact. (Rosie did rush me through reading all the signs, so I know I saw the number 80 at one point, but not sure if that was total graves or excavated graves or what.) We looked particularly carefully at the amber beads (red amber, very pretty), the chariot wheel and silver crown that one man had with him, and the various pots that had been crushed at some point and that someone had been able to piece back together. Having tried to put a broken cup back together, Ro understood exactly how difficult this must have been! There was also a short series of computer simulations of what the buildings and graves of the main part of site must have looked like where the bulk of the artifacts were found. Rosie has learned enough about archeology at this point that her comment was, “But it didn’t look exactly like that, did it. That’s just what we think it probably did.” So proud.

We also took a brief look at the showpiece of the museum, a bronze head of Apollo. Seems a fisherman was pulling up his net one day in May 1932, and was all excited that it was heavy. Alas, not with fish! The head is about 150% life size and in absolutely perfect condition. Just gorgeous. But frankly, we enjoyed the 8^th-3^rd c BCE stuff more.

After the museum on our way back to the hotel, we passed a kids’ clothing shop. Ro wanted to go in because she has wanted new blue jeans for a long time. This was admittedly the first place we’d found that was just kids 6-10 sized clothes. She found a few things right away that she liked. They were crazy expensive, but she’s so happy with the jeans, and she is outgrowing most of her shirts, that I just decided to deal with it.

Next we went in search of lunch, then for a nap. It had been raining all morning and we didn’t want to go to the garden in the rain. However, when we got up from naps the sun was out and it was a beautiful afternoon, so we headed for the duomo and the Giardino della Minerva. The duomo was close and, as it turned out, not terribly interesting to me. The outside was fabulous, very early with lots of Roman bits and pieces just sort of lying around in a beautiful 13^th c –looking courtyard. The inside was apparently completely redone in the early 1700s and was therefore, to me, boring. Someday maybe I’ll learn enough about all this new-fangled art to be interested, but not today.

The Giardino was a long walk. It’s close to the top of the hill where the medieval castle looked down over the town, so it was lots of up. It was a good thing we took our naps and stopped at the Duomo – the garden was closed until 5 and we got there at 4:45. Aurora was really annoyed and didn’t want to wait for them to open, but the caretaker was just inside the gate as we were talking about it and opened early for us.

It’s not the exact same garden as the one maintained by the Scuola Medica Salernitana in the 1300s,  but it’s in the same general spot and has many of the same plants. The current garden was laid out in the 1600s after earthquakes and landslides had rearranged a big chunk of the hillside, but the man who had originally planned the Scuola garden had left copious notes about what he had chosen and why, so the “new” garden is on a similar plan. It goes up the side of the hill in a series of terraces, and the modern caretakers have not only put out the Italian and Latin names of all the plants on the labels, but also whether the useful parts of the plant were hot, dry, cold, or wet, in accordance with medieval usage. The path layout on the bottom-most terrace had a sort of compass rose of fire/air/water/earth and degrees of hot/cold/wet/dry along the paths, and all the plants on that circle were arranged according to the compass. The upper terraces seem to have been more on a “these look pretty together” plan, as there was no obvious pattern to the plantings. The view from the top was magnificent. Sun didn’t hurt any either! We didn’t see the plants that were in the video from the museum, but they did have a mandrake on special display in a glass-front box only partly in dirt, so you could see the “body”. When the caretaker asked if we enjoyed our look around (we spent nearly an hour), I said we were very disappointed, as we had not heard the mandrake scream. He shrugged his shoulders and sighed. “Well, you know how it is – if you don’t yank it out of the ground, it doesn’t scream. I’m terribly, terribly sorry.” And we all sighed. And laughed.

On our way back to the hotel, Ro decided that because SHE had gotten lovely new clothes, so I needed some too. I had seen a sweater in a shop window that I really liked, so we stopped there to try it. I looked VAST in it, ugh. So I was ready to leave, but Ro was determined. She made me try on just about every single thing in the “reduced” section. All either terrible or too small. I am too big for most Italian fashion. However, we finally found a long silk blouse in a bright watermelon pink that actually looked really nice, and was down to 10E. Definitely a buy signal. (I have more impetus to get super skinny now though—in the window of the next shop was a leather jacket in brilliant purple. But as is so often the case with really high fashion styles and colors, only comes in sizes up to medium.)

Pepe, the B&B owner, had told me that his favorite restaurant was close by. I asked his wife this afternoon where it was, and she gave me directions. However, when we got there at 7:40 the rather surly looking man told me to come back at 8, too early for dinner. Ok, not going there. But there were lots of restaurants in the piazza where this one was, so we started to make the rounds. The first one didn’t have much on the menu that Rose would eat. At the second one when we asked for the menu, the man said, “uh, we don’t have a menu.” Eh? “We only serve fish. Whatever is best from the fishermen in the morning, is what we serve for dinner.” Then he brought out a platter of everything that they had available that night. Aurora got very excited at the sight of the enormous shrimp (one waved at her, because of course they were still alive), so we decided to stay. We were going to split a pasta with shrimp then split a fish course, but that turned out to be not enough. She wanted more shrimp, so I ordered another plate of the pasta and figured she could have the two big shrimp and I would eat the pasta. Somewhere along the line, however, oh you pesky language barrier, we ended up with a plate of 4 grilled shrimp AND a plate of pasta with shrimp. I think I must have blanched a little – the owner assured me it wasn’t very expensive, but I was convinced we were looking at a bill of 80E when it was all over. Those things are expensive (but AWFULLY yummy). I just about fell off my chair when the bill arrived and it was only 50E for all that shrimp.

Off to bed early tonight, as we have an early train to Orvieto tomorrow!

Easter weekend

Maundy Thursday 28.3

Rose has today and tomorrow and Monday and Tuesday off for Easter. When I asked about the days off back in the fall, I was told school was off Friday through the following week. So I decided to be gone all next week. Turns out, Rosie will now miss three days of school. However, I talked to her teachers about it and they purely did not care. She’s going to be fine in math and mediocre in Italian no matter what, so the teachers were really more interested in what we were going to do than in what she was going to miss.

I had thought about leaving tomorrow and going for the whole ten days, but then I realized everything is shut over Easter weekend. And being Italy, nothing is open on Monday anyway. So we’ll go on Monday and just be gone for the actual weekdays.

It is gloomy and depressing out, raining and cold. The house is freezing because I hate running the electric heat – Michele Facchini told me it’s probably more than 10E a day to run – but the fireplace and stufa just don’t keep the upstairs warm. I built up the fire so when Rose’s friend Sofi came over it would be warm enough to play, but they don’t seem to have noticed one way or the other. They had a great time, and Laura is coming over tomorrow, and possibly Denise Saturday. So a very social weekend for Miss Rose.

Good Friday

Laura’s mom, Sonia, called early to say that Laura couldn’t come – she was sick and the last thing we need about to leave for a week is to get sick. Sonia said Laura was disappointed and insisting on a playdate next week, when of course we’ll be gone, but we’ll figure something out for after we get back. Rose was very disappointed too, of course, as was I – I was hoping Sonia would have coffee and hang out for a bit. I need to call Ida (her sister) and just invite her out for coffee – I really like her, but without kids as a touchpoint I don’t have an excuse to run into her. 90% of life is just showing up – or in this case, making phone calls.

Went over and visited Ornella for a little bit. I told her last week that I am making Easter dinner for the five of us – lamb roast, polenta, grilled zucchini and chocolate bunny cake. She seems a little stronger, but she is still on the sofa bed in their living room – still can’t make it up the stairs. Meanwhile, I felt a terrible cold coming on and so went to bed for most of the afternoon.

The weather continues gray and rainy, but the snow is all gone -- it's been about 45F every day, but the gloom and the wet make it seem colder. And it's not much warmer down south, worse luck. At least it's supposed to be sunny all week. Our hotels in both Salerno and Orvieto are smack in the middle of the historic district, so we won't have far to go to get to everything we want to see.

The church bells went crazy at 3 pm today. I couldn't figure out what on earth until I remembered that at the 9th hour he cried out with a loud voice etc. No one seems to have done anything particular for Holy Week - I asked Eleanora about it and she just said that everyone in the place goes to Mass on Sunday, but there's next to no one at the other services.

Saturday

Tried to call Denise’s mom (also Sonia; this town does not go for much in the way of original names) but got no answer. We never confirmed a time so I guess they just made other plans.

Went and picked up the lamb roast this morning at the Pellegrino butcher. They must butcher their lambs a LOT younger than I’m used to in America, or have significantly smaller sheep than in New Zealand – two lamb legs (and REALLY legs, thigh bone and hip joint and all) came to a total of 1.7kg. I’m used to a single leg of lamb, boned and rolled, being close to 2.5kg. When I asked the butcher to bone and roll them he looked at me like I was crazy. Then he charged me 35E for the privilege. Yikes. On the plus side, they’ll cook in no time!

Baked a chocolate bunny cake for dessert. Yes, the foodies among my friends will call me a heretic, but I can’t wait to get home to Betty Crocker mixes. I just have never found a cake recipe that’s as easy or consistent as Betty’s. And NONE of them taste right. David’s blondies are magnificent and cannot be duplicated by mere cake mix. But for chocolate cake, I just want Betty back. However, a springform pan lined with carta forno is not to be dissed. We all use paper cupcake cups and never think twice about it. Time to start using BIG cake cups!

Aurora was very sad that she wasn’t getting to spend Daddy’s birthday with him, so we skyped with Matthew this evening. He had gone to the tax preparer and found out that we are NOT married for 2012, so I get to file as head of household. Yay me. We’ll be splitting the girls for tax purposes this year – since he has the condo having more deductions adds up faster for him than for me. Next year my tax situation should be interesting since I’ll only have 4 months of income. But since I didn’t find all this out till today and there’s no way I’m going to get it all done tonight, it means I won’t file till after we get back, bleh. Oh well, looks like I’m only getting about $600 back anyway, so it’s not like I could have had gobs of extra money by filing earlier.

Easter Sunday

Italian time change coincided with Easter this year. Which means that I overslept and missed mass in Pellegrino. It’s not so much that I wanted to go, but everyone in the village will be there. It’s A Thing You Do. Oh well. Got up and cooked the lamb, grilled the veggies, fixed the polenta and made a lovely gastrique out of my last 2 T of blackberry jam and the tail end of the bottle of balsamic vinegar. At one o’clock Claudio appeared and helped me carry it all over to their house.

We sat down and I started to get stuff out, but Ornella said wait, we have salume and pickles first. Well, ok. So we had salume and pickles. Then she got out a lasagna. And we all ate some lasagna. And she and Claudio and Ricardo ate a LOT of lasagna. So when I got all the stuff I had made out and started serving it, they weren’t really hungry anymore. They each had a bit of the lamb, but it turns out none of them really like it, nor yet polenta, nor yet grilled zucchini. And I think I was justifiably pissed. I mean, I told her a week ago what I was planning to do. She could have at least said, golly, we don’t really like any of that stuff, so don’t spend 50E on making us a nice lunch. The whole point was to spare her having to cook when she’s so ill. And so she just cooked anyway.

I went home to frost and bring back the bunny cake, but I didn’t cream the butter well enough and it was all lumpy. Tasted ok, if you don’t mind little spurts of butter in your frosting. As I was taking it over, I encountered Francesco’s brother Alberto going into the Besozzola church (into which I had not yet been). Seems there was to be a mass at 3:30, just ten minutes away! So I took the cake over and kinda unceremoniously dumped it at their house – Ornella had also made tiramisu, so I just didn’t care anymore whether they ate it or not. I went and got a shawl and a veil and went to church.

It was relatively warm out – finally got a little sunshine! – but inside the church was FREEZING. Since it’s not used at all in the wintertime there’s no heat. Pretty place, but I’ve become such an antiquities snob – a lovely little 19^th C church doesn’t really hit my radar. There were 20 of us there, median age about 70, at a guess. Alberto’s in his late 20s, me, and then everyone else. Clearly the diocese doesn’t expect any kids or strangers to come to mass here ever – there are no prayer books and all the attendees rattled off all the responses by heart. Alberto was playing the organ for some of the chants, but it was never entirely clear what the tunes were.

The priest struck me as the sort of priest that a tiny parish like this would have had in the Middle Ages . He was ancient, unable to sit up all the way straight. He mumbled through the mass with the lectionary open, but routinely either got the words wrong or pronounced them in dialetto. He got the Pope’s name wrong. (Admittedly, Francesco is of new vintage, but still.) And of course, coming as I do from a very conservative Anglican tradition, I was a little startled that he had a regular suit on under the chasuble, instead of a cassock. (He hiked the thing all the way up at one point to get a tissue out of his pocket. It seemed oddly shocking – I mean, he showed us his SUIT PANTS! I know, I sound like an idiot.) I’m not sure if I just didn’t understand any of it or if the sermon was in dialetto, but I couldn’t follow a word. I would have been fine with the service if I’d had a prayer book, since I could tell that the prayers were all the exact same as the Anglican missal, but I only know the words fast enough to understand and recognize them, not to come up with them on my own. Then after he said, “Messa finita”, he started to talk again – apparently we got a second sermon. People kept starting to leave and he kept talking. All terribly awkward. But eventually we all escaped to the sunshine.

Spent the rest of the afternoon and evening getting ready to go south. We’ll start in Salerno, a town I have wanted to see since I wrote a paper on the 13^th c medical school there, and then go to Paestum for the day one day. I’ve never felt the pull of Greece that so many do. Italy has everything I’ve ever wanted: Etruscan, Roman, medieval, Renaissance history and art all crammed into one tiny peninsula. But most of southern Italy was heavy colonized by the Greeks from 800-200 BCE. Thus, much of what people are so crazy about in Greece is actually here! And Paestum has some beautiful things. So we’ll do one day of “Greece”. Then up to look at one last group of Etruscans in Orvieto. If I can find them for not HORRIBLY much money, I’m thinking about getting some new dishes in Orvieto. I love my little green and white majolica ware cream pitcher, and I would love to get actual dishes to match it. However, I’ve seen the pattern for sale on line and they’re 168E per 4-piece place setting. Uh, no. I’ll manage just fine without at that price. But if I could find FOUR 4-piece place settings for that, the temptation might be too great. We’ll see. Many Orvieto ceramics have a chicken in the middle of the decoration. Majolica chickens leave me cold.

12 mar

Snow is all gone - been raining nonstop the last few days. My neighbor Ornella is very, very sick. She can't even sit up in the bed for more than a few minutes anymore. It's very scary. She was in the hospital for nearly two weeks.

I’ve decided on Paestum, Salerno and Orvieto over the Easter break, just a day or two in each. I’d thought possibly the spa in Saturno, but they don't let little kids into the pools so we'll skip it. Not fair to Baby not to be able to go (though she couldn’t go much in any event - she sat in the hot jacuzzi at the hotel in Verona for just ten minutes and it made her very woozy).

18 mar

Aurora invited her art teacher, Patrizia, to tea for St Patrick's Day. (Ro is pretty convinced that everyone with any sort of British accent is Irish. I think this is Roisin's fault!) We had a lovely set-up of prosciutto, fresh bread, deviled eggs, and strawberries and cream, with peppermint tea to supply the green. They folded origami shapes while I did a little spinning, and we generally had a groovy time. When it came time for Pat to leave, we saw that it was starting to snow. I was disapproving, but Pat pointed out that it wasn't sticking.

Yet.

A mere 16 hours later, we have nearly 2 feet on the ground and it's still falling. So much for getting groceries today, but it's supposed to go up to 50F tomorrow so I'm sure the roads will be clear then. We have plenty to eat in the house so it's not a real issue, but we'll have to do without milk. Oh well. We have plenty of firewood and stove pellets. I am not concerned. Just bored with snow in March!

I had planned to go to the Questura tomorrow in one last vain attempt to get Rosie's paperwork regularized, but I doubt the streets will be clear early enough for it to be worth the effort (we would have to leave at 6:30 am. I anticipate the roads will be beautifully drivable by 10:30 or so. Not attempting them at 6:30). Ro is of course extra delighted to be off school today, as tomorrow is a local holiday (the feast of St Joseph, Pellegrino's patron saint), so now she has the whole 4 days off.

20 mar

It was snowing when we went to bed Sunday. It was still snowing until mid-afternoon Monday and we had over 60 cms. This morning we got up late and the sun was shining so brightly that I barely had to shovel anything, so much had melted. The plow has been by and the strada is clear and dry. It had to have been at least 15 degrees (59 F) today, probably warmer in the sun.

Aurora and I walked up to Berzieri and ran into Rosana (Farolsi) and Giancarlo, who took us to see their rabbits, gave us 4 fresh-out-of-the-chicken eggs, and let us borrow their sled for the day! (Well, we can keep it as long as we're here, but I don't think it'll be useful after today.) So when we got home, Aurora went sledding for a while, then I made us the world's most marvelous scrambled eggs. They weren't even yellow. They were orange. I fantasize about being able to keep chickens and have eggs this good all the time. I even turned the heat off during the day, as it was just too warm in the house!

Tomorrow it's back to school, and it's supposed to rain buckets, ugh, but at least it will take down the rest of the snow. Rose and I spent our snow day yesterday doing origami -- she has Elise's book, but there aren't many patterns in it and some of them are very poorly explained, so we went out to the web and found really a gazillion different things to fold. We have four different kinds of origami hearts!

Hoping to get to Parma next week for one last try at the permesso. If it doesn't go through this time, I'm giving up. Hell, it's only 4 more months at this point -- I'm only at all interested in doing it to prevent Rose's passport from getting a black mark on it, but given that Elise seems to have sailed through with no problem, it may not be worth the effort. Still considering.

22.3

I have a bad cold and am going to bed. Had to cancel my party tomorrow night -- just can't manage it.

Stopped by to visit Ornella this afternoon -- she seemed better, and was able to sit up in the bed and talk for a while. We are hoping she will continue to improve. Her cat will be having kittens soon so we may get to see that. I asked her why they don’t neuter all their animals, since they keep getting more kittens and puppies. Her horrified response: “But if we neuter them, we won’t get any more kittens or puppies!” Well, all righty then.

Beautiful days these past two -- supposed to rain and be cold again this weekend, just what my cold and I need. Was able to do laundry and hang it out instead of relying on the pellet stove.

Not much else going on -- looking forward to our trip to Magna Graecia (the Greek part of southern Italy) after Easter.

Time for Nyquil and bed!

25.3

What the hell, snow? It’s been warm out. It’s been sunny out. It’s clearly been TRYING to be, y’know, Mediterranean out. And now more snow? I mean, it’s not a ton compared to previous dumps – barely six inches – but really? Can we stop now? I want real spring! You keep freezing all my wildflowers!

Update: ok, it is now 2 pm and the snow is all gone. The plow didn’t even come all the way up the hill. But still. Feeling resentful.

27.3

Weather has continued gray and gloomy and that damp cold that feels so much colder than it really is. However, we are headed for warmer climes soon. Aurora and I will be leaving Monday early to go south to Paestum and Salerno, which are south of Naples, thence to Orvieto, just a little north of Rome. Paestum is one of the best preserved sites of Magna Graecia, the section of southern Italy that was almost completely colonized by Greeks by the 7^th c BCE and not fully taken over by the Romans until the 2^nd c BCE. It was this area of Greek culture that brought writing to the Italian peninsula. Paestum in ancient days wasn't THAT big of a deal -- places like Naples and Tarrentum were much more important -- but probably precisely because it was less important, it changed less over the years and was abandoned in the early medieval period, so it hasn't been built over/around/through like others have. It's actually in better shape than many sites on the Greek mainland, and certainly this part of Italy had more Greeks in it than Greece did -- I can nearly truthfully say I've been to Greece by going there!

After Greeks in Paestum we'll be going to visit one last group of Etruscans in Orvieto, and to see the striped cathedral. The first time I saw the striped cathedral ten years ago I thought it was ugly, but it's grown on me, so I'll have lots of pictures of that. Also, Orvieto is where I got my little Italica ware milk jug, and I really want to get a few more pieces to match it. Most of the ceramics produced in Orvieto are the “classic” bright yellow and deep blue, but the one I have is green and white. They're harder to find. We'll see.

We're having Easter dinner with Ornella and her family. She is well enough now to sit up at the table and eat, but certainly not well enough to cook dinner. I'll do everything here and then carry it over there (her oven doesn't work). I've ordered my lamb roast and will pick it up from the butcher on Friday afternoon. I'm going to do the roast with a blackberry gastrique sauce, polenta, salad, and chocolate bunny cake for dessert.

Rose has invited friends over for Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Not sure yet if the Friday and Saturday friends can come, but likely to be lots of little girls running around loose for the next few days. Meanwhile I'm cleaning up and getting ready to leave -- our train goes at 9 am Monday so we have to be out of the house by 7:45 to be sure of getting it. Happily we only have to change once, in Bologna -- the Frecciarossa (fast train) goes straight from Bologna to Salerno, the closest real city to Paestum, in just 4 hours, so it'll be an easy trip. Charging up all those electronics to keep us entertained!