Sarly goes to Savona

We've traveled a rough 'Z' through western Europe...Cologne, Prague, Munich, Basel, Mosset, Barcelona...and now Savona, Italy brings our trip to a close. I'm sitting at the Malpensa airport near Milan, waiting on the flight that will take us home. I am in love with airports, train stations, bus stops, loading docks, and any other place funneling people from all walks of life onto a common path. I have a (very secret) sense of glee when things go wrong and we are all stuck together for hours, each of us balanced on the edge of uncertainty. Yesterday, when we left Savona for Milan, the first train was thirty minutes late, the next stop required some lightning changes, and just before the final leg, we discovered all the local train workers were on a strike from 9 am to 5 pm. Abandoned at a large train stop Carly aptly referred to as Deadsville, we camped out on the platform and used my new Swiss Army knife to create a picnic of olives, focaccia (moist flatbread), tomatoes, and peppers. Information mining from the handful of other unfortunates consisted of rough drawings and a lot of question marks: maybe the evening train would come; maybe it wouldn't. I propped myself up against my pillar of a backpack, loving the experience of it all, thinking of how cool it would be if we had to camp in the station all night, or trek through town and find a room, or maybe, I told Carly, it would start hailing and then it would be a really good story. It did start raining, and for the sake of everyone else I retracted my words about hail - although we were under shelter and I don't think it would have hurt much for the additional fun.

The six-seventeen train finally creaked in to pick us up, already overstuffed. Determined, we shoved on despite the riders' pointed looks at our fat backpacks and extra handbags. More people pressed in from behind us, so by the time the doors shaved shut, we were smashed like chickens on a chicken truck. At one point, the train stopped dead on its tracks between stations, and I wondered how many hours I'd be standing with nearly sixty pounds of baggage on my person. Still, I loved the game - all the way through getting off at the station four hours later than planned, finding nice Italian boys to give us a WiFi password, and calling up a ride to our night's lodgings. Yay for problem-solving!

But, enough about my weird eagerness for troublesome situations. Italy, with her citizens and culture, is brimming with energy and life. The bursting vowels of their language, their tight family environment, the passionate interactions and the rich smoothness of their pasta put these people close to my heart. We stayed in Savona (a modest coastal town in northwestern Italy) with Carly's aunt Kathy and her Italian husband Michele (MiKAYlay) - and how fortunate we were to have such tour guides! They took us in for several nights, served us fabulous food, set up our lodging, and donated their beach chairs and umbrella for our enjoyment. They also interpreted the language and culture for us, i.e. it's early to eat before 8:30pm, the bars open for croissants and shots of espresso in the morning, and you aren't allowed to touch the fruit stands without plastic gloves.

Like the French, the Italians love their food. When Michele and Kathy took us out for authentic Neapolitan pizza, the waiter brought out the chef, Pippo, to discuss what courses we should order and in what order we should eat them in. When he discovered we were American, he threw up his hands and exclaimed we must want fettuccine alfredo - which he could not serve us because it is not on any Italian menu anywhere. Also, we could not order spaghetti and meatballs together, because they are always eaten in separate courses. With that bit of education, we proceeded to order focaccia formagia (flat pizza stuffed with cheese), margherita pizza, a platter of whole fried anchovies, and spaghetti in some kind of amazing white sauce. While waiting, I observed a hubbub around one table when the grandfather came in and grabbed his grandchildren to kiss their heads while the adults greeted him all in the same moment. At another table, two teenage boys laughed with their grandfather as they each ordered a ten-inch pizza. I saw this scene over and over again throughout our stay - the older generation active, welcome, and involved with the younger on the beach, through the grocery, and in the streets.  Kathy joked that all the introverts had been bred out of the Italian race, and I'm inclined to agree.

Savona is the first European town we've been to where no one speaks English, but ordering from menus always results in some kind of good food and we spent the majority of our time on the beach anyway. The Mediterranean Sea is my new favorite body of water: buoyant enough to make napping in the water a possibility, calm enough to be a lake, and clear enough to count the barnacles twenty feet below. We took a day trip down to Cinque Terre, a chain of five small towns built onto the shoulders of mountains where they dip into the sea - and while they are as beautiful as everyone says, they are not as easy to hike as you might think. We climbed over three hundred steps and waited at single-file paths cutting along steep ridges, wandering amongst olive groves that clung to the steep hillsides. Our legs were well-conditioned from our month of backpacking, but other (mostly sunburned) tourists were attempting the hike in bikinis, flip-flops, skirts, and various other states of ill-preparedness. Overwhelmed by the obnoxious herds in the towns, we escaped in an ocean kayak to a small cove where fresh water fell thirty feet onto salt-mossed rocks, splashing into the sea at the shore's edge. The layered chunks of rock surrounding the cove offered high dives and heated drying, and we washed off the day in idyllic perfection.

One final thing I must highlight in this extensive post: the privilege of attending an Italian opera in the courtyard of a twelfth-century castle. The three-hour experience began at nine, just as the sun set and the swallows dove to their nests with their wings audibly ripping the air above our heads. As the orchestra stood I was struck with the matronly beauty of the violinist in the first chair, her grey hair tumbling in free curls down her back. The conductor entered to the wild applause of the elderly audience and I was reminded that the opera belongs to the musicians as much as the singers. No microphones marred their voices, and the sea breezes lifted the set to make it come alive, a part of the castle and its time. The story of Rigoletto played out in gilted gowns, hawk-feathered collars, leather pants and boots beneath ominous overcoats, dancing nymphs in scant costumes and galloping fawns in furry loin cloths; love and revenge and tragedy all rolled into one. The crowd awarded every piece with applause, and even the clever set changes were thoroughly appreciated. Half the cast took their bow at intermission; the other half came out one by one at the end for much thunderous stomping of feet and shouts of "Bravo! Bravo!" from their admirers.

Each country has given me a glimpse of its richness and character - and each country has resonated with a separate piece of my own character. Italy celebrates life, work, and the family, and these three qualities are part of my core. I can't think of a more fitting dessert for our sampling of the European buffet.

We're airborne now and somewhere over the Atlantic, but I think I can't cease writing because to do so means the end of the story. There are other books on the shelf - yet no matter how much I insist to myself that I am entering my next adventure, the wanderer in me is not yet ready to finish this one. I've always struggled to transition from fiction to reality, but am learning that without the reality of life, the story has no context and its lessons are lost. So here's to the mundane, to the everyday, and to the constraints of schedule: may I not let this story be wasted, but recycle it as fuel for the light of tomorrow!

Sarly goes to Barcelona

Okay - I'm not going to tell you when and where I'm writing this post, but let's just say things got a little out of order and the hubbub of Barcelona (pronounced Barthelona) is already far behind us. We decided to add this city onto our itinerary while luxuriating in France, and despite the fact that Barcelona has an incredible amount to offer, we barely nicked the surface as we passed through. During our last supper in France we discovered that our initial lodging arrangements had fallen through, leaving us stranded during the peak of traveler season. After a few phone calls, we found a hostel owner who assured us he would "have a solution for you" when we arrived. Avery had already planned on dropping another backpacker-friend off at the Barcelona airport, and thus five people three backpacks and a suitcase buckled into the tiny two-door and headed for the border.

Leaving the French countryside was bittersweet, and we entered Barcelona a bit skeptical of its city-ness. Up to this point, every step of our trip had mounted upon the shoulders of the last and I wasn't sure the pyramid could go any higher. But the great thing about low expectations is that they are easy to surpass, and the Barcelona experience was so different from the others that it started its own pyramid, anyway. We set our feet on the ground on the port side of La Rambla - a famous street filled with tourist gimmicks and pricey restaurants. Christopher Columbus stood atop of a fifty-foot pole pointing us towards the ocean; we ignored him and walked inland through the gothic district towards the Pensió 2000 (from which we would discover our lodging solution). La Rambla offered everything from flowers to ice cream to clothes in compact stalls, but we found it rather pricey and quite...squeaky. Every few feet, some kid was chomping on a voice-altering squeaky toy or a local was hawking them through demonstration.

The building containing the Pensió 2000 was unmarked and not much to look at, but after climbing three flights of beautiful old stone stairs and encountering a door with the doorknob set in the middle, I decided I liked its character. But when we tramped in and dropped our heavy packs, the owner informed us there were no more rooms available. Carly threw me a glance and I hastily reminded the man of our names and the mysterious solution he had promised us. His face lit up and all of a sudden we went from staying in a crowded hostel to being given keys to his personal house, where his wife was waiting to show us into their private guest wing. Two blocks later and a flurry of Spanish later, we were unpacking onto a queen bed, oohing over the robes and spacious bathroom and shower, investigating the tea and coffee varieties, and opening the full-length doors to the tiny balcony overlooking the street. A very good solution, indeed!

Barcelona is one of those places which I have marked to come back to - mainly because it took a few days to hit our groove and then we were already leaving.  We went thrifting through a chain of Humana stores, and the deals are so great I think it may be worth a plane ticket for a new wardrobe. In the smattering of reading I'd done about Barcelona, I learned about the world famous architect Antoni Gaudí, so we bit the bullet and purchased tickets for the open-air tourist buses with their narrated bits of information. We visited the Sagrada Familia, a church of no style I've ever seen before: something like romanesque-meets-gothic-meets-candy land-meets-Disney. Parapets and arches looked as if they were dripping liquid stone, and at the top of one peak sculpted birds played in a sculpted tree as if from the Twelve Days of Christmas. The usual saints and bible characters decorated the doorways, with palm trees for doorposts and giant clusters of fruit decorating the tops of spires. During our stroll through Park Güell (designed by Gaudí), I admired the way he used powerful artistic themes in his structures, making them very modern but not caustic or discordant. Sharp angles were always tempered by rounded forms, and bold outcroppings were always balanced by the rest of the structure so that when you took it all in, you felt inspired and calmed instead of thrown off balance and hung in suspense. One of Gaudí's apartment buildings undulated like waves along the street; another supported giant white eye-masks on its balconies as if each apartment was waiting for the neighboring buildings to get up and dance. Riding on the top of the open-air bus gave us an appreciation of Barcelona's architecture: nearly every apartment building has some rooftop garden and plants in each railing, and all of them have texture and dimension of various kinds, mixing up the cityscape and introducing some excitement for each street.

It took us some time to find good food, but by using the power of Yelp (restaurant app) we found a promising place for our last night. I asked the waitress if she thought it would be a twenty, thirty, or forty minute wait, and she just shrugged. Europeans consider it rude to rush a check and a single table may turnover only once during the course of an evening. But soon we were sipping wine and dining on seafood paella, a dish where whole prawns swim between gaping mussels in an ocean of rice with chunks of squid and octopus in a savory orange sauce. If for that dish alone, I'll be back. By eleven o'clock we were paid up and back on the metro - but the evening was just getting started. Behind a church, through a courtyard, and down a narrow hall we stepped out of Europe and onto the Swing Maniacs dance floor, the upbeat jazz throwing us back onto our American roots. I danced with some incredible leads that night, kicked a few shins (I can't yet do the tandem Charleston), and found out my brother's movie (www.SwingX.net) is known across the globe. Language barriers don't matter when your arms and legs do the communicating, and that night of dancing in Barcelona is an experience I'll never forget.

We departed for Italy the next day, this time by boat through the Mediterranean. We enjoyed a whole new cultural experience as the ferry was filled with Moroccans and other Arabic-speakers, and we wove through the (dry) pool room filled with plastic tables of smoky card games to set up a picnic up on the top deck. Later, we snuggled down in our cozy cabin for some great bonding time, and I went to sleep incredibly grateful that God had put Carly and I together on this trip, for her friendship, and for the great lessons I was learning. We are different in many ways - but at this point in the trip, we'd figured out how to make our quirks compliment each other in stellar fashion and now I'm afraid normal life will be strange without her.

Next up? Italian beaches and major relaxation.

Sarly goes to Mosset

The problem with getting behind is that experience doesn't wait. I'm sitting down to record idyllic scenes from Mosset, a French village unsure if it's medieval or modern, but we've already been through city shock in Barcelona, a cruise on the Mediterranean, and the heart of Genoa, Italy. But Mosset was the pinnacle of our adventure. The buildings are stone with their wood doors set on iron hinges; at times the the blacksmith's hammer can be heard echoing through the village at dusk. A tree has been growing out of the church tower since mid-eighteen hundreds. At one point during our stay, a bearded man with gentle eyes, a sack, and a hoe on his shoulders showed up at the door like a vision of peasantry from the past; he was once a Franciscan monk but now cultivates an artistic garden and paints silk tapestries. Of all the places I looked forward to visiting on this trip, this destination held the most excitement for me: mostly because of who I was going to see, and partially because of the mystery of where we were going. Before arrival I only knew that my old sitter, Avery, waited for us in a one-room mill somewhere in the Pyrenees of southern France. Nothing could have prepared me for the piece of paradise we experienced there.

Some of my earliest memories include Avery, but she moved before I was ten and I hadn't seen her since. Perhaps it was strange of me to ask sixteen years later if I might crash her current place in France, but I'd always felt close to her and it may be her influence I have to thank for my wanderlust. We're both travelers and seekers and we connect through an unspoken mystery I won't even try to explain. Still, it was a bit of a shock to walk off the train and discover I now stood a head and shoulders taller than someone I once squinted to look up at. Yet besides that slight change in perspective, she hasn't changed a bit from my memories - still glowing, energetic, and beautiful. 

Coming from Switzerland, where you can't find a loose end if you tried, we had initially thought the French a bit smelly (it's true), tardy (delayed trains), and disheveled (crumbling buildings). But in the same day we made those judgements, they were cut down to size with a little history and French hospitality.  Us and our two backpacks barely fit into Avery's two-door hatchback, but we wound our way up the valley and past the hot springs to Mosset, a village stacked upon itself against a mountainside. If the Alps shrouded their grandeur from us, the Pyrenees rolled out theirs with style. The region of Catalonia is as ancient as the mountains around her, and what we'd mistaken as unkempt buildings are the ruins of medieval history. Stone towers are staggered every few mountain peaks as an ancient message system to warn of sea-faring invaders, and forever-old aqueducts still provide water to crops and animals. Terrace after terrace mount the hillsides, and each farmer is assigned a day and time they are allowed to gather water - the schedule has existed for centuries. And perhaps the French aren't quite as timely as the Swiss, but their cuisine puts simple cheese and bread to shame.

After parking the car near two rosemary bushes bigger than the car itself, we crossed the threshold into Avery's kitchen, dining room, bedroom, and den. It was homey, spacious, and cozy all at once. Sitting down at the wood table, we started off with white wine and moved to red throughout the meal, as any customary French citizen would do. The first course consisted of what I inadequately dubbed a "flower salad:" mixed greens and tomatoes seasoned with sprigs of dill and parsley and set off with rose petals, nasturtiums, and any other edible flower or herb she'd found growing nearby. Eating an orange blossom on a fork seemed strange, but it only took one bite to convince me; my mom may now have to chase more than my horse from her flower beds. The explosion of sweet flavor flew backwards and upwards such that I smelled the flower after I had tasted it - from the other side of my nose! And if the salad wasn't enough of an experience, it was followed by vegetables roasted in olive oil and fig vinegar, sausage anointed in homemade apricot sauce, and a dessert of thick yogurt with lemon shortbread and rum-soaked cherries, garnished with lavender and served in terra cotta mugs. Every French meal is wrapped up with the steam of a hot drink, and we sipped on tea picked from a garden tree while nibbling squares of dark chocolate to bring it all to a close.

I can't detail each of our meals: but I can say we had at least three glasses of wine at every dinner (and most lunches, too) and that courses are a far better way to eat a meal than throwing it all on your plate at one time. One day we packed wine, cheese, bread, and paté onto a mule and spent the day trekking about the Pyrenees examining ruins, finding wild plants, observing landmarks (such as the tipped-over mountain where the aliens were supposed to have returned in 2012), and learning about the history of the region from our very knowledgable guide, Pierre. Not only does Pierre rent out his donkeys and mules to adventurous tourists, but also his yard as a campground. Carly and I spent our nights on mattresses inside one of his little white circus tents near a rushing stream, complete with an extension cord and floor lamp. 

If you want to share a little piece of this paradise, Avery is starting a business guiding slow bike tours through southern France. We visited several of the stops that will be a part of the tour...and might I tempt you? At one ancient monastery we visited a fifty-year old olive orchard and received a crash course in the making of olive oil, finishing up by tasting various oils and learning to distinguish their quality (a spicy aftertaste in your throat is good!). At the next stop we met Vincent, a bear of a man in love with his bees and a self-proclaimed honey thief. His methods of bee keeping are so simple it's profound: keep the bees happy. We wandered amongst the homemade boxes of hives with zero protection in complete safety, mindful to quickly cross the 'shipping lanes' as the worker bees zoomed in from the mountainsides. On one box he popped open the lid and we jumped back in alarm - but he laughed, gesturing inside. "Look," he said, "my girls are so kind. They even put it in jars for us!" After that delectable sampling, we strolled the beach and finished the evening at a French winery run by Englishmen, listening to the beats of a live band while eating our picnic dinner and dancing into the sunset.

There is so much to Mosset that I don't have room to speak of: the natural pond that is actually a filtered swimming pool, the old hotel over the hot springs, the dogs waiting outside the library for their owners...the unpredictable hours of the stores and the volumes that could be written about the agriculture and wild plants. But you'll just have to craft your own adventure and discover them yourself. Why not? As the French would say: profité! Go for it, follow your dreams, live vibrantly...profité!