La Dolce Vita

Tuscany, August 2011

For two blissful weeks we have the good fortune of staying at a villa in the Tuscan countryside, just outside of Florence, enjoying the food, wine and history so plentiful in this corner of Italy. This is the part of our trip dedicated to visiting with our families, who join us for the duration from both Switzerland and Czech Republic. Our meal times are filled with a wild mix of English, Czech and Swiss German with neither language common to all of us.

At times I get confused and start speaking to Kuno in Czech wondering why he has a blank expression. Our villa is set among olive trees and just downhill from a 13th century castle. While this is very romantic and initially feels unique, we soon discover that there is a 13th or so century castle on pretty much every hill in Tuscany. Kuno and I rent bikes and try to compensate (unsuccessfully) for the copious amounts of amazing food we eat here by (almost) daily early morning bike rides through the countryside around our villa. This allows us to see a different “view” of Tuscany, meandering through little villages, vineyards and olive groves. As we don’t have a detailed map, we never know exactly where each bike ride will take us, adding to the sense of discovery. Of course most of our rides consist of 2 hours of steep uphill and only 20 minutes of a lovely downhill time, but there is so much to look at that one forgets the pain of the uphill or the heat. Biking seems to be very popular in this part of Italy and we see a lot of older men (no women) riding race bikes dressed in loud pink, yellow, turquoise etc bike outfits one would only expect for Tour de France. Next thing I know, Kuno wants to check out a store for a fancier pair of bike shorts.

With the rest of the family (there are at times nine of us) we explore the major sights of Tuscany in a minivan. Driving itself is an adventure, but Kuno seems to get quickly accustomed to tailgating, overtaking in a curve and putting the right half of the minivan in the ditch to fit with oncoming traffic – simply driving Italian style. We visit the well known sights in Tuscany: Florence with its Michelangelos,Botticellis, great gelato and leather markets, the 17 tall towers of the hill town of San Gimignano, Lucca with its oval shaped piazza, tiny old town of Montecatini perched on the top of a steep hill, and the town of Vinci where Leonardo da Vinci was born. The exhibit of his inventions is mind boggling. The imagination and astuteness of his thinking for the time is incredible. And that on top of his painting and medical science skilss! Although many of his inventions didn’t really quite work, most of them formed the basis of designs that today are part of our lives. Kuno’s favourite place is a little town called San Miniato that we discover while biking. It lies on the ancient trading route Via Francigena and is full of churches and monasteries. My two favourite trips are to Carrara and Siena. In Carrara we drive into the mountains and join a tour of the marble quarries. This is the source of the pure white marble that Michelangelo used for his statues. We drive deep into a mountain (600m in, exactly the middle of the mountain) and there, in a giant cavern, we get an explanation of how the slabs of marble continue to be cut. The effort going into it gives me a new appreciation for the stone and I will never look at a kitchen countertop the same way.

And then there is our trip to the Siena Palio, an annual horse race of the Siena neighbourhoods that has been going on for centuries. For the days of the race the piazza in Siena is covered by sand and bleachers are built around the outside.

Balcony seats on the houses bordering the piazza sell out months ahead for hundreds of Euros. Celebrations are carried out for days before the race. This is serious stuff - on the morning of the race, the horses are led into the Duomo (the main cathedral) and the archbishop himself blesses each horse. During the race, 10 riders representing the various neighbourhoods race, without a saddle, two laps around the piazza. The corners are sharp and accidents happen. However, it is the horse running to the finish that counts in the race, with or without a rider. We don’t make it to the actual day of the Palio, figuring that the mayhem would be too much and choose to come two days early to watch the trial races. The celebrations are in full swing already. Hundreds
of tables line the middle of the streets of the various neighbourhoods for open air dinner in the evening. Giant flags decorate houses and we often have to jump out of the way to let yet another procession of singing and chanting people go by. We barely make it into the middle of the piazza to see the race. It is jammed with thousands of people, but because the piazza is on a slant, everyone can see at least a portion of the race. It is enthralling, just to be part of the hoopla, even though the actual race only last a minute. What an unusual experience, one that can only be seen in Siena and on a few specific days of the year. How lucky for us.

Unfortunately everything comes to an end and we have to leave for Switzerland, the last portion of our European trip. As a heat wave sets in over Europe, we hop on a train to Luzern. Tatiana is counting the days to get back and see her friends after two months. Kuno and I feel that we have had a great fill of exploring and are relaxed enough to happily come back home too.

The Tale of Two Cities

Dubrovnik and Venice, August 2011

We visit Dubrovnik and Venice in short succession and are struck by the similarities and differences between the two cities. Both are strikingly beautiful, have a strategic location on the Adriatic Sea and an incredibly colorful history, especially from the time of being powerful sea merchants in the 14th – 16th century. But the cities feel to us different, as if one is coming alive and the other one dying.

Dubrovnik is small, clean and happy.  Despite being destroyed during the war in the mid nineties, the city is rebuilt without a trace and clearly proud, basking in being rediscovered by the world. Once the heat becomes bearable, it comes alive with music, street restaurants and cafes late into the night. We are fortunate to arrive during the summer festival and are welcomed with fireworks and live band performances on the first night. Who knew that Croatian rock could be so good. We stay in a shoebox of a room on a small street right above a pizza restaurant and quickly learn that going to bed before midnight is futile – the smell of pizza baking and the racket from a row of restaurant tables right under our window makes it impossible. So we switch our time and spend the mornings exploring, early afternoons in a siesta (ie nap) and like the town, come alive in the evening. One night we go dancing to a night club, discovering that the next oldest person is roughly 30 years younger than us, but having fun anyway. There is a freedom in being our age – “fitting in” doesn’t seem to matter that much anymore.

We are, however, grateful to Tatiana for persistently listening to Beat 94.5 at home, realizing that we actually know all the songs that are being played. Surprisingly, they are pretty good for dancing. But the age catches up to us and Kuno’s ears start to hurt from the loud music, so we leave. This is when we discover why the city is so incredibly clean - it gets completely hosed down in the middle of the night!

Venice is a fairytale, but we can’t help feeling that every time we visit, the fairytale is a little bit closer to a sad ending. There is a bittersweet feel to Venice, like a beautiful doomed queen of a city. The riches in art and architecture are beyond description, it has to be seen, or perhaps, more appropriately in Venice, felt. The palaces show past glory, but are being eaten away by the constant presence of tide and boat wake. For every one that gets renovated, ten fall further behind in needing work. To avoid regular tidal flooding, the city built movable tidal gates in the lagoon, reinforced some of the quays to higher elevations and is rebuilding the drainage under San Marco. Yet the work remaining is endless. Other signs of decay are present.

The water and the streets are dirty. Restaurants on San Marco insist on charging outrageous fees for listening to live music while having a coffee and as a result the seats are empty. We check into a four star hotel and are ushered into a room right off the main reception hall which we quickly rename the “cupboard under the stairs”, our window just 2 feet above the side canal, walls showing signs of past flooding and our floor sloping in alignment with the sinking corner of the building. But the patio faces the Grand Canal, and grand it is.

We spend a lot of time observing the comings and goings on the water – from all sorts of trade boats zooming around (how would you like your electrician to arrive with all his tools and equipment in a boat slightly bigger than a gondola), boats delivering food, water busses, beautiful old style water taxi boats (that are beyond our reasonable means so we walk) and of course the gondolas. I just finished reading a book called the Midwife of Venice and am imagining what the city looked like centuries ago.

We admire the glass from nearby island of Murano and the famous Venice masks - I wonder what it would be like to be here in February during the Carnival. One can’t help but be transfixed by Venice, sense of wonder and melancholy mixed together. Its pure magic will always draw us back and perhaps, one day, we will sail in, just like the merchants so many years ago.