I'm starting this post off at Roxy Bar, a quaint little place across the Po River in the nearby town of Santa Giulia. This is a bar where the local Italians come to spend their hot and humid afternoons playing cards, drinking beer/wine, eating gelato, smoking cigarettes, and animatedly playing cards. Santa Giulia itself is a town with a with a gas station (where fuel costs a euro fifty a liter) and a bar. And...and... and...
And I'm pretty sure that just about covers it.
 |
| At Roxy Bar with Leslie |
I've spent the last two weeks at the Agritourismo Ca'Lattis here in the lush plains of the Po Delta. The farm is about forty feet away from the Po River, and the road that runs beside it is idyllic for morning running. The sun seems enormous here, and if I leave the house at six, I get to enjoy watching it rise over the river with the herons and the few Italian fisherman awake before ten.
 |
| The bridge to Santa Giulia |
 |
| Biking the Po with Leslie |
 |
| The Po River |
This being Italy, I had also anticipated that I'd be running amidst acres of vineyards and olive trees and caper bushes.
Not so.
I happened to pick the one region of Italy where the land is not used for growing grapes, olives, hazelnuts, or figs. Here, they grow rice, corn, wheat, soybeans, melons, and alfalfa. The products are similar to a typical American monoculture farm, but they are produced by very different people in very different weather under a very different government. I'm enjoying my time here and I don't regret choosing this farm, but next time I WWOOF in Italy I'll research the region a bit more thoroughly. To me, Italy means figs and olives and wine. Not soybeans and corn.
As I spent much of this spring geeking out to "The History of Rome" podcast whilst working at my father's shop, I've hence spent many mornings mucking out stalls and thinking, "Wow... I wonder if Hannibal ever made it here..." or "Maybe I'm walking where Julius Caesar..." or "If Trajan led his troops past..." However, my fellow WWOOFer smashed all of my walking in famous footsteps dreams when she told me that the region of Taglio del Po is only a few hundred years old. The Agritourismo, horse stalls, and everything else as far as the eye can see (and as everything out here is flat as a Danish pancake, there's a lot the eye can see) used to be under water. The Po River swept over this entire expanse of land, draining into the ocean and creating vast marshes as it meandered along. A brilliant fellow came along in the sixteenth century and decided to turn all the unusable marshland into farmland. "Taglio di Po" literally translates into "I cut the Po." Which is the reason this verdant landscape has no trees and an overabundance of mosquitoes.
 |
| One of the many flat fields. Sans grapes. |
I've been doing a lot more work the past few days. Leslie left last Thursday, I spent Friday being the only English speaker in all of Taglio del Po, and Anthony arrived Saturday night, taking on the role of the only English AND Italian speaker in all of Taglio del Po. I've enjoyed his company and I enjoy being able to communicate with my hosts more effectively via Anthony, but with this more effective communication comes a good deal more work. Some is quite enjoyable, some is grin and bear it type work. I spent all of Tuesday morning prying wire off of the anatrae (duck) fence. What went from a work with animals in the morning, help with dishes in the early afternoon and have late afternoon free to nap and go to the beach turned into work all the time. While I enjoy being here and I'm happy to help out, I did reach the point of being like, "Dude... please remember that I'm not getting paid for this."
Except I don't speak Italian. So I grinned and bore it.
On a rather controversial note, I've been able to take advantage of Italy's rather sexist culture to weasel my way into the kitchen with Laura. She's a brilliant chef who is VERY jealous of her kitchen, and I am the first WWOOFer she's allowed to do anything other than wash dishes and make salads. I think I convinced her of my strong desire to learn when I spent five hours stalwartly schlepping slimy snails from their shells and deboning raw sardines that had been fermenting in salt for the past three months. My hands and clothes reaked of "sarde" for hours afterwards, but I had won the key to the coveted kitchen. Since my snail/sardine trial through fire, I've been able to help with a delicious eggplasmnt parmesian, ragout, and petit quail egg sandwhiches. Poor Anthony has not been as fortunate. Anthony is a very suave, well-dressed, finance major from the corn fields of Ohio, but comes from an Italian family and cooking is his passion. He would do anything to spend his days in the kitchen with Laura, but because of his gender, Piero insists that Anthony work outside on the duck fence. And the horse fence. And be there whenever a tractor is involved. Whenever Anthony creeps into the kitchen, Carla laughs a little and says something along the lines of, "L'uomo in cucina!" I feel sorry for his outdoors only sentence, but not quite sorry enough to give up my so recently earned key to Laura's kitchen.
 |
| In the kitchen with Laura and Carla |
Speaking of Laura... funny story. Laura has a three year old granddaughter: a very energetic, precocious, spoiled, whirlwind of little Laura (we called her Lauretta). Because I'm a lady, whenever tourists came into the restaurant, I was given "Guardi Lauretta" duty. As I love kids and am usually pretty good with them, this assignment didn't bother me at all. Initially. I quickly found out just how difficult it is to keep a three year old quiet when you can't understand a word they're saying. I also found out that the generally recognized phenomenon of Italians needing much less personal space than the rest of us begins at a very early age. A lot earlier than three. My afternoons with Lauretta were full of her babbling on in Italian at a consistent supersonic speed, then pausing for a brief moment to slam her cheek into mine, or ram her curly head into my chest. She played with my pants, my shirt, my shoes, my face. When she ran out of things to play with, she'd jump off my lap and run into the kitchen to tell "Nonna Laura" a new word she'd learned in "Inglese". I'd stumble after her to make sure that she didn't leave a trail of carnage in her wake, only to be struck by the three foot tornado on her way out the door, demanding that I pick her up and throw her into the air. I'd oblige, and then carry her back to our chair near the front of the restaurant. Near the end of our second day together, she started teaching me some Italian games. Such as the Italian version of "Where is Thumpkin?" However, the cream of the crop was what "I eat your nose" segued into. Lauretta was on my lap and I was doing my best to engage her and keep her from harassing the three dining tourists. She faced me and grabbed my nose, saying (in Italian), "I eat your nose!" tucking her thumb between her index and middle finger just like we do in the States. I laughed at her and tousled her hair a bit. Emboldened, she proceeded to grab my breasts and shout at the top of her longs, "I eat your tits!"
At which point I decided that Lauretta and I needed to go outside.
 |
| Lauretta |
 |
| Lauretta and Leslie |
 |
| Lauretta napping. FINALLY. |
 |
| Lauretta's naps are far too short for how much energy she has upon waking. |
On a rather unfortunate note, I've ran into an obstacle that's put an end to my morning yoga and running. Or rather, I've run into two obstacles. Or rather, two obstacles have insisted on running with me. Bella and Brando, the two eight month old Tibetan Mastiffs, thwart my attempts to run by myself at every turn. When I open my trailer in the morning, they're there waiting for me, tongues lolling and tails wagging. Bella has even taken up the habit of sleeping under my trailer, snoring up a storm and attracting a cloud of mosquitoes. Normally, I wouldn't mind sharing my morning runs with a couple of enthusiastic, athletic dogs, but these Tibetan Mastiffs are definitely an exception to this rule. They're disobedient, aggressive, bring home animals that they've killed and decapitated, jump all over people, charge other dogs, and are generally just bad running buddies. When I'd run, they'd continually cut me off, as if it were some sort of dominace play. And as they'd just finished splashing about in an irrigation ditch, I'd lose my stride AND get drenched in foul smelling water. It took all the pleasure out of running, imagining what would happen if they attacked a local and I had to try to call the dogs off, doing my best to explain in my limited Italian that these are not my dogs and I don't know how to handle them. And this is a real fear, as Bella and Brando have a couple of siblings in the delta with behavorial problems. As in, they have a couple of siblings who have bitten people.
 |
| Brando sleeps under my trailer. To make sure I can't sneak off on my morning run without him. Clever bastard. |
Hence, I now sleep in the mornings and do at least an hour of yoga in the afternoons. No more running until Ireland. No more morning yoga until Ireland either, as whenever I bring out my yoga mat, both Bella and Brando plop down on top of it. I have to wait until Carla opens up the restaurant and morning work is finished and the day is boiling hot. Oh well. Yoga is best done in a heated environment, anyway.
I have eleven days left at this farm, and I am pretty ready to move on. I'd like to try WWOOFing in Italia again someday, but I'd like to find a farm where they grow traditional Italian crops, a couple of people speak English, and the expectations they have of WWOOFers is more clearly defined. On the WWOOF Italia website, Carla had written that we'd work five hours a day, five days a week, that English was spoken, and that we'd get to work with horses and go kayaking in our time off. We don't have any full days off, there are no horses to ride, NO English is spoken, and I have yet to see a kayak. The most difficult is the communication, though. They just keep speaking at me in Italian and expecting me to understand. I'm starting to get very frustrated about the whole situation. I would feel a bit more congenial if they had advertised themselves as a farm wherein you needed to speak Italian to function, but they clearly said that English was spoken, so I assumed that as I speak English, I'd be able to communicate with the Italians here just fine. I can't ask questions, I can't voice opinions, I can't really talk to Carla about my problem with the dogs, and when Anthony leaves on Wednesday, I'll be without a voice for the remainder of my time here.
Well, I'm off to feed the ducks and horses. I love you all and will write again soon.
-Aimee
No comments:
Post a Comment