An Italian Adventure
...written on 2001-03-17, @ 13:45:26
Tales of Kim's Life in Japan, mostly . . .
Fri March 16, 2001
"Kim, guess where Chad and Ivan are going on their vacation?" Lana asked me as I came into the Kokusaibu office. I shrugged my shoulders indicating that I had no idea.
"Bali!" she shrieked. "Can you believe it? They got a round trip ticket and hotel for 4 nights for $600!"
"Wow, that sounds great!" I said, "Why, that's when I'll be in Georgia WORKING." I added, cocking my eyebrow at Hide knowing that he would get my drift (the day before Hide and I had a little discussion about my missing all seven days of a company paid holiday).
Other Japanese teachers have told me of their travel plans during the company break as well, two are going to Paris together, a couple are going to Fiji, a couple of others to Italy, etc. Looks like I'll be left out of the big travel adventures this year. My next big block of time off will be in the summer, but I will probably be studying for a TESOL certificate in Kyoto for a month. That is, if I decide to "re-up". I'm not worried, as I have some plans for next year. I want to see the flowers bloom on the moors and highlands of Scotland and have a good young Scotsman show me arrrround. Grrrrrrrrowl. Any takers?
Tee hee. Always the mental flirt, well, for the past ten years anyway. No, wait, I take that back! Back to 1994, before I went to Europe for 17 days . . .
I was in my friend Joann's living room trying to convince her to come to Italy with me. I was meeting my German friend Marcus and his wife in Munich, traveling around Bavaria with them, and then I was off to Italy, Austria and Prague all by my lonesome (my old friend Mark had dropped out of the Europe trip to go meet with his family in Hilton Head, SC). Joann kept stalling about her passport and it finally became clear she wasn't going to go with me.
She asked me if I would do her a favor though. There was an artist that she was enamored of and she wanted a piece of his work. She showed me some samples of his art in a professional catalog. It had his address under his name, so I told Joann to write him and tell him I was coming. She just laughed me off, but I wrote the address down just for fun and left.
As I was doing my gift shopping, I spied some postcards of my city and state at the time (Dayton, Ohio) and bought some. I got home and wrote a little letter to Maurizio Olivotto, the Italian artist that Joann admired. I told him that I would be in his neck of the woods, and maybe we could meet up. I then put the postcards in a big envelope, mailed them and went about preparing for my trip.
I met up with Marcus and Petra and had a great time seeing Munich and experiencing Oktoberfest. They were wonderful hosts and I truly enjoyed my time with them. Petra dropped me off at the Munich train station and me and my first class Eurorail pass went to Milan, Italy and beyond.
I made stops in Milan, Florence and Arezzo and points in between and in every art shop or gallery where I asked to see any work by Olivotto, I just got blank stares or negative gestures. Hmmm, even in what I thought was the guy's hometown, Arezzo, I still came up with nothing.
One day while I was still in Arezzo, I decided to walk to his street, Via Leonardo da Vinci. I bought a bouquet of flowers on the way, just in case there was a Signora Olivotto. I walked and walked and walked for what seemed like miles. I found the street, but it looked like an industrial cul de sac. I stopped an Italian woman passing by, who grabbed a friend who was passing by and together they looked at my map and clucked at me in Italian and I got the idea that this street was not a residential one and that they didn't know any Olivotto either.
Foo! All that walking! And now I had to go BACK! My poor flowers were drooping as much as I was, and as I turned to head back to town, the first little old lady pressed a bus ticket into my hand. I was surprised and tried to offer her the flowers, but she wouldn't take them. I finally got on the bus, went back to my hotel, wrote Joann a postcard detailing the day's failure, mailed it and crashed.
When I woke up, I got the bright idea to look in the telephone book. This book wasn't quite arranged alphabetically by name, there was another system, but I noticed a heading for part of Olivotto's address, Loro Ciuffena. Hmm, could this be another city? I went downstairs to the map in the hotel lobby and saw that indeed, there was a Loro Ciuffena (city) in Arezzo (province). DUH! I asked the hotel guy how I could get there and he said I could take the bus tomorrow.
So, Saturday morning, bright and early, I boarded the bus with my semi-wilted flowers and my backpack, as I had to check out of the hotel because it was booked for the weekend. The ride was long and bit by bit all the passengers were getting off and I was worrying again about my sense of direction. I started a conversation (in Spanish) with the bus driver and his friend. I apologized to them for speaking Spanish, but we could understand each other better that way than if I had been using English. They told me that Loro Ciuffena was the last stop. I told them who I was looking for and I guess they were discussing it, but I couldn't really understand them.
We finally got to Loro Ciuffena and pulled into the village square. The three of us disembarked the bus and as the bus driver asked some questions on my behalf, the square soon filled and we were surrounded by a mob of people chattering to each other in Italian.
"Ah, Olivotto, he is the one with the big beard and long hair.", said one older woman. "No," countered a young man, "He is fat and bald." As I made a 360 degree turn where I was standing, many other villager speculations crisscrossed over my head. I marveled at the intense involvement of what seemed like the entire population of Loro Ciuffena, over such a tiny matter. Stranger still was, when out of nowhere, the crowd suddenly parted and three people pointed to this rather hesitant looking man and the bus driver leaned over and whispered in my ear, "He will take you."
"Take me where?" I whispered back out of the side of my mouth.
"To see the artist, Olivotto." he replied.
That decided, the crowd slowly dispersed as I waved goodbye to my new bus driving friends, happy that I had snapped a picture of them and the droopy flowers before the large gab fest started. Off on another road trip adventure, I squeezed me and my bags into this little white car that this stranger then whipped back up the road out of town. In less than a minute we came to a gravel-spitting halt where he dropped me off at a black wrought iron gate and sped off back to town.
I peered at the three doorbells on the stone gate. The middle one read "Olivotto/Marshall". At this time, part of me said, "Eureka, I found him!" and the other part of me said, "Man, I can't do this", and I looked towards town and wondered if the bus might be coming my way anytime soon.
Well, I can at least take a picture of the doorbell, I thought, so I got out my camera and went "click". I hesitated a little more and then I decided I had come too far to quit now, so with renewed verve I stuck out my index finger and gave the doorbell a stiff poke. A few seconds later, a very good looking man, with a curly mop of black hair, made an appearance and said something in Italian. I plunged ahead . . .
"Me despiace, no parlo Italiano. Dove Maurizio Olivotto?" If you know Italian, please don't sneer and snicker too much, but I basically said that I didn't speak Italian and asked where Maurizio Olivotto was. The very good looking man with a curly mop of black hair came out to the gate and let me in. I told him my name and that I was looking for Maurizio Olivotto and did he know him? He said that he was Maurizio Olivotto. Delighted, I offered him my hand and said I was so happy to meet him and then proffered the puny flowers as an offering "for the Signora", hoping for all get out that he didn't have one. "Gentile, gentile.", he said and made a motion for me to sit down. He walked to the back of the house where I heard water running and spoke to someone through the door. He returned to say that we would be joined shortly by someone that spoke English.
Well we were, and it was his live-in girlfriend of ten years (darn it!). She was from America and they met when she was a student of his at the university in Florence. They were rather surprised at my visit and let me tell you, I really felt bad for intruding and expressed this to them. I again apologized and mentioned that I had sent some postcards, that I was on a mission for my friend, etc.
As Adaua, the girlfriend, was explaining that Maurizio's art wasn't available to the public, Maurizio disappeared and then came back with the handful of postcards that I had sent him. He said he had received them two days ago and that if I had come yesterday as I had first planned, I wouldn't have found them at home as they were in Florence for one of his classes. Synchronicity is my friend.
They really still didn't know what to do with me, but finally Maurizio asked me to go for a walk. By then he had gotten braver with his English and was spouting out everything he knew as we went up the hills surrounding their abode. I was amazed! It was like I was an alien from another planet (pretty close, wouldn't you say?) and Maurizio was in charge of my education. He ran, to what looked like to me, a clump of grass, picked some, rubbed it in his hands and said "Smell this", I inhaled soothing mint.Then he pointed to a grove of trees and said those were the best olive trees in the region, then he plucked a fruit off of another tree and asked me to try the plump fig. He told me that he was born in the mountains near Verona and considered himself a mountain boy and that if he had his way he probably would prefer a hermit's life. I took some pictures of him and his german shepherd and then we went back to the house where my education continued.
They invited me to stay for lunch and he cooked the most scrumptious spaghetti using fresh pasta, tomatoes and basil. After lunch, he played me his favorite music, he showed me his family picture albums, where in one of his pictures, when he was about 20 years old, he looked exactly like JFK jr. He then took me to his studio to see his etchings (yes, I wish I could have put that in quotation marks, but it was true, there were etchings there.) He opened a large portfolio and told me to take whatever I wanted and to make sure I got something for my friend, too. At this point I was so overwhelmed with his kindness that I put my head in my hands. He was confused. He asked his girlfriend what was the matter and she told him that I was very grateful for his gifts of his time and himself. I picked out two small prints because I still had a lot of traveling to do and didn't want to risk damaging something large.
Much to my protests, they offered me a ride back to Arezzo, under the pretense that they wanted to see the big antique market that happened there once a month. Little did I know how important that minor factoid was to become.
We all piled into the car with my bags and gabbed and laughed during the one hour trip to Arezzo. We got to the market and browsed around. It was indeed a big event and it still didn't dawn on me what trouble I was about to be in.
After we'd had our fill of shopping, they walked with me down the streets into one hotel after another where I would ask if there was a room available. I kept hearing all these "no's". I overheard Maurizio make a comment to Adaua in Italian that my knowledge of Spanish helped me to understand. He was worried that with the antique market in town, I would not be able to find a place to stay. My stomach sank as I realized why I had to leave the hotel where I had been staying. People from all over booked rooms way in advance so they could come to the monthly antique market.
On the next corner, they stopped me and offered me a place to sleep back at their house. Like just showing up on their doorstep wasn't ENOUGH of an intrusion, I really dreaded this outcome of events, but they would hear nothing of my apologies, assured me that it was quite alright, and so we got back in the car to go to Loro Ciuffena.
Despite Maurizio's earlier confession of wanting to be a hermit, he continued sharing things with me that were important to him. I kept notes in my travel journal about his favorite music, the artists that he admired, the people that influenced him the most, how hard it was to be a successful artist, how he and Adaua met, etc. We talked into the wee hours of the morning, long after Adaua had gone to bed. I felt so blessed, so privileged to be enjoying such handsome hospitality.
The next morning I asked if I could have that wonderful spaghetti again. They thought it was an odd choice, but Maurizio cooked it right up. After that, I said good bye to Adaua, thanking her profusely for everything and Maurizio took me to the train station. There, the very good looking man with a curly mop of black hair kissed me on the lips and bade me farewell. I told him I would never forget his kindness and wished him well.
When I got back to Dayton, I went to Joann's house to show her pictures of my European adventure. I hadn't communicated anything to her after that disappointing postcard I sent from Arezzo. I showed her the pictures of the German biergartens, castles, etc. I showed her the pictures of Florence, of Michelangelo's David, of the bus driver holding the bouquet of flowers, and then I watched as she turned the page to that picture I had taken in the Italian hillside, where the best olive trees in the region are grown, where the figs are plump and the wind whips the minty smelling grass to and fro. She pointed to the very good looking man with a curly mop of black hair and asked,
"Whoa, who is that?"
I smiled and said, "My mountain guide."
"What's his name?" she continued breathlessly.
"Maurizio Olivotto", I chuckled.
"Yeah, right!" she laughed disbelievingly. At those words, I reached into my bag and pulled out the print I had picked for her and that Maurizio had signed and dated.
Can you believe, that after all that, Joann still doesn't have a passport?!
