On to Chiantishire

As usual I’m several days behind with this writing and we’re now post-wedding and near Pisa.   Late evening sun, Heather drying up after doing the washing up because I cooked.

Not straight on, remember we’re pootling.  The great Italian cities are well known, Florence, Rome, Turin, Bologna, Naples, Genoa, Venice, Verona and a dozen or two more than that but clearly there are many lesser known but little visited places and we called in at Ferrrara, a place with a decent write up but which I’d never heard of.   Ferrara’s claim to fame is the old city wall which apart from a couple or road entrances still entirely surrounds the old town.  It’s 7.5 kms long, much of it 20 to 50 feet wide across the top with a footpath and cycle path along it.  Down here in the Po plain there is clearly a lot of clay and the wall and the castle plus many other buildings are made of brick.  This construction material made the castle look very austere which is odd in a way because castles aren’t really meant to look cosy anyway.  It just didn’t look like a ‘real’ castle.  The Cathedral was another unfinished one, impressive but ugly with shops built against the outside of the west wall.  It’s easy to imagine a few medieval street vendors plying their wares, occupying a regular spot, then one sleeps overnight, then a shelter is built and hey presto, there’s a line of shops.  A busker with a baby grand piano was playing what to my questionable ear sounded pretty good.  There were his CDs for sale, a few photos, one of which was him playing on a gondola in Venice.  He was clearly happy to be the centre of attention and playing to the crowd.  To you older readers he behaved a bit like Russ Conway in jeans with a cheesy grin over one shoulder.

Our campsite here at Ferrara was very near the town and in an old mulberry orchard, something I’d never seen before and not very practical for a campsite.  Mulberries are small trees perhaps 25 feet high and the fruits, of which there are many, are like loganberries.  When a ripe one or hundred of them fall fifteen feet onto a white motorhome it looks a bit like the St Valentine’s Day Massacre.  One fell onto the book I was reading and left a red splodge in the middle of I Clavdivs.  Still Lime trees would be worse, they drop sticky resinous stuff on the paintwork even if the trees in bloom smell wonderful.  The campsite buildings and a cement block rose arbour leading to the entrance were in that 1930s Nazi/Soviet style architecture.  A sort of bully-boy Art Deco.

I do at last have a person story, these are the considered trifles I like to see and try to write about so that this doesn’t end up being just a travelogue.  Sitting with a coffee outside somewhere, we couldn’t help overhearing an Irishman on the next table.  He was in his 60s or 70s and with an Italian woman in her 20s and it appeared that they worked for the same boss rather than this being some sort of sleazy assignation.  Part way through a conversation, well not a conversation really which I think of as being a two way communication, this was a lecture.  Anyway it was about poverty in Ireland “when they had nothing to eat but potatoes”.  In poverty struck Ireland (allegedly) all you could do was “add a bit of olive oil and a few herbs to it for a meal”.  Now I’m no expert, although that’s never stopped me, but ‘a bit of olive oil’?    

Being in Italy has reminded me that here and in much of France, being a waiter or waitress (sorry, but I refuse to have anything to do with waitpersons) is an occupation, not something to do as a student or to fill in before a proper job.  So waiters are of any age not just in their 20s.

We saw a very elegantly dressed woman, possibly late 30s (everyone’s young to me these days) wearing one black glove and smoking a cigarette.  Now was this some sort of fashion statement like wearing odd socks or was it support for a group feeling discriminated against whose symbol was a single black glove?  I watched and when she finished the ciggie, off came the glove and it disappeared into her handbag.  So it seemed to be a guard against those nicotine stained fingers of the chronic smoker, although I’ve not seen such a finger for a long time.  How many of you remember the days when everyone smoked in pubs and the ceilings were always painted in varying shades of what I believe is called Fagnolia.* 

Heading further south we camp near the Futa Pass, a little north of Florence and located on what was called ‘The Green Line’, a WWII German defensive line across Italy to stop the Allies northward advance.  The question I posed in my first set of notes this trip has been answered because here lies the biggest German War Cemetery in Italy with over 30,000 Germans buried here.  They didn’t all die here but many were brought from other parts of Italy.  It’s very different from an Allied War Cemetery, very stark with a pointed memorial at the top of a hill with the graves arranged in a circular manner around it.  The stones were flat, standing 3 or 4 inches above the grass and each bore the names of up to 6 soldiers.  The word is sombre.

I have a collection of many maps at home which I search through before any trip.  Most are too out of date to use so I always buy new ones but I hate throwing away a map even if it’s hand drawn on vellum.  I did though bring an old all-Italy map just to show the relative locations of cities which tend not to change too much.  This one has information about travelling around the country.  On the train it’s possible to collect a form from the conductor if you wish to send a 16 word telegram or at least it was in 1974when the map was published.  It only seems like yesterday.   Sixteen words, well that’s just Twitter isn’t it?

* can’t remember if I’ve cracked the Fagnolia joke before or not, but then I guess some of you won’t either even if I have.