OUR TRIP TO TARANTO
Don: Saturday we decided that we needed to travel again. A couple of nearby cities or villages had been recommended to us, but nobody had mentioned visiting Taranto. Taranto is a larger city on the northernmost part of the Gulf of Taranto which leads into the Mediterranean. I think it was the fact that it was on coast and that it was going to take us a little over an hour by train that caused me to suggest that we choose this city as our destination. After all, no matter what the city is like, the train ride would be wonderful and there are always new experiences every time we step outside our trullo.

Trains are such a good means of transportation. They go just about everywhere, but often the connections are a bit of a challenge for foreigners. But we had already gone to Martina Franca and that was the place where we would have to change trains. It cost us 5.8 Euro each for the round trip.

After arriving in Taranto, we had to get a bus into the city center. The central piazza (Via Margharita) was a pleasant place with a gelateria nearby. That was great for me! I ordered chocolate, of course. It had some pieces in it that I assumed might be a wonderful fruit or maybe chocolate chips. Wrong! It was a nasty flavor that I couldn’t stop tasting all afternoon. We walked for many blocks into the Old Town area which is really an island. Guarding the island and the entire city was an ancient castle built around the time Columbus discovered America for the purpose of resisting the Turks. Nearby were ruins from a temple erected about 500 BC. Then we headed back into the interior of the Old Town. It cannot be described or captured in photos. It was dark and forbidding. Narrow, crooked alleyways led through dark passages between ancient buildings. Clothes were drying from second and third story windows. People-sounds came from doorways and what few people were visible were children in the streets. Many of the old and unrestored buildings showed evidence of ancient glory, but were now in disrepair. It felt reasonably safe most of the time, but occasionally we were intimidated by the darkness. In the heart of this part of the city was an amazing church built in the 10th to 12th Century, and now being restored. Outside, a nun was herding children into a nearby building. Three of them told me they spoke only Italian then in a moment said in clear English: “What is your name?” They wanted to hear us speak English.

When we had walked as far as we dared, we headed for the sea and walked beside it into the town center again to find something to eat. It was just getting dark, but not late enough for the restaurantes to open, so we got a sandwich at a little panini (sandwich)/ coffee shop. It was not yet dinner time for the locals, but it was strolling time! Everyone was out on the long and delightful piazza in typical Italian fashion. It was wonderful. At the bus stop to go back to the train station, we were helped by a Sicilian from the Italian Navy who was traveling the world. Then on the train we met a single elderly man from Holland who was going from country to country trading labor on organic farms for room and board so he could travel. If you want to see the world, there is a way. What a rich day it was.

Mary Ann: The long walk through the old part (Centro Storica) of Taranto effected me like no other place ever has. It is impossible to describe, and just as impossible to capture in pictures, but it felt and looked surreal, like something out of the most horrific of Dickens, perhaps like a wasted, bombed-out city after a devastating war. I’ve seen a number of ancient sites and parts of cities that were just as old (X-XVIII century), but this area had a completely different feel about it. To say it was in disrepair is a huge understatement. There was almost no color except dirty grays and browns, the stone of the buildings lay bare where once they had been painted or stuccoed, doors and windows were missing, gloomy, dangerous-looking alleyways spread out from the main street, beckoning wanderers into even more foreboding places. Except for small cars tucked into corners, I would have imagined Don and I had been transported to some ghetto in the Dark Ages, and at some point I fully anticipated rats to scurry across my feet and a cloaked man with a scythe to be lurking in some dark doorway. The one thing that kept me from falling into this imagined state, yet also seemed so bizarre in that setting, was that school children were walking these streets, going home I guess, and almost seemed oblivious to their surroundings. One young teenager even had red dyed hair, and nearly all of them were carrying bright name-brand backpacks. Other than these children, there was almost no one else around, and the only sign of any habitation was laundry waving above us from second and third story windows. This old place was truly a unique experience, one I’m still trying to wrap my mind around. Every time I think I’m getting a handle on the world of Italy, something like this jumps out to surprise me. And that’s what our life is like, here on another continent, across the big sea.

OUR TRIP TO MARTINA FRANCA
Mary Ann: On Wednesday we took a trip out of Alberobello, our first since arriving here two weeks ago. Our choice of destination was Martina Franca, a small city about 15 kilometers (9miles) south of here, about a 15 minute train ride away. The country between here and there was absolutely beautiful, pastoral and rural. The patchwork of bright green fields and deep brown vineyards was outlined in long, perfectly straightstone walls, accented with well-kept trulli, and an occasional olive grove.
It happened that it was market day in Martina Franco so we set out to find the place where we guessed all the people in the area would be gathered to do their weekly shopping. And were we right! The streets were lined with stall after stall of vendors selling almost any kind of ware you can imagine----shoes, coats, girdles, toothbrushes, hats, lamps, and, of course, fruits, vegetables, meat and cheese of every variety. There were probably at least 100 vendors, and 20 or 30 times that many people there to buy. It was a colorful potpourri of sights, sounds, textures and smells, and the most wonderful place to take pictures and people-watch.

There were several thoughts that occurred to me as I wandered among the crowd. First of all, doesn’t anybody in Italy have a job??!! How do these several thousand people have the time to spend every Wednesday morning at the market haggling over the price of oranges? Maybe I’m wrong, but I can’t imagine enough people in Troy being free on a weekday morning to fill a market place. The second thing I thought about was the valuable role this time plays for the older folks. We’ve noticed how here in southern Italy the men often gather in groups to shoot the breeze, and this was no less true in this setting. Then there are the women of “mature years” who seem to have most of the responsibility of buying, especially the food, and I imagine them bringing home bulging bags full of tomatoes, prosciutto, artichokes, olives, dried beans, and chicory and then preparing huge, multi-course meals for their family and friends. This seems like such a contrast to our American culture where the elderly are often isolated from the rest of the community and have no important work to do. I especially think of my 83 year old Dad and wonder what his life would be like if he were an Italian and could stroll through the Piazza Popolo with his buddies every night, or could meet them every market day to discuss the state of politics in the world or the goings-on in their own family. Finally all this activity in Martina Franca today made me wonder why these European cities are so vibrant and alive, while American cities struggle to survive. What can cities do, if anything, to draw people out into the streets again, create community, and make downtowns a vital place to live and work? What would encourage Americans to walk, walk, walk, like they do here, and shop in the small unique stores right in their own city, instead of the giant, one-size-fits-all stores that forms rings around the outskirts of cities while the core crumbles. Well, these were just some thoughts that occurred to me while wandering today.
The other thing I need to talk about is the wonderful old part of Martina Franca. This was organized and built in the mid-1700’s and the buildings are mainly of a Baroque style. The narrow streets are stone and wind every which way, often leading under ornate arches, or into tiny little nooks just big enough for a potted plant and 2 teenage lovers kissing on a wooden bench. We saw the Basilica of Saint Martin, wandered around the central piazza, oohed and awed at the carved stone lintels above the doorways, and peered down many a tiny strada, taken by the sheer beauty of this small Italian city. I’ll also add that we had a wonderful lunch of crepes, traditional broad beans and chickory, and fresh fruit at La Tavernetta Restarante, and chocolate and almond gelato for dessert at a gelateria we passed by on the way back to the train station.

OUR NIGHT IN ROME

Mary Ann: I want to write about our first day in Italy since we spent it in Rome, an ancient, fantastical city full of richly-textured sights, sounds and smells. The Hotel De Artistes was in a perfect location, only 5 or 6 blocks from the Roma Termini train station where we came in from the airport. This was especially convenient because we had to walk that distance pulling two 40 pound suitcases, with each of us toting an 11 pound backpack. Our room was lovely and overlooked a central courtyard surrounded by a couple of tall, light, stuccoed apartment buildings with plant-filled balconies, and laundry hanging on lines strung between windows. After arriving, we took a short nap, and then began exploring a little. In the span of 3 hours, we learned to ride the subway, found the bus station, bought tickets for our bus trip the next day, tracked down a gelateria and sampled their wares, and wandered around our area a little just to see what was there.

The best was waiting for us though. Around dusk, we decided to head for the closest piazza which in this case was the Piazza De Repubblica. What a good choice! It was filled with evening strollers, strolling as only the Italians can do, and lots of shops and restaurants and noise and tons of traffic all swirling through the rotondo. “Bookending” this piazza was a beautiful set of 19th century government buildings, all lit up and a perfect backdrop for the activities. Then, not more than a couple blocks away were the ruins of the Baths of Diacletian from the 1st century A.D., and beside it, a darkened garden, filled with ancient carved marble statues, crypts and columns, and a giant marble urn fountain in the center. I felt like I was in a sacred place, in the middle of holy ground where precious and ancient memories are preserved in stone. I was truly moved to tears as I accepted these treasures as a gift which continues to inspire and awe us. We took pictures and whispered awhile in the garden, wondering about their history and the culture that produced them.

Then it was time to move on to a really important thing…finding a place to eat. There were lots of choices along this busy avenue, but we settled on U. Guiliani, a rather small caffe and pasticceria and are we glad we did! It was a wonderful and memorable experience. The meal of tortellini and lasagna was luscious and the owner/waiter was a national treasure himself. He bustled around between tables, occasionally saying to himself “Mamma Mia!” chatting and greeting everyone, and in between he made sure the wait staff was tending to everyone’s needs to his satisfaction. There were lots of customers---some buying delicious pastries from the glass case, some wanting caffe at the “stand up bar” and others sitting down for a long and leisurely meal. We enjoyed the food and the atmosphere, a perfect ending to our first night in Roma.

DAILY LIFE IN ALBEROBELLO

Don: It’s Tuesday morning, March 7 – well, actually it is just after noon on Tuesday. As you might guess, we didn’t get up all that long ago. And…I have a good excuse. It snowed last night! We sure didn’t expect that. We knew it was going to be colder for a few days, but had no idea it would be THIS cold. We’re not prepared for super cold weather. So, we slept in late in our cozy warm bed and then climbed down the ladder to the cold stone floors of the trullo to get a fire going and eat breakfast. You see, the fire goes out during the night, because, like everything else here, the stove is small and doesn’t hold much wood. Sometimes I build a fire and sometimes Mary Ann does. Today was her day and I put stuff for breakfast on the table while she went to get wood from the underground cave-like wood storage room. Then she put a little newspaper in the stove and some cardboard. We scrounged the cardboard from boxes we found discarded in the village and had to buy an Italian newspaper to get paper to start the fire with. One euro for a paper we couldn’t read! Actually, Mary Ann sat here on the couch for a long time looking at that paper. I think she was trying to make a good impression, but she picked a funny place to do it, because I’m on to her! I know how much Italian she knows! Anyway, she’s done looking at it and we can use it to start fires. On top of the paper and cardboard, we put kindling. That sounds like a no-brainer, but it’s harder than you think because we don’t have a hatchet or axe to split the logs into kindling. The only thing I could find that would work was a heavy hammer and a stone chisel. If you pound the stone chisel into the end of a straight log, there is a good chance it will split. If it doesn’t, then the chisel gets lodged in the log and you have a ____ of a time getting the silly chisel out of the end of the log. I know because I’ve done it a time or two. Then you light the fire and close the door. If the fire gets hot and keeps on burning, you are in luck. If not, you have to open the door to find out why it isn’t burning and smoke billows out into the trullo and you have to open the doors and window (notice I didn’t say windowS because there is only one window on the main level) to let the smoke out. Also, you have to go up the ladder into the bedroom and open a small window up there because smoke rises, you know. All of that opening of doors and windows gets the smoke out, but it also makes the trullo colder which is what you were trying to avoid when you started out lighting a fire in the stove! So, it’s a bit of a challenge to live life in a trullo. You may wonder why I said “trullo” instead of “trulli.” Well, even if you didn’t wonder, here’s the scoop. Trullo is singular and trulli is plural. We live in ONE trullo, thus I use the word trullo.

This trullo has two cone shaped roof sections, a cone nearest the street and one toward the back. We usually use the back section to go in and out. It’s a little doorway , so when you enter, you don’t have to duck at my height, but you have to be a little clever about it if you are carrying anything like a basket of firewood or bags of stuff from the market. Inside the back door is a little sitting room – a living room, I guess. The stove is just inside the door on the right and a couch is on the left. A tiny kitchen is at the far end through a stone archway. The kitchen has an apartment –sized cook-stove, an itty-bitty sink, and an apartment-sized refrigerator. There’s almost no counter space at all but there is a small table with a marble top by the stove that you can use to prepare food etc. The bathroom is through a door beyond the kitchen. Inside the bathroom is a small sink, a toilet, and a bidet. If you need to know what a bidet is, ask Mary Ann. I don’t use it. In one corner, there is what the owners call a shower. It is nothing more than a showerhead mounted on the wall. A curtain can be pulled around your body to keep the water from going all through the bathroom. The water drains into a floor drain. I suppose the shower is supposed to be a modern convenience, but there is a problem. The water heater only has about a 2 gallon capacity, so you run out of warm water in nothing flat! And then it is cold – VERY cold! We have both thought about the prospect of being in the shower when that happens and have decided there are less risky ways of getting clean. One day we clean the top half of our bodies, the next we clean the bottom half. How’s that for a plan?

As you enter the “living room,” there is another stone archway that leads to the dining room. The dining room is under the front cone and a door leads out from it to a recessed entryway and the street. Inside the dining room are a couple of recessed alcoves with small stone archways over them. They hold shelves for various things. There is a nice table with six chairs in the middle. The ceiling is wood, with large logs as support. In one corner is a wooden ladder / stairway that leads to the bedroom. The bedroom is a small room in the peak of the cone of the trullo. There are two single beds up there which we have put together to make a bed the size of a king. Beside those two beds, there is a very small table, a stool, and a blanket chest. There’s not much room to move around. You can only stand up straight in the center of the room which is where the bed is, so you have to be very careful when you bound out of bed in the morning! You just might whack your head on the ceiling which is not very soft at all. It is concrete! Also, there is no railing around the hole where the ladder comes up, so you want to be fully awake if you decide that you have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. The only window in the bedroom is a tiny thing maybe 10” high and 12-14” wide. There is an inside wood shutter that blocks out all of the light, so it is always night up there. The only way you know it is morning is when the light filters up the stairway from the one window downstairs. Downstairs, the floors are all stone and very beautiful. The cone over the living room is smaller. There is a loft up there which can be reached by an even smaller ladder and a few things are stored up there. I suppose there would be room enough for a single bed if you absolutely needed it, but the risk of jumping out of bed and landing on the stone floor below would be significant.

The trullo is beautiful both inside and out. Outside the patio is SO attractive! The owners have installed beautiful lighting all over. The trullo sits on the side of a hill, so the view from our patio is just delightful. You can see down the hill and over to the other hillside opposite. That hill is covered with trulli. In between is a valley and the main road leading into town. In that valley is where the Thursday market happens and is a more “touristy” part of town. There are lots of little souvenir shops, pizzerias, restarantes, tabacherias (tobacco shops), and wine bars along that way. Most of this we can see from our vantage point in our patio. At night, just below our trullo, there is a mysterious and strange thing: one ride like you would find at a country fair on the midway. It is a circular sort of thing with waist-high walls around the perimeter. When we have seen it, it is always on a slant and looks like it would spin and tilt at the same time. The strange part of it all, is that the signs on the side of it say: DANCE! I’ve never actually seen anyone dancing in that thing and it seems to me that you would risk your life to try it, but there it sits! It is covered with glitter and lights. It is the only spot for children and teens in the whole village and looks entirely out of place in this ancient place. They fire that monster up at about 8 pm and play Italian rock music out of the loudspeakers for a couple of hours. Teens congregate around the thing and you can hear it all over the village. I feel sorry for teens in Alberobello. There is next to nothing to do here for them except this monstrosity of an entertainment site. We hear the music for a couple of hours and then it is silent, thankfully, until the next night.

We have thought that we could easily have opted for a more convenient kind of journey, but we have not regretted our choice. The challenges associated with our choice are certainly significant, but the blessing is that we have been dropped into the very heart of a small town in Italy where seldom anyone is heard speaking English at this time of year. So we are forced to learn Italian ways, connect with local Italians, and struggle to learn to speak their language and understand their words. We cannot be arrogant Americans if we want to survive. We are learning to pay attention to our surroundings, to see and appreciate the wonderful diversity of our planet, and enjoy the richness of new ways, new sounds, sights, smells and new tastes. We have laughed at the things Italians do realizing full well that they, too, have found us amusing and strange. But when we laugh, we do so with great appreciation and gratitude. This place is indeed a blessing. We have made the choice that is right for us and we are thankful for it every day we are here.

CITY OF ALBEROBELLO:

Mary Ann: This is a magical city, filled with these wonderfully-shaped cone trulli and every day when I go out, I almost imagine that gnomes or munchkins will come popping out from one of the doorways. The structures are actually quite short, and so they give me the feeling of being a giant in a strange land. They sit along very narrow streets that wind around every which way, but that doesn’t stop cars from zooming around corners at amazing speed. We sit on a hill filled with many (perhaps a couple hundred) trulli which are either connected to each other or very nearly so. Across from us we can see another hill covered with just as many, with the main street of the city separating the two ancient sections of town. On that street, and in the connecting piazza is where the Thursday morning market is held.

Don: One of the most remarkable features of this town is the sense of community that we have seen. Every weeknight at about 7:00 pm people come out to walk the main streets and the piazza. It seems it must be a part of the family routine. Couples walk together, families stroll with babies in carriages, and there are almost always a number of groupings of men who gather with 5 or 6 others to stroll or stand on the sidewalk discussing some-thing often with the typical animation and enthusiasm of Italians in general. What do they talk about? Politics? Sports? Wives? Maybe the latest tangle with the family? I certainly can’t tell, but they always have time to notice the couple from America who walk by hand in hand. There aren’t a lot of smiles to spare here, but I don’t get the sense that they are unfriendly. It just doesn’t seem to be the Italian way to be liberal with a smile at least in this rather small, rural village. If the weekdays belong to the adults, the weekends belong to the teens. The main street is blocked off for automobile traffic so they can have their space. It seems to me that they are here to learn to become as good as their parents at the art of being community. They stroll, they chat, they congregate, they laugh, and they eat pizza. Guys seem to collect in small groups while girls walk in pairs or groups, often arm in arm. Rarely have I seen a people whose commitment to community is seemingly this strong.

MARCH IN ITALY

LIFE IN THE TRULLO:

Don: I don’t think it has ever occurred to me that I might spend any amount of time in a home that was somewhere around 400-500 years old, but here I am in an Italian trullo in Alberobello. This is home for us for about a month. It is an all-stone home built without mortar. Even the cone-shaped roof is made of stone. Inside the place is beautifully restored with a rustic appearance, but done with an artistic touch. Floors are polished stone, walls are white stucco, and rooms are separated by stone archways. There is electricity, but the wiring limits us to using only one appliance at a time. You can’t heat the water and run a space heater at the same time without blowing the circuit breaker. So we have to plan well. The water heater manages to heat about 2 gallons of water before starting over. We heat mainly with a wood stove which does not last through the night. Since temperatures dip into the low to mid 40’s at night, it isn’t uncommon for our bedroom to be as low as 52 degrees in the morning. We are finding that our lives have suddenly shifted in dramatic ways. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs has new meaning. We are having to scramble for the basics and have had little time until now to think about the meaning of it all. Our minds have been occupied with how we will provide for the fundamentals, like food, shelter, warmth, and sleep when we find ourselves suddenly without the things that are “automatically” available like they are in Ohio. And we have to do that when it is such hard work communicating the most elementary messages to those around us.

Mary Ann: I’m finding myself amazingly domestic these days. Housework and cooking have never been my love or my forte, but here in Alberobello I spend a good deal of time shopping at the weekly market or supermercato for food, creating simple menus from the basic foodstuffs and spices we gather up. A couple of days we ate sliced fresh tomatoes, asiago cheese, fresh bread, tasty local oranges, and figs for breakfast. Right now there’s a pot of bean and sausage soup simmering on the small gas stove, seasoned with only a little salt and oregano we found in the cupboard. This is a small place so I’ve had to learn to be creative. The potatoes and onions are stored in the cleaning bucket, alongside the food processor; bread and pasticcini (sweet pastries) are piled on the apartment-sized refrigerator.