Toscana, Mi Amore

                What am I doing with my life? That seems to be the question as of late. On one hand I’m indulging in all of the wonders that Tuscany has to offer, but on the other I know that this is not my real life and cannot last forever. Since I arrived at Cosimo and Maria I have had top notch cooking, coffee, wine, and midday siestas. It has been a blur of relaxed nights that involve drinking wine and dancing. The people are all laid back and fantastic company. My fellow WWOOFers are Pauline, Chom, Cary, Lena, Christa, Jay, Anthony, Taka, and more recently Tom. Each person brings a special element to life here at the farm whether it is artistic, musical, culinary, or comic genius. At the end of the day, it’s all about enjoying the finer things in life here. We work hard and play harder. Everyone wants to share their talents and ideas and the end result is usually something wonderful. I’m not sure exactly what I bring to the table since their talents make me feel a bit inadequate on many levels (especially in the cooking department). I’d like to think that my sharp wit and lack of shame are good additions to the mash up and at least serve as minor entertainment. Maybe I will become more refined from their presence. Having a group of people to provide for makes me have to try harder and expect more from myself. Usually I only have to please myself, and I’m not picky. We also do a lot of travelling around on weekends together which is always a bit chaotic since we are a bunch of people with no real direction. Its always a good time. We have been to Florence, Siena, San Giminamo, Livorno, Empoli, Pisa, and keep making more travel plans. It’s a lot of time on trains playing cards, walking around, taking pictures, and eating delicious gelato. It’s not all finer things, wandering, and relaxation here though. When it comes time to work, we get down and dirty.

                I’ve done some pretty tough farm work already since I’ve been in Italy. The August heat was almost unbearable, but now I have swapped sweat for sticky grape juice mixed with dirt and burrs. In the field we go out and harvest grapes for about six hours a day during the week. This is a fairly simple job, but requires climbing up under vines, into prickly weeds, and picking through the good and bad grapes. The bad grapes are reeeeeally bad. With the rains recently the grapes have been especially juicy and explode all over your hands which you then use to brush the hair out of your face and/or rub off on your pants, which means everything gets coated with a layer of sticky grape gunk. By the end of harvesting you always have this great grape funk emanating from you. Francisco is our boss and he can be a bit severe. He’s the accountable one for everything that goes on at the farm, but when work is done he is the life of the party (Limbo champ). Nevertheless, I stay out of his way for fear that I will be the nearest subject on which he can unleash his eternal irritation. Granted, a few of us are bad grapes ourselves. Chom for example quite enjoys smashing grapes in Alayna’s hair and face for his personal entertainment. He’s the worst grape of all! We are still plotting how to bring down our wrath upon him. Deep down we really enjoy his shenanigans and those of everyone else. We make the work fun by acting like complete maniacs while being semi-productive. At the end we collapse on the grass and watch the clouds. What a rough life.

                It’s really strange. I expected to come to Italy and experience life with an Italian family and learn about/enjoy their lifestyle, but that hasn’t been the case at all! The farm situations have never quite worked as planned and instead of Italians I have become more acquainted with other transient wanderers. It has been a really great experience meeting other people that are also wandering and with whom I have a lot in common with or can learn about other places from. There is a certain kinship between those that are adrift that occurs spontaneously and almost instantaneously in some cases.  When you have nowhere you belong, you rely on the very essence of life and experience it in its purest form. This kind of experience opens your mind and spirit to all kinds of possibilities if you are willing to let it do its work on you. I have found in my life that I never learn the lessons that I seek out, it’s always those lessons I need to learn but never knew I needed. You simply cannot plan everything out when you don’t know what the hell is coming your way, and really that is all of life. You have to be flexible and willing to change courses, because we are not omnipotent and nothing is certain enough to be unchanging. The dynamic nature of life can be unsettling when you fight it, but when you embrace it, so much latent potential within you is released as you are released from your everyday (self-imposed)restraints.

Time for more character profiles:

Alayna: I have seen a spirit I’ve always recognized in my good friend come to be more outwardly expressed. She has gone completely bonkers in the best way imaginable, and I’m loving every moment of it.

Chom: The previously mentioned trouble maker who is an incredible cook/ creatively evil mastermind. He’s a total hipster, but also strangely endearing. We mess with each other a lot, but in the end there is trust. He even let me cut his hair into a way hipstery new do!

Pauline: She is always livening up the room with dancing and light-hearted silliness. Her French-ness is expressed in her love of food (especially bread and chocolate) and carefree love of life attitude. She is also gracious and even forgave me for eating the last of the Nutella.

Cary: He first won me over with his incredible guitar playing which sets the mood for every occasion. He is a connoisseur of many sorts and I always enjoy listening to him talk about the finer things. My favorite moment was when I got to play bongo drums alongside him to a Black Keys song. 

Jay: The New Yorker who was my go-to guy when first arriving at the farm. He is incredibly helpful and good-hearted. His grape stuffed chicken made me want to cry joyful tears of deliciousness.

Christa: Another New Yorker with a vast knowledge of wine, looking to experience another perspective of wine-making. She brought a lot of energy and personality to the group. We come from completely different worlds if not different countries, but I really enjoyed her company.

Tom: He’s only been here a short while, but already I am endeared to my new younger brother. He has a manic South African flair that complements my own insanity. We had a lot of fun screaming at the “furries” while hoeing together. We also had the greatest time in Livorno, the JANKIEST beach town ever…but that’s another story.

Anthony: A fellow Midwesterner whom is an employee at the vineyard. His love of Disney and other relatively cheesy music/movies entertains me. He turns a blind eye when we WWOOFers get a little out of line and sometimes is even in on the shenanigans.

Jon Paulo: A sixty-some year old man who has worked on the farm his whole life and harvests with us. He is the designated lady-killer and enjoys flirting with all the girls, though he is relatively harmless. We have lots of fun English/Italian banter going on all the time and he is a spectacular dancer. 

Arrivaderci not Goodbye:

                Monday September 3^rd, Alayna and I left Nuova Terra for Rome. The last couple of days leading up to our departure were fun yet sad as we prepared to say goodbye to our new friends indefinitely. There was a new lightness to the atmosphere as the period of fasting ended in time for the weekend and people’s stomachs were finally filled. We were glad for the change before leaving since the nine days of limited food had been rough on the community members and very uncomfortable for us. It was easier to enjoy ourselves when everyone else was as well. So when we went on a trip to see some more sights nearby, it was a good time for everyone! First we climbed up a beautiful mountainside with rocky waterways and the air filtering through the greenery to see a castle at the top. There was a lot of construction going on and we managed to sneak inside an open tower door and climb up for a better view. Quite magnificent! We then had a little picnic and siesta time before we went to a wonderful town called Civale and toured some of the historic sites. It was the last stronghold of the Roman Empire and a gorgeous place. The view out over the river and into the clear blue-green water was breathtaking. We got to try a tasty local pastry that was fried and fruit filled for a little flavor of the city. However, the neatest part about the day was the fact that there was a lavender festival going on in the city and the scent of the flowers wafted all around. I even picked a little bit to put behind my ear so I could smell it whenever the wind blew through my hair. Oh the magic of the little things. We ended the night with pizza in Udine and said our goodbyes to the rest of the group as we prepared to leave early the next morning.

It ended like it had begun; with Daniele escorting us at the train station. He was the last and the hardest goodbye. As we boarded the train that morning and pulled out of the station I felt a little tug in my chest from the direction of Codroipo. Goodbyes are always hard, but as our hosts told us its arrivaderci, not goodbye. (See you again) It was hard to be too sad for too long since then it was time for us to say ciao to Roma! It was an interesting train ride where we did not realize we had to switch trains, went to the wrong station, and somehow ended up on the right train to Rome. We ended up back in Venice instead of the station we wanted in Bologna. Our tickets said nothing about a switch, but there was a town called Padova listed as one of the stops we were meant to go through. There also happened to be a train leaving for there in a matter of minutes. We hopped the train there without a ticket (luckily no one ever checked) hoping to find a way to Bologna. From Padova there was no train to Bologna specifically, but there was one to Rome. We hopped that train instead, again without a proper ticket, and found that it was in fact the same train we were supposed to catch in Bologna! It seems to me that we have some strange sort of luck where things usually get a bit messy but somehow work out.

Upon arriving in Rome we found our way to our hostel and found that there was free pizza every night. That turned out to be the saving grace of the place. It was clean and comfortable, but not set up well for socializing. Free pizza forced everyone to congregate in the tiny kitchen of one of the two buildings the place was divided into. This is where we met most of the people we hung out with. The first day we spent with our randomly assigned roommate Zach, the Moroccan/French guy. It poured the whole day and we missed the meeting with our walking tour guide because of some miscommunication, but we still walked around and saw the city together. Zach left the next day and we met a bunch of other people from all over the world. There was Eva from Switzerland, Ursa from Slovenia, Lee and Luci from Australia, Francisco from Portugal and several others. We walked through markets, got coffee and wine, and even played ring of fire one night. It is always interesting playing drinking games with people from different countries because you learn all kinds of fun new games and rules for games you already know. So not only did I get to see the sites of the Trevi Fountain, Colosseum, Pantheon, Vatican, etc. and enjoy the city life…I got to do it with an awesome new cast of international friends! That is what I love about travelling, especially in hostels! It is so easy to meet wonderful, interesting people looking to have a good time. (Thank you Lee and Luci for teaching me about the “Gerkles”) Rome wasn’t my favorite city because it feels like it has lost any remnant of genuinely Italian flair through rampant tourism. The spirit of the place has been corrupted. The people I got to spend time with made all of the difference and turned a shallow city into a place worth staying in. (The Colosseum was also breathtaking, but the people were still way cooler)

As we left Rome, we did it with new friends and experiences to take with us. Luckily that sort of souvenir weighs nothing. We caught a train to Florence and then San Miniato where we were picked up by a group of WWOOFers and soon found that our lives would once again become completely different. It turns out that our current farm is not personally managed by the family that owns it and that we had been in contact with. In fact it is basically a hostel for WWOOFers with other employees regulating us. For the most part we WWOOFers take care of ourselves and do the shopping, cooking, cleaning, and so on. We have a lot of freedom outside our working hours to do whatever, so people party at the winery or go and travel. There are about ten WWOOFers in total so things can get a little bit crazy! Everyone is relaxed and wants to have a good time, drink some beer or wine, and simply enjoy Italy. Compared to our other stays, this place is a haven for heathens. It isn’t quite the personal family farm stay we thought it might be, but it is still quite the Italian experience we wanted to have. So far the work has been simple bottle labeling and cooking since they just had heavy rains in Tuscany and the grapes are too plump to harvest. If they have too much water in them it compromises the alcohol content of the wine. So in another couple days we get to start the harder work, but in the meantime we are taking it easy and enjoying ourselves!

The company at the winery has been great, but Alayna and I also got to spend the weekend in Florence at another fun hostel with some other interesting travelers. When we first arrived in Florence, we were not terribly impressed by the area surrounding the train station, however we soon found that the center of the city is quite beautiful and has amazing gelato. The latter was enough to make me love Florence, but overall I found that the city had a better vibe than Rome. It was artistic and chic, but not contrived. Though much of the city looked like other cities we have seen, one place in particular took my breath away. That was the Duomo. There are many duomos in Italy, but this one was so spectacularly huge and ornate. You don’t even see it coming until you are on the piazza and suddenly you are confronted with this feat of ancient architecture. I was stopped in my tracks in awe. Oddly enough the inside was not as impressive, but still cool. Unfortunately we did not get to see the David statue or the art gallery, but I think that just gives us an excuse to go back. Likely our next trips will be to Pisa, Sienna, and some other nearby towns, but we will see how things unfold. It’s hard not to love life in Italy! More to come soon.