Umbria
Aquiela
Grado
Gubbio


My best friend from high school is here to visit for a week. When I moved to a new high school between my sophomore and junior year Meryl was one of the first people I met at the cafeteria lunch table the first week of school. She has always been the kind of friend who sits up late with me remembering and laughing about our youth and talking about the issues of maturity. We don’t see each other often enough, but it is perfect when we do. Having her here is the greatest joy because she delights in absolutely everything we do. Every morsel she eats, every medieval village, every mountaintop, every shuttered window is a thrill to her. We go to Aquilela to see a 14th century mosaic floor in the Basilica of Sta. Eufemia, to Grado on the seaside, to the star shaped walled city of Palmanova for cappuccino, and then to Venice to search for treasures in glass , to the villages in Slovenia, which are beautiful even in the rain, and finally to the waltzing hills of Umbria .

We leave on Sunday for Venice. We don't know it, but it is the day of the Venice marathon. The runners start on the Brenta Riviera and finish in Venice across the causeway and through the city. The causeway is blocked, traffic is slow and confused because of homemade signs and police looking so very official in full uniform doing the Italian thing; talking, talking, talking. What do they have to talk about?

The city is the normal press of tourists squeezing into narrow passage ways jostling in the density, but it is even more difficult to maneuver because of the running lanes blocking off the path along the Grand Canal, and high water on St. Marco. Wooden platforms crisscross the piazza and pools of water lap at people’s feet gurgling up from the drains. We wander, looking, eating, drinking and shopping for little things that Meryl can resell. Miniatures of everything are made in glass, teeny tiny bugs, cartoon characters, ballerinas, Santa Clauses, even devils with giant penises; tiny miniscule details with fragile lives. The city is so intoxicating. We both are in the clutches of a historical stupor and neither of us want to leave. We find a hotel hidden away from the crowds, stay the night and have dinner of spaghetti with pesto and calamari on Via Garabaldi . The street is dimly lit except for the restaurants. The apartments above are shuttered and dark and only the locals are out and about. The other diners greet those walking by with cheek pecking and hand pumping as if each person is the most important soul in their world. We both enjoy the fantasy that we are members of this historic community that spawned John Cabot and Antonio Vivaldi.

Arm in arm in the darkness we saunter along the Grand Canal to piazza San Marco. Three café are lit and occupied; two with small orchestras that alternate songs. The small crowd of tourists, too cheap to pay the music cover charge and 15 € for ice cream, shift between the two café standing in the darkness listening to the music. A few couples claim the deserted piazza as their dance floor to waltz into romance. We choose a quiet café across the square to share a toast to long friendships, fantasy, music and dancing in the shadow of St. Mark’s Cathedral.

Monday we reclaim the car from the car park and head to Umbria. My plan is to drive along the western coastline to avoid the high speed and crushing trucks on the super highway. It is a coastal road and I expect that there will be great views of the Adriatic and lovely summer villages to pass through, but I am thinking like an American. The road is miserable and a serious driving mistake. This is not highway 1 in New England or highway 101 in California where one does not even have to get out of the car to see the glorious vistas and enjoy the sea. No the Italians leave the beauty of the sea for those who have homes in the tourist towns. We don’t see the sea at all! Instead this road appears to be an expanded farm road that meanders through the swampy areas clogged with slow moving trucks and no place to pass. I finally can stand the traffic no longer and we pull off to enjoy lunch or a cappuccino along the seaside. Everything is closed! The town is completely deserted. The modern apartments that looked over the beach are shuttered tight against the winter. The shops, restaurants, hotels, café are empty, closed tight for the “off season”, and no one was walking the beach. On this glorious warm day in October there is only a hint of the laughter and joy that people share here in the hot summer. I am certain in the heat of the summer this place and all the other towns just like it are hopping, over crowded and crazy wild. Without a doubt I am not traveling this road during the height of tourist season either.

We push on to Gubbio and the reward is great. The city claims to be the largest medieval city in Italy. The buildings are beautifully restored with stone exteriors, hotels, restaurants and shops interspersed among the ancient apartments. The market on Tuesday morning fills the lower square, stores on wheels bring the goods to the customer, rather than expecting the customer to travel the paved cow path to Perugia. Vendors greet the locals by name, calling out the special bargain of the day and the music of the moment is the sound of people connecting with each other. I find it interesting that the voice of the language here in Umbria is so much louder and harsher than the fluid chocolaty melody I hear all the time in Gorizia. The magical flavor is enhanced every evening with luscious local cuisine and wines and quiet walks along the cobbled streets.

Meryl really wants to go to Deruta. Her mother Davie had Deruta pottery when Meryl was growing up and she has collected some of her own pieces, so going to the place where all this beauty is made was a dream come true. The village of Deruta boasts dozens of pottery shops owned and operated by the artists who create the hand painted ceramic ware. The village is a speck on the map near Perugia with an isolated charm that has made a commitment to those who value the brilliant colors, the ancient designs, the slow intense hand painted artistry and the pleasure of speaking to the artists as you watch them work. It is a glorious sunny day and the town has only a trickle of buyers. In each shop the artists work on a piece, painting the designs on hand thrown pottery that has been dipped in white after the firing. Many of the pieces are classic traditional designs that include a stylized dragon. The Raffaellesco pattern is said to have been created by Raphael, the master painter and architect of the Italian High Renaissance. The dragon is “a benevolent deity, bestowing good luck and fair winds to the seagoing merchants of the era with the puffs of wind steaming from his mouth”. Other designs are adaptations of the traditional, but many of the artists have also created unique contemporary motifs. We wander throughout the town peeking in each shop, talking with the artists, comparing the designs and colors. After another gastronomic delight we return to our favorite shops. Meryl buys pieces for the gallery to be sent home and I find a treasure in my favorite colors blue and yellow for which they are so famous.

It was hard to put Meryl on the train for Naples and the second half of her trip. We both are going off alone after a deep connection that spans many many years. It feels pretty lonely without her.

Branik valley

Armando's birthday celebration

Sunset Adriatic Sea

We returned to Slovenija in September for the second year after a couple of months at home. Home has become a confusing term. Is home the house that we own, but is inhabited by another family? Is home the state we have lived in most of our lives but not now? Is home the country of our birth, which seems strangely unfamiliar to us? Is home where our family lives scattered around Ohio? Is home where we have the closest friends? Is home the place where we live together and share our daily adventures? I found myself saying that I was going home when in Slovenija as I talked about returning to the U.S. and in the U.S. when talking about returning to Slovenija. No place feels like home and both places feel like home.

We concentrated our energies in Ohio to connecting with family and friends and working around our house. Fortunately the renters bought a home in June so our house was available to use when we returned the beginning of July. It is such a nice house, but I was surprised that my feelings of attachment to the place we designed and built with our own hands was without emotion. A lovely place to live, but really didn’t feel like home. We were only supposed to be in OH for 6 weeks, but because of medical tests, Bob needed to stay four more weeks. The extra time should have provided us with more time to connect with people, but it was surprising how many seemed too busy to make time for us, and how few seemed really interested in hearing about our experiences. Our return to Nova Gorica was greeted with very warm welcomes and a genuine pleasure that we chose to return to Slovenija. Maybe home is where one feels appreciated.

Bob and I are both teaching this year. He continues to teach full time at the gymnasia and I am teaching at the technical school. The technical school has about1,500 students who at 14/15 years old decided to go to school to study wood working, computer science, auto mechanics, traffic management, engineering or agriculture. Most of the classes are made up entirely of boys with just a smattering of girls. I am the English language assistant and I share teaching responsibilities with 8 English teachers. My major responsibility is to be a native speaker and engage the students in dialogue concerning a topic chosen by the teacher. In my first week I discussed advertising, an introduction to music beginning with rock music and working backwards, a discussion of the 3 pillars of change in a persons life [birth, marriage, death], the skill of asking questions and working with a basic class to help them introduce themselves and tell me what they have planned for the weekend. I continue to be amazed by the high level of conversation and discussion that happens with students who are only in their first or second year of high school. With the 4th year students I do not have to adjust my vocabulary at all and they often surprise me with their sophisticated word usage. In one class I was asked to discuss biometric ID’s and I had to do research to understand what it was and how the controversy is affecting the world. Actually I think I am learning more than my students.

Bob has a teaching schedule that suits him better than last year. He will not be bouncing from teacher to teacher, but concentrating on the European classes and seeing those students for 15 classes each week. The other 5 classes will be distributed with a teacher for a week at a time. This schedule will make it possible for him to really get to know the students and be more involved with the sequence of their learning and not just the native speaker entertainment that plagued him last year.

Last year we had months and months of trying to get our residency permit. This year should have been easier, but because we had to delay our return our residency papers, the car inspection and insurance had expired. Bob took the Twingo to be inspected, but it needed new brakes, new headlight and an emission adjustment. If all those things were repaired within 3days then he didn’t have to pay for a new inspection, but of course nothing in Slovenia is completed in 3 days so he paid again. He wasn’t able to get the insurance though with out the new residency permit so the car sat until the wheel of bureaucracy ground to a stop, the planets were aligned and it was our lucky day. Good thing we have bikes, the weather is nice and we do not have far to travel to work. Surprisingly after only 3 weeks we had all the papers in order, we both have Slovene health insurance, the car is insured and we are feeling very official.

We are living in a new apartment in Šempeter. The town is smaller than Nova Gorica and has more charm of a European village than the post WWII city. We live 225 steps from a grocery store, and within a couple of blocks of a church with ringing bells every quarter hour, 2 bakeries, 4 cafés, 2 flower shops, a pharmacy, a medical supply store, 2 meat markets, a department store, the hospital, the bus stop and a pizzeria. The ride on our bikes takes about 20 minutes on the bike path with the walkers, rollerbladers and other bikers. The European Union recently celebrated the European Week of Mobility. The focus was to encourage people to use alternative transportation to cars, and it does seem that there are many more bikers and walkers out and about. The fact that gasoline is about $5.00 per gallon is undoubtedly also a factor in the choice to use people power. The city also offers free city bus rides to encourage people to leave their cars at home so at anytime of the day people are coming and going, meeting each other, getting exercise and enjoying their community.

We are the first residents of our apartment so everything is new. We have 2 bedrooms, a balcony, a bath and a half, and a full size kitchen. The windows face northeast with beautiful light. We are hoping that from the bedroom window we will be able to see the mountains when the leaves fall off the trees. Our landlords and friends have furnished the apartment with new living room and bedroom furniture and new kitchen appliances that include a full size oven and a dishwasher. We feel like we are living in the greatest comfort and sitting on the balcony in the morning with a steaming cup of fruit tea is the height of luxury.

Singing in the vineyard
Tractor full of grapes
Pickers
Zelen grapes

Making wine in Slovenia

All of the Primorska region is making wine. The rains of August have stopped and the sun has warmed the grapes into a luscious sweetness. Tractors grumble on the roads pulling red, gray or green plastic crates behind on a metal platform over flowing with black-purple or golden grapes. The fruit flies are in heaven.

We pile into Joško’s ancient Russian made small land rover and bump up and up a narrow wagon path past rows and rows of grapes belonging to friends and family from the valley. How Joško knows which vines are his I have no idea, but there seems to be no confusion as to where he is going. We each have a bucket and pruning shears and we start first with the pinot grigio, then to the muscat and then the zelen, a native white grape. The cut grapes drip with sun warmed sweetness oozing sticky down my arm. Some are huge translucent bunches; the others are tight clusters wrapped around the wires and vines and difficult to cut off. The grapes are small this year, but sweet. July was a drought, August there was too much rain and September has been sunny and warm. With the high level of sweetness the wine will have a higher alcohol content, 13% is expected and no sugar will be added.

Tanya and Miloš pick their grapes and put them in a large plastic vat for 3 days. They crush and stir the mixture and keep the vat covered with a giant piece of canvas. After the 3 days they drain the juice into a galvanized vat and press the pulp in a machine to extract the remaining juice. They leave the juice to ferment in the vat with a valve allowing the gas to escape flavoring the air with a sweet tang. Over the next 10 weeks they transfer the liquid to other containers a couple of times and throw away the sediment. On 11 November St. Martin turns the juice into wine, the common drink for all occasions for the rest of the year. Homemade wine is poured directly from the vat and served in plastic bottles that once held water and no one seems to worry about oxidation or the fragile qualities of wine, they just enjoy the sweetness of the nectar of the gods.

Because Joško makes more wine than Tanya and Miloš the process is more elaborate. There were a dozen friends and family who pick buckets and buckets of grapes for hours. The crates are loaded on tractors and trailers to be dragged down the hill to the house. In the garage the sticky sweet grapes are put in a grinder that removes the stems and then the grapes are pumped into a press. The slurry sits all night to strengthen the bouquet of the wine and in the morning the press will extract the juice and send it through a tube directly to the vat in the wine cellar.

After all the stickiness is washed off our hands and tools we sit around the large table in the wine cellar and are served a meal that matches our hunger. Barley soup, fried eggplant, tomato slices, prušt, potatoes, zucchini quiche, salad, pork, chicken and apple strudel all served with 3 kinds of zelen wine that was made in 3 different vats, and each tasting remarkably different. All this food is accompanied with extreme bouts of laughter and wild attempts of speaking Slovene, Italian and English.

Once the juice is pumped into a vat it is then pumped again through a larger vat that has an outer envelope wall holding cold water, which cools the temperature of the juice. Sulfur is added to aid clarity and gelatin is added to help the sediment settle to the bottom of the vat. The fermenting juice will be transferred a number of times to clean vats and the sediment is disposed of.

While cutting grapes my partner cut my finger instead of a cluster of grapes. It was a deep gash close to the nail of my index finger that refused to stop bleeding. Since I donated my blood to the cause of this wine we have now labeled a vat “Kay’s Wine”. Each week after choir practice I test “my wine” tasting its process of becoming wine. Three days after the picking, the juice begins to have a little tang of fermentation, but still tastes good, the second week the juice flavor is even tangier, the third week the liquid was a dull cloudy mustard color and the taste no longer resembles the juice flavor. It lacks the rich sweetness, but instead is a tad bland bitter flavor. The fourth week the liquid was still cloudy, but is becoming a golden color and the flavor has the hint of wine; it is definitely taking a turn to satisfy the palate. In three more weeks the miracle of juice to wine will be complete and Bacchus and St. Martin will join hands across time for all cultures to celebrate.

May poles at Three Kings Church

Alpine flowers in Podlipa

Bob snacking in an alpine meadow

Water fall below Kanin

Spring has been glorious in Slovenia. The season is welcomed the first of May with May poles and bon fires. The May poles tower above every town and village. A giant pine tree cut from the forest, stripped of its bark except the top branches which are left like a Christmas tree on the tip. It is then decorated with a hanging wreath of greens, ribbons and flags. Many of the poles look as if they are just stuck in the center square with wedges holding them in. I have no idea how they are tranported, lifted, secured or even why. There are usually bon fires and other celebrations of the day, but this year it was raining so hard that many things were canceled. Guess we will have to wait until next year to understand the traditions surrounding the beginning of spring.

The temperatures have been the coldest that anyone can remember, but the consequence of wearing sweaters rather than shorts in May is that the trees and flowers have stayed in bloom for such a long time. The air is amazingly sweet with air pockets that smell of rose, lilac, mimosa, lavender, jasmine and a mixture of wild flowering trees. I have never before experienced luscious fragrance in the air that stops me in my steps and turns my head. It is marvelous!

The fields in the country are sprinkled with wild flowers of all colors, shapes and sizes interspersed in the tall grass that is cut for the animals. The cows near the town are moved from field to field to graze within pastures that are bordered by a single fence of string. Why the string around the circumference keeps them enclosed I have no idea, but they do not seem to even be tempted to get on the road; too much yummy stuff to eat right where they are. The cows also are transported to the upper elevations for grazing. No longer are herds of cows lead up the winding mountain roads, but they are loaded in the back of a wagon and pulled up the mountain behind the tractor or hitched to the car. One Sunday we went for a hike on a gravel road and followed a trail of manure drippings that looked like we were following large birds. We were so very confused as to what kind of exotic creature was dribbling up this road when a tractor pulling a wagon of 2 cows passed us. The drippings obviously came from dairy cows that were scared to death of speed and steep slopes in such close confinement. Oh how I wanted to see them run free when they finally arrived at the summit.

The woods are lush with greenery and we are trying to spend as much time as we can walking the many paths around our area. Justi Carey, an British foreign teacher, and her partner Roy Clark have written a beautiful book describing many of the hiking paths in the Julian Alps. We hiked with them on one of their favorites paths though deep woods, wild flower meadows, to a giant spring that pours from the base of the mountain to form a reservoir for drinking water, past a water fall and all in the shadow of the highest ski slope in Slovenia. They even lead us through a tunnel built through the mountain during WWI with slots in the hillside for the guns and the echo of young men involved in a ridiculous war. Throughout these mountains is the presence of the WWI soldiers. They left caves, tunnels, roads, markers, and in some areas common items are still found deep in the woods. Unfortunately their unidentified bones were also left and now rest in common memorials on each side of the border.

The cuckoo bird accompanies us with a lonely call on all our walks, but other than a few hedge hogs we see very few other animals. There is still snow on the peaks in the upper elevations so the views and the vistas continue to be breathtaking and the air is cool with the dampness of the evaporating snow. The Slovenian people take great advantage of these hiking paths and we see many with their sticks and hiking boats enjoying a lovely Sunday afternoon.

Now that we have our Twingo we take drives in the evenings to find the sunset. Around each curve we find another gorgeous valley, mountaintop, or vista. I really think that the creator sculpted and painted every view with the intent to please those who wander here. From some of the upper levels the Adriatic Sea is visible in the distance reflecting the sun, and of course from the sea the mountains tower all around. Legend says that the Creator sculpted all the other countries of the European continent from a bag of geological wonders. When the continent was finished all the pieces that were left over were put together to create Slovenia. Within a drive of 2 hours the contrast of extreme beauty is overwhelming.

We have been so very impressed with the gardens in our area. They are a work of art. Everyone seems to have land set aside to grow potatoes, lettuce, tomatoes, peppers and lots of other yummy things. The gardens are pristine with straight lines and paths free of weeds. Early sour and then sweet cherries have been offered to us by our friends who have abundance from their trees, and lettuce by the bag full as well. We have done some planting also. We both were hungry to get our fingers dirty in the soil and create our own works of garden art. I planted window boxes with basil, sage, thyme, marjoram and hanging geraniums. Since every Slovene woman has the gift of flower boxes, I wanted to try my hand at building the skill [the trick is lots of water]. I didn’t think that the plants would grow so tall that we would have to peer through the pink flowers to nosey our neighbors, but it is fabulous to open the window and pick herbs for dinner. We have also planted corn, tomatoes and American pumpkins in a plot provided by Joško and Alida. The plants don’t seem to be doing very well, but we have enjoyed driving out to the countryside and work the land in the quiet of the evenings.

This spring has been like all others in my life with choir concerts to attend and participate in. We attended a concert of choirs in the hill top village of Tabor. Three out-of-door sites were set up for the audience and the choirs rotated between the sites. The singing was all a cappella and a combination of choirs. Many of the songs were sung in dialects with fascinating rhythms and harmonies. It was magical to sit in this ancient village listening to lovely singing with the stone wall as the acoustic shell, the declining sun setting the mood and the stars becoming the spot lights. Truly a moment to remember forever.

I have been directing 2 choirs at Šolski Center; one for students and one for women teachers, as well as giving voice lessons to interested students. We had a Concert of Song evening at the theatre in the new Sports building. The concert included 4 –6 songs by each choir, duets, solos and a couple of combined numbers. All but one of the songs was in English and we have worked all year on using American sounds rather than Slovene sounds in their English. In many of the songs no one would have known that these singers were not native speakers. There are some greatly talented singers with a real desire to sing things well. I have been creating arrangements all year for these choirs, which has been a wonderful creative outlet for me. I have really enjoyed making music with these people. It has helped to develop relationships that only exist with shared experiences and I am building lovely friendships with the teachers and the students. The students sang a peace round as the encore; their faces were leaning in anxious desire to do well and their voices soared in the hope for personal and collective peace. It’s amazing! Here I am sharing in this hope with young people of another land. We are doing our little part to build tolerance, understanding, appreciation and sharing this love through song. Tears of gratitude came to my eyes. I am so thrilled being a part of this journey and so honored that these singers have joined me.

March 8 is International Women’s Day. This day of celebration began in 1910 to demonstrate unhealthy working conditions for women and the IWD demonstrations in 1917 were some of the first of the Russian revolution. The day has traditionally been a time to show respect for women employees, but has now become a day like Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day to buy flowers or little gifts for the women in ones life. The main square of Nova Gorica is planted with vendors selling flowers and plants and men are seen carrying bouquets all over town. I think the US should honor this day as well. Women really do need to be reminded that all the little things they do [scrubbing bathrooms, changing beds, sweeping, cooking special meals, hugging crying children] are greatly appreciated. I wonder if there is also an International Man’s Day?

The gymnasia graduating students celebrate the end of their public schooling with the matura dance [the matura is their exit exam]. Fourth year students and their families attend a dinner in the sports complex decorated with balloons, draped fabric, long tables with table cloths, candles, flowers and runners to match the napkins. Food is served in courses from buffet tables around the room through out the night. A live band plays music for dancing beginning at 8:00pm until 4:00am and people really know how to dance. Couples glide across the floor in a style with an ease that only comes with hours of dancing together. Many of the students are almost unrecognizable dressed in floor length gowns and hours of preparation to get their hair to pile so high on their heads, but just as many are looking more comfortable in regular street clothes. The ceremony begins with a grand musical entrance to a Strauss waltz and then the entire class exhibits a fabulous demonstration of dance styles from contra dances though the tango. All the students take dance classes at private ballroom dance studios and practice all year for this moment. It is amazing to watch the students execute the dance steps with precision and joy. Each homeroom also gives a presentation [many power point photos of excursions, projects and kids being silly] and special moments of gratitude to their homeroom teacher [one teacher received a wheelbarrow full of flowers – one plant from each student]. We left at 1:00 and dessert had not been served yet and people were still going strong. The students dance until dawn when the last ones leave at 6:00am. It is especially nice to see the families in attendance. Not only parents are in attendance, but in some cases grandparents and younger siblings are gathered around the table seated with the guest of honor, their graduating student. The students have a national dance day planned on the last day of classes in May. All over Slovenia 4th year students will gather and dance their routines in an attempt to win a Guinness world record and another way to put Slovenia on that map.

Easter celebrations are many and varied. The priest blesses the trimmings from the olive trees on Palm Sunday and they are then carried home to represent the palm branches used to celebrate the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem. In Ljubljana where they have no olive trees, butar are made from dyed wood shavings and greenery from bushes that all bundled together to make a wand that is blessed at church. People make dyed eggs by hard-boiling them with the skins of onions. Some place flower petals and leaves on the eggs, wrap them in cheesecloth put them with the onionskins in the boiling water and then when the leaves are removed the designs are white on the burgundy colored eggs. Eggs painted in tradition designs are available to buy in wood, but like many of their traditional art forms I am assuming this one is disappearing too. Food is brought to the church on Easter eve to be blessed, bread [the body of Christ], wine [the blood of Christ], horse radish [the nails of the crucifixion] and eggs [shell is the tomb and the yolk is new life]. These are the first foods one is supposed to eat on Easter Sunday. Easter Saturday at Sveta Gora is the major service and is over 2 hours in length including a great deal of incense, a procession around the outside of the church [with Kay sight reading Slovenian hymns while walking around the church on the wet stones in the dark – it probably is not my best singing ever]. I have never seen anyone so excited about the resurrection as Brother Ambrose. He dances from one person to another wishing Velika No^c hugging and kissing, giggling that the resurrection has happened. After this long evening of course the choir gets together for food, wine, traditional Easter foods and lots and lots of laughter.

Our son Aaron visited with us for 5 weeks and his partner Elle for 2. This was Elle’s first visit to Europe so we were able to give her the experience of 3 countries. We all went to Cres, a Croatian island in the Adriatic. The city of Mali Locinj is a popular retreat spot for Slovenians and we headed there for a couple of days. Unfortunately the weather was rainy the entire time so we were only able to do a little bit of hiking, but there are paths all over the island, around the shore and following rock walls. The people who have lived on this island have had to remove an enormous number of rocks to find land to cultivate or to use as pasture for animals. Small plots still protect sheep in some areas, but mostly the land is left to scrub growth and the economy has adapted to the tourists who come to breathe the fresh air scented with pine and salt while walking and sitting in cafes.

We visited Bob’s family in Podlipa and went to the home of Vinko to try the spinning table. He built this wooden table following a 300-year-old tradition that has been passed through the family. The table is a little bigger than a card table standing high on 4 strong legs with a barrel secured under the top. The unfinished tabletop fits into a wooden knob on the top of the barrel and is able to move around in a circle on this knob although not easily because it was wood against wood. Eleven of us gathered around his table, we were told that the table would move clockwise if our palms were flat on the table and counter-clockwise if the backs of our hands were on the table. It took about 20 minutes of standing talking together with our hands on the table before it started to move. It slowly edged clockwise and then picked up speed as we all moved around it with our palms flat on the table, then Vinko told us to change and the table came to a complete stop and with the backs of our hands on the table it started to move the other direction. We went back and forth for a while and then people started to step away from the table leaving just 4 of us [my son Aaron, Elle, a cousin and me] and the table moved faster and faster and faster until we were running to stay with it. None of us was pushing it I am certain, it moved because we all believed that it could and the power of our thought made it happen. The room had a number of doubters and a numbers of would be believers, but when we were finished I thin everyone believed that the human brain and collective thought is a powerful thing.

It is interesting for us to try to imagine how Aaron and Elle are seeing things for the first time; these same sights that we now take for granted. How odd that the water rolling out of the mountain in Vipava, the snow capped peaks of the Julian alps, the turquoise So^ca river, the alpine towns, the coastal medieval villages, the border crossings, Friday night wine at the Italian wine bar and festivals in ancient castles can seem common place to us now that we’ve been here 7 months.

Water coming from the mountain in Ajdov^s^cina,
Medieval festival at Gorizia castle,
Spinning table and Vinko
Butar and decorated eggs for Easter

Matera,
house interior,
church interior,
cliff apartments,
neighborhood

Interior Castle del Monte,

Castle del Monte

Monte Sant'Angelo

San Giovanni Rotondo

In April the teachers from Solski Center plan an annual bus trip together for 4 days. Last year they went to Berlin, this year we all head to the region of Puglia in the south of Italy. Passing along the calm Adriatic on the route to the spur of the Italian boot are rows and rows of fruit trees drastically pruned like butchered limbs dotted with pale pink soft delicate lace on the deformed branches, and miles and miles and miles of grape arbors and olive groves. This area was thought to be once a part of the Croatian coast and the rock formations, soil and hills that should have been the foothills of the Dalmatian mountains now rest in Italy thanks to plate tectonics. For miles the area appears to be isolated, lost and forgotten protected only by old men chatting on benches dressed in the uniform of shirts, sweaters, jackets, hats and ties. Then out of nowhere a modern city with new apartments and buildings teeters on the rocks. The Commune di San Giovanni Rotondo is expanding due to thousands of pilgrimages who come to the hospital and church dedicated to Padre Pio. Padre Pio bore the stigmata of Christ for 50 years until right before he died in 1968 and was declared venerable by the pope in 1998. The faithful come from all over the world to this harsh land seeking a connection with God though this holy man who suffered the pains of the Savior, and many, many hotels and restaurants have risen to care for the pilgrims while they are here. Pilgrimages are very present in the Catholic faith here. Holy days are celebrated, the saints are remembered and given credit for natural happenings. I too feel the presence of something spiritual when I visit these sights, but more than the presence of a relic I think I feel the deep heart felt searching of those who come seeking.

In Monte Sant’Angelo we visit the hill top city where crusaders trained and received spiritual preparation before sailing from Bari to the holy land. The grotto under the church is believed to be the earthly home of the Archangel Michael and this was the second largest pilgrimage site after Rome during the middle ages. There were strong beliefs that the world would end in 1,000 so believers stopped creating and constructing in their home towns and traveled to holy sites to see the sacred relics before the end times. These pilgrimage roads leading from the British Isles to Italy intersected in France and the first tourist economy sprang up along these journey paths leading to the beautiful monasteries that housed the plunder brought back by the crusaders beginning in 195. One relic we experience on this trip is the house of Mary the mother of Jesus thought to have been brought to Italy by the angels. Actually it is a house made of stone, proven to be from the holy land from the time of Christ, that was brought by the D’Angelo family to preserve it from possession by the Muslims. It now sits within a basilica and is a place of unique smells and the feeling of warmth within the stonewalls.

Around 1,150, when it appeared that the world was not going to come to a fiery end, the faithful began to build churches in their hometowns with a focus on judgment and repentance. Those who had traveled to far exotic places brought back unusual ideas, stories of happenings and images of unusual creatures that can be seen in the designs of the churches and castles in Southern Italy. One such exotic building is the Castel del Monte, built by Frederic II between 1229 & 1249. It is a gigantic octagonal shaped hunting lodge that looms on the hill above the surrounding olive groves. The building is decorated with Eastern designs in doorways and windows carved from red aggregate, marble columns streaked with orange and trimmed with floral extensions, spiral stair cases and an upstairs indoor toilet.

In Bari, in the Basilica di San Nicola, the remains of St. Nicholas [of Christmas fame] are found. Stolen from Myra by Italian sailors in 1087 the remains have held a great fascination due to the continuous extraction of liquid manna from the bones. The presence of holy relics and people who come to worship in these places is fascinating to me. So many of the buildings are built on the Roman ruins of temples and the energy for centuries is one of seeking and believing. I find it difficult to understand the power of holy objects, but I bask in the seeking of things spiritual.

Outside of Bari we visit a producer of olive oil. Il Fratolo D’Amico processes totally biological olive oil with in 12 hours after picking the fruit from the trees. Many of the trees are ancient goddesses 3 – 400 years old standing watch within walled fields of flowers. The slow process grinds the olives by large stones. The lacrima, or the tears, pools on the pulp and is ladled in the first 10 minutes for the purest olive oil. Then the pulp is pressed on mesh discs for 4 hours and the oil that is extracted is extra virgin. The faster process grinds the olives with metal discs using centrifugal resulting in an oil of a much lower quality. I have never before tasted oil that tastes like the smell of freshly cut grass. I am definitely spoiled for life.

The place I found the most fascinating was Alberobello. This UNESCO [unesco.org] site is a community of trulli buildings, cone shaped houses, built in the ancient style of motarless construction. Legend says that the residents were able to dismantle their homes when the taxman came to avoid paying taxes on structures built on the king’s land. After he had passed, what appeared to be piles of rubble, the houses were reconstructed until the next visit. The streets weave around hobbit houses painted stark white with flat stone conical roofs capped with pieces bearing ancient symbols. The double walls are layers of flat rock over loose stone used for insulation. The interior is an even temperature all year, the walls are stuccoed and white washed with curtains separating the sparse rooms that were originally heated by the cooking fire. The children sleep in loft spaces closest to the rising warmth and water is stored in a cistern below the structure. Many of the buildings we saw are tourist shops, but the community consists of over a hundred homes that are lived in and lovingly maintained. This was once a thriving neighborhood of those who could afford no less, but now it is a prestigious place for a weekend home.

Another UNESCO site was the I Sassi di Matera. The first residents of these caves are thought to have dug their homes during the Paleolithic times. In the 1300’s this was a highly developed thriving community dug deep into the walls of the cliff. Chambers, lofts, storage areas, hallways and benches are carved from the stone and it is possible to imagine the energy of early apartment living. Churches and monasteries were also built in the same way with freschi painted on the rocks. During the time of Mussolini, running water and sewage systems were created, but due to high unemployment and the desire for that which is modern the residents moved to the “new city” in the 1930’s and many of the caves have been abandoned to garbage piles. The filming of “The Passion of Christ” was done here and some of the sections are now being restored as summer and weekend retreats.

This was definitely an eating drinking trip. People brought homemade wine and snops that was passed around the bus. At every stop the bottles and the food were pulled from bags and generously shared with everyone. We ate some of our meals at traditional restaurants sampling the cuisine and drinks of the region. I have never been too fond of bus tours, but this was a fabulous opportunity for me to get to know the teachers away from the schedule of school and build some lovely friendships that extend back to Nov Gorica.

Alberobello,
Home - interior of church

Walled city of urbino,
Walled olive and cherry trees,
Termoli at sunrise,
Sidewalk chalk painting,
Urbino bascilica square

I traveled home to Ohio on 11 March to sing the Mozart Requiem with the Ashland Symphony and teach workshops as a Kennedy Center Teaching Artist for the state of Ohio, but mostly to visit with family and friends. I had no idea how it would feel to go home. Would I be so comforted by the familiar, the ease of understanding everything around me that I would never want to leave again? Or would the culture of excess and abundance disturb me so much that I would go running back to Slovenia? Actually I had neither response. It was indeed comforting to be able to understand announcements in the airport, read the signs and purchase a drink with words rather than waving and pointing hand signals, but now I also am able to understand all the conversations around me. Living in a country where I understand just a few words in each sentence has made it possible for me to pull in my antennas when I am in a crowd and contemplate my own thoughts rather than the thoughts of those around me [not that my thoughts are so profound, but at times they are more stimulating than conversations between couples or parents and young children]. But now that I am in the U.S. and everyone is speaking English loudly I am in the midst of everyone’s conversation. Like a magnet my thoughts bounce back and forth to the closest, loudest, most animated conversation until I have no thoughts of my own. It took me a distressingly long time to be able to block out all the nonsensical noise pollution

After two weeks of being at home I am still very confused. Home does not feel like home. It doesn’t feel foreign, but it also does not have the cozy comfort of home. The cities are lacking aesthetics, buildings are abandoned boarded up, trash is scattered along the sidewalks cluttering the grass and clogging the pours of the earth. Self-promotion blinds drivers on the roads and clutters the brain in restaurants, stores, magazines, T.V. and radio. Automobiles are enormous with only the driver in a vehicle expanded enough for seven. Music blares in elevators, stores, restaurants, competing with T.V. news and sports blasting over top of the deafening din so that we loose our voices trying to have pleasant meaningful conversation. Abundance over flows in the groceries, the clothing stores and the bookstores, bigger and more breeds so much waste that there are stores that practically give the clothes away. But it is an abundance of poor quality cheaply made garments lacking in style, quality, longevity and made by poor slaving women in developing nations. It is this cheap abundance that makes everyone in the U.S. capable of having much more than he/she needs. Does wealth lead to abundance – abundance to waste – waste to the aesthetic soulless poverty of the ugly?

Everywhere there is carryout food and drink, paper, plastic styrofoam surrounding nourishment consumed while driving, watching T.V. , dashing in a hurry. Food is simply for sustenance enhanced with salt, fat, and sugar so that it very quickly becomes unhealthy. Carryout is not even a concept that has been realized in Slovenia. Yes you can get pizza delivery, but to eat on the run is unheard of. So people include healthy food consumption together as a part of their day along with having a coffee with friends.

On an Ohio brilliant sunny blue-sky day, sidewalks are empty of walkers and in new consumer areas no one is expected to walk so the investment has not even been made in sidewalks. Drivers circle parking lots diving for the closest parking space rather than walking while concrete bleeds over the earth blocking the breath of the world. What saddens me the most is that these unhealthy manifestations of our American culture is the way the rest of the world seems to be judging themselves and they are desperately destroying their own countries to live up to our standard.

Yet in the U.S. people are more pleasant. They greet strangers on the street with a smile, a hello. They make room for others on the sidewalk or adjust their pace to accommodate someone else in their space. They talk and make jokes in an elevator and make eye contact with strangers. Americans show their private face and personality in public while the Slovenes seem to be very selective as to whom they open up to. The Slovenes are not as unfriendly as them seem, they are just much more cautious and selective than Americans.

There is also so much more diversity in the U.S. People on the streets have faces from all over the world. Food from all cultures can be enjoyed in restaurants and purchased at common grocery stores and the diversity, despite the problems, provides the U.S. with a cultural richness unknown to Slovenes.

Priorities seem to be different too. For many people I know in Ohio the priorities appear to be listed as: 1. Work 2. Family 3. Religion 4. House/yard care 5. Friends 6. Leisure time. In Slovenia the list appears to be: 1. Family 2. Friends 3. Leisure time 4. Work 5. House/yard care and religion is a part of the week for some, but it does not appear to be the same kind of social activity. Cultural priorities determine much about the way people interact with each other, how their cities are designed and how they respond to their world. In Slovenia shopping is not a leisure time activity, but hiking in the woods, on the bike path or strolling along the city sidewalks is. Therefore the U.S. has far too many shopping malls and the Slovenes have hiking paths everywhere. How wonderful that Bob and I have the opportunity to live where the collective priority list is closer to our personal list.

Firenze -
Paolo Vettori e Figli violin shop -
Mario Trattoria

Firenze & Pisa -
Fresco at the Barefoot Chapel -
Duomo, Firenze -
Pisa -
Sunset on the Arno River -
Leaning tower

Winter Holiday

Bob had winter holiday the last part of February and we combined that with our annual wedding anniversary trip and set of for Tuscany. The train ride to Florence from Gorizia, Italy is 5 ½ hours with a transfer in Udine. We were amazed that so many people were riding the train. Every seat was taken with families, workers, business types, and elderly ladies alone, but very few non-Italians. Bob’s fascination with trains and train travel is heightened every time we travel. There are no high-speed bullet trains like in France, but the coaches are comfortable and the views are beautiful. We have not had this problem ourselves, but we know of people who have forgotten to stamp their tickets before entering the train and they have had to pay an additional fare on the train, so we are constantly reminding each other to punch the ticket in the little orange box on the platform.

I was 19 years old the last time I visited. The advantage of ancient Italian cities is that they don’t change much over the years, but the city did seem busier with more cars, more modern businesses and high scale shops than I remember. I think maybe the changes have been mine. We heard more American English in Florence than we have heard in the past 6 months. Many American universities have study abroad programs in Florence and their presence has been an assistance to the Florentine economy. The universities have purchased buildings for classes and provided apartments for their students, and of course the students are out and about spending money on eating, playing and other necessities of living in an historical community. Their presence is really evident with the number of carryout pizza deli’s and racks of potato chips with cold cokes.

We stayed just outside the old walls of the city, an easy walk to the Duomo and other attractions. We spent a long time just wandering the city, watching the sunsets over the Arno river from the Ponte Vecchio, peering into doorways that lead to hidden gardens and courtyards, entering churches that have been standing for 800 years and glancing at the tourist wares in the market. If I more than glanced in the market I was accosted by the sellers throwing out multiple languages until I reacted, and then they tried to charm me in perfect English.

We attended morning Ash Wednesday mass in the Duomo with 60 other s in a church built to seat thousands. As much as I am pulled to visit churches when I travel, the experience of sharing the intention of the building is much more meaningful than walking through as if in a museum. The vision and devotion of the faithful echoes and dances in the walls of a church and their energy is much more present when joined with others seeking the Spirit. The search for understanding of the spiritual is everywhere in ancient Florence; in the altars set high in the corner of buildings, in the frescoes that cover the walls of every church, in the paintings that decorate the walls and the sculpture that are housed in the niches.

A space that really spoke to me in an ancient tongue was the courtyard of the confraternity of Il Chriostro dello Scalzo on via Cavour. A doorway like so many others leads into a courtyard enclosed with a skylight illuminating drawings of the life of John the Baptist on the walls. The fresco images were created during the years 1509 – 1526 and have the look of monochromatic oil pastel. The figures reflect the honest look of the people of the time; faces with wrinkles, double chins and tired eyes. So many of the glorious paintings we see in other spaces are the aggrandizement of the body or the soul of the individual. The holy faces have a classic beauty, sculpted perfection or the nearly naked bodies are the study of the muscular structure, but here in this little hidden wonder the people of the countryside 500 years ago look out from their pensive thoughts and daily happenings.

We had an early morning viewing of Michelagelo’s David alone in the Accademia; there are no lines at 8:15am. The enormity and the beauty of that sculpture are breathtaking, but I delight even more in the unfinished pieces and the struggle of the lives trying to free themselves from the rock. I have read and reread The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone. In his recreation of the life of Michelangelo the young sculptor broke from tradition and chose the piece of marble by the life he saw within the stone. These souls forever jailed in stone rage against their captivity are calling to be freed 500 years after they were first discovered. Also in this museum is the first pianoforte made by Christopho in 1700. While in the employ as a court musician of the Medici he created this new instrument to be able to control the dynamics of his playing. The first instrument has not been restored and is in the same condition it was when it was found in a 20th century attic.

There are so many churches around the city with brown block undecorated fronts. We were confused as to why they looked unfinished. The holes for the scaffolding were left open and now house the pigeons when it rains. Was this the result of WWII destruction? All the bridges except the Arno were destroyed, could the facades of the churches been damaged too? A visit to the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo helped us understand that the churches took forever to complete and some still remain naked and unfinished. The façade of Santa Maria del Fiore – the Duomo, looked the same until the end of the 19th century. The cathedral was begun in the 13th century on the site of an existing church that continued to serve the parish while the Duomo was being built around it. The lower portion of the façade was completed, but left unfinished until the 1580’s when the Medici’s had it removed with the intent of completing the façade. It remained unfinished until the design of Emil de Fabris was chosen in the 1800’s and it was completed in 1887. The museum shows the designs that were proposed over the years and the drawings of other submissions that competed with the Fabis design. In addition to viewing the original art that was created for the Duomo the study of the evolution of the building is fascinating.

A high light of the trip was visiting the violin workshop of Paolo Vettori e Figli. We met Paolo and Milica in Nova Gorica and visited them in their new location near to our hotel and across the street from the sculpture garden where Michelangelo worked. Paolo, Dario, and Lapo create around two dozen hand made instruments each year using ancient wood rescued from an old barn. They have restored the carriage house of an old palace for the workshop and show room. Their vision to mold this space to meet their needs included digging a basement room from the inside. It was done mostly by hand with shovel and buckets filling 80 trucks with rubble. The front room where Dario and Lapo work has a sunny ceiling painting, large front wall of glass, a spiral staircase to the loft and the new basement and a window that opens to the back garden courtyard. They have molds and designs mounted on the walls, a glass showcase of recently made instruments and very very fine spruce dust everywhere from the detail finishing with tiny thumb planes and 1200 grade fine sand paper. We went to Fiaschetteria-Trattoria Mario for lunch. This typical Florentine local restaurant has been serving home cooked meals since 1953. The space is crowded with tables, the cooking happens behind a glass wall in plain view, regulars greet the family cooks by name, tourists watch wide eyed as this circus of serving delicious and fast lunches unfolds in record speed with the song of laughter everywhere. Bob shared a Florentine steak with the Vettori family and melted with the taste of the biggest hunk of rare meat I have ever seen at table. He couldn’t stop saying how wonderful it tasted. I enjoyed the prima course of pasta and then salad, grilled peppers, potatoes, local wine and finished with biscotti dipped in a liqueur and a light fluffy Florentine cake [I think all the traditional foods are called Florentine]. The bread in Florence though has great texture, but a very bland taste, no salt. Like everything else in Florence there is history in the bread too. 800 years ago Pisa was a port city because the Arno was wide and deep enough for sea vessels to travel. The tariffs on salt imposed by the Pisans were so high that the Florentines refused to buy the salt and therefore began making bread without salt. Now 800 years later the tradition continues. For those of us who are fascinated by tradition it oozes from every pour of this city.

On Shrove Tuesday we traveled by train to Pisa and then to Viareggio. The best thing about Pisa is that the tower still leans and tourists come to see and feel the amazing energy within these walls. The crystal white buildings shimmer in the sun framed by the royal green grass and the rough blocks of the city walls. We then trained to Viareggio for the carnievale and the gigantic parade of floats. The city is a beach town on the Mediterranean coast with miles and miles of soft sandy beach. The parade takes place on the street along the beach and people gathered are in a rich array of costumes. There were none of the wealthy elaborate costumes of Venice, but many families were adorned with funny hats, masks, glasses and silly costumes. Most of the floats had national and international political statements. The face of George W. was clearly the most popular image with strong statements about American politics.
We greatly enjoy going to places in Italy, but the Slovenes we know are not as excited about things Italian. In this area where the fascists had control for 25 years the people still have long resentments that their names were changed, that they were not allowed to speak their own language and that the Italians were awarded cities and land that had always been traditionally Slovene. Some boys at school were telling Bob that when the Slovenian partisans were fighting WWII in this area they could have moved further into Italy, but because of natural and cultural borders they chose to stay in the area where Slavic languages were spoken, but that consideration was not given to the people when the allies drew the boundaries. Resentments live on for generations.

Parade floats in Viareggio