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.