The other sword in the stone

 Italy has a more commendable Sword in the Stone story than the Arthurian legend. While Arthur pulled out the sword to gain power over all England, St. Galgano’s La spada nella roccia is a sign of peace.

Born to wealth in the Tuscan town of Chiusdino, Galgano had a dream in 1180 that the Archangel Michael and the Apostles would lead him to peace if he gave up his knight life. He took the deal, plunging his sword into a stone to show he renounced all violence.

Galgano lived next to the stone as an animal-loving hermit. After he died,, Pope Lucious III declared him a saint and built a round chapel around the stone (under which Galgano is supposedly buried).

But wait, it gets better.

Later, three envious louts tried to pull out the sword. A wolf that Galgano had befriended attacked the sword-stealers and ripped their arms off. And now those mummified arms are displayed in a glass case in the Montesiepi Chapel.

Sound as likely as Arthur and Merlin? Ha! In 2001 researchers from the University of Pavia used Carbon-14 dating to show the arms and the sword were indeed from the 12th century.

There may be no Italian Camelot, but the story of one man’s pledge of peace continues on a beautiful hilltop in Tuscany.

Tool Time in Italy

While having your own place in Italy puts a new spin on tourism, it also comes with responsibility. There is no front desk nor landlord to call when something doesn’t work. Just like home, it’s time to put on your handyman cap.

 Our apartment is in a building constructed sometime before 1900, so it has even more excuse for creaking bones than I do. 

Before Cecile and I arrived, Gillian and Will had scoped out the building supply stores and outfitted us with a basic set of tools. It wasn’t long before I got to try out both.

While trying to clear a sluggish drain in the kitchen sink, I broke a piece of pipe. There was nothing else to do but to find an Italian equivalent to Ace Hardware.

“Brico” is a general term in Italy for do-it-yourself – an adaptation of the French bricolage. The word is used in the name of several hardware store chains, from the huge BricoLarge to the very modern Brico.io to the inexplicably smaller MaxiBrico. Fortunately for me, there is a MaxiBrico tucked in an industrial park about 15 minutes of winding road from our apartment.

Hardware stores are magic. No matter if they are in Mid-Missouri or Mid-Tuscany, they attract some of us like light bulbs do moths. Especially if they are the kind that have little bins full of nuts, bolts and doohickeys that you just might need some day. (Even if they are measured in millimeters instead of 64ths.)

And here’s the good news: Clerks here understand the universal Tool Time language. The guy at MaxiBrico had the same response as the guy at Ace Hardware to my hand waving and “This thingy that goes into something under my sink is busted.” He looked at my broken piece of pipe, turned, led me to the plumbing department and wordlessly pointed to a whole box of thingies. 

He even smiled and nodded when I said “Grazie.” And I’m sure that, just like the guys at Ace, the nod turned to a shake when I turned around.

And like hardware clerks in any town or country, he knew he would see me again. It always takes at least two trips to the hardware store before you finish a project. 

I’ve been to the MaxiBrico three times and to its upscale Brico cousins twice. You got to love DIY tourism.

 

More than words

I’ll admit to a bit of anxiety when I heard the invitation. Lia Bonacchi, our realtor’s mother and the secret key to local life, asked us to go to a literary event she organized in nearby Prata. An actor from the regional hub Grosseto was to dramatically retell parts of The Decameron, the 14th century Italian classic written by Giovanni Boccaccio.

This is something like being invited to hear Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in Old English. The Decameron is a similar set of 100 stories a group of young Florentines supposedly told to each other while waiting out the Plague in the countryside.

Cecile checked out an online English edition of Boccacio and read enough to see that the original seven young women and three young men used well-honed wit and bawdy innuendo to enliven a life in a pandemic. A bit classier than firing up Zoom.

I had no cause for anxiety.

Prato is a Tuscan hilltop town of about 500 souls. It had a few more when it endured a siege in 1285 or when it harassed Napoleon’s troops in 1799, but now welcomes both tourists and countrymen to its rustic beauty. That night it was mostly the latter – we seemed to be the only Americans in the audience.

Lia had arranged to use the historic garden of an extremely tiny stone church in the old town. (The garden is another of her projects: Conserving fruit tree varieties dear to Tuscan hearts). Sweet Tuscan night air under the branches of a heavily-laden pear.

Actor Giacomo Moscato was amazing, as was his accompaniment on the lute and other stringed instruments by Paolo Mari.

It was all in Italian, very little of which I understood. But not to worry. In a way, it reminded me of opera. Moscato’s face and pacing spoke volumes. I could focus on the rhythm of the words, the story in Moscato’s gestures and the soothing sound of the lute. The words were important (and funny, if the chuckles from the audience were evidence) but I knew that could read the details of the story later. 

It was pure performance. Molto bene.

Leave it to Lia

We chose this apartment and, even more so, Boccheggiano, based on the enthusiasm and warmth of our real estate agent, Giulio Martini. Guilio grew up in the village as the son of its only realtor. The enthusiasm he and his 30-something friends (The 4 Gatti)­­ have for their hometown is without bounds – I’ll write more on them later.

But perhaps the most wonderful benefit of buying from Guilio was being introduced to his mother, Lia Bonacchi (Italian women don’t take their husband’s name).

Lia is the ultimate Italian mama. She seems to know everyone in western Tuscany, manages a vacation rental, organizes cultural and civic events, immediately befriends you with her smile and offers her help long before you realize you need it. She is from Prata, married a Boccheggiano man, lives near Follonica and seems to be in all three places at once.

Her English is good enough that, along with a little help from Google Translate and impromptu hand waving, she can explain anything. It has enough pleasant gaps, however, to encourage Cecile and me to try expanding our tiny Italian vocabulary. Talking to her is like opening a window to Italy.

The purchase of our little piece of Italy would undoubtedly been much more stressful if Lia had not volunteered to help us with the basic civic maze of utility bills, local rules, etc. She was a godsend to Gillian when she came over in January to sign the purchase paperwork.

Now she has, in her wonderful way, befriended us and sends to us a regular stream of pointers to interesting local things to do and – even better – invitations to events she organizes.  Through her we have watched a parade of classic autos, enjoyed outdoor drama and next will attend a dinner theater at an agritourismo nearby. These are local events that don't pop up in tourist brochures.

As I ramble on about our Italian adventure for the next two months, I’ll undoubtedly by mentioning events and places that Lia has recommended that will provide us with an inside scoop on Tuscan life. 

A day at la Spiaggia - the beach

 

Italians love their beaches. And their umbrellas.

We spent Tuesday, the last day of the ferragosto holiday, at Folonica on the coast across from Elba Island. It’s been a popular beach for a long time — even before Napoleon looked longingly at it. The 15th Century Torre Mozza looks over the beach and a Roman road cuts through the water just off the sand. You can stand out of the water on a section of Via Aurelia and tan like a gladiator. 

We were all there for the sun — but in moderation. A forest of umbrellas keep people from incinerating in the Mediterranean heat. 

Contrary to the rumor, Italian beaches are not full of topless grandmothers and Adoni in speedos. It’s a family place, although the popular tiny bikini bottoms offer hectares of flesh of for bun burning.

If you forgot your bikini, or lunch or a toy to bounce on the sand, not to worry. There was a vendor for any need. My favorite was the caterpillar-tree electric cart that sold ice cream and beer.  Hey!  Look at the tractor treads ...

You gotta love Italy.

A blur, Italian style

“Una sfocatura.” 

I’m not sure if it’s the proper usage, but that’s how Google Translate described my first day in Italy.

“A blur.”

Jet travel is hell on your sense of time and space. Especially so this trip, when we had a 7-hour layover in Chicago before a 9-hour flight, then 3 hours of rental car bureaucracy followed by a 2 ½ hour drive. Then, what the hell, let’s go to a festival until near midnight!

We had a choice of trying to make a connection from our Columbia-Chicago hop flight to our main flight to Italy in 40 minutes or in 7 hours. At my age, terminal sprints can be terminal, so we chose to wait it out, but bought a day-pass to American’s comfortable Admiral’s Club. Lots of great food and comfortable chairs, but it was a less-than-perfect prep for a long “night” in an airline seat.

The flight was as expected – marginal comfort, marginal food, very marginal sleep. But our plane actually arrived a half-hour early and amazingly, we breezed through Italian customs.

Not that our luck counted for anything at the rental car counter. We had reserved a car for noon and the saleswoman-clerk said that unless we wanted to upgrade to a bigger car (hint, hint), that’s when we were going to get it.

But we are retirees and know what to do with time on our hands. Eat. And fortunately, the Rome airport had a pizza parlor to weep for.

But eventually we were packed into our cute little Fiat Panda, following Google Maps north to a town that barely shows on any map.

I don’t know why I was surprised, but the trip up the coast from Rome looked almost exactly like driving the inland route off the California coast – golden-dry grass dotted with sturdy trees (stone pines rather than live oaks) and low stucco buildings. California’s Mediterranean climate really is just that.

But like California, Italy gets greener as you go north and more so as you gain altitude. Boccheggiano is just 38 kilometers (24 miles) from the sea but quickly rises 675 meters (2,215 feet). Once you leave the coast highway, it makes that climb on twisted roads that scream for a sportscar. For obvious reasons, “Panda” is not a sportscar name.

Entering Boccheggiano was breathtaking for us even without the altitude. It’s gorgeous. And there to meet us was daughter Gillian, her husband Will, daughter Evelyn and her friend Nata. It had been Gillian’s dream to buy an Italian house, a dream she easily roped us into. Gillian, Cecile and Evelyn went to Tuscany last summer and discovered Boccheggiano and an enthusiastic realtor named Giulio Martini. The rest is quickly becoming history.

Gillian and family had been in Italy about two weeks and would share a few days with us before returning to Oregon. They were excitedly ready to show us all the Italian wonders they had discovered.

It had been about 40 hours since we rolled out of bed in Columbia. But, as Gillian pointed out, the Medieval festival in nearby Massa Marittima happens only twice a year. So, we bundled into our tiny cars, swished over the winding roads and arrived in time to pack the courtyard as people have been doing annually for hundreds of years. 

The Balestro del Girifalco features a crossbow competition between historical neighborhoods. Before the amazing archers, however, each district stages an incredible performance of flag-tossing ancient pageantry. It’s sort of a Renaissance breakdance slam.

By 11 p.m., the day had truly become a blur. Trying to navigate those twisting roads in the dark woke me up just enough to get home, have something to eat and collapse. With a smile on my face.

La vita è molto bella.

Our Italian Adventure Begins

 The adventure continues! 

Sunday, Cecile and I will depart for Italy, where we will stay for two months in a tiny historical village in Tuscany. Boccheggiano is a hilltop village of less than 400 people that has roots that go back to the pre-Roman Etruscans. 

Our daughter, Gillian, has long dreamed of having a place of her own in Europe – ala “My Year in Provence.”  But rather than France, she focused on Italy where small towns are losing so many people that the country encourages “ex pats” to buy property.

So, with Gillian, we bought a small-but-comfortable apartment in a town that is aggressively working to make sure it is around for another few centuries. The town welcomes folks like us and produces a constant stream of cultural events to draw interest. This weekend, for instance, it is producing a tribute concert to Pink Floyd, a “peace theater” production and a festival of medieval fantasy. At least that is what Google Translate told me.

Gillian and her family are there now, but leaving a few days after we arrive. We will enjoy some time together (really together in this apartment), then take the handoff. While our grandson minds our Columbia house, we will explore a simply gorgeous part of Italy.

Meanwhile, between now and mid-October I will be posting updates on Facebook and on-and-off-again travel blog “Heard from Afar.” Ciao.