Yesterday was my birthday! Sadly, I didn’t have time to write anything. It was a good day though. After a long day that included waiting on a train for an hour, we ended the day with our first Italian meal and some genuine gelato. For dinner, we sat outside overlooking the very center of the old town of Siena, the uniquely shaped Piazza Il Campo. The piazza actually curved and sloped to resemble a shell. For dessert, we sat in the twilight on the ancient brick of the piazza, watching the bustling evening crowd dwindle.
It’s overwhelming how many people are crowded into Siena. We could barely move through the hoards. On every narrow street, it’s as if we were walking against the grain in a herd. I absolutely hate being in a crowd, but visiting Siena is well worth withstanding the torture. There are a few outstanding Gothic and medieval attractions. The three to absolutely not miss out of these are the Piazza (plaza/square) and Palazzo (palace), and above all, the Duomo (cathedral.) The Piazza and Duomo are fine examples of the best in human capability in architecture, art, and engineering. I can’t imagine how they tackled such a feat successfully back in the 13th century. The paintings and architectural detail are so intricate, the Duomo is a gem.
The gelato alone makes the trip to Siena worth it. It’s above and beyond all other ice cream because it’s oh-so-creamy and rich. There are a ton of flavors and none that I’ve ever tried have had an artificial twang. The flavors range from kiwi, cantaloupe and lemon, to chocolate, coffee, and hazelnut. All the gelaterias have enticing displays of the choices with the actual fruits or nuts of each flavor on top of a mound of gelato.
It’s no understatement to say the Italians are obsessed with “la buena figura” (or beautiful face) and fashion. There are countless high-end boutiques crammed into the small town of Siena. Most of the people we pass on the street are dressed to the nines, much more so than the French. Big sunglasses are hugely popular here – for men and women. Image seems to be of utmost importance.
Back to yesterday: We met a few interesting people! We were lucky to meet all of them. First, two Malaysian women were sitting in our seats on the train from Visp, Switzerland to Milano, Italy. Two Swiss guys were sitting next to them, so there was nowhere for us to sit! So, we got out our seat reservations and proved after some contention that the two window seats were indeed ours. The Swiss guys moved after the exchange, and we ended up sitting in their aisle seats. We’re glad they were in our seats after all since it made for great conversation for a lot of our 2.5 hour ride.
They had many questions about us and our country, and they educated us about Malaysia. The two of them can speak three different languages to each other: English, Malay, and Cantonese. There are lots of Chinese Malaysians, so many of them speak Cantonese as well as their native tongue. I guessed that one of the ladies was of Malay descent and the other Chinese. They all learn English in school. They described Malaysia as a country with a high standard of living. They mentioned they get very little vacation (a week all at once is pushing it) and they work 10-12 hours a day! Sounds like they are as bad as the Japanese, the only nation of workaholics that are worse than us. In Malaysia, any vacation – if at all – is up to the discretion of their boss; they don’t have “vacation benefits” like many of our employers provide. People rely heavily on personal cars since they lack a good public transportation system. Hmmm, sound familiar?! They were surprised to hear that the US has an equally poor transportation system. The two women were reveling at the amazing train system in Switzerland (and much of Europe, for that matter.) It’s like being chauffeured around, they said, since they’re so used to driving themselves everywhere. We also noticed after crossing into Italy several big box stores with huge full parking lots! A shame!
When we asked them what they did for a living, one of them answered, “At the UN,” in a quiet voice, after much hesitation. Could they work with the Security Council? They were in Geneva for a few weeks and it sounds like they will come back periodically. Only a 14-hour flight from Malaysia with a stop in the Emirates. I’d hate to have to do that too many times. They were also marveling at the bright flowers in Switzerland and Italy as we crossed the border into Italy and passed several flower farms and ornate gardens surrounding ritzy Italian villas. Apparently flowers are a novelty to them because there aren’t many flowers in Malaysia. I thought there would be since it’s tropical, but it’s typically tropical in other ways – lush green forests and a hot, humid climate. Malaysia has a short month-long rainy season but no more seasonal variation (seems typical for the tropics.) They asked us about our state’s population and economy, what it’s known for. They explained that Malaysia is known for rice, palm oil, and rubber exports. When we mentioned it was my birthday, the two of them seem overly excited about it, like a birthday may be a bigger deal in their culture. They were just riding to Milan for a weekend trip!
We met another person going to Milan from Switzerland for a weekend trip on the same train. He came up to us, speaking American English with a thick southern accent. He had heard us say we were from NC and had to say hi to us, being another NC native from Mooresville. He had lived in Raleigh for many years, most recently in Greenville. He had worked at a jigsaw blade factory that closed down in Greenville, so he took a transfer to a 2000-person town in the Swiss Alps! Very near Zermatt! His wife and toddler daughter had been with him in Switzerland for 6 months. He explained how Zermatt was such a ritzy, impractical, overpriced place. Well, it is a very old world-famous resort, and for good reason. He said he went shopping for a blender there once and the cheapest he could find was 300 Swiss Franks – about $300! It truly is a small world – he met a woman in St. Niklaus (a nearby town) who had managed a pool hall for years on Hillsborough St. in Raleigh, NC!
A couple young Italian women approached us near the Siena train/bus station, asking us in Italian if we knew how to get to the bus headed for the center of town. They spoke a little bit of English, so we were able to get across that we weren’t sure how to get to it either. I mentioned I had seen a sign upstairs that pointed to the bus, but we thought it must leave from the lower level since that was street level. Corey and I were ready to hike back upstairs when one of the girls asked someone for help. They pointed us in the direction of the parking deck, still on the lower level. We walked out to the deck and it was still a parking area on all sides. The girl asked someone else, and after much to-do, got us nowhere.
Finally the leading girl insisted the bus stop must be around the parking deck somehow. We followed her since she was the Italian and we were the foreigners, after all. She led us out of the deck and onto a one-way bus ramp coming up and away from the bus stop. One bus passed us with a very narrow margin as we walked down the ramp in the wrong direction, especially treacherous with all our luggage. The next bus was about to leave and the girl insisted we follow her. That was the bus we wanted. We already knew that all the buses went to the center, it was just a matter of catching one. We ran down the ramp as the two girls were already climbing onto the bus (they had the benefit of no luggage.) When we reached the bus steps, there were people crammed all the way to the edge, but we managed to barely fit ourselves and our bags after some shuffling. Off we went with no idea where to get off the bus since it wasn’t the line we were expecting.
The girls chatted with us during the bus ride. They were also surprised we were American. Not sure why so many people have trouble believing that. They were quite curious about us, and we returned the favor with many questions about them. They seemed very interested in the fact that we were married and when we got married. They noticed right away that we were married and thought we were honeymooning. Those two girls weren’t the only ones to be hung up on that; the Malaysians asked the very same thing. The girl that I talked to the most (don’t know her name) was a secretary to a notary (maybe the equivalent of a paralegal or attorney?) The two of them were taking advantage of the four-day weekend due to International Labor Day on May 1st for a holiday in Siena from their native Turin. They were joined by many, many other Italian tourists.
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Today started off slowly with a lot of uncertainty about how things would go, but it worked out in the end. I woke up at 0700 to the sound of clanging plates but didn’t get out of bed until 0830…always a mistake. Anyway, we had a nice breakfast in their ‘breakfast room’ including my first taste of Nutella on this trip. We checked out at about 1030 and put our luggage in the luggage room so we could wander around for a while. Not but 5 minutes later, while inspecting a taxi fare sign, a bird (or birds) pooped directly onto both of us, we had to go back to the hotel and clean up a bit. Back on the street, we investigated the bus schedules at Piazza Gramsci and discovered that the bus does run to Rosia on Sunday, great! We bought two tickets for 3 EUR each (much better than the expected 25 EUR taxi fare) then looked for a place to eat lunch. We had no idea how the food situation was going to work out at Il Colombaio since they didn’t have food there and it is 1 km away from Rosia, which is a fairly small town. We found a cool pizzeria and sat on their 3rd floor. The kitchen was just off of the stairs on the 2nd floor and we could see all the cooks at work. I had a very interesting pizza with egg and spinach on it, and B had a white pizza with sparse asparagus and shrimp. Next, we found a rather impressive grocery store tucked away in the basement of an old building and bought some vegetables and snacks for whatever lies ahead. The bus left Piazza Gramsci at 1450 and it was a beautiful 15-minute ride through narrow streets and open fields to Rosia. The walk from Rosia to Il Colombaio was less peaceful, as we had to drag our luggage through town then down the narrow road to the south. The cryptic directions telling us to turn at the cypress tree in the middle of the road made sense when we saw it, as well as the Torri sign. The B&B is actually in the village of Torri. After a total of 30 minutes or so of walking, we strolled into the courtyard of Il Colombaio and were immediately greeted by Barbara, the owner. She said she was expecting us, because the lady who was on the same bus and walked to Torri ahead of us when to Il Colombaio too, and told her we were following. She showed us to our room, the ‘Lover’s Room’. Later, we sat outside under an amazing canopy of hanging flowers, watching the two black cats (one was playing with half eaten lizards) and Snoopy, the biggest dog I have ever seen, lounge under the Tuscan sun. We talked with a couple downstairs from Australia, who invited us to come to dinner with them when I told them we had no car. We ate at a nice restaurant in Brenna, not far from here. It was a lively conversation for more than two hours, and our dinner of fresh veggies and veal strips for me, and gnocchi and beans for B, was good, but not as interesting. Danielle and Nigel were particularly interested in our elections and how similar/dissimilar Australia and the US are in terms of social behavior. Overall, we are very similar as a whole. Anyway, we got back late around 2230, and crashed shortly after.
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The Song of Serendipity 