No Matter What, Don’t Kiss the Donkey
Ciao! Come Stai?
Italy! Pasta! Machismo! Exaggerated hand gestures while speaking! Living with your mother until you turn 40! The Mafia! I witnessed some of these stereotypical behaviors (and many more!) over the past 5 days.
My trip began by taking a train from our port city, Civitavecchia (chi-vit-a-vech-ee-ya), into Rome. We had to walk a little ways to find the train and, in the days leading up to our arrival, I had been practicing a few phrases to prepare myself for communicating with the locals (thanks again Lisa!).
While walking to the train I decided to try out my first Italian question. Here’s how it went:
Me: “Dov’é il tren?”
Italian Stranger: “If you want to get to the station, you need to go up this street and to the left.”
Mamma Mia! Was I that bad? That obvious? Unfortunately that wasn’t the only time I tried to use Italian and was immediately answered in English. So it goes.
When I was in high school I was lucky enough to have visited my sister while she studied abroad in Rome. For this reason, I forewent (is that a word?) a lot of the “must-sees” in the interest of time (I only had a day there).
Rome was, first and foremost, a city; The traffic was ever present, the noises loud and varied, the people mobile and busy. The difference between this city and, say, Chicago, was that around every few corners there would be a statue or building or cobblestone alley that seemed plucked directly from the history books I had studied in school.
An aspect of Rome that I loved was the public water system. There was constantly running water being pumped out of various walls, statues, and fountains. I thought it 
was simply for decoration before I saw people filling their waterbottles. I drank it the rest of the day.
On a truncated bus/walking tour of the city, I was able to see the heavy hitters (if only for a passing moment). The Pantheon! The Colleseum! The Vatican! My favorite was theTrevi Fountain (which gets it name from Three (Tre) and Streets (Vi) which converge in the space before it. Hence, Trevi.)
It is tradition to make a wish by throwing coins over your shoulder into the fountain (picture on the right). Now, as a wish maker, I am overly practical. I wished for Gelato (we had some within the hour and it was delicious).
I witnessed an anti-globalization protest, a storm sweep through the Piazza Nerona and ruin an art market, and spent time in the church where Galileo recanted his heresy (“I was so young, naïve and ignorant. You are correct, all-knowing and wise Pope Urban VIII. The universe surely revolves around Rome.”)
After spending a night in Hostel Beautiful (a complete misnomer), I caught a few trains to the small town of Sora with my coworker and friend Stephanie (the onboard nurse). We had both spent time working on an organic farm before, so we decided to try this one out.
Upon arriving at the farm we were met by Antonello, the owner and founder of the Italy Farm Stay (www.italyfarmstay.com). He met us at the train station and drove us back to the farm. We were led through his open air patio which was fully stocked with hammocks, a communal book shelf, and classical guitar (a requirement for these types of set ups). We were sat down at the kitchen to try the homemade wine, talk finances, and see the different activities that were available to us.
“This is the, eh, horseback trip,” he said as he flipped through a photo album containing pictures of past guests smiling their way through each offered activity. “You can spend time in an Italian, eh, cooking class, with my mah-thur.” Page turn. “Here is the donkey. It is important to see this animal. It is free to pet him.” Page turn. “It is important and, uh, healthy to hug him” (pictures of a past guests hugging the donkey). “It is free. But, do not kiss him. He does not like the tongue.”
Throughout his talk there was the slightest hint of a smile at the edges of his mouth but he worked hard to supress it. I could not hold mine in, however, and was nearly in tears as he delivered his deadpan speech. He reminded me of another man in my travels who got his pleasure from teasing the foreign and gullible (Paragraphs 11-12, 19).
(Later, while talking to other travellers, I was told that he delivered the same speech to them upon their arrival. He was serious about protecting his donkey’s lips apparently.)
The time on the farm was really an enchanting experience. All of the food that we ate came right from their land: hand pressed olive oil, homemade pasta, wine from their grapes, fruit (figs, pomegranites, strawberries) all from the orchard. The honking Fiats and exhaust fumes of the Roman life were replaced with the howling of a dog trained specifically to seek out truffles and the smells of baking bread. It felt like coming home.
On the morning of the second day (after a night of star-gazing on the roof of a nearby barn with a slew of other travellers/farmers), Stephanie and I worked the field with Giuseppe, Antontello’s father. Having been a school teacher before joining the military and eventually taking up farming, his patience with us, the linguistic toddlers that we were, was impressive but understandable.
“Tranquila.” “Qua.” “Poco a Poco.” He guided us with such kindness and care that it made for a great morning. As he would converse with other Italian speakers and passing farmers it was a real pleasure to listen to the cadence and rhythm of the language. I would love to learn Italian solely to have it roll out of my mouth in the poetic, sing-songy fashion that it did with Giuseppe.
The rest of the time was spent singing Karma Police with an inappropriate (but hilarious) Brit and a PhD candidate from California, hiking to a freezing cold waterfall, tasting a variety of cheeses from a Mussilini-loving Cheese Monger (“He organized Italy!”), and having a great dinner in the quiet town of Sora.
The next morning I caught a 5:45AM bus into Naples. While there I spent time on the Santa Lucia bay , plodded along Via Toledo (taking photos of classically Italian side streets complete with parked Vespas, smoking men, flags of green, white, and red, and clothes drying on lines hung between buildings), and randomly had lunch with this guy (which is a story for another time).
I spent my final day exploring the island of Procida with some professors, their families, and an interport student. We had to suck in our stomachs as scooters and cars would try to make their way through the narrow cobblestone streets. We made it to the beach, ate a sea food platter on the bay, and I played some wicked Hackey-Sack with the Geologist for the voyage while we waited for our Ferry back to Naples. It was a great day.
Upon returning to the ship, it was so nice to see everyone. Everyone had their stories and adventures and were bubbling over to tell them. It really is a “Floating Campus.”
Life is good aboard the MV Explorer. We arrive in Croatia tomorrow.
Thanks so much for reading.
Ciao.
Casey
