#71: Italy and Barcelona, August – December 2010
Celebrations, Travel and Loss

Earlier this month, Amelia hosted the national competition of sbandieratori, a sport going back to medieval and renaissance times. I think I’ve written of this pageantry before, when the Amelia team performed at the annual festival celebrating the town’s history. But we’ve never seen anything like this — tens of teams competing, waving and tossing their heraldic flags in increasingly complex patterns. The competition was amazing, and our Amelia team won second best…in all of Italy!! So proud of them.

October

Socks on, scorpions in, khakis put away, cords brought out, pampas in bloom, persimmons in blush. Must be fall.

The reference to scorpions probably doesn’t make much sense to most of you. But when the weather gets cold here, the scorpions come inside, looking for a warm place to hide. Mama Cat seems to have had a skirmish with one, because she ended up with a fistula in her cheek which the vet treated with a series of two injections each of antibiotic and anti-inflammatory. She was not particularly brave about the treatments, but she was uncomplaining about the injury. We might not have realized she was hurt, had we not happened to spot it during the daily post-breakfast cuddle. Fistula’s now closed, so all’s well that ends well.

We spent a lot of time getting ready for the changing seasons. We divided scores of flag iris, Dutch iris, fall crocus and lilies, replanting some and giving the rest away to friends near and far. I pulled up the zucchini vines and planted spinach in their place. Also put in pansies wherever there were gaps from end-of-summer blooms. Neighbor Paolo came with his tractor to mow the field, then returned some days later with his bulldozer to grade the area that we’d cleared last spring. Weekly helper Mario roughed up the bulldozed dirt with a rake, so I could plant mixed seeds of grass and alfalfa to hold the soil. Meanwhile, Russell was whacking weeds and digging up saplings sprouted from established trees. We’re starting to look so tidy, I hardly know this place is ours.

We ended the month with a Magical Mystical Tour to the Valnerina. This valley stretches northeast from Terni, bounded by steep mountains with granite outcrops, growing narrower and narrower until the road passes through a rocky defile, all of it a corridor for travelers since the Stone Age. The highlight for me, not only of this trip but also for our entire stay here, was an excursion up a side valley to the Abbey of Saint Eutizio. I didn’t even know it existed until we were just driving along after lunch. “Let’s go see the abbey at Preci,” Russell said. “What abbey?” I said.”You remember,” he said. “No, I don’t,” I said, wondering if this was another my senior moments. Bottom line: Russell had visited it while I was away taking care of Dad in his final months, so it was a total surprise for me.

And what a wonderful delight. Up a narrow hollow off the side valley is a beautifully-renovated monastery dating from the turn of the last millennium. It marks the remote spot where St. Benedict visited hermits living in mountain grottos. He was so affected by his discussions with the hermit Eutizio that he went on to found the Benedictine order, which later built the abbey in commemoration of this momentous event. I was very moved to be standing in a sudden gust of rain and wind at that historic site. It came to me that the Benedictines and the Muslims together saved western civilization by copying every ancient manuscript they could lay their hands on. Where would we be today, if St. Benedict hadn’t happened upon St. Eutizio high on a windswept mountain?

November

Hope your Thanksgiving was full of all the things you love. Russell very kindly took me to a wonderful restaurant in Saturnia, a Tuscan town famous for its hot springs since classical Roman times. I cooked for ten last year, so it was especially nice to have a treat this November. We had an absolutely spiffy meal, even if there was no turkey with all the trimmings. I did bake a pumpkin pie, though, so we had a taste of Thanksgiving when we got home.

By now, you should have received our post cards from Barcelona, another of our efforts to explore unvisited parts of Europe before we move back to the States. It’s such a fabulous city that it’s hard to understand why its reputation isn’t right up there with London, Paris and Rome. So many things to see and do that it was impossible to take them all in during the five days we’d budgeted, but we sure gave it a try.

We decided to take the overnight ferry from Civitavecchia (chee-vee-tah-veck-ee-ah), the port of Rome, as a sort of trial for our return to America via passenger-freighter. What a good time we had, staying in our exterior cabin with private bath, having breakfast in the cafeteria, eating lunch in the excellent restaurant, and watching the giant, eleven-story ferry dock amid the lights of Barcelona. It’s a 20-hour trip, but well worth the experience.

A short taxi ride brought us to our B&B, which turned out to be nearly perfect — two converted apartments in a 19th-century building in the heart of the city, within easy walking distance of just about everything we wanted to see. Our room had warm, saturated colors and original artwork, a nice seating area and a huge marble-tiled bath. Nearby was a tapas bar so good we ended up eating there every night just so we could sample all those goodies in all those little dishes — red pepper stuffed with cod and baked with a cheese sauce, Spanish omelet (why are we not surprised?) fried baby artichokes sliced very thin, grilled asparagus and mushrooms, eggplant with red peppers and goat cheese, fried anchovies, marinated anchovies, veal sirloin tips, etc. etc, all washed down with the excellent local beer. This is the way to eat, as far as I’m concerned.

I won’t bore you with a blow-by-blow account of all our adventures and instead concentrate on those we thought were most memorable:

• The Catalan spirit. As you probably know, Barcelona is not really Spanish, but Catalan, a quite distinct culture and language. Over the centuries, the Spanish have repeatedly tried to destroy the Catalans, most recently during the Franco regime, when teaching the language was forbidden and buildings that were representative of the Catalan heritage were allowed to decay or were turned to other, debilitating uses. Once Franco fell, the Catalans were determined to return Barcelona to its former glory. Buildings were refurbished. Catalan was taught in schools (as well as Spanish). Especially now, when so many folks are feeling a lack of hope because of the recession’s effects, it was uplifting to be among people who never, ever gave up.
• Palau de la Music Catalana. I know a lot of visitors are in awe of Gaudi’s modernisme-style Sacred Family Basilica. I much preferred this theater, founded to promote and preserve Catalan choral singing, specifically by the workers in the nearby textile factories, who sang the songs their mothers taught them. It was built with an exuberance incorporating the decorative arts of ceramics, glass, sculpture, frescoes and metalwork. This was one of the buildings that Franco et al. let deteriorate, but a sustained effort at restoration has returned it to its jaw-dropping splendor.
• A trio of complementary museums housed in a single palace: Ceramics, Decorative Arts (ranging from doors to chairs) and Textiles (mostly clothing). R particularly liked a wall-sized tile panorama of 16th century Barcelonan lords and ladies, strolling in a garden in all their finery while sipping the latest rage — whipped chocolate imported from Spain’s colonial Mexico.