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Published: November 13th 2006
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Our arrival to Italy on the 15 hour Dubrovnik-Trieste "Bus of Doom" was followed by several connecting trains as we made our way from the east of Italy up to Tirano, several hours north of Milan and very close to the Swiss border. Tirano is a small town of perhaps 15,000 people, and of this population it appears that a large number are somehow related to Luke. We were to stay with his uncle, aunt and cousin and enjoy the simplicity of the rural Italian lifestyle. We were greeted at the train station and driven to the family home, a simple but nice house in amongst a large apple orchard, from which the family makes their living. We were promptly fed a hearty meal, where I learned two very important words in Italian. Each meal was characterised by uncle Gino and aunt Rosangelo saying 'mangaro' (or eat) and we would try to avoid eating more by saying 'basta' (or enough). Don't get me wrong, the food was terrific but they had unrealistic expectations of the capabilities or our travellers stomachs and every meal we were basically forced to eat far beyond the point of satiation.
Besides eating, the time with the
family in Italy was spent seeing Luke's relatives who speak almost no english so I sat silent while Luke tried to get by on his limited amount of Italian. Interestingly, no one could pronounce my name (a problem I have often faced while travelling). Uncle Gino said to me "Why don't you have a normal name like Tommy or Bill. We'll just call you Tommy". And that's what they did- each time I was introduced to people it was as Tommy and it became my new name.
The single highlight of my time in Italy was a restaurant dinner we had one Saturday night. Luke's cousin Filipo wanted to treat us to 'a night of passion' and his passion, evidently, was food. The day before we went to the restaurant to discuss what we were to eat and drink on the night. Wines and dishes were selected after much deliberation and a few beers. The following day, the wines were opened and poured into decanters 7 hours prior to our arrival. The restaurant that night was reserved entirely for us four- Filipo (cousin), Luke, Danny (another cousin) and myself. We arrived around 8:30pm and left around 1:30am. We had around
I'm a winner
I won a trophy but no one can remember what I won it for... 6 courses but there were so many, I honestly lost count. We must have drank several litres of excellent wine each, not to mention great coffees, liqueurs and other assorted Italian specialities. In fact the meal was so long and so substantial, Luke had to go 'numero due' twice during the night to make room for the never ending food.
We spent most nights with Luke's cousins heading to various bars and discoteques around the small town. The nights out were fun but not particulary worth recounting. However, the funny thing that I will relate about young Italians is that they all think they're race car drivers or motorcycle racers. This was a problem because Luke's cousin insisting on showing off his 'racing skills' each time we drove home from the night out, usually after many drinks. I think I have come the closest to death on these drives home than any others event in my life. Ironically, we would have been in Turkey at this point had we not changed our minds due to the bombs going off but thinking about it now, it would have been much safer to risk it in Turkey than get in that car
Family love
I guess Filipo was glad to see Luke again for those extremely treacherous drives home. At one point we hit a dog at around 140km/h.
I left Luke to stay on with his family and headed south to become a tourist. I would visit Venice and Rome before heading out to Spain. I will not bore you with the details of how I walked around these two cities seeing this church and that building. I'm sure my experiences in Venice and Rome were almost identical to those of thousands of other tourists each year. In fact I never intended to go to Italy and can't recall how I ended up there. I guess it was just on the way from Croatia to Spain.
In Venice, after a problem with the hostel, I met an American couple also having trouble with their accomodation. We decided it was a good idea to split a small apartment and we continued on to Rome together as well. I tell you this because after getting to know these two, the guy decided to change his itinerary and come with me to Spain, becoming my new travel companion, and the girl went home as was planned. I insist this is not my fault but I
believe at the time they were engaged but have recently broken up. After a total of 8 days in Italy, Andrew (the Californian) and I hopped on a plane destined for Spain.
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