We have been in Italy for 4 or so days and it has been an experience. On our day in Naples, we had one goal which was to eat pizza. On the journey from the hotel, we walked through a street market (complete with tiny italian flags draped across the street and street music) and also witnessed a high speed scooter chase with the police. No misfortunes befell us, maybe partly because we had one bag between us that we clutched closely. The pizzeria we found open happens to be one that Bill Clinton made famous (that guy gets around... he also made the hot dog stand in Reykjavik famous) although it was considered top quality by locals before that. And it was! Bufallo mozzarella, tangy tomato sauce and basil, thin but slightly chewy dough, and 500ml of wine for a couple euros to wash it down. Yum yum! We decided as we finished that we would try to catch the 2:10 train to Campobasso (our next destination), which involved power walking to the hotel then station and straight onto the train drenched in sweat. But, we had made it to our last hotel stop before our farm.
The following day was somewhat of a nightmare. We had to spend the morning in Campobasso getting our visa process sorted out. After around 4 hours of running around, getting lost, going back and forth between the police and post office, and not being understood very much, we were told to come back the next day at 9am, and we had to have a letter for the first place we would stay in the region. Argh... we knew we wouldnt have that, since Italians apparently pay taxes on guests (so many dont want to declare them) but they told us to come back anyway (we have 8 days from arriving to sort the issue out one way or another). Following that was an intense thunderstorm with hail. Our introduction to the farm that afternoon was not so great either...
Now we have been at a farm for the last 2 days. At first we were a bit uncertain this was such a great idea. The farmer was standoffish on the first day (we learned later he was hungover from a wedding with 3 hours of sleep), we were given a tiny room with two small cots and one pillow (there are 2 other woofers here... when they leave on friday we get there much nicer digs), and we found out it wasnt the restaurant/culinary experience that was advertised. Since then though, the farmer has grown on us a lot and has also already made bread, pesto, and tomato salad for us, and spent 2+ hours with Matt making fresh pasta with truffles and porticini mushrooms. We have been getting up at dawn (6am) and working until around 10am. After that Giovanni (the farmer) thinks it gets too hot and we have free time. Then maybe later in the day he will sometimes have other small jobs we help with. On the first day, we were fixing some fence along the edge of the property, and today we collected twigs/firewood as he chainsawed some branches apart.
The visa is still an aggravating topic. We wont have a letter of proof of accommodation, so it looks like the visa will fall through. That means we will be missing the third farm and leaving the Schengen zone after 3 months and going to Ireland for the last month instead. We missed our 9am appointment with the police, but Giovanni took us into town this morning to deal with it. Aggravatingly, the office was closed, but we did get the form we are supposed to fill out from the post office. We really hope we dont have to go back AGAIN to submit it, but we may have to. We just want to wipe our hands clean of the whole thing at this point, especially when it means asking Giovanni to drive us. We have been through enough pain trying to get this thing, so we hope dropping it will not have to be painful too.
Oh and there is no wifi here... I am currently on Giovanni's ancient computer. So blog posts will be less often.
Ciao!
No comments:
Post a Comment