Savignone...pt. 2

Hello again...

So a couple of corrections first. I saw four movies on the plane, not three (I mention it because its been bugging me for a week now and since I think its important then you must too.) The one I forgot was Fantastic Mr. Fox and I know this because dinner conversation has become something like "how do you call this animal in America" and "do you like this actor" and we talked about foxes and George Clooney and then it clicked.

Also, when I wrote about the family history I said that Angelo brought my grandfather with him on the ship to America and that was wrong. He came in 1906 and grandpa was born in 1931 so oops...my bad.

OK now on to yesterday's activities. Because my travelling partner is my wonderful but forgetful gramma, I usually only find out about the next days activities by listening very carefully to our hosts talking about what we are going to do and hoping I translate right. If I'm tired of focussing so hard on conversation then I just end up following everyone into the car and wait until we get there, which is what happened yesterday. So after we drove up and up and up I deduced that we were going somewhere where we could see the whole city and it was probably going to be a church or a castle. It ended up being the Church of the Gaurdian Mary (roughly translated, in Italian it's Santuario Basilica N.S. della Guardia). In the post before I think I mentioned the little niches in the streets of the towns that had images of Mary, Jesus and a suppliant, and that gramma had to stop and take pictures of each one. Well this is the church where that image stems from and there are a few life sized statues of the supplicant around the alters. Inside the church it's like all the other fabulously constructed churches but it has add-ons on both sides for special works of art.

The first is a nativity village scene made entirely out of nut shells and you press a button and it moves and lights up in the houses. It was pretty awesome and I took a lot of pictures of it.

The second was a couple of rooms devoted to momento's and letters sent by the family and friends of people who died. At first I thought they were all thanking the guardian for a recovery of some sort but after I saw a framed momento of a child's t-shirt with dried blood stains on it I clued in and looked up 'grazie per riceverato' which means 'thank you for recieving' so and so. It was very morbid and they had stuff going back a few centuries up on the walls all focused on how these people died. Pictures and paintings of ship wrecks, falls from wagons, automobile accidents, people surrounding a bedside etc. There were also artifacts like motorcycle helmets, gloves, clothes, cigarette cartons, alcohol bottles and the like. I definitely didn't like that room and it took me awhile to get out of the funk that put me in.

We got back, ate some more, and then went to bed. It's five already today and all we've done is get up and eat. We're going to tour a church later as it's basically midday for us here and then early tomorrow morning (like 4ish) we will leave to catch a bus from Genova to Tione.

Ciao ciao.

Voltaggio and Libarna

Ciao again,

I'm kind of on posting spree now because I have access to wifi and a bit of free time on my hands so don't get used to frequent posts. After Caserza we moved a couple of miles on to Savignone to stay with some other cousins. If you remember to the family tree in the Caserza post (i.e. go back to that post if you don't remember) Peter 1 had two children who stayed near Genoa: Giuseppe and Maria. Maria had at least two daughters, Angela and Rosietta, who now live in Savignone and we are staying at Angela's daughter Sandra's house in the province. Aside from a couple of more family meals we actually got stuff done the last day. Sandra and her sister Valeria took us to Voltaggio, a nearby town, It's a typical ancient but still inhabited ancient town (at least to me) with 500 year old buildings right next modern recreation facilities. I think the reason we were there was to go to a castle where we could see all of Genoa and the sea (and because it's really old and why wouldn't you want to go to a castle) but we didn't end up doing it. We went to a cafe, stood in front of the church, walked around, got lost, said hello to the dogs in the big gardens, dodged the cars that drove much too fast, and then walked back to the car. The town has concerts and shows and, not movie theaters per se, but they show movies and lo and behold next weekend its Young Frankenstein. I saw the musical version of it two days before left.








After Voltaggio we drove around with apparently no destination in my mind and ended up at the archeological site of Libarna which was an ancient Etruscan city of around the 3rd to 4th century b.c., was discovered again before most of California was settled and is a tourist attraction now. The site is a Theater, an amphitheater ( first picture) and two houses ( probably more houses but the archeologists divided it up that way and who is to argue with them). One of the mosaic floors in the dining room was preserved so I got super excited as I wrote a paper on that last year. Got to run..

Caserza

Day four of Italia trip (I think...believe it or not I'm still jet lagged)



So after a horrible flight (gramma thought it was very comfortable but she was able to sleep) in which I watched How to Train Your Dragon, The Last Song, and Alice and Wonderland, tried to eat the food they gave us, and still had time to think about how much room I didn't have, we landed in Munich. There we had to go through airport security AGAIN before we got on the plane to Genoa, despite the fact that the corridor we had to go through did not have any kind of access to stowed away forbidden items and was policed heavily. We then got on a twenty person plane with actual propellers (the kind that spin and make alot of noise and look not at all safe) to go over the Alps. Luckily, I was so exhausted from the first flight that I slept right through that one. We landed in genoa around 9 PM just as the sun was setting. Yes the sun sets at 9 here, which does not help at all with the jetlag. We were met right away by a cousin, Valentina, who let us stay at her apartment in Genoa before driving us to her Zia Mariucha's house in Olim the next morning.

Quick family tree and history for those interested. Peter Marciano, my great great grandfather had 5 children: Michele, Angelo, Gian Battista, Giuseppe, and Maria. The first three moved to America in their twenties and Angelo took his 5 year old son, Peter2 (my grandfather) and his wife with him. Giuseppe stayed in Caserza and had three children: Michele2, Peter3 (Tino), and Mariucha.

So our first real meal was at Maricuha's house in Olim which has about four houses and is reached by a one lane road that looked too small for a bike, let alone a car. There is no such thing as a one way street here (well there is but not this far up in the country) so you need to honk around every corner to alert anyone coming the other way. Of course I noticed some of the men who passed don't think they need to do this but I thought it was very rude of them not to.



There we were reintroduced to the typical Italian meal which begins with antepasti (which is salami, bruchessta, and other lunch meats, bread, and cheese). Then there is a pasta, this time stuffed ravioli, followed by a meat course, in this case sausage in pasta, followed by cheese, fruit, and then a sweet pastry, apple torte, served with coffee. The coffee is an esspresso which I already am addicted to. After about two hours, which was how long it took us to eat, we went to Mariucha's daughter Silvia's house in Caserza where, after dropping off our stuff, we took a quick tour of the locale miracles in the area.

The first was a fountain where in 1534 a young girl with the plague drank and was cured. No one believed her, including the local priest, until he caught the plague too, drank from the fountain, and was likewise cured. You can still drink the water there and people come and fill up bottles to take home with them. I took lots of pictures but then deleted all of them. At least it was only half a day lost.

We then went to visit a small village called Sanerega built in 1003 that had a little museum with it. It was a short visit but it's weird to be someplace so very old. Afterwards we went to her Uncle Tino's (Peter 3's nickname) house in the Caserza and had another 6 course meal. Not knowing any Italian I was pretty quiet the whole day. We slept well after that.

The next day we went to Michele2's house for yet another six course lunch. Michele2 is Valentina's father and they had 3 other sons. They had a couple of cats and a two month old kitten, which I found adorabl,and also a small stable of few cows and two dogs so obviously I was very happy there and could keep myself entertained.



We then went back to Caserza for a nap, woke up, and drove back to Olim to eat again. Instead of the typical six course meal we had six courses of various homemade pizza's cooked in their stone outdoor oven. Started off with typical cheese,then cheese with various olives on it, then cheese with whole tomatoes, then cheese with some fruits, and we ended it with a pizza dolce or a tart but made in the oven and nice and warm. All of the food has been molto buono and yes, I've cleaned my plate each time as picky alex isn't so picky when I have fresh homemade food in front of me. During these meals the cook, usually the mama but in the case of the pizza it was the mama who prepared the pizza and the oldest son who cooked it, goes back and forth from the kitchen and hardly gets to eat.

Yesterday Ceserza had an annual festival in which the church was opened up (they only have mass there twice a year) and everyone gathers at 4:30 PM to hear mass, and then go to the piazza for food, drinks, a bocce tournament, music, and a massive lottery in which they sold 1000 tickets and gave away about 50 various prizes. Of course gramma and I didn't win anything. They had been preparing for the festival all day except I noticed at around 1-3 PM everyone was in their own houses eating lunch.



Afterwards, gramma and I were very tired and just asked for something small so instead of a two hour dinner we just had a one hour dinner where the meat course was broth.
Everyone here is very hospitable and I'm picking up Italian pretty fast although I understand much more an I speak.


Ciao

Off I Go!

...and yes I was humming the Greg Laswell song when I wrote that. I mean I know that's not a good omen because of Grey's Anatomy but it's been stuck in my head and I just had to.

So you may have noticed a couple of changes to the layout and title. I'm going to have to water the blog down a little (I mean, lets be real, it wasn't that horrific to begin with) so that friends and the fambam could visit the site without judging me. If you are new and are wondering what the P and D stand for then you can go in through the archives to the first post. For everyone else..welcome back. Don't forget to change the new url in your favorites ;)

I'll try to update as often as possible to make you all jealous.