Again and again...Italy

So I recently listed all the cities in Italy that I've visited, and I was shocked.

Verona, Venice, Milan, Rome, Florence, Padova, Genova, Cinque Terre, Napoli, Modena, Bologna, Palermo, Torino, Soave, Sanremo, Imperia, Pisa, Prato, Siena, San Gimignano, Assisi, Sorrento...well I may have missed one or two but you get the picture.

I still have tons of places to see--though I don't think I can accomplish any more this time around, considering that I leave in a matter of days! Italy pulls me back time and time again. I know that you can never really tick off a box after visiting a country as if to say, "Done! Don't need to go back there." But it's getting a bit ridiculous how often I try to sneak back to Italy, as I have managed to do thanks to Workaway and one extremely generous (and adorable) Italian family.

Workaway is a site that allows you to find and contact various Workawayers all over the world, and you provide whatever services they require in return for shelter! A lot of it is farm-y, manual labor type stuff, like working vineyards or family farms, but there's a fair bit of kids who need looking after in this world, too. After searching the listings for months, I found a family whose schedule worked with mine, and they extended an invitation for me to come to Soave, Italy! I had to Google it, but perhaps if you're a wine connoisseur (wow that was hard to spell) you already know it, as the city shares the same name as a famous white wine that comes from the area. Just outside of Verona, Soave is a little medieval village nestled in rolling green hills. It has amazingly-preserved walls all around it, and the castle standing sentry atop the hill is in great condition (in fact, it's one of the best in the Veneto region, which I discovered when I finally got to visit the interior this past week).

So in this final stretch in Europe, I've been living with the lovely parents (Ludo and Matteo) and their 2 beautiful girls (Lavinia, 2, and Matilde, 7) in Soave. I try to help out around the house a bit, and I'm an extra hand with the kids, but since they have 2 great sets of grandparents, there's actually not a whole ton of work for me to do! I do lots of roaming, however, in and around Verona. The Veneto region is in pretty fierce competition with Tuscany in this Beauty Contest, if you ask me.

SOAVE

VERONA

The Adige River and the Ponte Pietra, as seen from Castel San Pietro

Veronese rooftops

Verona as seen from the Santuario Madonna di Lourdes, which apparently a lot of tourists neglect to visit (according to Cesare, the most beautiful Italian boy I have ever seen in my life, whom I met last night in a foccacia shop...where I ended up sitting for like two hours, if only to look at his face some more). But it was stunning! 

No wonder Romeo and Juliet had a thing. This place is painfully romantic. (Well, painful probably just because I'm here alone. Cesare, where you at?!)

 LA MIA FAMIGLIA ITALIANA

The little nuggetinos: Matilde strikes a pose while Lavinia...dances?

Matteo, hard at work making gelato for the bar! 

Ludo and Gaia (the dog) chilling during our family picnic near Lake Garda

 Life in Italy: The Pros. I've been working on a little list of things that I love here, trying to work out what I love so much about the country and its people. Here's what I got so far:

1. Little kid repetition is way cuter in Italian than in American. (NOTE: After spending more time abroad this year and making so many friends and acquaintances from the U.K. and other Anglophone countries, I more and more see the need to differentiate between American English and other varieties). “Ancora!”, or “again”, comes after anything you do that is even the slightest bit amusing. Often, it’s lifting the child in some playful fashion, and after a chorus of ancora’s, you’ll find that your arms hate you a little bit. “Diamo care!” which actually means “andiamo giocare,” aka Let’s go play! This one usually comes around 8 AM, and whether you like it or not, it’s playtime, punk. 

2. Gesticulating is not a way of communicating. It’s a way of life. I think of the dinner during which Matteo, deep in conversation with his father, unintentionally threw his pizza crust into the salad—then used the offending hand to gesture frustratedly over what he had just done. 

 3. Eating quickly and vivaciously is apparently the only way to eat. Even the kids get into it: I’ve seen my little nuggetinos eat—enthusiastically—loads of cured meats (practically had to fight off a 2-year old to get to the speck) and fancy salamis, stuff undressed rucola into their tiny mouths, reach for a slab of runny Gorgonzola, and fight a parent for slices of purple cabbage. None of that “plain buttered noodles please” nonsense for these kiddos. In Italy, the little ones inhale stuff that I didn't even consider until my second decade on Earth. (Granted, this was largely due to lack of contact with some of this stuff, but Dog Gambit, I live in the capital of arguably the most powerful country in the world! Why do I have so much trouble finding some passable Prosciutto!?). 

4. The price of wine is still a shock to my system. My first instinct is to drop to my knees and praise Bacchus or whatever deity brought me this gift. My second is to treat said gift as if it may disappear at any minute, grabbing as many bottles as possible and taking home to care for them and love them…until the last drop. 2 euros for a sound bottle of wine; 60 cents for a glass in a respectable neighborhood bar. (My advice? Follow the youths. The students—my fellow cash-strapped winos—know where to go). It’s unreal. The hangover, however, is very, very real.    

Ciao for nao. Hoping to have a post about my side trips soon, but we'll see if that gets done before I leave Italy! I remember writing posts about France long after my return to the States, trying frantically to catch up on my blog, and it was a little depressing. I'll do my best to avoid the "posthumous posting" this time around (sorry that phrasing is so morbid, I just couldn't think of another way to put it).