Since I wrote last, we’ve had a few more adventures. We took a 3-day trip up to Florence to give our hosts a break (our hostess can’t help herself – even if we insist we cook dinner that night or that she should get some rest or take care of her own stuff, she still cooks/hosts/entertains us non-stop! A true Italian Mama…). Florence was as brutally hot as Rome and, unfortunately, as crowded. Morgan and I spent our time in air-conditioned museums, walking around green, hilly areas with amazing views of the city, sitting in front of the massive and painfully beautiful duomo, and cooking simple dinners in the evenings at the flat we had rented a room in. We were ready to come back to peaceful, simple Agello as soon as we left.
Morgan has some Czech-jew in his blood a couple generations back and my dear friend in Prague had been asking me to visit her since she heard I was back in Europe last spring, so after we returned from Florence I looked up bus tickets. We found an overnight 13-hour bus from Venice, staying in Prague for just about a week and a half – plenty of time to even do another quickie trip to another major city nearby. Getting up to Venice on an overnight train from Chuisi (the stop near Agello) was an ordeal in itself – it was standing room only and though we snagged some seats a couple hours in, we had to move three times as more folks got on at various stops to claim their reserved seats. Around 7am I groggily looked out the window and saw mountains. We were NOT in Venice, or even close! I immediately asked a train-person where we were and what had happened. Apparently we were supposed to have been sitting on the car behind ours, which had disconnected from the main train about an hour before… Which of course, no one had told us (no one checked our tickets the entire night, actually), nor was it indicated on the ticket in any way. What a fiasco! But we did finally get into Venice and find the bus stop for our next overnight journey. We even got a glimpse of the Alps by night as we drove through determinedly tunneled mountains, a reminder of man’s feeble attempts to conquer nature…
Prague was lovely. My dear friend picked us up at the bus station and the fun immediately began! I had a great time walking around my old ‘stomping grounds’ with Morgan, and my friend kept us entertained and in fits of laughter non-stop. I finally got a chance to do the synagogue tour in Prague, which was really beautiful. They really do hold such strong energies… The Old Cemetery was particularly moving and it happened to lightly rain just as we were walking around it, so the gravestones and mosses/plant life around the rocks were glistening and appropriately somber.
We all decided to go to Budapest as well, for about 3 days. It was a 6-hour bus ride and tickets were cheap so we thought ‘why not?’! Another buddy that lives in Prague joined us too and we paired off for most of our time there. Our two friends spent more time just outside the city limits in more rural areas and Morgan and I tromped all through center of the city for the most part. It worked out well – we had very well-rounded photos of Budapest between all 4 of us! The Buda side was elegant, classy, and rich-feeling. Pest was bustling, alive, and wonderfully diverse. Everywhere people were friendly and helpful (we realized the evening we arrived that none of us knew a single word in Hungarian, or even how to say ‘thank you’). The citizens there have done an amazing job of prioritizing the integrity of their older buildings… The architecture everywhere was really to die for (and that’s saying something after going there right after beautiful Praha!) and I couldn’t take enough pictures to do anything justice. Too, I saw the Danube river for the first time in my life… A moving experience for Morgan as well, who uses water as inspiration in most of his visual-art work – throughout our time in Europe he has been documenting in particular how certain bodies of water in specific cities act and behave.
After a few more days in Prague to check off a few last-minute things on the list (eat goulash, buy souvenirs/presents, have a picnic in the park at sunset), re-group and have a proper farewell with my friends, we got back on another overnight bus back to Venice. Again, we spent an entire day and evening in Venice waiting for our next overnight mode of transportation, trying to not spend money and stay out of the way of the unending, thick crowds of tourists... But this time it was 104⁰F and unbelievably humid. As soon as I stepped off the bus at 6:30am, I felt like I had walked into a sauna. And it just got worse throughout the day. By 1pm I had a wrist cramp from fanning myself so furiously for the previous six hours!
And finally, we made it back to Agello. We’ve been ‘home’ for a few days now and I’m realizing how soon I’m going back to the states... Which is always depressing. (At least it’s a much more reasonable temperature up here in the hills.) For now, I’m trying to soak up as much as I can in my last few days with Morgan’s wonderful family here, our delicious vegetarian cuisine, this landscape that continues to take my breath away every morning I wake up to it, the last olive trees I’ll see for a long time, and being surrounded by the music of Italian in every conversation...
- nova.
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