Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Walking with Angels. Fidenza to Costamezzana

OOpened the shutters and it isn't raining, this is good. Insoles are dry and so is the inside of the boots. The boots on the outside are still soaked. Oh well. Charlottes are dry, the one never being wet inside. A real nice easy walking day through the rolling hills. Nice green fields with all the crops taken off. The crops are more forage although there are no animals to be seen. Apparently the dairy cows are kept in barns rather than in the fields like France and Switzerland. We arrived in Costamezzana at 11:30am or so and went to the bar. Our very friendly owner Oliver made us welcome and we had a sandwich and caffe while waiting for the Ostello guy to show up and let us in. We signed in to Oliver's guest book and our accommodation guy is going over our passports. Every place has to see our passports to get the info off or to take a photo of, for the legal part. Next we were asked to follow the accomodation guy across the road to his house. There we met Signora who is definitely the brains of the outfit. She went through the forms again, not unlike when you cross the border into another country. In no time she had us in stitches with her no nonsense demeanour. We check out the church but it is locked, not unlike others unfortunately. Back to Oilver's place for vino blanco and wifi, perhaps even a game of cards. We are playing Intaliano, sitting in the bar sipping wine and enjoying the atmosphere. Ciao(see you later in Canadian) people come and go, having a caffe, greeting each other. I think Oliver has a wealth of local info on most people around these parts. The conversation can get louder as more people come in. I notice it is the men mostly who patrinage the bar. The universal dress code being blue jeans. Sometimes women come in to purchase a lotto ticket but mostly men. A couple of one arm bandits( flashing lights slot machines). Once in a while someone puts a coin in them. Second glass of vino blanco, starting to remind me of Saturday afternoon bar days many moons ago. Back to our humble abode. These albergues as we call them, cold, no heat, sometimes damp, although clean, 13E each, give time for reflection. In Oliver's I downloaded a book from ITunes, the story of the kidnapping in Salt Lake City of 
Elizabeth Smart called, My Story. So now Charlotte likes me to read it out loud to her. I suppose in a way it is like one of those audio books. It is not easy to read about a person so evil and manipulative who preys on children. I don't know really why we chose this particular book, but we did. Perhaps we can handle it in small doses. This cold in this place goes right to your bones. We will be beating it back to Ollie's pretty soon, but no more of that yummy white wine or we will be needing another nap. The pictures are a little out of order because I used the iPad to snap the one in Ollie's place. The last picture is of the church here in Costamezzana, too bad it wasn't open. It has a very grand look to it with the dual staircase on either side of the figures depicting a biblical story and a stone cairn listing the names of those who died from here during the Second World War. It all has a very symmetrical look to it. The architect would have had that vision in his mind when he was designing it. I could go see the Signora who signed us in, she would know who to see to open the church up, in fact she might even have the key. Walked in to Ollie's and he showed us his freshly drying pasta and he is going to make us some with tomatoes.









No comments:

Post a Comment