bon voyage/ buon viaggio!

Los Angeles, California, USA

After Sophie and I spent our last morning in Zurich watching cartoon network in german, we took the speediest and most efficient and perfect and clean public transit (trams and a speedy boat taxi) to the lake, where we swam to a tall waterslide and jumped off a high dive with some very cool looking middle schoolers who were crowding the docks and the beaches like sea lions on the santa cruz wharf. Being around middle-schoolers gave me a weird sort of middle school anxiety again; i got the feeling that I myself was in middle school and was supposed to try to act really cool then i pulled myself out of the lake and onto the wooden dock and looked down at the boys who came up to maybe my waist and I realized they are swiss thirteen year olds... and I am twenty two, a fact that sometimes slips my mind. Age is only a number in a lot of ways.

Anyway, we completed our final day with two terrific jumps off the high dive, complete with screams and flailing, the perfect end to our trip that could very well be entitled "jumping off european things" or something of the sort. We spent a lot of time in water, that is, when we weren't working on farms or eating like big fat queens. That night at Astrid and Brad's house we thought about drinking from their array of fancy liqueurs but were all feeling too sick from having seriously overloaded on swiss chocolate for "dinner" (it was accompanied by a light salad). So we lied around in the candle-light bedroom, listening to the song "summer lovin'" from Grease which is officially Sophie and my favorite movie, we must have watched it ten times this summer and sang all the songs on the train and while we were laboring away at the hay bales trying to make the time pass...anyways, we listened to summer lovin' while we looked at the photos of our journey, which was particularly poignant when we got to the photos of us walking through an old italian graveyard as John Travolta and Olivia Newton John sang "summer fun, somethin's begun..."

The next morning we woke up early and said our goodbyes and then twenty five sleepless hours, two mini bottles of wine, two soggy pasta dishes, six cups of orange juice and a few classic chick flicks later we arrived in LA. My amazing fantastic momma had prepared the most delicious carrot cake in the world from scratch because she thought it would be a nice american treat, not knowing it is Sophie's favorite cake. Then mom made us tamales, another thing we had missed, and we put on some scabies cream one last time (this one smelled like sulfur) and passed out immediately. A perfect end to a perfect summer.

Fin.

Epilogue:

Sophie left the next day, but only after getting some everything bagels with herb cream cheese, eating japanese food, getting her photos developed, and of course, watching Grease one more time. It is always bitter-sweet watching Grease because it is so great and John Travolta is so cute and charming and such a fantastic dancer and then we remember he's a scientologist and our dreams are shattered, again... it's still very difficult for us to come to terms with that fact. Now I am having a weird sort of separation anxiety from Sophie. I've been literally no further than 50 feet from her this whole summer, every hour of every day so it was strange dropping her off at the airport. But it was a wonderful honeymoon and i will see her in two days and then we will go back to our regular friendly marriage.

The culture shock coming back was there, but not as badly as when i studied abroad. THe big cars and the sloppy clothes were definitely noticeable, and it is still very strange to hear people speaking american and knowing that they can understand me when i talk so i can't just talk about someone's silly haircut while I am standing next to them. Eating a taco was better than I had imagined, but I miss speaking italian so badly even though it's only been a few days. It's all very bittersweet, as endings always are. I think for us it was the perfect time to come back, any shorter and we would have felt cheated out of the full experience, but any longer and we might have become worn out from the nonstop travel adventures. It's hard not having a home base. But what a perfect two month journey it was.

ARRIVADERCI!

France and Switzerland

Zurich, Switzerland

We spent the last week in a chateau in france that is owned by Katie's wealthy family friends. It is one of their 4 houses, and it is in a small town in provence called Les Beaumettes.

I want to write down everything we did but it is about a week old so it is not as inspired as it could be, so I will write bullet points

- the night we got in our train was late so the rental car place closed and as we were about to sleep on the ground outside, i magically began to speak french and we found our way to the holiday inn who called a cheap hostel and we bartered with them and got to stay in a small apartment for 60 euros for 4 people, so 15 each. Being as we were almost broke, this was exciting. and free water.

- when we finally found the house, there was an enormous wasp nest, maybe 2 feet wide, that meant we spent a few hours walking around the house wrapped in mosquito nets trying to exterminate two huge wasps each the size of my thumb. I finally killed one, it was bittersweet.

- huge travelfamily dinners, gnocchi lessons (they had a gnocchi pass machinetta in the kitchen so we made some really really good gnocchi) and pasta dinners, baguettes and sausages with fennel and brie, we had a mexican fiesta in which we all dressed up, and you could definitely call some of our outfits offensive, but then again.. nobody else was there.. so, if a tree falls in the forest and there is no one around to hear it... is a chola outfit really offensive?

- we went to a fantastic series of farmers markets and flea markets that were loaded with amazing spices, honeys, soaps, patte's (sp?) fruits and vegetables, little old men wearing berets, old spoons and old maps and old posters and lanterns and a little green park in the town with a river running through it that had a bunch of big waterwheels. I lied on my back in the park eating a salmon and spinach quiche and listened to a father and son play a violin guitar duet of carmen, and other things. We dipped our toes in the river and ate lemon meringue pie. We purchased a lot of knick knacky treasures and i got another spoon for my collection from two men named bernard and robert.

- my friend Jessie's mission was to eat as many almond croissants as her heart desired, and i think she must have had about 7 or 8? maybe a few were other flavors.

- we drove to the coast off Marseilles and took a ferry to this small island called ISLE VERT (google image this and be so jealous) crystal clear this time more green water, jumping off rocks, swimming around like nymphs, this is pretty much our routine by now. It took a few little hikes to get around and it was very very hot, and we got some amazing photos which i should post the link to sometime.

- We visited aixen provence and maybe ate the best mousse i could have ever imagined.

- the gardeners name was jaque and he was round and very sweet and came around every day or so to see how we were doing

- i slept in my own bedroom in a bed that was far too big for me, inside a mosquito net and i felt very elegant.

we took the train to zurich which was ridiculously expensive we all almost cried a little, but it was a very nice train and loaded with really good looking personnel, which made the ride more enjoyable. The view from france to switzerland is incredible; green and lakes and cute pointy roofs and villages nestled in hillsides. When we got to zurich we found my cousin astrid and went to a kebab place and ate and then the rain began to pour, as it apparently does randomly in switzerland, and we took the bus home and watched notting hill and fell asleep.

The next day, yesterday, we explored zurich a little. This city is BEAUTIFUL and perfect and very well planned. For example, we rented bicycles for free and rode them around through the little pointy roof streets that are covered with trees (almost no trash on the streets) and then we got to the river that runs through the middle of the city and people were swimming in it. Every other city i know, you don't swim in the river that runs right through the middle because it is filthy, but this one is alpine melt water with a few leaves floating in it. All along the banks were beautiful twenty something people lounging around in the sun. We found a spot to put our towels and then went to jump off a small bridge into the water. Then the current dragged us downstream and it was like we were getting a little tour of the city by way of water. When we were about to pass under the big bridge, and a few young guys were jumping off it, so we got out and climbed up four flights of stairs, walked across the bridge, which was covered in cars, in our bathingsuits, climbed over the railing, and stood there maybe 10 to 12 meters up trying to get ourselves to jump off. Finally, we counted to three, but SCREAMING at the top of our lungs because otherwise i wouldn't have found the courage, which only came from the adrenaline i got from screaming one two three, and then we jumped off, Jessie, Sophie and I all went down screaming while a crowd watched and katie took photos and video. When our heads poked out of the water there was a crowd of people applauding, and my arm hurt from having slapped the water at a bad angle, but it was so exciting! We are all very proud of ourselves for that.

Now Sophie and I are going to rent bicycles and bike to the picturesque lake!

I could live in switzerland.

insomnia

Esino Lario, Italia

I am at uncle Max's house above lake como in the northernmost bit of italy. They call them the pre alps, they are still staggering mountains to me, but nowhere near what you'd see going through to switzerland. It is 4 am and i can't sleep because sophie and i were both wearing soccer pants that are made of windbreaker material so every time one of us moves our legs the noise wakes me up, and i am also still very itchy from scabies and really not happy about that.

Good news is that i have been dancing a lot recently. Tonight we went to a little festival the town was having at it's tiny piazza where an italian band was playing waltzes and cha cha cha's and i taught my cousin alex how to dance kindof by leading him awkwardly around the floor and counting the steps outloud. But it was lovely. Before that our last night in Calabria we went to another festival (august is festival month in Italia) and we watched crazy italians of all ages dance the tarantella like maniacs. The accordion was going so fast, and the mandolin too, and i just started feeling it in my feet and dragged antonello on the dance floor and we were hopping around back and forth and bumping into everyone else and my calves got so sore after about 5 minutes of the dance, this one song by the way lasted about 30 minutes! Earlier that night sophie and i had done our obligatory full moon skinny dip in the secluded area in the perfect sea again, and that was a great way to say goodbye to the calabrian sea, and we were swimming a couple hundred meters out in the ocean while the sun dipped below the horizon and then we swam back and went to the festival all wet. Not exactly la bella figura but definitely worth it.

This time i didn't leave anything behiind in calabria, besides a little pandemonium that had erupted after I had been pretty disgustingly sexually harassed on the way to the tomato fields. Luckily he didn't touch me and I was smart enough and got away safely, but when i told my seriously protective and chivalrous and wonderfully bubbly hospitable male friends we'd made, they made it their job to track down exactly who he is, where he is from, his car, his girlfriend (i feel very sorry for you), spread word all over town and luckily didn't beat him up while I was there because I expressed a serious concern for my own safety if he were to retaliate against sophie and I for some reason, and i just think violence escalates violence and really was discouraging that. But I am almost positive that at least Antonello did on Friday night after we left, mostly because he kept swearing that he would the minute we left, saying things like "one punch in the face and kick in the ass and he'll learn some respect". I think that's just how they deal with things there. He is lucky that i hadn't made friends with any mafiosi, because he might be dead or close to it at this point. Like I said, everything there seems exaggerated and a little extreme.
I don't want to talk about this anymore and please don't talk to me about it unless i bring it up.

We left calabria on a really good note, after eating and dancing at the festival, saying goodbye to antonello and inhaling some really good cappuccinos at the train station, we took a flight up the coast of Italia and landed in Milan. Upon collecting our baggage, we discovered that someone/something had peed on sophie's backpack, or maybe had spilled a jar full of dead rat juice all over her backpack and she had to wear it and then ride on the bus smelling literally the worst smell i have ever smelled in my life. A cross between pungent pee and rotting corpse. So when we finally found Katie after an hour of waiting, and finally got to the station and then took a taxi up the hairpin turn roads to the tiny mountain town, she showered and we drank and ate with my family and then fell asleep like babies in this gorgeous huge yellow and stone house overlooking the lake.

Favorite Time of Day

Briatico, Calabria, Italia

At sunset time, this little old lady named Vittoria (or la nonna Vittoria as we know her) comes over to the farmhouse where we are staying to feed the chickens. She is small and bent over, has frizzy hair that is dyed light brown, and is always dressed very elegantly, skirt and blouse. She is a very smiley lady and she really loves animals, so when she walks into the chicken and goose pen she is beaming, holding a plastic bag full of food scraps from lunch, and hobbling down the pathway. She talks really lovingly to the chickens and then throws the food down and tells them to go eat. She confronts the ones who aren't eating and tries to get them to eat (much like she does when we don't feel like eating anymore) and she fills up their waterbowl. I have never seen anyone behave so tenderly towards chickens. It is my favorite time of day. Yesterday i took a photo of her throwing the food down, she waited until i counted to three and then flung the food down, again with a huge smile.

The other day we were eating lunch at her house and there was this chicken wandering around by our feet. She told me her name was Gabriella and then hand fed her watermelon, while talking to her and telling her she loved her. I couldn't contain my laughter because this chicken looks so silly, but their relationship is so serious and she has such a serious human name. The chickens little head flap is falling over her eyes so she looks like she has a comb over, and her one eye is always glaring out from under her red head flap (the other one is well covered).

Also that same day we watched Vittoria's 85 year old sister, whose name i forgot, eat an entire melon by herself after lunch. Well she cut me off a small piece but then went at that melon for about 20 minutes.

While I am talking about old ladies, i guess i should mention Antonello's mom. She is about 80, had three teeth (to my knowledge) and always seems to be yelling about something, even though she's not mad. The other day i talked about wanting to make pesto and i asked her if she liked pesto and she screamed "PESTO!! NO!!!!!! NO PESTO!" and then turned around and walked inside the house, muttering curses about pesto. This is a common occurance, this random screaming fit. But she is not angry, i think that is just how she communicates.
She has given birth to 17 children. That means she has spent the majority of at least 30 years of her life being pregnant and breastfeeding infants. This I cannot wrap my head around.

spicy south

Briatico, Calabria, Italia

We arrived 2 days ago in Briatico, Calabria, a small barely paved beach town where it is never not hot and the water is as perfect as any travel brochure of the carribean. It seems like a really poor place, a lot of the houses are really run down and a lot of the old people don't have teeth. But everyone we've met is extremely happy, laughs a lot, is really into family, is exraordinarily generous and very hospitable and willing to go out of their way to show us a good time. The work here is easy. We work however much we want, whenever we want, and it involved taking care of tomatoes or cutting twigs of oregano and putting them into bags.

The food is lots of spicy, lots of tomatoes and pasta pasta pasta. Our new friend antonello (large frame, huge smile, dark skin and greasy jet black hair, number 10 of 17 siblings) drives us to secret beach spots that only he is allowed to go to because he knows people who know people, takes us to meet his family, buys us gelato and beer and anything we want, and screams at the top of his lungs to techno music as we wind around the hair-pin turns on the cliff above the sea. He showed us a lot of pictures of him slaughtering a pig and making salami WHILE we were eating that very same salami from that very same pig. He laughed in my face when i told him i was a vegetarian. But he is pretty much always laughing, if he's not cursing or talking on the phone to one of his ten brothers about how he is driving in the car with two beautiful girls from california. He is a lot of fun, a real gem who we are very lucky to have found. Tonight we are making pesto from basil from our garden and pine nuts from his yard.

Fragneto Monforte and the battle of the old things

Fragneto Monforte, Campania, Italia

Sophie and I spent the last week in a tiny town called Fragneto Monforte which is almost entirely inhabitied by my family it seems. We stayed with my zia Elena, and visited all my other aunts almost daily. All of my relatives there are a bunch of little old ladies, and then one little old man. They love us and kiss us and pinch our faces and kiss our faces and feed us and feed us and then overfeed us and then really won't let us stop eating and literally will pile our plates full of food even when we protest vehemently. That is love. But the food is so good, it is a hard spot to be in.

I went to my uncle Pompeo's house, who lives right next door to aunt elena's house, and they are in a feud. They are on different sides of the family and are not speaking, so pompeo would call his niece who lives two houses down who then would call us to deliver his message and then my aunt elena would grumble about it. Anyways, we walked the 10 steps to pompeos house and then he showed us all around his house and showed us all of his very old things that have been in our family for hundreds of years. Some of them since the 1600's and he had a big vase from ancient rome sitting really nonchalantly in the corner. The house was where my great grandfather lived, and it was so incredibly ancient and full of ancient things that it was just like a small but really legitimate museum, but even better because every artifact came with a story that was about a member of my family. He had a dresser that belonged to my grandmother's grandmother, Filomena, when she was young, and he had an old dictionary that belonged to my great grandfather, and the archway that used to be in front of their old house, and tiles mouned on the wall that were painted brilliant colors that used to be tiles from the terrace that my family lived in. He walked really fast for an 80 something year old, and then he made us eat a lot of chocolate. He has a family tree that traces our family back to the 1700s and earlier and some of our family members had the titles "the magnificent" after their names. It was a really beautiful and kind of unbelievable tour.

Then we went home and elena asked how was pompeo's house and I told her only that he has a lot of old things and she said "I have a lot of old things!" and proceeded to show us around her house and talked about how old each and every thing of hers was. Apparently, in Fragneto, all of the houses are antiques full of antiques. She showed me a cookbook full of recipes that was written in te 1400s. That is so crazy! Someone was writing that cookbook that I was holding while columbus was sailing across the sea or while dante was writing his inferno and while people still believed in fairies. And there I was reading how to cook a pheasant in the year 2009.

After a lot of kissing and eating and overeating and napping and putting on scabies cream over and over and doing our laundry, we drove down the narrow 1oo meter street, aka 'across town' with my cousin mariarca and then got on the train heading south to Calabria. But not before getting treated to a gelato at the train station by a man named Francesco (every other man here is named that) who apparently had made the pizzas that we had ordered ad zia ilda's house two nights prior, and knew my entire family by name.

Paradise

Napoli, Campania, Italia

This place feels like paradise. Even if it weren't juxtaposed with that other not so great farm experience, i think it still would feel perfect. Every day we wake up, eat melons and drink espresso, then go on a tour of the city, weaving in and out of vespas with three people on them and blazing through red lights like they are polite suggestions. Then we end up at our destination: The spanish quarters which are in the old center of naples which are narrow streets with bridges of laundry hanging overheard very much like a film set, or the ruins of pompeii which are stunning, the ashes buried a metropolis and now that it's excavated we wandered through the streets and went into little houses and into a whore house and into people's gardens and pretended that it was 2000 years ago and that if i turned the corner i might run into jesus (who, according to me, hung out in pompeii), or we end up at the old fishing section of napoli, red and yellow and balconies with lots of little old men on little old boats yelling and if you didn't understand what they were saying you would think they are arguing but in fact they are just reminiscing about something or telling jokes, or we ended up at vesuvius today and lucio picked up a lava rock for sophie off the side of the road. Also they sell lava sculpted into designs, one was sculpted into a marijuana leaf and painted green with the words 'legalize' underneath it, so clever i almost bought it. Wait. No I didn't. We also visited positano, google image this too if you've never seen it, i forgot if i already wrote about it but it is beautiful.

Then we come home and eat a huge lunch in the backyard in the shade of two big apricot trees on the grass next to about 50 turtles who eat better than we did on the last farm. Some of our finest lunches have included gnocchi alla sorrentina which we had today, pasta con le vongole, pizza direct from napolis finest pizzerias, prociutto and melone, always fruit and salads and wine and acqua con gas (good for the digestion, which is something that is very important to italians, they love talking about digestion. Here are some other things they say are good for digestion: caffé, lemon skins, liqueurs which are called digestivos, black liquorice, warm water instead of cold. I find this hilarious.)

Then we usually nap or go out on another excursion. then come home for dinner where we feast again on amazing food home cooked by my aunt Marilena who really knows how to do italian food. Insalata caprese, potato cake with cheese and ham, artichoke hearts, grilled bell peppers and roasted tomatoes with string beans, pasta sempre al dente, and always great salads, wines and fruits and then desserts and THEN the digestivos that she makes from scratch. There is limoncello, apple liqueur, one made from loquat seeds called nespola, noccillo which is made from walnuts and cloves and tastes warm and christmas like, and grappa which burns me less now than it used to. We eat all of our meals over long periods of time, lots of fast italian which goes over my head but also lots of joking and storytelling and (lovingly) forcefeeding on the part of lucio, who thinks that a compliment on something means 'i want four of those immediately'.

Stupidly, i left my bathingsuit at the last farm, where it is probably getting ripped to shreds by evil children and chickens and scabies, so i have been searching for a new one this whole time. Unfortunately, the style here is to really only cover a small portion of the butt crack and leave it at that, which doesn't really work for me at all. Also, they all have weird frills and beads and sequins and oh they also cost 100 euro. Just when I was about to give up hope, Lucio saw a store and we went in and i tried on 4 of them and found one that worked. It is black and has a bunch of beats and multi colored thread and also mini mirrors embroidered into the breast part- that way you can see yourself in them when you're looking at them, woo hoo! I figured i might as well embrace the tacky bathing suit thing and have some fun with it. Also, it fits and also it cost ten euro. Fantastico! I am starting to wish it was more ridiculous, tassles and maybe some happy faces or some designs on the butt part too. Oh well.

I think, i hope, that we have killed all the scabies. We burned them in the suns heat and also at a sulfuric volcano and also washed everything a billion times and i think i bleached my skin off today in the shower with a pesticide. So i hope that will be the end of them.

buona notte