Un Bel' Giorno

Un Bel' Giorno in Italia

in the land of artisans

Italy is the land of artisans.  When we moved here I aimed to take advantage.  I really hoped I could find an old man, a woodworking master, who would let me hang out with him and sap his vast knowledge, meanwhile learning to speak better Italian.

 

Enter my dream man, Daniel.  I met Daniel one day 1.5 yrs ago when he was drunk sitting out on the sidewalk along my walking route to pick up the kids from school.  We had a lovely conversation, a lot in English, where he told me he refinished furniture professionally and showed me around his wood shop.  He is also a musician who loves American Jazz, and used to travel around Northern Italy playing Friulian folk songs at festivals (our region of Italy is called Friuli -Venezia Giulia, its culture, language and local people called Friulians/Friulano).  He was so friendly and warm.  I really felt like I had made a friendship.  The next time I passed him on the street he didn't even remember who I was.  Drunk!  ha!

This Spring I brought him some chairs to refinish for me on which visit he mentioned that he had heart problems and in order to take care of his health he ate very healthily (still does), had bad days where he couldn't work and the he was sober and had been for 5 years (...except that one slip up on that day that we met, apparently!  But I didn't point that out...kept that memory to myself;)  On this second visit I think our friendship became real and he really responded to my interest to learn from him.  I stopped by a couple of times a week on the way to and from taking Juliet to school.  He came over to the house once, met the family and saw the furniture I had built (crap by comparison) and some tables we planned to refinish together.  I organized a once a week babysitter to make this happen in the summer.  But summer happened.  Travel, guests, the garden...the time and the babysitter escaped me.

 Finally, fall came around, we're settled with the kids school routine, some abandoned summer chores have been caught up on and I was able to make it to Daniel for a wood project this week.  It was awesome.  We're speaking in Italian, I am learning a little bit about what a solid wood shop should look like as well as how to refinish furniture like a professional.  I know it sounds a little dramatic but I felt like I was fulfilling a dream.  Pinch Me.  Mostly I felt so grateful to live here, have things like this be a part of my life and to be able to meet such a generous soul.  Living abroad is life changing.

Italy is poor right now, its economy is in the tanks and a lot of people are out of work.  As you can imagine, not many people are paying to have furniture refinished, therefore Daniel is also out of work.  In his hey day, he told me, he had 3 people working for him because he was so busy.   He was refinishing pieces for people all the way from Verona to Venice, people transporting their beautiful antiques to tiny little Sarone for the hand of a master who charged an honest price. Nowadays, he has a broken car and no money to get it fixed.  This fact was told to me without a whiff of sadness or sympathy seeking, only because I asked if he had a car.  He has lived in the same small apartment for 50 years, one he shared with his mother and his grandmother because the men in his life died in WWII.  It's simple and full of old little things crafted or improved by his own hand, right down to his only sofa that he recovered himself.  He wears a tiny gold band on his ring finger which triggered me to ask if he was married.  "Only to my grandmother," he replied with a smile.  During WWII Mussolini demanded all the gold the Italian people owned in order to fund the war.  His grandmother didn't like Mussolini and didn't agree with the war so she hid the gold ring from soldiers who would surely come digging through every peasants home to find it.  He wears the ring every day because he is proud of his Grandmother.  

I came to his house this week with a tiny offering of bread, fruit and cheese for us to share for lunch.  He told me he had planned to serve me some pasta.  "Pero, okay, cosa voi...we'll eat what you brought."  He brought out more things from his meager fridge to add to the lunch and then offered to teach Juliet and I to make pasta the following day.  He sent us home with a mountain of fresh pasta and 3 jars of jam he'd made from the trees in his backyard.  He teaches guitar lessons to some older teens and then they eat dinner together afterward, all made by him, and play music.  After totalling it all out he probably doesnt' make more than a ten dollars.  He supplied all the paint and wood finish I used , all the power to run the machines that we worked with, never once portraying even a hint of resentment.  It's hard to keep track exactly but almost every time I have been over to his house he has sent me home with something.  Generosity...a trait not uncommon among Italian people but one I find particularly inspiring in Daniel.  "I am a simple man," he told me yesterday.  Here's a video of Juliet and Daniel in action!

Ahhh...people, huge hearted people!

xoxo

Ash

Baska Beach Vacation, Part 2

Ever since June 2013 we have all had a hankerin' to go back to Baska on the island of Krk in Croatia. Due to the craziness of the past summer we didn't get around to it until mid-September. Normally it would still have been plenty warm for a beach vacation, but this summer has been the coldest and wettest of the past 50 years in this part of Europe. The forecast kept changing, and I was being very pessimistic, but we went for it anyway.

A big upside was that we got another fantastic apartment very close to the one we had previously. It was at the end of this long, narrow pedestrian street with brightly painted aqua-blue doors and shutters. More than one group of tourists stopped to take pictures of it over the weekend.

Here I am with the big kids heading down our street to find some gelato.

We arrived on Friday and had that afternoon to play on the beach, but it was Lake Tahoe cold and we were definitely the only crazies out there.

That night we ate pasta salad that Ashley had brought on the roof-toop veranda of our apartment. It was magical, despite the cold.

The next morning it was pouring rain. Our friends Ben and Charlotte Crandall had driven out Friday night and we met up with them and their toddler Luca for a breakfast of delicious pastries. We went back to the apartment and contemplated playing cards or some other indoor game when we noticed that the rain had let up somewhat. We decided to head down to the beach in our rain gear just to skip rocks and let the kids play in the sand. Slowly the rain let up, and we braved the water with the paddle board that Ashley had wisely rented.

Here are Georgie and I out for a spin. Ashley has been enamored with paddle boards ever since she and the kids visited Uncle Robbie in SoCal and he took them all over the little cove by their house.

Next thing you knew, it was sunny. Not warm yet, but sunny. At this point a few other brave souls started to venture out and join us on the beach. Isaac paddled around standing up, but felt more comfortable going long distances on his knees. At one point I couldn't see him at all and panicked. Turns out he had set in at one of the other nearby beaches for a little while before launching out again.


Don't let this picture fool you. That water is not warm. Still, lovely day.


Georgie was likewise awesome on the paddle board, although she preferred to stay close to the shore where we could see her.


Juliet loved riding on the paddle board with us, but she preferred to fly over the water.

That evening we ate dinner at our favorite restaurant, Cicibela, but they had changed the menu from last year and no longer had the fantastic ravioli that I had ordered. Twice. We also got gelato from the "fun" guy that builds characters for the kids out of their cones and scoops.


This is the pier and little beach that we camped at for all three days. Sunday was even lovelier than Saturday and we headed out as early as we could.


Ashley was dying to try some paddle board yoga, which she was able to do successfully without falling in. Georgie also did a great job. I, on the other hand, fell over several times trying to side plank.


This is an Italian woman that just loved our kids and Luca. She played with them on both Saturday and Sunday. Crazy story: Georgie lost her CTR ring that Gaga had given her in the water close to the shore. We looked and looked for that thing. Ashley even bought a mask for me to use to find it. No luck. Georgie told her Italian friend about the ring and within five minutes she had found it. Georgie is holding it up for the camera.

None of us wanted to leave given how beautiful the day was, but the men had a little more motivation: at 1800 was the Udinese-Napoli game. We split up, the ladies in our minivan and the boys in the Crandalls' car. Our seats this year are WAY better than last year. But they also cost twice as much. Not Isaac's though, same price.


Ben and Isaac before the game started. We tailgated out of the back of Ben's car, eating the sandwiches, pita chips, hummus, tortilla chips, guacamole, and carrots that Charlotte had packed for the beach trip. Thank you, Charlotte! This is the one game that we missed last year that Isaac was really disappointed about. Napoli is his 2nd team after Udinese. I think it is because we had such awesome pizza in Napoli and bought him a cheap Napoli team jersey and scarf there. And you will notice that under his Udinese jersey there is a bit of light blue, and under his Udinese scarf there is another flash of light blue. That's right, he wore BOTH jerseys and BOTH scarves to the game. And escaped without being assaulted.


I love these games. I get so excited for them and it kills me when we can't go. It is Isaac's and my "thing". We love European football!


This picture is special because the guy warming up in the green jersey with the white shorts and blue socks is Isaac's favorite player on Napoli, Jose Maria Callejon. Isaac's Napoli jersey has Callejon's name and number on it. Callejon is also Spanish and used to play for Real Madrid alongside Cristiano Ronaldo. He came on as a substitute in the second half.

Ben had never seen Udinese win before, but that night he would not be disappointed. Udinese won a free kick in the Napoli half of the field and I could feel that something special was going to happen. I started recording with my phone just before Di Natale lofted the kick over the defense and into Danilo's path:

And we won! 1-0! A perfect end to an almost perfect weekend. Sad that we will probably never go back to Baska again. But who knows? Anything could happen.

The First Day of School

 It's that day again. 

 Juliet woke up balling her little eye balls out and Georgie grabbed me mid sentence when I was helping her get dressed and held back tears in my arms.   Her chest heaved a little and she wiped little trickles from her cheeks.  I offered her some positive words but sometime I feel like I'm fumbling.  Sigh...I hope they helped a little 

I keep wondering if we're doing the right thing with this Italian school business.

Sweet, sweet...thoughtfully, quietly sweet! 

This one on the other hand, was ready for this day a few weeks ago.  Yesterday he was pretty grumpy.  When asked by our friends what he was most excited for about school he said, "Getting out of this house."  What treasured words:)  

 Everyone seemed fine once we got there.  No one cried and everyone had a friend (or 5).

I'm going to miss these guys!

xoxoxoxo

Morocco!! in February

Marrakech, MOROCCO!

When we moved to Europe on the top of my list of places to visit was Morocco.  I watched a travel show while running at the gym a while back and, well, I'll just say the program did a really good job of marketing Marrakech as a place to delight all your senses.  But my husband Mr. Safety had watched some movie about traveling in Africa that scared the b-geezies out of him back in the 90's and still hadn't forgotten about it.  Morocco was NOT SAFE!   I spent many a delicate hour trying to convince him that he was being manipulated by Hollywood dramatization and Morocco was indeed a FINE place to show our children the third world, if not the safest place because of its proximity to Spain and its tourist ready amenities (can you tell I still have some emotion tied to this?)  But I made no headway.  At Christmas time Bryant and his friend Alex were planning a trip to Marrakech in February and I jumped on board.  I LOVE to travel with Bryant and I figured if I wasn't getting our entire family there I might as well go myself.  After a lot of debating with Joey over the phone, disagreeing over the safety factor we finally decided that the US Department of State Travel website could solve this for us.  And I won;)  I bought my ticket from Milan to Marrakech for 79 euro.  After Joey read the travel okay, he called me and said, "Okay...you can go.  It looks like it's safe enough to travel there but if you die...I'm going to kill you."   

Riad Badi:

 A Riad is basically the name Moroccans give to a Bed and Breakfast.  We stayed at Riad Badi, booked for us by Alex. We loved everything about it.  It is run by a French couple who grew sick of modern city life.  Marrakech is full of French people giving France the bird, dressed in white linen and woven hats and employing the Morrocans in their tourist establishments. At least the 3-4 we spoke with had nothing good to say about France and raved about their life in third world Marrakech. Almost all of the local Moroccans speak Arabic and French and, sometimes, a little English.   

Christian was our hotel owner and our tour guide...you can see him here on the right:  Tall and lanky, casual and all around really, really nice.  Something about him was very endearing.  Maybe it was the fact that he never fixed his hair and always wore sweatpants while simultaneously being handsome, warm and unintrusive.  He reminded me of my Dad.

 I only wish I had taken a picture of our breakfasts, all of it among the best food I've ever eaten.  Moroccan style crepe, a sweet potato spread that I still drool about, yummy fruit, house made yogurt, this whole wheat Moroccan bread that tasted better than any where else we had it in the city...yea, I'd definitely stay there again

I took this photo for the kids.  It's hard to see from the photo how large these birds are.  They are really huge and nest all over the city way up high on the old walls.

Oranges for sale

Soap and spices, tea, bath salts and Argon oil vaseline

Argon is a type of nut I'd never heard of until arriving here.  It is pressed for its oil and grows almost exclusively in Morocco.  It is a very large portion of their export.  Its a big deal to people who are into anti-aging skin care and is really expensive outside of Morocco.  Argon, oranges trees, olives and olive oil, saffron and tea are all big exports from Morocco.  Flying in and looking down over the landscape was beautiful.   Acres and acres of orchards with trees all pruned into a donut shape, something I had never seen before in the west but I have since learned is a good way to go when pruning your orchard.

 What a Monkey;)

 The Main Square and Mosque

To be perfectly honest, initially we were all a little disappointed with Morocco.  We made it through the souks in one evening and discovered that a lot of it was just the same old crap, booth after booth.  The next morning we didn't know what we were going to do with our entire , having covered all the souks already.  ...Hmmm...we decided to try that cooking class that we had considered doing but thought we wouldn't have time for.  We called them at 8:30 am hoping to get into their 9:30 class and within ten minutes they were there to pick us up!  Ahhh the benefits of traveling in the off season!  This cooking class at Faim d'Epices TOTALLY redeemed Morocco.  We had such a good time!  And we learned how to shop the souks giving us a rap sheet of things to do the next day.  I stocked up on preserved lemons, real saffron (be careful...they sell fake stuff), tea, and tagines.  

 The class started with a spice education;)  

The unique flavor of Moroccan cooking comes from the combination of sooooo many subtle spices, none of which are allowed to over power the next, each one so very subtle but all combined to be a uniquely perfect burst of spicy flavor and sensation.  We learned the difference between Chinese Cinnamon and regular Cinnamon, tasted Argon oil and orange and Rose water...spice after spice after spice...It was fun!

 Our chef taught us to make Moroccan crepes and while I have tried and tried, they never turn out as good as the ones we ate in country.  It was so pretty watching this Moroccan woman work with the dough who said she learned to cook from her mother and grandmother.  You could tell too...it felt very traditional, not professional.  We liked that. 

After cooking the feast, we ate it.  Look at Bryant and Alex with their smart phones!!;)  Taking pics to share on Facebook;)

So, yea, the ice cream was amazing and spicy but you can get good ice cream anywhere...it's that triangle bread up there...that's the Moroccan crepe thing I keep talking about.  That little baby was the good stuff.  It was more like a buttery croissant/pita/crepe type thing...there's really no description to justify it.

Back to the Souks: 

Dried fruit and nuts

An old Mosque turned into a school and now simply a museum

Another picture I took for the kids...see the little (wait no, fairly big) lizard on my arm?  It looks just like the one from Rapunzel so of course, I thought of my girls;)  All over the city are men waiting to charge you money to take a picture with their bizarre animals.  

Morocco is cheap, culturally rich and worth the trip.  It has not been my favorite place I've ever been but still very enjoyable, interesting and unique.  It was my first time in a predominantly Muslim country and I found myself struggling with judgement and perceptions that I hadn't really thought through or been aware of before.  I still wish I could see the country and the people through a different lens than my white middle class Western one that I couldn't seem to shake while I was there.   If I went back I'd stay outside of Marrakech in the mountains.  Then I'd take 2 day trips into the city.  And I'd still love to take the kids;)