I can't start painting today as the furniture isn't being moved until this evening and so...we go for a drive while we have the hire car. We head off straight and then finally, I get to turn off to the right! How many times have I been tempted! We're going to a German speaking down up in the mountains, a ski town by the look of it when we arrive and I see a sinuous curve of still thick white snow coming down.
First stop - the church and not for reasons you might think. To look at the ceiling, the art work? No, the daughter is bent over looking at the Rosso ammonitico limestone slabs that house the sea fossils. She finds several and then lighting two candles for her dad and Aunty, we leave the building. There's not a great deal to see here but it's interesting that it is an island of German speaking people in Italy. But way back, borders kept changing from Austria to Italy and Germany.
We find a cute old fashioned shop with everything in it, including tabasco (which is rare up here where we are), run by an old couple. We buy a Fragolini liquor, which is the wild strawberries that taste like roses and we head home.
That night the mountain men arrive to remove the furniture. Smelling of manure and woodchips, the cousin and an older man take the heavy pieces down, a mid sized one carries the cushions from the lounge that I was going to carry but they wouldn't let me. Old fashioned chivalry is alive and well in the mountains. And then the cousin's mother arrives, huffing an puffing from the four flights of stairs to deliver me news.
Last year I got a letter from the state electricity company saying that I had a small sliver of land on the hill near our home and that they owed us some money for power lines over the area. I was to come and sign some documents and money would be exchanged. Easier said than done but a cousin said he would take us as he had to do the same. That afternoon, his wife came and said that the name on the electricity account wasn't the same as on my passport and that there would be issues with the bank and after half an hour of her trying to make us understand in dialect, she just got louder and louder in the hope that we would understand more clearly. In the end we got it. I was to go to the bank before 9 and ask the manager if he would accept a cheque with the wrong name on it. The daughter and I needed a drink after that.
The next morning, after waking up in a panic at 3 thinking about all the things that had to be done and done in another language and not being able to go back to sleep, I did come up with a bright thought - I would google translate the bank manager! Easy. I head off down to the bank bright and early and with a bit of google and bits of English, he agrees to do it.
And then it's off with the 86 year old cousin in his Fiat Panda. He drives hunched over the wheel, holding on tightly and strangely follows the speed signs. We have taken a neighbour with us to drive around in the car so we don't have to pay for parking. She is agreeable to this. I thought we were taking her because he didn't like driving but I find out listening to their talk that that is why she has been asked to come. This man owns about seven apartments! (probably why he does!) We get the job done and I think he will offer her a coffee but nope, home we go. Still, I am eternally grateful for the cheque in my pocket. To think, the power lines went in in 1955, it's only now people are being reimbursed. Things move at their own pace here.
That afternoon, I walk up to the hillside after the old men have left (I don't feel in the mood for a proposal today). The view is captivating, I sit in the sun and admire the valley, it's lake, the church spires, the grey peaks crenellated and with rivulets of snow in it's gorges and I feel at home. It's as if my husband's spirit has transferred some of his great love of this place into me. I can only hope that he does the same with his Italian.
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