Searching for the Candidos

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17/10/05 - We left Mel to stop in at a small town 10kms up the road to see if we could try and locate my (Lorenza) grandfathers sister, Maria. We were given an address by an aunty who was a bit sketchy on the details but our previous hosts were able to correct the spelling and point us in the right direction.

We get to the town, we find the street, and we find the house number. This is too easy or perhaps Aust. Post has actually taught us something. Alas our luck had run out or did it? There was nobody home so we decided to ask a lady passing if we had the correct house. With our very limited Italian the lady understood that we were from Australia and looking for a woman called Maria. She then shouted to a neighbor, who was working in the barn. They exchanged a few more sentences and with no time to waste Vito was in his car next to us waiting for us to follow.

We followed him to another house through the narrowest streets we have ever seen. Vito yells to a guy on a tractor. After much pointing, hand action and facial expressions never used before in our lives we were invited in for coffee. Before coffee Vito spots the postie and we are both hurrying towards him. The postie explains to Vito the number is wrong and rides off to check. He returns promptly which makes me think it could not be far.

Now that we have the correct number we are able to have our coffee. The tractor driver’s wife invites us to have something to eat. We finally convinced her after the 45th “no grattsi” that we were fine. She soon disappeared and we later discover that she actually knows Maria and had phoned her to advise of our arrival.

Coffee finished and again we were following Vito through the narrow streets. There she was waiting for us. A little woman in size but when I shook her hand I could see this 86yr old had worked the land most of her life.

She introduced her husband who at 90yrs had dementia. We spent the whole afternoon talking two different languages but it didn’t seem to matter. After a little homemade grappa it all seemed to make more sense and the language barrier decreased. Maria’s son Danielo, wife Patricia and son Raffaelle live upstairs of the house. Patricia joined us whilst looking at many family photos. Raffaelle gave us a copy of his bands CD and showed us to a very nice place to stay.

Quote from Raffaelle: :

Follow meea if youah canah

After a delicious meal and a bottle of local chianti I must say we’ve had a lovely but exhausting day especially driving the total of 10kms from our morning departure point.

Buona notte.

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Photos

The Candidos
Lorenza's Great Grandparents & Children, minus Fernando her Grandfather who had already moved to Holland

Great Aunt Maria
Lorenza's Great Aunt Maria, husband (merito) Tomasso and daughter in law Patricia

Comments

[Manola]

Finding the Candidos
This is awsome. Enjoying the photos and travel journal. You look like you are both having a lot of fun and sharing it around!Well done.