Ah, the romance of Italy; the beauty of Venice, the pomp of Rome and the cypress-speared vistas of Tuscany, all punctuated by the sharp scent of basil, the tang of olives, and the cool wash of wine from an earthenware jug. Then there are the lemons, large as oranges, from the Amalfi coast, and the wonderful, mad, gesticulating language, the ancient architecture, and the imposing ruins.
I love all the towers, piazzas, and pavement cafes, the frenzied markets bursting with colour, and the extravagant churches leading into cool, calming cloisters, echoing with whispered penitence and the chime of bells.
Given a choice of where I’d like to be, Italy is the word that spills from my mouth before I’ve even had a chance to think about it.
But…
…that’s in summer.
And this is February. When the Beast from the East has been chucking its weight about all over Europe.
So far I’ve made it to Trieste in my unheated car, only to be told I need to carry on driving another 165 miles to Ferrara, in the hope (note – not the certainty) that they’ll have the part to fix my heater there. So I gird my loins (mostly in many layers of fabric and a hot water bottle) and drive to the area around Ferrara.
Which is where we find something unexpectedly nice: FREE aires, or sostas, as they are called here. And the word FREE sometimes applies, not just to the parking space for your campervan, but also to the water and electricity!!! Well bend me over backwards and call me Susan, how great is this?
The first one we stay at is at Castelgulielmo, in the car park of a cemetery. The services are all free, and there’s a little shop in the village where you can buy necessities.
Like water.
Because the drinking water has been cut off in case of freezing.
But even if it hadn’t, I still wouldn’t have wanted to drink it as it tastes like liquid Savlon. Not being funny, Italy, but for a country that prides itself on its food and drink, you should pay a little more attention to the basics.
This is where we meet Mitia – a nice chap, from Slovenia, with a gorgeous Boxer dog. He has the campervan opposite to us and slopes over for a beer and a chat. He tells us he’s never worried about the security aspects of travelling alone because he trained in a particular Martial Art when he was in the military.
‘If I even touch Steve, I am in BIG trouble,’ he says.
‘So, basically, you’re classed as a weapon?’ I quip, (I know my humour doesn’t generally transcend language barriers, but I can’t always stop myself).
But he says, ‘Yes,’ and nods very solemnly, clearly pleased that I’ve got such an accurate grasp of the situation.
We go out for dinner at a local pizza restaurant where, as usual, we’re the only diners apart from the owner and his wife, who’ve settled at another table and are watching a quiz show on the telly. While we all eat, Steve and I tried to guess the quiz show questions by the intonation of the voices and the looks on the contestants’ faces. Our twenty or so words of Italian aren’t quite up to the job, but we get so involved in our little ‘game’ that I begin to think I know some of the answers and start shouting at the telly.
This backfires slightly, as the owner (mistakenly thinking we actually understand it) turns the volume up for us, and then spends the rest of the show making incomprehensible comments to us about the contestants, the compere, or the results. Best I can do is nod, and try to intuit whether I should look appalled, amused, celebratory, or disappointed. I think I say, ‘Yay,’ far too many times.
They’re a lovely couple, though. He used to be in a blues band in the 60’s, and there are framed photos of them on the wall – all long hair, and Afghan coats, and embroidered waistcoats. There’s probably a flute. There usually is.
His wife shows us YouTube footage of them performing recently at Deltablues, as the Caledonia Popexa Blues Band. Then he gets his guitar out and plays us Blackbird by The Beatles.
The next day, inspired by Italian cuisine, Steve goes to the supermarket and comes back with, among other things, a packet of ravioli. He hasn’t a clue what’s in it though, so I ask him what the picture on the packet shows – the Italians are usually helpful that way.
‘Er, meat?’ he says. ‘Something red, anyway.’ He shows me the packet; it is radicchio. Which is lettuce. Steve has bought lettuce ravioli. (To be fair it tastes great, but that might be down to the fifty million things I put in the sauce, including meat).
By now my car is booked in to have the heater fixed the following week, so we move to another sosta, this time at Migliarino. It is situated in a car park, next to a rowing club that has lots of strange, sea-themed sculptures. Here we meet Frederik, the local beggar. Most days he stands, quietly and respectfully, outside the Coop and Steve likes to make sure he always has some change for him.
Frederik says he came from Nigeria three years ago, and has no intention of going back because he likes the cold. He gives Steve his CV, which describes him as an agricultural engineer and farm worker. I’m not sure what he thinks we can do with it, but he likes us, and I suspect it is all he has to give.
While we’re snowed in, Steve gets out his Dremel (not a euphemism) and reproduces the broken part of my windscreen wiper from a tiny rubber gromit that he’s found. It takes a couple of goes, but then it works perfectly. As my friend Anna once said, ‘Steve is a legend‘.
To celebrate we head out to a local restaurant for dinner. I hadn’t quite realised it’s a fish restaurant, of course, and happily ask the waitress to recommend something – but not fish (I’m just not in the mood that day). Ooh, the look I get!
She makes up for it later by leaving a bottle of Limoncello on the table for us at the end of the meal, and then not charging us for it. I love Limoncello. I prefer to drink it until I can’t actually say it. By the time we left to go home it is just that lubly lemony stuff.
Ferrara
Ferrara itself is a smashing little town, half Renaissance, and half medieval in architecture. Both sides meet in the middle of town by the properly moated Este Castle.
We walk down a street of original medieval archways…
…and then back up past all the renaissance buildings, admiring the door furniture as we pass. Lots of lovely knockers (don’t embarrass yourselves).
We discover a strange little park with allotments run by a local co-operative, that sells honey, and utterly unidentifiable produce, from a log cabin under the trees. We end our walk at the Diamante Palace, with its studded walls casting impressive, constructivist shadows in the waning light.
And then, car fixed and Ferrara seen, it’s time to crack on with our journey home. We drive a long way to a sosta – that turns out to be up too steep a hill and too windy a road for our RV, Georgie, to manage. So we drive further – to a sosta that we has been taken over by a circus. So we drive further still – and end up at a sort of lay-by in Vezzano Sul Crostolo.
But the long drive has left tempers, not so much frayed, as completely unravelled. We have a good shout at each other and I huff off to the bedroom, disgusted, yet again, by the fact that my bedroom door refuses to slam. Steve goes for a cooling-off walk in the nearby woods.
He comes back later and says, ‘dear?’
‘Yes love?’ I say, hoping he’ll apologise first.
‘No,’ he says, ‘deer. Come and see.’
And there they are – a whole herd of them in the field next to the van: wild, and skittish, and part of a nature reserve that also boasts wild boar and wolves.
Following them, we find an abandoned cottage that has once boasted a rather fabulous outside loo – complete with bidet and everything. Not like the tiny concrete or wooden shacks I remember from my childhood (FYI I’m not that old, they just hadn’t all been demolished then).
So it seems that some lovely wildlife and a broken bog is all I need to cheer myself up. I pick daffodils, apologise to my lovely, car-fixing, husband, and head home to cook weirdly-stuffed pasta behind my non-slamming doors.
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