Gite Italiane

10-December

As I write this our Vermont family is “enjoying” traditional snowstorms and temperatures not above freezing. The web tells us that you in England are having below-freezing temperatures, but I must report that we’ve made mostly crystal-clear sun for the past three days – probably not a short as yours, but still very much nearing Solstice brevity – and can eat breakfast on our first-floor, south-facing terrace in the morning. Yesterday we looked out over the wall into the next fattoria, we saw a man high on a spindly ladder, beating the branches of an olive tree, harvesting fruit into the ground-net below. He worked on into the morning, singing outside, unaccompanied, except by the dogs of all the surrounding groves.

It’s hard to believe that Ellie left lane End nearly two months ago, and I followed at the end of October. We left our home and all of you, our friends; it will likely take a bit of getting used to in order to again feel “at home” in Vermont, but – before we go there, it’s been great to take advantage of some of Europe’s wonders. Let me tell you just a bit of what we’ve been up to in Puglia, Italy.


While I was finishing up business in Lane End, Ellie met her daughter Sophia in Paris, and spent a week crossing Europe – by way of Reims, Strasbourg, Munich, Lake Garda – to Venice, where I met them at the start of November. The best part was that Ellie had found us a marvelous owner-let apartment in a back neighborhood on a quiet canal in Venice AWAY from all the tourists. Three days with no cars, motorbikes (even bicycles); just a few putzing motor-boats!

We wandered and lost ourselves in the maze of streets and canals, and took a boat way out into the islands of the lagoon. Sophie’s guy (back in Vermont) is a glass-blower, so she and Ellie spent a couple of hours on Murano (the centuries-old home of “Venetian glass”) while I went to Torcello, the site of a fabulous Byzantine basilica.



The Autostrada took us to Ravenna the afternoon we left Venice, but we arrived too late to visit the fabulous cathedral. But it seems that Ravenna is an international center for conservation, design and creation of mosaics, partly because of the fabulous work preserved in the floors of ruined palazzos left from the Roman era. I walked into a lovely back-street Renaissance church and through a back chapel, paid for il billetto, and walked down into another world. It was my first (but not my last) experience suddenly encountering the foundations, decorated floors and mosaiced walls they left us, buried beneath the world we’ve built in subsequent millennia.

We drove down the Adriatic coast after dark, and landed in a hotel in Senigalia. We awoke to all the spaciousness of a coastal vacation town out of season, had a nice run on the deserted beach, and prepared for another long day in the car, heading straight for our new home in Puglia. We drove all day down the coast to Bari, headed inland, following directions given by our landlords (Terry and Joan, from Sevenoaks), arriving in time to make our first Italian supper.

So what have we been up to? One thing is: learning and enjoyed Italian cooking. (OK, that’s two.) Ellie is a good cook anyway, but particularly seeks out fresh ingredients. We have them here: greens, pears, pomodori, with great choices of cheese, salamis, and meats in shops everywhere. And of course: entire store aisles full of pastas: fresh and dried. Puglia is a huge source of both olive oil and wine, and we enjoy them fresh and local. The wine at .79€/L. isn’t GREAT, but is very drinkable. So we enjoy the sun as much as we can, eat well; I work while Ellie works on Italian verbs. (In case she never told you, she’s always wanted to live in a foreign culture, learning the language by the seat of her pants: French or Italian being her ideals. She has made fast friends with a local woman Patrizia Lelli, whose mom is teaching Ellie to make a traditional pasta: orecchiette (small ears).

As we enter the final festive two weeks of the year, we anticipate a fairly quiet Christmas; we’ve sent off cards to friends and family in the US, and limited our gifting to no more than 10€ of little nothings for each other. Our host/landlord Terry turns sixty on Boxing Day, so Joan has warned that we might be over-run by ex-pat British celebrants that day. Our (third) wedding Anniversary in January 1st , and I return to the US on January 4th, so we are likely to take several days for our own celebrating and leave-taking, mostly likely in Sicily.

What I’d like to share, though, is an amazing exposure to antiquity that we had several weeks ago. In the course of about ten days we travelled to the Naples area and the – a few days later – took the overnight Adriatic ferry to Patras, Greece. In the course of these we had five very different exposures to the ambitions, skills, and accomplishments of the ancients Mycenean, Greek and Roman civilizations. Planning our trip to Naples with visiting Lane End neighbors Taz and Kellie, we learned about Paestum, an ancient somewhat out-of-the-way site of what had been a huge trading hub of Magna Grecia, the civilization which spread west from the Greek city states around 2500 years ago.
Paestum is only partly excavated, as it had been a city of thousands at its height; like all ancient sites, a visitor sees structural remains from many eras – in this case including a Roman forum and gymnasium superimposed. But most famously, Paestum shows off the most well-preserved Greek temples in Italy. The sun had miraculously banished two days of rain, and we chose to spend all our time that morning out of doors, missing the artifacts preserved in the museum nearby.

But then, on to our other destination of the day – Herculaneum. When but a youth I was captured by the romance and decadence of Bulwer-Lytton’s Last Days of Pompeii, and had fantasies of growing up to be an archaeologist. But several people had told us that spending our time in Herculaneum – the other Roman city buried by Mt. Vesuvius in August 79AD – was more worthwhile. Pompeii was famously covered by ash and pumice from the angry mountain, but Herculaneum was horribly engulfed in a flood of boiling mud which hardened to a porous rock over the centuries.

Plundered by 18th century aristocrats who tunneled to find its treasures, Herculaneum was more recently brought into the open air. The biggest problem is that encroaching Naples suburbs grew over it; as you look over the railing twenty to thirty meters down into the ancient city, you see only ¼ of its estimated size – the rest laying undisturbed beneath the tufa cliffs on which the modern world sits. The surge of volcanic mud blasted much, but it also left wooden beams, furniture, and food preserved (well-baked or charred), and even two-story buildings: the partly-preserved top floors and roofs are evident at no other ancient site. We saw incredibly well-preserve mosaic floors and walls, delicate and sophisticated wall paintings and other amazing architectural and artistic bits – all in situ, just as crafted and preserved. We saw the baking ovens, food storage containers, and the sophisticated plumbing in the public baths.



And the following day we visited the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, and marveled at the treasures removed during the excavation years – the most artistic and lifelike statuary of bronze and stone, intricate jewelry of gold and precious stones, household implements (bronze, bone and wood). Glass work, painting, and incredibly detailed and subtle wall mosaics too: staggering.


















Having stayed with Ellie’s old Bucks University chum Luigi and his family, we were subjected to a fearsome dose of “mama’s cooking” and other local delectation.


We spent a day with Luigi driving to wonderful out-of-the-way hilltops, beaches and harbors around the Bay of Naples. We started the day visiting the tunnels, temples, and ruins at Cuma, founded in the 8th Century BC on the top of a hill right on the sea, from the which it dominated the coast and played a vital role in spreading the Hellenic culture. After the collapse of the Roman Empire, it was progressively abandoned for becoming a safe shelter for pirates and Saracens and for this reason destroyed by an alliance of close cities in the Xth century.
Tradition recognizes in one of its tunnels the Atrium of the Sibyl where the Greek hero Enea was announced a glorious destiny that will lead him to found the eternal Rome.

After a few days recovery, we headed to Greece for a visit with our dear friend Andreas and his family in Athens. More recently our friends Alison and Michael visited us from Gloucestershire, flying out just in time for the dose of winter winds which have hit us and kept our fire going day and night. OK, well several days have gone by since I started this, and things do change.

We’ve been enjoying ourselves in Puglia for the last weeks, but now I am beginning to think more about my inevitable and long-deferred return to the US for work. Ellie and I will go to Sicily a few days after Christmas – she will likely stay there for January before coming back to Puglia to receive more visitors in the spring. On the other hand, I’ll be getting on an airplane early on January 4: Catania (Sicily) to Rome to Dublin to New York. A dreadful day is what I’m expecting, followed by yet another flight the following day to Huntsville, Alabama, where I will work at the “home office” with colleagues I’ve seldom seen over the past years.

As Alabama cotton blossoms Vermont will just be coming out from under snow, and I’ll make my way to the northeast in late March, rendezvous with some in-coming flight bearing my wife from Italy, and we’ll re-claim our home. Whew!

We’ll keep you apprised of some other experiences in the New Year, but this is quite enough to write just now. Wishing you the Happiest of Holidays, our warmest regards. . .
Bruce & Ellie