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August 17-18, 2000
My folks, who have been visiting with us these past few days,
are scheduled to leave on the train back to Firenze (Florence)
on the morning of the 18th. So, it being their last day here,
we figure we better show them some things that are representative
of, or unique to, this part of Italy, which is known as Lunigiana.
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In the morning we visit the Castello del Piagnaro in
Pontremoli which houses the Museo delle Statue Stele
Lunigianesi (Museum of Stele Statues). The statues are
actually menhir
which were found over the decades as local folks cleared
their land to plant or build their homes. (One of the
statues was actually used by a farmer as a cornerstone
or something when he built his farmhouse -- he chisled
the date into it before the archeologists came, chastized
him, and confiscated the slab.)
The menhir are primitive -- prehistoric,
really, dating back as early as 2400 B.C. The later
ones get a little more sophisticated, but for the most
part they're just variations on these shown on the left.
There's one in patricular, though, that has become something
of a local icon. It's the one shown above right.
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| Its likeness is used by several
local businesses in their logos. Some say it looks like
a mushroom, others a moon. I find it has a curious appeal.
My mother and I buy spray-painted, terracotta replicas
of it in the gift shop: my mom buys a dozen; I buy only
one. Which of my friends will be the lucky recipient of
such a precious souvenir? I'll have to give it careful
thought. If one of you really, really wants it,
e-mail right away -- first come, first served. |
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After the usual noon routine (cook a huge meal, spend
two hours eating it, spend another two hours sleeping
it off), we head down past Pontremoli to Ponticello,
where the annual Mestieri del Borgo (Crafts of the Village)
festival is taking place.
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Ponticello is a small village south of Pontremoli and
every year they hold a festival showing what peasant
life was like in earlier times. Of course, "earlier
times" is pretty loosely defined. While we were
in the main square watching these folk dancers perform
(at right), we heard an announcement that there was
going to be a threshing demonstration out in the fields.
We ran to check that out only to discover a gigantic
threshing apparatus, circa 1938, hooked up to a generator,
spitting straw out all over the spectators.
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There wasn't much else to see: the usual ladies showing
off embroidery and needlework, a retail display of bee
products and mushrooms. There was an exhibit of local
cooking, though, and the main feature was the
testaroli I described in an earlier postcard (at
left).
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This is the cast-iron pan used to cook many typical
dishes. It's called a testi and you need a hearth
to use it. You set it over hot coals (imagine, guys,
setting your testi over hot coals), place the
stuff to be cooked inside it, then cover it up and shovel
more hot coals over it. It bakes unlike anything I've
even seen. Renato's aunt all have one -- they use them
in outdoor kitchens.
Other things that can be prepared in a testi: stuffed
zucchini flowers, spinach and herb pie, and pattona
(another gummy pancake-like thing).
I suppose it's because the temperature gets so much
higher that the food tastes so much better when it's
cooked in a testi. It's a shame that using them is going
the way of the dinosaurs. In another generation I'm
sure the only place we'll see them is at festivals like
these.
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Testi
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| My parents and I travel to
Firenze, where they must catch a flight to Paris around
noon. We arrive at 8:30, starving, and do something we
would never normally do, even in NYC: we eat breakfast
at McDonalds! But there's no place else to get what we
think of as breakfast in all of Italy. Here we usually
just have a roll or a piece of focaccia and some coffee,
but we left Pontremoli by train at 6 a.m. and now we need
something more substantial to tide us over until lunchtime.
Egg McMuffins fit the bill, and nothing gets lost in the
translation. |
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I put my parents in a cab to the airport and make my
way toward the Duomo where I know better than to attempt
going inside. This time it has nothing to do with the
dress code. Firenze is swarming with tourists.
Anyway, I'm not here to go sightseeing -- I'm here
to shop. August brings not only tourists but magnificent
sales, and I want to find a gift for Kati C. who is
back in New York taking care of my beloved mutt, Musetta.
I would like to buy her something from Mandarina Duck,
where Georgia went wild the year before. But I can't
seem to remember where the store is.
I remember how to get there from the Arno, so I head
that way and then work my way back to the station. Below
is a shot of the Arno and the Ponte Vecchio. I'm reminded
of something my dad told me about Mark Twain's take
on the Arno. (Mark Twain wrote Italian postcards much
better than mine. You can read them in his book "Innocents
Abroad.")
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"It would be a very plausible river if they
would pump some water into it. They all call it a river,
and they honestly think it is a river, do these dark
and bloody Florentines. They even help out the delusion
by building bridges over it. I do not see why they are
too good to wade."
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Well, I wind my way down every street in Florence and
finally end up right back where I started, without so
much as glimpsing a Mandarina Duck. However, the place
I find myself is my favorite place in the city -- the
piazza in front of Santa Maria Novella (above right).
It's in this church that Cliff Robertson is mesmerized
by a woman he thinks is the reincarnation of his dead
wife in "Obsession," one of the worst
movies Brian De Palma ever made.
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Leonardo, Giotto, Michaelangelo: they stand scowling down,
imperious, at the hot and cranky tourists, who have been waiting
for three hours to get in and see the stuff they drew, painted,
sculpted. The line (of statues, I mean -- not tourists, although
it applies to them as well) goes on and on. When we run out
of artists, there's no shortage of other famous Italians to
include. On the bottom row, left to right, are some others
whose work does not appear in the Uffizi (and maybe not in
any other museum) but without whom the world would not be
what it is today: Nicolo Machiavelli, Dante Aleghieri, Amerigo
Vespucci. Great men, no doubt, and I wonder if any of them
ever paid such a high price for a cold drink.
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