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Published: June 14th 2017
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Geo: 46.1445, 8.72654
Happy Labour Day – a public holiday in Switzerland and Italy too. We headed off to Italy today, to go fishing with Martina's boys, Andrea and Daniel, at a stocked trout dam near Verbania (Tom chose to go in Martina's car with the boys – don't know what they talked about, but they seemed to have fun). It took an hour to get there, but the boys were dead keen, and I think that they had a great time. After setting Steven, Elio and Tom up at the dam, with Andrea and Daniel, we ladies (Rita, Martina, Georgia and I) as well as Matthew, headed to the nearby market to do some window shopping. When we returned, we found the boys had only caught one fish, and were cold and wet. Georgia then threw the line in, and annoyed the boys by immediately catching a fish (albeit too small to keep, and albeit that she ran away from the rod when it became clear that there was something on the line!)
In typical Italian style, we went to the restaurant at the dam, where we had an exceptional meal for 10 Euro ($14). Two courses (pasta and meat), and coffee
– and a complimentary sugarcube, soaked in grappa and flavoured with vanilla beans! And, just as typical, the waiter spoke three languages fluently, and passable English as his fourth language!
We raced back from Italy, and just got back to Porto Ronco (with boys sleeping in the back of the car) in time to freshen up and head off to dinner with another cousin, Daniele, and his wife Sandra. They live about 20 minutes away, at Orsellina/Brione and have 2 kids – William aged 10 and Jasmine aged 8. It was a really lovely night – Sandra speaks good English, and Danny is a lovely fellow – a real joker, but also very kind. The kids got on very well. Georgia was delighted to find another girl, and they made themselves understood (Jasmine speaks Italian with her Dad and at school, but German with her mother – what's a third language?) Jasmine even had one of the picture books that Georgia has at home, so they read it to each other (G from memory) in both languages. And the boys also found a common language – Lego and Nintendo DS! Danny and Sandra also have the most enormous dog – half
Maremma, quarter Bernese Mountain dog (and maybe quarter horse!) and the cutest game that it plays with their cats is to put the cat in its mouth, and……I've never seen a cat being voluntarily half eaten by a dog, but they both seemed to love the game! It was a lovely night, good food and great company.
However, I think the thing that will always remain in my mind is the drive home. From Orsellina to Porto Ronco, where we dropped Nonno and Nonna, it was foggy, and really a tough drive from Steven. But then, as we came up the mountain, it got really bad! We couldn't see the road in front of us, couldn't see either side of the road (and knew that one side of the road was a rock face, and the other was 800m straight down to the lake) and crept up the mountain at 5km/hr. We had to get the GPS out to tell us when there would be a hairpin turn in the road! Thank God we made it home, and it's certainly an experience we won't forget!
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Siobhan Healy
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I can definitely relate to Georgia's fishing experience. The only time I've been fishing was when I was 12. I caught a bream and started crying when dad took a picture of me with it because I knew it was going to die. Probably a good thi
ng Georgia's had to be thrown back.