Two down

Our third week is underway. Last week we worked primarily on increasing our level of frustration – of course our language skills are developing as well, I’m just not sure which language. Anyway, a couple of rather burdensome problems remain. I won’t bore you with the intricate details but one is an ongoing confusion over the prepositions “a”, “da” and “in” which all appear to mean sort of (but not quite) the same thing: in, from, to and/or at.

A second problem is pronunciation, or I should say where the stress is on any given word. One source says the second to the last syllable, one instructor says nearly in every word (excepting verbs) it falls on the first syllable. Ultimately, I suspect, it’s something that one learns with time (and practice). We’ll see.

Last Friday afternoon after class (and caffe and dolce) we videotaped the chef of Da Divo, on Via Franciosa, near the Duomo in Siena. The only customers in the restaurant at the time were two elderly but lively British women, presumably traveling together, with we had a rather fascinating conversation later about the importance of letting Tuscany invade one’s soul, or something along those lines. Before we said arrivaderci, Roberto informed us that we had at least three interviews lined up for the next day.

On Saturday morning Roberto came to pick us up and we went to the small village of Geggiano, just outside Siena, where we interviewed Andrea and Tatiana Bandinelli.

The Bandinelli family is one of the oldest existing noble families in the Siena and Andrea’s grandfather (known as the “red Count” because he was a communist) was one of the preeminent archeologists of his time. We had a great interview and afterwards Andrea gave Susan and a tour of the family’s villa, which had originally been a summer home (and was therefore unheated). It was not what we expected at all. The walls were covered with paintings, which were in large part murals although in one room the walls were covered with “false tapestries”. These were scenes painted on canvas, which were then fastened within frames to form what appeared to be massive woven pictures., almost like wallpaper but with greater depth. The piece de resistance was the bed where Andrea’s grandmother died in 1976, a bed which the family had once loaned to Pope Pius VI when he stayed in Siena, and who returned the bed to the family with a portrait placed at the top of the headboard as a gift. Andrea, who is probably in his 40s or so, informed us that he spent his wedding night in the same bed.

Leaving the Bandinelli family we then headed to Asciano where we interviewed a young sculptor named Dario who talked about how he came to work in marble and stone and wood as well as explain the importance of keeping alive the traditional forms of handcrafts. From Dario’s workshop we ended our day at the home of a fruit and vegetable vendor Serre di Rapolano, Giancarlo, who discussed the changing nature of not only his business but the profound changes in agriculture which are sweeping Tuscany.

Roberto dropped us off at home and we made tentative plans to meet for our last two interviews on Sunday,, depending upon the weather.

We were going to head into Siena for a quiet dinner at a tiny trattoria recommended by Roberto, Per Bacco, but since it started to rain/wet snow late in the afternoon and continued pretty much throughout the evening and since we had had a large midday meal at one of Roberto’s secret places in Serre di Rapolano we decided to stay home.

Sunday Sue and I took the bus into town. Although it was a bit cold the sun was out and it felt good not to have anything to do but stroll the backstreets of Siena, one of our favorite pastimes. One of our objectives was to find the tiny Osteria, Per Bacco, which Roberto had suggested the day before. We not only found Per Bacco but a couple of other small trattorie in the same neighborhood (along Via Camollia).

We eventually stopped at Nannini’s bar and caffe on Via Banchi di Sopra, and urge anyone coming to Siena to do the same. Nannini’s have what must one of the largest, if not THE largest selections of dolce (sweets) in the city. Naturally we bought several for this evening’s dolce course and for our morning with caffe.

We then headed over to Conad’s grocery store in Piazza Matteoti, where we picked up some artichokes in the Roman style (peeled hearts with stems, blanced and marinated in olive oil,) one buffalo mozzarella and some roasted pork slices, which we had for our afternoon antipasti.

We left the store and when we got to the bust stop it quickly became clear that because there was a soccer match that day between Siena and Brescia, and the bus stop was right next to the stadium and the streets there were closed to traffic, there was no bus. It was a nice day so we decided to walk home which only took about 50 minutes. So we got our exercise and worked up an appetite for our antipasti to boot.

After antipasti and a glass of wine we spent the rest of the day doing home work, and just working on our Italian in general, I finished prepping the movies into Quicktime to pass along to Roberto so he can work on the translations for me. I made a meat sauce with spaghetti for dinner and we relaxed a bit before starting our third week of success and failure. But as our instructor says, “piano, piano”, step by step.