Spannocchia: Piano, Piano

I arrived at Spannochia after a three-plus hour bus ride to Siena, a hike around Siena with my backpack on (don't worry, Nana, I'll be back!), and a forty minute ride to Rosia, a small town where I was picked up by the intern director. I quickly met everyone, took a much-needed shower, and then joined the whole crew for dinner. Dinner took about two hours, not counting the half hour of wine on the terrace before dinner. It went slowly, but in a good way. Because of my extreme cost-cutting measure in Rome, it was the first time I had a full Italian meal! That means there was a "primo," a pasta dish (in this case risotto), a meat along with a vegetable side dish (secondo con contorno), salad (lettuce, add your own oil and vinegar), and dessert. The food was definitely delicious, and it was definitely a very good preview of what was to come.

Spannocchia is a huge "holding" in Tuscany, in the region nearest to the city of Siena. It includes a central complex (the old villa, farmhouse, tower, intern housing, some staff housing, and main gardens) and various remote farmhouses, guesthouses, vineyards, etc. spear over a 900+ hectare property. Most of the property is woods, but they have pigs, beef, chickens (for eggs), grapes, olives, a large garden, and a few cereals and other crops. While the wine and olive oil are both delicious, the real star of the show are the cured meats, most especially the prosciutto and the mortadella. They sell what they produce, host guests in the villa in the central complex (by the night) and the outlying farmhouses (by the week), and host interns for three months at a time.

During my two weeks here, I get my own room, a shared bathroom, and all meals in exchange for twenty-eight hours of work per week (weekends off). I live in a house with the eight interns, and every day I seem to do something different. So far, I've painted, stacked big logs, helped build some houses for pregnant sows, de-grassed and re-strawed garden paths, collected fennel seeds, filled twenty liter boxes of red wine from the cisterns, cleaned out harvest boxes for the grape harvest, and trimmed the raisins from the grapes in anticipation of next week's harvest. Every task I've been given, the very end of the instructions includes the phrase "piano, piano" or "slowly, slowly." The philosophy here seems to be that a job done once well is priceless, so you should take your time and make sure to do it right the first time. It's actually pretty nice, and takes the pressure off a little bit. It might be all the free labor running around here, but the emphasis isn't exactly on efficiency. I think it's the whole Italian mentality, and exactly the attitude that drew me here in the first place.

The view from my window in the morning:





Coming up: the prosciutto master is taking me to an expo called WineTown in Florence, and the grape harvest (and the slaughter) start on Monday! And again I promise many more pictures!


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Location:Spannocchia, Chiusdino, Siena, Toscana, Italia

Rome!

I left my house just before two on Tuesday, and got to my hostel on the Monti neighborhood of Rome around five the next day. While I didn't actually spend over a full day traveling, I did get hit by some jet-lag and interior clock confusion.


After washing up and changing, I was informed that the hostel provides a free pasta dinner every night instead of the more normal cold breakfast. I decided to have a look around the neighborhood and come back for the free dinner. So I went out the front door, walked to the end of the block and what should appear but the Colloseo! So I circled it, took in a few sites, and made my way back to the hostel for dinner (dry pasta, but sauce from scratch!).


Thursday, I walked the looooong way to Saint Peter's, waded through tourists, and was very disappointed to find that there was nowhere to sit down inside. One would think a church would have a dew pews in front of one of the many altars, but they seem to rely almost entirely on roped-off folding chairs. The only pews to be found were for penitence after confession, and that seemed a little much just for a seat. I walked the long way home (are you sensing a theme here?), stopping at lunch, piazzas, and shaded benches all the way home. That night after dinner, we went to the small piazza near our hostel, which seems to be the spot for groups of young people to meet up and share a bottle of wine (public drinking being legal here).


By Friday, I was determined to not do so much walking, and maybe more reading in the park. I had an 11-1 reservation at the Galleria Borghese, so I planned to just relax in the park the whole day. I saw some beautiful Bernini sculptures, and more combinations of holy family members than seemed necessary. Afterwards, I went and rented a clunker of a bike and spent an hour riding up and down the hills of the Villa Borghese.


The trees there look like the paintings of ancient Rome, which I guess I thought was just an affectation. Other people were riding motor-assisted 2- or 4-person bikes, golf carts, or even segways, which seemed like cheating. Walking back, I got so hot (it's been about ninety degrees here every day I've been here!) I had to stop for a lemon granita just to make it the last few blocks.


I started off Saturday by going with some people (mostly Aussies) to watch the Ireland-Australia rugby match at an Irish pub at at ten in the morning, which was part of the world cup. It was super fun to watch, and I think I mostly get the rules (which seem to be few and far between). Then I teamed up with another solo traveller, a German girl, and we agreed to go somewhere off the beaten track, not walk too much, and not spend too much money. So we took the metro down to a neighborhood called Testaccio, home to a seemingly random pyramid after which the metro stop is named. We went to the Protestant cemetery, which is full of all the people who died in Rome and weren't Catholic. Keats and Goethe are buried there, among others, and it's actually quite a beautiful place. After that we went to the market nearby and looked at all the fruits, vegetable, meats, etc. It definitely made me want to have access to a full kitchen. Instead, we went and bought some pizza by the pound (delicious and affordable!) before getting back on the metro and going to the bus station to buy tickets for the next leg of our respective trips. That night, I went with a group of people from the hostel to hang out at the Spanish Steps and the Trevi Fountain at night.

[the above pictures are, regrettably, most of the pictures I took for my first four days in Rome. I made it up by taking a bunch of pictures on Sunday, so I'm just going to make. I'll make it up by just captioning my day of meandering sightseeing and including many pictures:

Fontane delle Torgughe (fountain of the turtles)




The beer selection at a micro-brewery I visited:




Cheese counter!!!




Street cafes in the former Jewish Ghetto




Bridge over the Tevere




View down one of the hills I climbed




People trying to take pictures through the Knights of Malta keyhole, which shows a perfect view of St. Peter's.




Random observations:

Hostels never lack for Australians, Canadians, or Germans. People come and go, and are at various stages in their various lengths of travels. One Aussie group making its way home after traveling for 18 months, and they still have about 3 weeks to go. Another Aussie group just starting out on their first backpacking trip ever! People making their way up to Oktoberfest, or to Croatia, which oddly seems like the place to go at the moment. It seems like in about two years Croatia will be the new Prague, attracting study-abroad students and vacationing families alike. Lots of packing styles, from very minimal to the very opposite, but so far I seem to have made good packing choices.

Rome is not only full of ornamental fountains, but functional ones as well! The water is cold, fresh, and tastes great! This was probably one of my favorite things about Rome (did I mention it was 90 degrees every day?)




All in all, I liked Rome, but I think I'll enjoy the smaller cities and towns a bit more. Too much noise and bustle for me. I'm catching a bus for Siena in the morning, and I'll have a few hours to explore before I meet up with someone from my first WWOOF farm. Onto my next adventure!


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Location:Rome, Lazio, Italy

And I'm Off!

The bag (including hiking boots!) tops out at 37 lbs.

Next update from Rome!




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One Week Til Takeoff!

Hello friends! Welcome to my blog! As the the departure date printed on my one way ticket to Rome is looming, I figure it's about time I start updating all of you as promised. Over the next 9-ish months, posts to this blog will be posted on Blogger, Twitter (@EmlyMae), and Facebook. If you prefer to receive these updates via email, you can subscribe to the RSS feed and choose the email option. Using my handy iPad, I'll be able to compose blog posts wherever I happen to be, and then upload them to the blog whenever I find myself with an Internet connection (hopefully about once a week). While I'm in cities, I'll also be posting micro-updates to Twitter and Facebook.

As some of you might have heard, it turns out that there is no such visa for the trip I wanted to take. The only long-term visas available are for rich people with independent incomes and their own villa in Tuscany, or for people who have been invited to work in Italy by a reputable company. So I have had to revise my travel plans slightly, but hopefully that won't impact my project very much. Instead of nine straight months in Italy, I will be spending three months in Italy, three in the UK and Ireland, and then returning to Italy for the spring.

The project (a reminder): Create an English-Italian glossary of all words one might need on the farm, in the kitchen, or at the table (hence Farm, Kitchen, Table), interspersed with recipes, essays, and snapshots from this year's adventures.

So far, I have farms set up for the first three months in Italy. Here's a rough itinerary:

September 14: Arrive in Rome! Spend five days soaking up Italian in cafes and on the streets and five nights trying to sleep in a hostel.

September 19: Spend two weeks harvesting grapes at a castle near Siena.

October 3: Begin four weeks harvesting grapes and olives and cooking at a villa outside of Grosetto.

November 1: More olives (and horses!) at a farm near Cortona, this time with an old stone mill to make olive oil.

November 22 - December 13: Florence, Parma, Modena, and Bologna!! (read: art, cheese, balsamic, meat!!!)

December 13 - March 13: Some combination of Ireland and the UK (cold! wet!). So far, an organic brewery in Scotland and a few dairy farms in Ireland look promising. Still a little early to set that up.

March 13 - May ?: Back to Italy, probably Emilia-Romagna, to maybe herd some goats, make some cheese, etc. Again, to early to set up specifics.

I'm mostly ready... I still need to make a few little shopping trips, find a few more warm layers (see cold! wet!), and make sure everything fits in my backpack. Fitting enough layers for anywhere between 35 and 80 degrees in one backpack is going to be... challenging. Wish me luck!


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Location:Grayslake, IL