Exploring

                        

 It took four trains to get to Nice. Having left a somewhat dreary and rainy day in Lucca my arrival into the station at Nice-Ville was all the better for the late afternoon sun, warmer temperatures, and, of course, hearing all of the French. I’d felt a similar relaxation, warmth, and good cheer on our trip to Briançon back in July. An academic year in Caen in college and teaching the language ever since perhaps had something to do with it. It was good to be back in France. It felt familiar. When you’re living in a new country for an extended period of time, sometimes that’s just what you need.

        

          Having less than twenty-four hours in the city, I set about exploring as the sun set. The moon rose over Place Masséna, an enormous square decked out in giant arrangements of Christmas trees, a large ferris wheel, a maze of trees frosted to look snowy despite temperatures around 50F, an artificially chilled outdoor skating rink, dozens of wooden stands housing vendors selling arts and crafts or specialty foods, lighting displays, statues changing colors on top of tall columns, holiday music playing, quiet trams passing by now and then. The kids would’ve loved it. When I crossed down into the old town it was quickly apparent that business that night (Monday) was very slow as the host of every restaurant I passed tried to stop me and convince me why theirs was the best choice for dinner.

           

          The next morning I headed to the sea and the Promenade des Anglais. I was rather surprised to see a guy in a speedo and swimcap down by the water, it being December and all. He put hands to his hips to survey the surf and strode confidently in, seconds later beginning a relaxed crawl parallel to the beach, with no shivering or hyperventilating apparent from my vantage point. I decided to take a chance on my bad knee and climb up several staircases to the Colline du Château to take in the views of sea, city, and, as I found out as the sun just struck them, the snowy mountains in the distance. After heading down (and lucking out with the knee) and buying a fresh pastry and fruit at the marché on the Cours Saleya I began checking out bookstores. This is always a dangerous proposition due to realities of both time and finances.

            I was late to check out of the motel and late for my appointment to pick up our leased car at the airport and had another sizable debit on the credit card but also a healthy stack of books that would make a great addition to my resources for teaching French. They didn’t have the Peugeot 207 available so they gave us the 207SW at no extra cost, a model just roomier enough to fit my skis! And it came with GPS! I’ve never had GPS but was quite glad for it on that day since the detailed map of southeastern Provence I’d bought for this trip was still sitting on a table back in Lucca. I decided to test out the GPS with a side trip to Monte Carlo, Monaco before making my way through the eighty-some coastal tunnels on the return trip. I walked right into the main Casino past some entry guards but to access the actual gambling hall it looked like I would actually have to spend some serious euros so I instead toured the bathroom (free!) which featured the most high-tech self-cleaning toilets I’d ever seen. 

            So now we have wheels, motorized wheels. It changes the dynamic a bit for us. We’d gone five months with no car, felt pretty good about it, but also were feeling a bit limited beyond just inconvenienced. It turns out the Italian love affair for the automobile is just as great as the American’s (only the average vehicle here is quite a bit smaller and more fuel efficient), so maybe our relenting and acquiring a vehicle wasn’t so much our “American-ness” showing through as our becoming more Italian. Maybe. I’ll let you know in six months.

            In any event, we now don’t have to buy groceries every day, can buy heavy items, can drive kids to and from school when it’s pouring rain, and can explore. One day Lauren and I drove around south of here for a little while, eventually turning around after the road got quite steep and almost too narrow for even one car and the GPS showed it eventually petering out. There was the birthday party Ingrid attended in Nozzano Castello. Another day we took Niko twenty minutes out of town to a dentist who wasn’t there (another one of those “pre-holiday” days off) but then were able to get him to the emergency room where the dentist available had another twenty minutes before vacation and thus enough time to drill off the top half of the nerve and fill the tooth with cement, removing the agony of Niko’s previous twenty-four hours. And then there was the sunny day Thursday when we just wanted to find some park, some nature preserve, something away from the city and the cars. We found it! Lake Massacucioli, best known for Puccini’s home at Torre del Lago, where a summer festival is held every year. On the opposite side of Torre Del Lago we found a small Nature Preserve with museum (closed), but boardwalks open. We ventured out into the marsh and went into the small wooden structures along the way that hid us as we looked out at the lake and the birds. Very peaceful. And then at the turn around point we heard the inevitable children’s plea “I have to go now, really bad!” The return walk was significantly faster than the first half of our journey.

            So having a car will be nice. We’re almost to the halfway point of our stay and we’re looking forward to exploring some more areas off the beaten track. Next up, at the end of the children’s vacation, we will head up for a few days to the Dolomites, hopefully getting in some skiing if there is enough snow. Things are getting a little stir crazy around here after so many days without school. Being home is nice, but sometimes the best antidote to too much time together is not being away from each other necessarily but rather a break in the routine. And for us, with the help of our Peugeot, we hope to break up that routine when we can and go exploring. 

A Christmas Walk

(Many of these blog posts have been a bit long and too time-consuming for many to read during a busy day. So this will be a short post! )

Crumbs were left, some salt remained, appreciative note for foodstuffs sat near them.  Babbo Natale and his reindeer were not fooled by our relocation and the letters to the North Pole had obviously been received. After a long, enjoyable morning at home we finally got dressed and headed out into the sunshine for a walk. So high were his spirits Nikolai actually walked, too, and didn't complain once! Temperatures must have been close to 50F as we walked down a twisty path through a large field of grass still green. 

Into the walls we went and out the other side before climbing a staircase up onto the path encircling the town.

                         From there the mountains showed a fresh coat of snow in the distance 

and before we joined all of the townsfolk for a passegiata sulle mura we stopped to admire the view,                      
                                               
                                                                   the weather,

                                                   and just spending time together.

Sounds, Smells and Soapsuds

         When I started this blog I didn’t have a clear idea of its audience. Would it be directed towards family? Family and Friends? Any cyber-surfer who happened upon it? As it took shape I opted for all of the above. I would put in photos of us and details to make it worthwhile for family and friends but also include something in each post that anyone might be able to relate to such as, for instance, what we all encounter at times dealing with our home.

         We found a house with a giardino just outside Lucca’s walls whose rent closely approximated what our tenants would be paying back in New Hampshire. Already we felt lucky since most housing around here is in the form of small apartments and rare is the yard for the kids to play in. Another factor going for this house was its location: close to the walls and historic center but also in a residential neighborhood with a pizzeria, bar/gelateria, bakery, butcher’s and bike shop all within a five minute walk and, in tourist season, safely removed from the crowds.

          Built roughly one hundred years ago and, like most dwellings around here constructed primarily of concrete blocks and plastered walls with rounded orange tiles on the roof, the house fits in with the neighboring apartment complexes and houses. From the outside you’ll notice narrow, tall windows with functioning green shutters to close when you’re away, when it’s storming, or in the summer during most of the day to keep the sun from roasting everyone inside. The double wooden doors at each entrance also reach quite high and, when both are open, provide a berth wide enough for even the largest friend or piece of furniture to enter or exit the premises.

         The first thing we noticed upon entering the house were the tall ceilings, two of which featured paintings of flowered borders framing an idyllic country girl carrying a bundle of grapes or a literal cornucopia from the harvest. The floors were all tiled or some sort of stone, lending a sonorous reverberation to our speech. There were the enormous bookshelves with glass doors, some antique desks, the tiny kitchen. It was all a bit disorienting coming from a low-ceilinged smaller house made mostly of wood. It seemed very different but also exciting, new, foreign. A home that would surely work splendidly for our family for the year.

        After some time in a place you begin to see its drawbacks though, no matter how great it may appear at first. We heard our every footstep on the hard floors. The reverberations of our voices became loud echoes and, while making the harmonica sound less like a toy and more like an instrument, turned the kids’ fights into World War III. Our location also happened to be one hundred meters from a train track and fifty meters from a busy roundabout connecting the main route to the highway and the city’s periphery road. Getting accustomed to the cars passing and honking took a couple of months while getting used to the daily stream of busses and semis changing their gears, braking, rumbling and shaking the house, that took about four or five.

         Then there was the sewer gas. Mainly it came from the upstairs bathroom on the floor where our bedrooms are located. The stench ranged from tolerable as long as you weren’t there too long to nauseating. Its source was hard to pinpoint, but the time it started all of a sudden while I was cleaning up after a workout the answer was clear. The shower drain. Pleads around town for help and advice were mostly answered by, “it’s like that here” or “I have the same problem”. I believed them at first, wondering how they could possibly live like that. Surely Italians had at least as capable an olfactory sense as did I, if not much, much more acute given their acumen and acclaim for gustatory pleasures. I went ahead and bought all of the chemicals they advised me to dump down the drains, dumped diligently and hoped for the best. But no lemon-scented ammonia, no liquid plumber, no WC NET Professional Scarichi Domestici con agenti biologici (mint scented!) would finish off the stench so easily.

         We called the plumber. He took a look and said it would be too hard to fix, that it was simply like that (at least according to my comprehension level of Italian in August). Were we just spoiled Americans to want to be able to breathe freely in our home? Maybe it was just something we’d have to grow accustomed to if we didn’t want to cut our sabbatical short and leave the country. We resigned ourselves to the maliferous odor. The days and weeks went by, we tried not to spend too much time upstairs (besides those rather important hours spent in bed every night), we tried to ignore it.

         It became more and more apparent to me, however, as another month or two passed and my frustration level grew that this was not just a simple “bad smell” problem, but that there had to be something fundamentally wrong with the system. This had occurred to me back in July, of course, but after the plumber had said there was no fix and everyone else had admitted that that was just how it was I’d backed off and tried to accept it. After awhile though, that just wasn’t going to be good enough. I had to do something.

         Three months had gone by since his first visit before we finally got the plumber to come back. I showed him some diagrams on how a plumbing system should work. He agreed that that would be the best system, ideally. He and his partner were joined by two others who set up a scaffolding two stories high outside and set about chipping into the wall. Soon they had exposed the piping and drain of the shower, (which, surprise surprise, had no trap). After another jaunt up into the attic the plumbers confirmed that there was in fact no vent stack for the house either. So my suspicions were confirmed: we’d been inhaling noxious gasses for four months. Having said that, it is true that we probably wouldn’t have so appreciated having normal air to breathe in the house had we not had foul air first (okay, perhaps I'm trying a little too hard with that attempt at looking at the bright side...). You’d think that here in Italy, birthplace to the concept and implementation of plumbing, houses would all be equipped with such technical innovations as the vent stack and the ‘S’ bend (trap) in drains. Apparently not. Over the next few days the teams worked together drilling a hole through the ceiling and roof, setting up the vent and installing a trap. The next day—finally! finally!—the stench had been staunched and set free to travel up through the sky, never to return again.

         Then there were the suds. In a future post I’ll write about the wonder of bicycles here in Lucca but in the meantime I will tell you that after five months we’d finally had it, not so much with having to bike everywhere as with not having a car. It just so happened that on Sunday night I was doing the dishes, thinking about what to pack for my train ride to Nice the next day where I would be leasing a Peugeot for the next 175 days (our plan had been to buy a used car here in Italy but we later found out we don’t have the right to do that as non European Union citizens and as temporary residents here in Italy). The owner of the house stopped by to pick up a few possessions from the basement and my wife took the opportunity to point out where a leak had sprung from the washing machine. The owner took the machine apart and started trying to fix it when I heard the loudest and most terrified screams from our son I’d ever heard before. The kid can be loud when he wants to and we’ve heard uncountable cries and rages in his nearly five years, but I swear, this one topped them all. Oh, and I should probably confess where we’d left him while we were in the basement working on the washing machine leak. Yes parents, you guessed it. The bathtub.

        

          The day before Niko had discovered how to make the bubble bath infinitely more bubbly and so much did he revel in his bubbly, soapy world that we didn’t think twice about letting him run the jets to give him his suds. On the night in question, though, after Niko had tired of the jets apparently he ventured to turn them off himself (a button easily reachable from inside the tub). We pieced together later that upon doing so the jets did stop but with a terrible crash, something instantly burst and the water and bubbles rushed immediately out from both somewhere underneath the tub and over the top onto the bathroom floor and out into the hallway, bringing with it a purging of the contents of the drain (not pretty). Niko was terrified and scampered out of the tub and into the hallway, which is where I found him, naked with soap suds all over, screaming for his life, and when I’d wrapped a towel around him and picked him up all he could say amidst his sobs was, “I wanna go back to New Hampshire, let’s go back to New Hampshire, I don’t like it here! Let’s go home!” We later set about opening the tub. The owner called the plumber to come take a look and see if he can fix the tub (he’ll be here after Christmas).

One minute before leaving home in New Hampshire for home in Lucca

     We are very fortunate to have this home and it will do just fine for us during our year in Lucca. There’s no denying that we do look forward to the day we’ll be back in New Hampshire in our cozy home near the woods and lake. In many ways, however, life at home in Tuscany really isn’t quite so different as back in New England. No matter where you go, the roof may spring a leak, the lights may go out, but eventually routines settle back in and life goes on. In the meantime, until the plumber comes to save us again, the kids will be taking showers.

Andiamo al Parco Giochi!

Let’s go to the playground! The kids made this request frequently the first couple of months after we arrived. Ingrid claimed she never saw kids her age around our neighborhood, much less played with any. As far as I could tell, this was pretty accurate. Where were the kids? In August there was a good chance they were off on vacation, spent most of the day at grandma and grandpa’s house, or just stayed inside during daylight hours due to temperatures in the upper nineties. We found the stress and irritability level of the younger set—and, consequently, our own—was proportional to how often we got them out where they could be amongst their own generation and, try as we might (why was it so hard to try to get used to eating dinner at 8:30 or 9:00pm and head into town with the family after?), our late night outings with Ingrid and Niko worked out only perhaps once every week or two. So, when we had a sort of stir-crazy, everyone fighting, out of routine family explosion one hot day in July, we decided to promise at least one trip to the parco giochi per day.

         But which one? Part of the fun early on was seeing if we could find a new playground, or, after we found them all, discovering when the ideal time was to visit. The first we saw, located just inside the walls and next to one of the main gates to the historic center, sat across from an elementary school and preschool. Easily accessible and visible, this playground tended to be the busiest. But not when we went. The first couple of times maybe one other kid, usually one or two years old, toddled around the seesaw and the springy horse and motorcycle. Eventually Ingrid had it figured out: little kids in the morning, big kids in the evening. We tried again and sure enough found the place teeming with kids scampering about, parents standing nearby ready with a well-placed boost or reprimand, grandparents sitting on the benches watching it all in amusement. 

         Another playground we located, much larger and, in addition to a little train, slides, climbing structures and swings, featured...grass! Surrounded by a chain-link fence and open from sunrise to sunset, this playground was located about one hundred meters outside the walls encircling the town. Niko and Ingrid beamed when they saw how big it was and that there was grass to run around on, not just dirt or stones. We’ve only been there maybe five times but we’ve never seen more than two other families. Go figure.

         Then there was the smaller playground hidden in a courtyard, replete with fountains at ground level for running through, trying to block with your foot, sitting down in and beating the heat. Or the playground on the far side of town, just inside the walls, which the kids tended to prefer not, I think, because it was the farthest from our home, but perhaps due to the comfortable morning sunshine (well, I guess that must’ve been us) or the right combination of monkey bars, climbing structures and swings (more likely).

         Lauren found these trips to the playground very educational from a linguistic standpoint. Here was real language, kid-directed language, language you need every day as a parent. Yes language students, I’m talking about the Imperative. The Command form. ‘Come here, go up, come down, be careful, stop it,’ and the like. But also, of course, there was the magical world of kidspeak, fascinating enough when you hear young children talking with buddies—or by themselves—in English, doubly so when they’re using a foreign language. Enchanting to my ears, practical for Niko and Ingrid. One of Ingrid’s favorite expressions that a girl taught her on the playground when she saw her hanging upside-down from the monkey bars was ‘fare la pipistrella’ or ‘to do the bat’ (it sounds so much better in Italian).

         

      The kids get plenty of time with other four year olds and nine year olds now that they’re in school. The days are shorter, too, and so our trips to the playground tend to be limited to the weekends. Still, I don’t know where we’d be without these places. They helped us through the summer and are a highlight of every weekend. As any parent of young children knows, we need all of the help we can get. Imagining the plethora of suggestions (demands) my kids might come up with for activities to do when bored I’m always slightly relieved when the question turns out to be not 'Can I take all of the food out and mix it up with dirt and put it in the refrigerator?' or 'I'm going to show you how many ways I can annoy my brother/sister, 'kay?', but instead a simple ‘Can we go to the playground?’ We're tired or have x, y, z to do, sure, but parents, let's nod our heads--it starts there--and with that kids have the answer they're looking for. We don't need to say anything else but, uttered more to convince ourselves, more to get ourselves up for it, not sure where it will lead us this day but some form of adventure guaranteed, we say "Okay, all right. Get your Coats." 

A Thanksgiving Communion

For sixteen years, starting at age nineteen, I didn’t eat animals. Cheese? Sure. Eggs? Of course. Fish? Nope. Chicken, Beef, Ham? No, definitely not and no way. Did my sophomore summer preparing fries and spending hours soaking up the smell of sizzling ground-beef patties have anything to do with it? Or was it the ethical quandary surrounding the mass slaughtering of animals to produce the millions and billions of hamburgers my employer sold? Perhaps it was a concern for health—cholesterol, arteries and all of that? How about the ecological and humanitarian costs of putting so many resources and energy into this food source when, if they were instead applied toward producing other non-animal foods could provide nutrition for ten times as many people and seemingly solve many food crises? When I didn’t want to make my meal companions too uncomfortable or felt like giving them a little surprise while I got on with my salad or meatless casserole I would answer their queries questioning my vegetarianism with this statement: ‘I just don’t like the taste’. Truth be told, that was a lie, and my reasons did include some of the typical environmental, health and moral reasons many vegetarians give, but it was fun to say and entertaining to see the shock register on the meat-lovers' faces.

            Then one summer in the middle of triathlon season a few years ago I felt like I needed something more in my diet, tried elk stir-fry from a local farmers market, a week later visited a former student on his dairy farm where we received a few pounds of fresh ground meat and then grilled it up back home. My first burger in sixteen years. In theory it shared similar origins with the burgers I’d worked with years earlier, but somehow (the fact that the meat came from one cow and not dozens, one cow whose diet was mostly grass, and one who was not packed in with others all of her life may have had something to do with it) this one was so much better. There was no turning back. And no, I didn’t get sick.

            In Italy the opportunities to eat meat abound. Since I’ve been eating meat for several years now the dietary transition moving over here definitely wasn’t as difficult as it could’ve been (I did come across mention of a society for vegetarians in Italy but don’t think their numbers will threaten to put any meat growers out of business in the next century or two). I can’t believe I’d lived all of those years without prosciutto! And the steak I had the other night, cooked (slightly), sliced in quarter inch strips and topped with fresh-pressed olive oil, arugula and shaved parmesan! So satisfying on a primal level, and pretty darn tasty, too.           

          

          I have trouble imagining consuming octopi, organs, veal, heads and eyeballs, although I do admit to eating rabbit. Once. The second time I saw a rabbit here it was missing only its fur and skin. Pink, shiny, and stretched out on its side behind the glass display, this bunny was not hopping anywhere. It was Monday and I’d gone to the local butcher’s shop to look for a bird we’d be needing soon. The rabbit’s eye met mine.

            When I was a vegetarian I used to think that if I were to eat meat ever again I should be prepared to slaughter the animal myself. Were I starving and looking for meat for survival I don’t doubt my capability to do so, but in this first-world corner of the planet I am fortunate enough to inhabit the thought of doing so still slightly sickens me. Nevertheless, even now as a meat eater I think it couldn’t hurt for everyone back in the States who eats meat to, if not slaughter once themselves, at least see the process done, or maybe visit one of the butcher’s shops like those over here where everything is so much more…alive, or recently alive anyway. Where it is obvious what part of the body that chunk of meat is, or which animal it is, that it is an animal. Call it a reality check.

            Anyway, I felt reminded that what I was looking for was also an animal, and that it would be killed and prepared for my family and me. They didn’t have it, but after a minute on the phone my butcher said it was all set. Without taking my name or phone number, he simply told me to come back in two or three days. When I returned Thursday he went in the back room while my mind conjured up various versions of what this 6-7 kg bird might look like. Would some feathers still be in? Head (eyes)? Claws? But no, there were no obvious parts left on that we wouldn’t see back home, and in fact its innards had also been handily scooped out for us. Was this because the butcher knew what I, as an American would expect? Or was it just typical for this bird (and I’ve seen little hens—entire little hens—shrink-wrapped on small foam plates at the grocery store)? When he brought our turkey out the lady next to me exclaimed in admiration and smiled, chattering with the butcher about the bird and possible steps to prepare it. I paid and took the heavy and soft bird—thankfully we wouldn’t have to defrost this one—and we set about making our meal.

            Except the oven didn’t work. It soon became clear that I was to do anything possible to remedy the situation ASAP. After frantically calling the owner of our house and then the realtor who sometimes helps out, explaining our situation and trying to understand the waves of Italian rushing at me through the phone, I finally found a switch. The switch. Yes, apparently all of the other times we’d used the oven the switch had been flipped on, unbeknownst to us, and therefore we’d been unaware said switch even existed! So the oven heated, the bird cooked, and Carol and Michael joined us during their visit all the way from Massachusetts for a wonderful Thanksgiving meal. Being so far from home, familiarity and routine made this tradition (which we often share with Carol and Michael and other family at their house) ever more poignant and important. The Italians went about their daily Thursday routine as every other but in our home the American holiday was alive and well. Ingrid and Niko smiled and laughed more, fought less, rallied with us around the common goal of producing and enjoying this special meal and enjoyed lots of playtime with their grandparents on the soccer field, reading a book or putting together and flying a toy jet fighter. For hours the house took on the rich and comforting smell of the meal that was coming together.

            I had so much to be thankful for and first and foremost on the list was family. The wars and hate in the world hadn’t gone away but they were still outnumbered by peace and love and on that day the politics, economics and environmental consequences of food production and food choice just didn’t bother me. The world I see every day is multi-hued, filled with contradictions, more free-response than true or false. So when I took a bite of that turkey there was no ex-vegetarian’s remorse, no guilt, and no sense of lost ideals. What I felt was extreme satisfaction in the moment, a profound communion with family and with the cycle of life. An animal had died but nourished all of us. Who knows, maybe I'll return to a non-meat diet in the months or years to come, but for this third Thursday in November, Mr. Turkey, I would like to extend to you my deepest thanks.

Lucca Comics & Games

            If you could be any superhero who would you be? As a kid my choice varied amongst a few characters but I found most affinity with the climbing and swinging ability of Peter Parker’s alter ego: Spiderman. Sure, although no slouch, he probably wouldn’t stand much of a chance arm-wrestling Superman and didn’t sport the ultra-cool bad-guy fighting gadgets of Batman, but boy was he adept at making his way silently through urban environments to get the crooks when they least expected it. A squirt of his web and WHAMMO, another foiled crime. And what a suit! Imagine my surprise and delight when walking into our own urban environment one morning a week or two ago I caught a glimpse of the red-and-blue-spandexed man-spider himself. I managed to snap this photo (and not without detection, as you can see) before he slipped anonymously into the crowds.

         Truth be told, although delighted, I wasn’t as surprised as you might think. This was the third day of Lucca Comics & Games after all, and I’d grown accustomed to seeing superheroes galore, as well as video-game characters, the princesses, monsters and cloaked sword-wielding folk from role-playing games, and countless other comic-book look-alikes, many of the Manga style popularized originally in Japan.

      

           Preparations for Lucca Comics & Games and the 155,000 fans who would come to town over five days to enjoy it probably began as soon as the festival ended last year, but for me the reality of this gigantic event (which I later found out is the second largest Comics and Games festival in Europe) began to become clear at the end of September. Why was the largest swath of grass below the walls being covered with plastic? Were more pedestrian paths being constructed? Would some sort of landscaping occur? A few days later dump trucks brought in load upon load of rock, then the bulldozers smoothed and compacted it upon the sheeting. Whatever it was, it was gigantic.

Then came the white tents, equally voluminous. Never before had I seen ones the size of several football fields, replete with wooden flooring and ventilation systems. After four weeks of preparation the construction finally drew to a close. Meanwhile similar tents had taken over the town’s two main piazzas and a section of the path on the walls, along with a bandstand for the many musical groups that would play day and night during the festival. It had taken us awhile, but somewhere in their set-up we finally realized what the tents were for.

         And then they came. Yes, the ones already costumed up when they got out of their cars were among the more obvious festival-goers, but we noticed the others right away, too, even outside the walls on our street. Mostly Italians yes, but dressed a little more casually than the typical Lucchese style, and so many more twenty-somethings than we were accustomed to seeing.

         So for five days and nights the town’s population swelled many-fold as thousands meandered the walls, the streets, the convention areas—people-watching had never been better—visiting cartoonists and game designers signed autographs and gave tips to aspiring artists, gamers staged mock battles, contests abounded for best costume, best new game, and musicians rocked it out around the clock.

 When all was said and done, most praised Lucca and the organizing committee for staging such a professional event and many also lauded the great behavior of so many mostly younger visitors. The tents are coming down now, most already packed and hauled away but the largest down on the grass below the walls proving more challenging to quickly remove (couldn't some of those superheroes have stuck around to lend a hand?).

We enjoyed some of the novelty and excitement surrounding Lucca Comics & Games and celebrated Halloween by dressing up and wandering amongst the costumed crowed up on the walls but we were also not too disappointed when it ended.

The population shrunk back to a sustainable level and, after a busy summer and fall, life in Lucca began to settle back into its quieter season. Seeing Spiderman was fun, but after five days I think we were all ready for him to strap the camera back around his neck and just be Peter Parker for awhile. 

La Scuola

Heading for Bikes Bright and Early: School is Finally Here!

“Dad, we were supposed to bring our own snack,” Ingrid began. We were biking home from her first day at the local public elementary school in the middle of September. Hmm, I wondered, will this lead to crisis, parental guilt trip? “But the other girls shared theirs with me,” she finished. Phew. Back at home in the kitchen, only after she’d wolfed down her mozzarella, pepperoni and mustard sandwich, Ingrid expanded upon her first day. “The teacher had me tell where I was from and then all of the kids got a chance to ask me something.” Ingrid was talking to us and not yelling. What a relief. Everything would work out.  What had we to fear, really?

            We’d arrived at school that morning a little after eight, looking around nervously at the other parents and kids crowded into the lobby, waiting for each teacher to come and lead her students off to class. This would be the fourth year our daughter’s teacher worked with the same group of students so Ingrid really would stand out as the new student of the bunch—besides being the only foreigner in her class (and, presumably, the school). It seemed that indeed all parents were present, many snapping pictures just like me. Four and a half hours later the crowd was back, our energy palpable—practically bursting in fact—as we all waited inside the fence on the grass or the concrete walkway  at the school entrance, eagerly looking for our children. First the youngest classes came out, led by their teachers. The teacher would bend over and take the first kid forward, looking out into the sea of faces with him until the student pointed at his parent—upon which this student's body would be thrown into a spasm of excitement, being of the younger grades—the parent waved, and the teacher would then set him free to dash off to his mamma or  papa or to his nonno or nonna. Then the teacher swept forward the next student to search for his genitori. So it went with the next student. And the next. I thought that maybe it was a first day thing, but the next day was identical and now, several weeks later, it still works the same way.

Awaiting La Maestra 

            After dropping off Ingrid we biked a few blocks north to Nikolai’s school, a private preschool. We’d hoped to have him go to the local public preschool but, after calling several local options, all of which said he could be placed on the bottom of a very long wait list, we realized he wouldn’t have a spot, and probably only would have had we secured him one at sign up time. In March. We had bought his new Topolino (Mickey Mouse) school slippers, his white grembiule with Ninja Turtle patch (white button up smock worn every day over their street clothes), toothbrush and washcloth, extra set of clothes, sheets for the pisolino (nap), etc. etc. So we were prepared. We’d had several months together day in and day out . We were ready to finally have a little respite, some time to ourselves. So why were we so nervous?

            On this, the first day for new students at the preschool, after we'd donned Niko in his new slippers and smock, we were permitted to cross the red line on the floor just outside the coat and slipper room and see him off down a hallway and into a room where various other youngsters were sitting, standing and staring, playing with toys, crying, or holding onto the teacher’s hand. We’d done it before, elsewhere, but seeing our youngest off on his first day didn’t seem any easier this day at this school in this foreign land.

Ciao, mi chiamo Niko 

           

              We biked into town, wandered, stopped at a café for the first time together since we’d arrived in Italy. The conversation didn’t drift far from school and the kids. It threw us off a bit, this suddenly new routine, this four hours with no kids until we had to go back to pick up Ingrid. What would we do with this time?

            Soon the time was up and after bringing the kids back home and hearing about Ingrid’s day we tried to get some information from Niko. In a totally new school with twenty-eight classmates instead of eight, immersed in a totally different language, away from us for the first time since early June, he must have been stressed out. It turns out there was so much that he didn’t understand or that he tried to understand through his own interpretation of events, which, reported through his eyes, sounded off the alarm for us, created doubt, made us wonder if we’d made the right decision, but after a couple of meetings with his teacher and the director of the school we felt better enough to try to stick it out.

            Unfortunately we haven’t yet gotten into a routine with Niko there because he began getting sick. Usually it was a fever that lasted a couple of days that kept him out of school. Then we’d send him back and after a few more days he’d have a chest infection, or just seem pale and very, very tired or especially cranky. He'd stay home for awhile before returning to school. Then he’d get another fever. One doctor we were finally able to see gave him antibiotics and cortisone and eventually whatever he had that time was cured, but then he got sick again, most recently, and we found a pediatrician who was not very happy we didn’t have an appointment or insurance but agreed to take our cash and pronounced that he now had tonsillitis and should spend two full weeks at home. Later we found out that extended time at home was a common prescription for children here in Italy when sick, and it does make some sense. Every time Niko went back to school he’d get sick again, so by keeping him out long enough to recover and building back up before returning we’d assure he wouldn’t get sick right away again. Hopefully. But two weeks! Now one week after that appointment he seems fine but okay, we’ll try to go with the advice—pretty much—keep him home another few days and try to sneak him back in at least on Friday, get one day down before the weekend so starting up a full week next week won’t be too much of an overload on his little system. Hopefully.

            The girls who shared their snack with Ingrid have continued to be nice to her. She attended a double birthday two of the girls had together at a bowling alley. After arriving by bike on a rainy day, drenched, the girls gathered around her in sympathy and tried drying her hair. Talk to Ingrid about school and she’d say, “I like it but why do we have to go Saturdays and why is their so much homework?”

Flipping Frogs

         Apparently at the school’s introductory meeting with the parents several others had similar questions about the latter. Lauren and I have gotten a lot of practice at trying to make sense of assignments half understood, or partially written down, even assignments where we understood the directions but could just barely understand enough of the Italian to figure it out. The Italian translation of a poem by Hermann Hesse with comprehension and expansion questions, for example, had me on my intellectual toes. And then there was the math. Geometrical figures of animals drawn carefully on graph paper on a Cartesian plane. Ingrid was to re-draw said animals, first flipping them mentally laterally, upside down, and laterally and upside down, then being careful to draw them neatly on the grid lines. When I’m focused I can have a decent eye for detail, but this one challenged me a bit. After a few night of this and lots of frustration on Ingrid’s part Lauren and I managed to explain it in a way she could understand. Or maybe she just got used to it. Now she says it's not that bad. I could go on with examples of novelty in school work compared with home, but suffice it to say that there is a lot of homework, much of it isn’t easy to understand, and we try to help Ingrid out as best we can. Luckily for us her main teacher speaks some English as well and occasionally translates instructions for Ingrid in class. She’s also very warm and caring about Ingrid and that, in addition to Ingrid’s acceptance amongst her peers makes it all worth it. It also doesn’t hurt that once or twice a week they have English class.

Ingrid gets ready for Pre-school and Niko for 4th grade

            We thought Niko would adapt to life over here more easily than the rest of us, but our assumptions have been challenged these first several months in many ways. He will get better, though, and he’ll stay healthy longer and he’ll probably be the family expert in Italian before we leave. In the meantime, he and all of us have been lucky to enjoy some family visits recently. Nonni play a big part in the lives of their grandchildren here in Italy. Ingrid and Niko notice that and have missed theirs, so they’ve especially enjoyed when their own grandparents have been able to visit.  Time with i nonni can be pretty good for a kid's immune system, too, and they don't ever seem to forget the snack.

Il Passaggio a Livello

Back in Minnesota where I grew up the Burlington Northern and other big freight lines crossed through my neighborhood about a half mile from our home. At night when all else was quiet I remember discerning the first perceptible train whistle—a rich, multiple-horn tone—then listening for the next one, even louder and accompanied with the deep rumbling coming from tons of corn and soybeans rolling down the track and the regular rhythm as each car seemed to press down the section of rail at the crossing.  Sometimes I’d hear a few in a night, and often my dreams would begin weaving from their sound.

            I’ve lived in New England for twenty years now and it’s been awhile since my nocturnal or diurnal soundscapes have featured trains. My daily twenty kilometer commute to work in New Hampshire included no stoplights, one turn, and no railroad tracks, the nearest one along my route having been turned into a recreation trail over the past couple of decades.

            We’re in Italy now, though. In Lucca and all over the country trains are a major part of life. On our particular line I’ve only seen one freight train in three months, and I’ve seen a lot of trains, so when I say trains I’m talking about the ones with windows and, usually, faces behind them. Trains are a very reliable—setting aside the occasional strike—common, and fairly economical mode of transportation here. Being without a car, we’ve used them ourselves for the occasional trip to a chestnut festival or the beach. But day to day we have a different relationship with trains. Specifically, crossing their tracks. Most of the time we head out, in fact, our route requires us to head toward the rail crossing, il passaggio a livello, two hundred meters from home.

         I invite you to take a trip with me to said crossing. Heading out from the house we take a left, enjoy a minute of calm bicycling and now we’re there. The crossing. Apply hand brakes, put your foot down. Stop.  The bell is lightly dinging. Red warning lights are on. The long white and red striped bar on each side of the tracks is closing. 

Then all is calm. We wait. Across the tracks we see a girl on a moped, a car with its engine already turned off. Three cars are next to us now and two more cyclists, a woman in high heels, nylons, dress, big sunglasses, lots of hair and makeup and a younger man in a dark sweat suit. We all wait. 

           Besides you and me, nobody really seems impatient. All engines are turned off. When another car rounds the bend and sees our growing waiting party, however, it backs up and turns around in search of another route. We look at our watches. Another woman pulls up on a bicycle, ducks it under the crossing bar, looks both ways, crosses, ducks under the next bar, and cruises towards her destination. We count the minutes. The rest of the group just waits.

Queue stretching back to our house from the tracks

 And then we think we hear it. Could it be? Yes, here it comes! Speeding by in glory and with purpose, full of passengers and off towards the next station the train zips by and we’re all secretly glad we didn’t get caught out there in front of it. And then it’s gone. Optimists start their engines. We yawn, fidget with our handlebars. 

Perhaps we’re trying to show we know the story and can wait yet we’re really anticipating it ourselves, salivating imagining the bars are about to move. Another minute ticks by. The optimists, no longer quite so much so, stop their engines.  Okay then, the two of us think, enough already. Another minute. Finally the second train passes—this one slower and slower as it anticipates the station a kilometer or two early—and everyone starts their engines, arranges one pedal up high with a foot on it ready to push—pessimists, realists, optimists alike—and twenty seconds later the long bars sweep up and we are allowed to go on our way. 

            Niko likes these trains. According to him, they’re worthy of his affections because “they go fast and far and when the gates ding and the chook-a-chooze go by it’s loud.” After Niko returns from a ride with his mom he’ll hop off her bike, come in the door and report what went down at the crossing. “We waited for two trains!” “The gates started to ding but we made it through!” “There was a double-decker!” And, to be fair, sometimes he’ll even be able to tell us, “There weren’t any trains today!” Niko relays this crucial information without fail. And with lots of enthusiasm!

            So for many the trains are practical and economical. For me the rumble of these light-weights isn’t like the heavy freight cars back in Minnesota and the horns—a quick and simple airy toot—are kind of boring in comparison, too. And then, of course, there’s the inevitable wait. But like many things that might be or become mundane the trains and their crossing are rendered fascinating to me through the eyes of our four year old. He hears these metal beasts, feels them, just stares intently or shoots up his arms or yells in glee. He doesn't mind the wait at all.