very heavy snow and sad news

Ian has sent an email to say that Soriano has had heavy snow (which has fallen across much of southern Europe). Ian's photos show views from the apartment as well as photos he took while he and Noelene walked in very cold weather the last two km up into the town with their bags on Tuesday, with the bus unable to get all the way from Orte.

And then yesterday, with the snow becoming ice-coated overnight, Graziella, whose family has lived in the apartment next door for seven generations, has gone out in the morning and fallen and died from head injury.

Such tragedy...

things we leave

It was market day on Friday March, as is every Friday. We needed to drive to Fiumicino, to the Rome airport, return the rental car and catch the 5.30pm for London and Sydney. In innocence we had amazingly parked the night before, paying till 10am, in what turned out to be the closest parking space possible on market day. We would have had lots of difficulty otherwise. We were offered by hand as well as by windscreen wiper leaflets for the regional elections.

We said goodbye to a world of small sellers of very very fresh food, surrounding us.

We said goodbye to the main piazza and the market, buying an extra suitcase...

A last look from the castle security post, our kitchen window.

slipping down the back stairs of the Borgo di Sotto

Glancing up the short cut passage to our front door in Borgo di Sopra

a last look at this prettiest staircase entrance often admired on our way

and in the car, a last look at the old town and the castle

and this avenue of pollarded trees, winding our way out of town

down the road to Viterbo, turn left around the city walls

head on past Tarquinia and aqueduct ruins

see the autostrada empty ahead as we fail to keep pace...

and

and

there will be some summing up later...

Last morning

We had been feeling very much at home here, but also as remarked earlier, conscious that we would always be outsiders. And then, as I was wheeling a bag to the car on Friday morning, Fabrizio Sanna saw me from his shop and rushed to say "E Venerdi!" [It's Friday] He knew we were leaving Friday. And then I was gathered into a two cheeks embrace of genuine friendship and mutual regard. It is indeed possible to strike up warm friendship. So this blog entry simply shows Fabrizio and I and Fabrizio's shop L'Antica Latteria,with its treasures especially in the cheese department, a short walk from our apartment.

Bells in the morning

I managed to record the Soriano Siren herself last night.

And this morning I recorded the bells which did not follow the siren last night. Today a bright and sunny day, though cold. The market being set up the square below, it's Friday.

As a special consideration to those of you who use the computer in bed or who, like the Etruscans or Romans lie down at the dining table, I managed to take this morning's movie, with no time to replace it now, in portrait mode!!

We now load car and go to Rome airport, after lunch in Maccarese, near the airport, where this blog began... See you in the southern hemisphere two days from now. The plane to London 5.30pm today Friday, the London-Sydney plane arrives Sydney 6.05am Sunday, we should catch the 7.38 train for Kiama, change to the railmotor, be in Gerringong 10.20am. (and we did, and it was a beautiful soft sunny maritime kind of day when we arrived. Helen the Fit walked the 300 metres home for the car, I minded the bags.)

Tre Scalini - last dinner in Soriano

We seem to have settled for dining in the restaurant 40 metres from our door - four times in four weeks, and all wonderful fresh food. As someone said to us on the first day we were here: "why bother eating anywhere else." It may sound less than positive as a comment, perhaps, but read it the other way: "nothing better".

Our host Roberto (he who did the lunchtime on-the-spot-invented song and dance the other day)

and Lui

Our meal this evening began, as once before, with assaggini di pesce - little tastes of fish

these are not professional food photos, they do little justice

they are just pointed iPhone.

... hiding in the middle of which something very cheeky and innovative, a half passionfruit stuffed with little shrimps.

Followed by cockles and mussels (cozze e vongole) in a broth with white wine and olive oil, alongside a gratin of long shellfish, in their own super fingernails.

Helen return to a dish of chicken with porcini mushrooms, in a truffle cream sauce.

Dennis had saltimbocca, a Roman dish with scallop of veal, leaf of sage, slice of prosciutto crudo. It did not supplant the memory of the first time with this dish, it is very hard to cook well and was not as well cooked this time as before (too long cooked, or the meat not as good).

As a vegetable dish, cicoria, chicory, wonderful wasteland weed, which was light fried with a little porcini mushroom.

and for dessert after that we said please:

tiramisu, uno

cucchiai, due

Tiramisu 1, spoons 2

with Roberto finishing each line for me

and then bringing a doppio or larger serve.

When I said it seemed a doppio he grinned and said ssshhh.

The atmosphere is warm and local and we will go back there, wherever we may stay, if we are fortunate enough to come back to Italy.

last evening

I had hoped to record the 5pm sound of the siren for work in Soriano to end AND the church bells that usually follow (something akin to the competitions between Don Camillo and Peppone, find the book The Little World of Don Camillo or the old b and w film at YouTube) but for some reason the siren went at 4.45 and the camera waited in vain for the church bells to ring again after the siren.

The camera - well, I say I was holding it discreetly, but it wobbles a lot. And the movie begins with a little circus of getting a van through the inner gate (where the funeral notices are posted, on the left, lethal to stop and read!) below our window... as you see, cold and wet.

Early morning, second last day

Photo taken by Helen Tuesday, from another ridge,

of the castle and old town of Soriano nel Cimino.

Our apartment is inside the walls,

directly facing a clock tower above the inner gate.

You can, if you click to enlarge the photo,

see the clock tower behind the top of the power pole.

Having a cold and perhaps also because in reflective mood I have yet to put up that report on Viterbo (but it now appears below this one, drafting commenced earlier). We leave Italy in 35 hours and there is much to do, also much to think about.

Here is the view from this kitchen window at 4am this morning. There are only three things I can see there that would not have been there over hundreds of years.

We don't know the history of who has lived in this apartment, but you will see from the photo that we can see through the inner gate to the outer gate of the old city, through walls protecting a castle built in 1278, never taken by force, only by popes. If I were the boss around here, through any of that period, I would want this window in the hands of someone I could absolutely trust. Imagine, just imagine, conversations and mutterings and dark night awake wonderings about who is watching the gate.

Helen the other night was reflecting on the fact that our neighbour's family, in a small apartment, have been there for seven generations. Then she the feminist social worker, focused in how short generations have been, how young many mothers... how many generations in 800 years.. and thus, in utter contrast to how we feel in relation to death in a house in Australia, how many have died in these walls, how many ghosts are here with us. And woken to discuss this, my mind fell, eventually, to reflecting on how many died before the age of say 3 (being conscious that among my father's father's six siblings, one other lived to the 1950s, two died in World War I, and three died before eight years old. So, and I had never thought about this before at all, nor does it seem to enter literature, a high proportion of the ghosts out there - and in here - are tiny tots. Age is a rare and mainly modern privilege...

There is a risk of romanticising Italy entirely, especially in such a place, look back again at the top photo and at our travels. But there is also a lot of blood on walls, and a lot of physical grief for ordinary people, however salved by religious belief.

We watched last night Ermanno Olmi's wonderful 1978 film L'Albero degli Zoccolli (The Tree of Wooden Clogs) which won virtually everything at Cannes 1978, and which presents the life of peasants in northern Italy as it was 100 years ago. And I have been reading again Eric Newby's book Love and War in the Appenines, which presents life as continuing and slightly updated from then, in World War II.

And you see the continuum of history if you look and inquire, everywhere. In Viterbo I took the liberty of politely asking a couple opening their front gate, to beautiful courtyard and home (geez they must get fed up but I actually asked the question while saying politely no, to his invitation to come in for a look):

"Per quanto tempo sono state qui, vostra famiglia"

"Dal trecento."

How long has your family lived here? From the 1300s.

We may say wow, but this, here, is life. (We also had families alive (I suppose) around 1300, but we most of us come from such a vagabond and upheavaled horseback-horsewhipped place as England that we have no clue about our past - and we often scoff at Aboriginal claims to history, huh.)

And it is continuing life. Ian laments that the young generation will not keep places like Soriano intact, they are captive to globalisation. I am less sure. At least away from the big cities. The rhythm of life is powerful.

Last night Helen and I agreed that among the many ways we are still outside (and we are 96% outside, really) is our failure to adjust to the daily rhythm. We look from our window in the evening and say "oh", once again we have missed it. The kids go to school 8.30 to 12..30. Shops open 8.30 (earlier for food, later for fashion) and everything shuts at 1pm, except the bar (coffee, juice, alcohol, there are no drinking hotels, no sign of gross drunkenness, at least outdoors) and the restaurants. And then everything is open again at 4pm or maybe a snoozy bit later (and after 5pm in summer) and closes again at 7 or gossips on a bit longer (or at 8 in summer). The gelateria just past the church is there late if we need a little palate cleanser later. But we have failed to adjust to this rhythm, this very sensible business of siesta and revival and going out for the passeggiata in the evening.

Passeggiata?

This is no great help:

Pocket Oxford Italian Dictionary © 2006 Oxford University Press:

passeggiˡare intransitive verbwalk, stroll

Glen catches it nicely:

http://www.passeggiataitalia.com/

in fact, just glimpsing that site now, you can see we are not alone.

We failed in this month to get even the rhythm of the passeggiata. Of course, this has been winter and the fact that it has been quite cold has kept us and locals off the evening streets; now my wretched cold cancels our plans to do the Viterbo passeggiata...

fa niente, possiamo tornare, la lasciamo per un'altra volta.... forse

No matter, we can come back, we can leave that for another time ... perhaps.

We are also very conscious, and this is more important than attachment to a place where we will always be outsiders, we know more about ourselves and about each other from this trip, and we carry away from it not just such a wonderful body of new knowledge but also new eyes to what we have at home and what we can do in our own spaces at home.

Helen had been on a brief visit in the late 70s. I had been here for two years when really very young in 1968-69. It has been wonderful for me to find that naive understorey of understanding has enabled me to be more confident and fluent than before, to slip into so many conversations so easily, to see so much more than then (because I have seen so much more life than then).

For Helen it has also been wonderful, I know, though the language cliff has been enormous, not least coming directly from her management role with ten fleas under ten fingers, as the Chinese would say, back home. For her the adventure has been enhanced by her outings alone, as yesterday to Viterbo, in this non-English-speaking world. I leave it to her to write more - when she may have a chance - but it is evident that she can hear it and say it, even in this place where language is complicated because accents are local and speech interwoven with dialect. (I smiled at the point in Olmi's film where at a local fair an earnest young bearded socialist is giving a speech to a crowd of peasants about the rights of man, in Italian; the film otherwise in Bergamo dialect, full of sloshy sounds and words derived from French.

Public health, public transport and silly bloke!

Photo: the Soriano nel Cimino Health Centre and Hospital

- the pink building at the end on the left, with the ramp,

about 150 metres down the road from us.

The building is many hundreds of years old but the centre is wonderful

.... why are we so obsolescence and inadequacy prone in Australia?

A cough turned nasty last night so I put on overcoat to go to the health centre and, looking in the pocket for keys, discovered the key of the toilet of the Caffe San Leonardo in Viterbo... and no car keys, which were supposed to be there!!

So... when I thought I had lost the iPhone at Bangkok airport that was not true. When I thought I had left my wallet on the Orte-Roma train, that was not true. But a phone call this morning to the lovely bar where we had coffee and beaut eats with Noelene and Ian in Viterbo yesterday established that I had kindly left them our car keys, not their toilet key. No worry, they said (in Italian, you do need that here), the keys are here.

No asking Noelene and Ian for a lift, they ducked off to London last night in their peripatetic way, so with me stuck at home with aching cold dreading the Friday plane, Elena has taken the treno to Viterbo, an adventure by herself, which should be fun.

I will next put up some photos from yeaterday, Viterbo is extraordinary. As for the train, it's very much like taking the little train from Kiama to Nowra, the same local train feel, but the scenery quite different. There is a timetable here. An art deco style to the main stations (others have some platforms at ground level and two feet wide!) and (some ancient) carriages. The Roma-Viterbo railway was put in, quite separate from the regular state rail system, by Mussolini. And yes, the trains do still run on time!

A spectacular route to travel. Cost for a day ticket in the Viterbo province on public transport Euros 2.50.

The other important thing to report is that I had learned earlier that while foreigners are not able to access health services (as distinct from private doctors) here during the day (we would have to go to Viterbo to access this under the Australia-Italy health agreement), we can go to the local health centre between 8pm and 6am when an emergency doctor is on hand. You do need to be able to speak to the doctor in Italian, or have someone translate for you. Service was instant and excellent. As I have no lung trouble and as antibiotics are given in Italy only when infection reaches the lungs (sensible, really) the doctor (the on-duty doctor, from his prescription pad, appears to be otherwise in general practice in this town) prescribed what would probably be called a complementary medicine in Australia acetilcisteina, for mucolytic therapy.

Dispensed by excellent farmacia this morning.

Wonderful health system in this town of 9000 or so. Fancy being able to go and knock on a door and 9pm and see a doctor instantly!!

Helen also commented yesterday on roads and transport. This region is rather like the Shoalhaven in having a scattering of small villages. The roads are not as good here as in the Shoalhaven, there is not the same (Helen's words) anal preoccupation with repair of roads; on the other hand (also Helen's observation) the public transport system is remarkable, fast bus links between villages and connections to rail services. Yes, Italy has any number of political issues, and does have public debt, but there is such focus on quality and care of life, in ways and with sensitivities we scarcely comprehend let alone expect in Australia.

The daily grind and the temptations of sin

Last night we went out and were out late at dinner with the lovely Noelene and Ian McBride, who own this and another apartment, they having arrived the other day at the other apartment.

Ian said to me that someone in Australia had asked him, regarding coming to this place "What can we do there" and Ian had pointed the inquirer to this blog.

So we first have to ask any such reader if you have any special informational requests - please use the comments box below. And please do so swiftly, we are out of here Friday (sob).

Anyway, we decided that in our socially fatigued state we would follow the custom of many here and have breakfast at the Bar Roma.

This first picture gives you a sense of the level of our overall exertions. In this story, we go first to the ATM (Bancomat), then to the Bar Roma, then to the Farmacia.

This first photo is taken after our really long walk. I have turned at the Bancomat and pointed the iPhone at the other end of the piazza. You can see the church on the left, the Bar Roma opposite. In the middle is a huge gate, of the outer wall of the Rione Rocca, the core 'suburb' of the village, in which the castle is located. Behind the outer gate you see a bell tower, which is in fact on the (you can't see it) inner wall gate. I sit now to write this looking directly at that bell tower from inside the Rione Rocca. So at this point, arriving at the Bancomat, we may have covered somewhere near 100 metres.

Now there are two things we want to tell you about this lovely Bancomat. We have used it several times, and almost as many times, when it comes to the 'how much do you want' page, it has offered different amounts. Today in the mid-range numbers, it is offering 160, 250 and 320. The other day, the middle number of that was 210, the number below 90. The time before, the middle number was 180, the number before that... who cares... the fun thing is to deal with a machine that keeps you on your toes!

Now the other wondrous thing. You know how, in Australia at least, the ATM wants to spit 50s or nothing - sometimes you ask for $21o hoping this will yield three 50s and three 20s and it spits you out and tells you not to be stupid? Well look at this. Helen, in a rush of last days, has drawn from our cash passport Euros 320. Does the machine give us 6 x 50 + 1 x 20? NO, ola, it gives us.... how balanced: 4 x 50, 4 x 20, 4 x 10. And how civilised.

Now, flush with cash, we proceed to the Bar Roma, maybe 40 metres away back up that piazza, on the right.

We are immediately asked what we would like and pointed to a table.

Now, the last time we were pointed to a table, we were near the Trevi Fountain in Rome and we needed badly to sit down and were so tired in fact that we had entirely forgotten Rule 1 of bars in Rome: DO NOT SIT DOWN. The result in Rome was sit down price for two cappuccini and one small mineral water from an aggressive waiter and a bill for E13.40, say $A20.30 today.

But here we were, back in the real world, in the Bar Roma of Soriano nel Cimino. We ordered two cappuccini and two pastries which I failed to photograph and which we may never metabolise. Two coffees, two big pastries, E 3.40 = say $A 5.15.

Here are some glimpses of the display from the iPhone.

... and here you can see the church across the piazza...

The parocchio arrives, the local priest. Into such a den of temptations, right after eight o'clock mass.

Helen notes that the elderly (my age and beyond, I suppose) women at the next table, who have been customarily frosty at the sight of her red curls, suddenly fall into what I would describe as a melting simperation of modest but very obvious seeking-of-attention and sucking-for-grace. And hey, look, you have to admit, as parocchi go, he's pretty gorgeous.

Here are some photos of some of the temptations in the display counter confronting the priest. It is Monday, yesterday through the day, families visiting family (we guess) came from the piazza past our window, carrying great wrapped trays of this stuff. The local consumers are all strong-legged, seemingly long-lived, determined people, who must have a wondrous sugar intake, balanced by amazing necessary daily exercise (remember we are 230 steps from our car, such a short horizontal distance away), buckets of olive oil and food mostly very local and fresh ("Don't have those potatoes from Naples, these from Viterbo are better.)

Anyway, look at this stuff and dribble...

After that, we needed to take a 20 metre hike across the road.

Next to the church is the Farmacia, a very professional joint without the blather of sales crap one gets in an Australian pharmacy these days.

I got a pack of five wondrous 12 hour plasters of Flector, a Voltaren-like anti-inflmmatory patch for my Crappy Knee. Recommended highly by Ian, the vet.

Then I saw on the shelf and bought something I had not seen or used since 1968, Enterogermina, 20 little flasks each with 200,000,000 spore di Bacillus clausii poliantibiotico resistente. Wonderful stuff for rebalancing gut flora. So I got that for my long-standing Crappy Gut; the previous time used was after food poisoning at a very expensive Rome restaurant at a 1968 dinner in honour of Malcolm Fraser, leading a cultural delegation! Such an historical start point to chronic gut issues!

I also, not having slept much for some time, saw on the shelf a box of 60 Melatonina, (Melatonin) 5ml capsules, not available in Australia, to see if it restores my sleep rhythm - may also be good on the plane.

And then we went home. And it has been raining since. We will go out in the afternoon, after taking our siesta early.

If I can begin to sort out Crappy Knee, Crappy Gut and Crappy Sleep, get a good coffee plus pastries AND have a nice interaction with a friendly Bancomat which is full of surprises, we have surely travelled far - in less than 200 metres.

The view from the iPhone - Soriano nel Cimino

Riding the Rome-Viterbo railway

The smile of life

Kicking up heels in the Bar Centrale

Evening in the piazza principale

police whistle, security anxiety

We are very conscious of the different approaches to security and policing between Australia and Italy. A look (for the first time) yesterday at the ABC news and we saw another zillion being spent in Australia on security, way way way out there at the end of the world, on the strategic path to Antarctica, as Henry Kissinger once observed.

Here? So simple and smilingly relaxed to get into the country and so pleasant to talk to a police person anywhere.

Today we came from a shop and suddenly there was a whistle that would make a rugby forward wet his pants. Any referee in any football code would envy the quality of the whistle blowing by the lady of the Soriano local police, she of a certain age with long dark hair down below her cap.

She had arrived in a place where there were several small shops and nose-to-kerb pay parking and a van double parked behind the rows in vehicles. Did she come sneaking in the night with electronic pad and whack revenue-gobbles of parking tickets before anyone could react? No, her whistle brings a scurry of ladies to the parking ticket producing machine where the police person goes to assist and gently cajole... while the delivery van man returns to his vehicle and hey presto the van is gone.

The more you blah blah about blah blah the more you tend only to think of the world as made up of blah blah.

The smile, the whistle, the good-natured chiding and 'hey there'; give me those as sensible mechanisms for national security rather than the pompous pouting prating of techno-cold-spirited fear-mongered scare-mindedness.

lovely weather for ducks

Dark and wet today... but still invigorating to walk!This town is a confusion of semicircles and ravines. Each day I attempt to walk down to the bottom of the hill and up again, in about an hour. This means wandering around the circles of stairs and roads, then looking up to find a path that appeals and heading for that one. It took a couple of days to work out that there are two ravines and the rail line runs along one then disappears through a tunnel and twists around the other side of the hill. Hence looking down yesterday from one high spot I saw a beautiful dam / pool with a pure white statue just below me, but no possible way of getting there. Setting out in completely the opposite direction today, I arrived just prior to a major duck fight, which was so alarming at the time, that I forgot to photograph it. Here is the subsequent truce.

been walking

I wonder if Ian can also tell me who it was who greeted me so very warmly and loudly today in via della Bastia?

and while diverted...

...returning just now from buying a lemon for us to cook the artichokes, I passed two very dramatic goth figures coming from the castle. As I got back to the camera and the kitchen window, the dog who is the keeper of the outer gate was completing security inspection.

La Vecchia

There are the obligatory cats too, wherever we go... we shall assemble photos of some of them.

I have just returned from my afternoon walk around Soriano in sunshine between storms and came upon this remarkable statue. We will have to seek explanation, the sign below reads "To the Little Piazza and Statue of the Old Woman of the Carnaiolo" The name of a wine, but there must be some greater meaning.

Ian McBride, whose apartment we are renting here at Soriano, writes to say:

Ciao Helen and Dennis
La Vecchia is very famous in Soriano as during the times of the Borgias the Lord of Vignanello got himself invited to stay the night by the Castellano of Soriano in the castle. The Castellano was Spanish and was popular with the locals. After all had retired the visitors awoke and murdered the castellano in his bed. They then went to the battlements to wave a light to tell the Vignanellesi that they would open the castle doors. The Vecchia saw the light (What she was doing up at that time of night has never been told) and warned the garrison. They rushed out and defeated the Vignanellisi at the battle of the Buonincontro. The garrison then returned to Soriano and threw the Lord of Vignanello over the battlements. This fact is celebrated and re-enacted every year at chestnut festival time.

May we just add, in case you think that the Vignanellesi are a Germanic tribe from far away that googleearth indicates a crow flight distance between Soriano and Vignanello of 4.5km.

San Valentino

After fresh air climbing to the castle behind our apartment, with a view of the snow on the Apennines, we went for lunch in the restaurant 30 metres from home, and ate well:

Agnello allo scottaditto (a handful of tiny grilled lamb chops, the 'scottaditto' translating as burned fingers')

Saltimbocca (veal with sage and parma ham, the saltimbocca translating as 'jump in the mouth')

Carciofo (artichoke, stuffed with garlic etc, delicate, eat the lot, nothing rough)

Asparagi gratinata (with light buttery parmesan dusted sauce)

Tiramisu (pronounce it tier - a - me - SOO, with emphasis on last, it translates as 'pull me up'; not to be confused with items of same name in Australian supermarkets, this was weightless and dreamy )

Castagne (chestnuts) in a lethal sauce with grappa.

Vino di casa, quartini (quarter litre flasks) of white both frizzante and non (bubbly and still).

--

Elena says: "I have discovered food."

Regarding this picture on the wall, Elena remarked: "Another strong woman." (comparing with a figure in the Fountain of Neptune in the Piazza Navona, our photo here)