Listen to the Violins

Sunday, June 9

Yoyi woke up with a cold she had been developing since the previous day.  It made her uncomfortable and wore her out a bit, but she was not really bedridden. So, while we were laid back in Verona yesterday, at least we weren't laid up today.

Gianlucca's friends had visited the previous evening and had brought him several kilos of cherries.  Thus, besides the usual, delicious croissants and capuccino for breakfast, we had a huge bowl of cherries.  After breakfast, as we were preparing to leave, Gianlucca gave us a large bag of cherries to take with us.

After our taxi ride to the train station, when we tried to pay for our tickets, I discovered that I didn't have my credit card.   I concluded that I had failed to pick it up the previous evening at the restaurant.  Luckily, I had my trusty cell phone, which I had barely used to this point, and I called Gianlucca.  I requested that he call the restaurant and ask if I had left the card there, and the restaurant confirmed that I had.  I asked him to request that the restaurant destroy the card.  In the meantime I trusted that they would do so, since I would need the card to buy our train tickets, and did not want to cancel the card.  (Does this start to sound like an email scam?)

Our itinerary for this last day in Italy was to be convoluted.  We took the train to Milan, and we took a taxi to carry our bags to our hotel, where we left them.  Then we walked back to the stazzione and took the train back to Cremona, the town where all the great violin-makers worked in the 16th and 17th Century.

Midway in our trip, the train stopped and couldn't proceed until a disabled train ahead was removed from the tracks.  During the half-hour delay, we chatted with a young fellow in our car who was traveling to promote a book he had written.  He loved practicing English with us; he also could speak French, Portuguese, Polish and some other languages.

When we arrived in Cremona, we exited the train station, and I saw a young fellow carrying a violin.  I hailed him in Italian and he answered me in perfect British English.  He was nice enough to direct us to the Stradivarius Museum and to talk to us a little about why a Brit would live in Cremona.  His name is Nick Robinson; google him and you'll find some very enjoyable concert videos.

Turns out that he had directed us to the concert hall, with a couple of impressive metal sculptures in front.  We walked back towards the town center, where we found the Palazzo Comunale, with the visitors' bureau and the town's exhibit of stringed instruments.

The exhibit, housed in a single, not very large room, contained Amati and Stradivarious violins and Celli.  The staff said that the instruments are taken out every morning, except weekends, and played for the public.  It was Sunday.

Besides violins, Cremona is also known for its turrones, and we bought several to bring home.  Italian turrones are softer than those familiar to us in the States.

Our next stop was the Stradivarius Museum, which displayed not only a large number of Stradivarius, Amati, and Guarneri instruments, but also some contemporaries' work.  In addition, there were displays showing the manufacture of violins and a lot of artwork related to stringed instruments.  There was a special exhibit of multi-media art with a violin theme.  Stay tuned (ha, ha) for our slide show to see more of the artwork.

There are still many violin-makers in Cremona, but one of the few scheduling mistakes I made in planning this trip was to land us in Cremona on a Sunday, when shops are closed.

We took the train back to Milan and had a quick dinner so that we finish early.  Our flight out the next morning required us to get to the train station to catch the airport shuttle bus at 6:30.

Laid back in Verona

Saturday, June 8

We spent a leisurely breakfast chatting with other American guests, served by Gianlucca,  When the Americans left, we continued talking with our host.

Today we walked to the river, which offers protection to the ancient town, as the city lies in a sharp, reverse bend of the river.  The castelvecchio (old castle) abuts the river and has a fortified bridge across the river, as well as a drawbridge and moat -- to protect it from the citizens, no doubt.  The castle stands in the narrow neck of land where the river almost bends back on itself.

The castle contains a museum that displays medieval art and also shows off the interior of the ancient castle.  Yoyi decided to sit comfortably in the courtyard while I visited the museum.  I also climbed up to the ramparts near the top of the castle walls.

From there we walked back to the town center, passing a Roman arch and eventually entering the center through a Roman gateway -- the triumphal arch.  While we were in the past, we visited the 1st Century Roman theater.  They were setting up for a concert for that evening.

While wandering around, we got into conversation with a middle-aged shopkeeper, who was a pharmacist by training.  We learned from him of a shop in Florence that it would have been fun to visit.  The Officina Profuma Farmaceutica di Santa maria Novella has been making medicines, soaps, and fragrances from a wide variety of plants and animals since the height of Florentine culture. We sampled an acacia product that was very nice.  Factory and store are located in the courtyard of the Santa Maria Novella church, right across from the train station and 3 blocks from our hotel in Florence.  And it's free!  Next trip.

We had been on the go and it was nearly 2:00, and now we were in a bind.  We couldn't find any restaurant that was still serving lunch.  Especially in small towns, the eating establishments, as well as other stores adhere to more limited schedules and often even close for a long after-lunch break.  Even the gelato store we planned to visit was closed!  We finally had to settle for snacks for lunch, sitting on the patio overlooking a park.

Yoyi was sniffling and run down, so we went back to the B&B to rest.

We asked Gianlucca for restaurant recommendations for the evening.  Since it was still early we sat on the square across the street and watched the elderly neighbors walk around and wheel around, and the little children playing with each other, supervised by caretakers, mothers, and fathers, while we read and did crosswords.

We ended up at an eating establishment where we sat outside right at the edge of the river.  I looked for a safe local dish, and found one with large smoked sardines (sardone) served with boiled potatoes.  Very tasty.

After our walk back to the neighborhood, we sat outside until it got dark before going back to our room.  Right on the square there was an example of local culinary preferences.  Many (if not most) butchers in the North of Italy offer not only beef, but horse meat and donkey meat, too.

We turned in early, but Yoyi couldn't sleep for her sore throat.

Coming to Verona

Friday, June 7

We walked (comfortably, as there were no stairs; see previous day) to the vaporetto.  (Truth be told, the steps in the B&B from our room down to street level were sufficiently difficult to make up for it.)

We caught the 11:00 train for Verona.  This train had some of the oldest wagons of all the trains we had taken.  We looked for a car that appeared to be comfortable and claimed our seats.

Quiz: what was I supposed to do before boarding the train?  (Keep reading for the answer, if you haven't been paying attention and don't know.)

We settled in to enjoy the scenery and prepare to visit Verona.  After it was too late I discovered that -- yet again -- I had forgotten to validate my ticket on the platform.  Off I went through the train to find the conductor to avoid the fine.  If the air conditioning had not failed on this train trip, it would have been as smooth as our other trips -- if considerably more crowded.

Musing on our visit so far we came to the recognition that after a day or two in each location we had mastered an impressive set of arcane skills -- skills that we would probably never have to apply again in our lives:
 - the streetcar network in Milan
 - the winding streets in Siena
 - the electric mini-bus in Florence
 - the vaporetti in Venice
 - the trains, including reading the schedules and remembering to validate the ticket

Our taxi ride took us to the nicest B&B of our journey.  Gianlucca, the proprietor, has turned his condo into a business, maintaining a VERY clean and well-situated establishment.  Our room was called "Paris."  We learned from Gianlucca that the agency that oversees guest houses requires (why?) that the rooms be thematically named.  This B&B used place names, and the artwork inside the rooms related to the location.  In Venice we had been in the Puccini room, while other rooms were named for other composers.

The B&B was situated on a pretty, landscaped city square where we were puzzled to see a large number of elderly people on the park benches or walking around.  At first we thought that their companions might be their adult children, but we soon concluded that they were, for the most part, caretakers.

After a picnic, we walked into the city center, about 1 km.  The many tree-lined streets outside the city center have large homes, mostly from the 19th century.  It is a good town for strolling.

Street performers and artists are numerous in all the tourist areas.  Aside from the standard mime

acts, such as bicycle riders, Charlie Chaplin, and other famous personalities from film and history, we saw people dressed like famous statues or paintings, especially in Florence.  In Verona we saw people dressed as mummies.  By far the most impressive act was a man seated on the ground apparently -- using only one hand -- holding up his partner. a woman seated above him, with nothing more than a stick held in his hand.  One of us (not me) figured out the physics of this little act.  I have to say: "very clever" to have devised it and to have figured it out.

While we strolled through the city center, we passed the synagogue to make sure that we knew its location, since we planned to attend serviced this evening.

The town is not hectic like the tourist cities.  It is pleasant and relatively small and easy to negotiate.  The primarily renaissance city center has structures from every era from the Roman Empire to the 21st Century.  We visited the Arena di Verona first.  This, and a couple of other structures are vestiges of the Roman period.  The Arena is in active use, with music and theater productions on a regular schedule.  The city gates are also Roman.

The best known attraction in Verona is the house of Juliet -- where Romeo supposedly saw his love on the balcony.  There really was a family in Verona that feuded with another family, and possibly even threatened to marry across familial lines.  In any event, the house we visited was owned by one of the families, and the family name is so similar to the name in the story that just about everyone assumes that it is Juliet's house.  It must be true, since I saw my love on the balcony.

Too bad that the star-crossed lovers were from warring families.  I can see how this lovely little town engenders l'amore.  For our part, we overcame our warring families long ago; the Ashkenazim get along fine with the Sephardim.  What could be better than gefillte fish followed by arroz con pollo?

After walking a lot, and having our daily gelato, we ambled back to the B&B and dressed for shul.  We walked to the synagogue (about a km or so), and we were among the first ones there.  (Is that unusual??)  The building was constructed in the mid-19th Century, but finishing touches were not made until 1929, just about when Mussolini began his harassment of Jews in Italy.

They warmly greeted us, and the first person to engage us in conversation was a conversion candidate.  In a community of about 50 Jewish families, what would inspire a Catholic to become Jewish?  It is unbelievably difficult to be a Jew in places like small-town Italy.  Soon another American couple arrived, as well as the rest of the regulars.

They set up a mechitza down the middle of the room, as the womens' gallery is no longer in use.  Eventually they reached a minyan, and began the service, led entirely by the rabbi.  The granite and marble building with its cavernous interior echoed the davening to the extent that it was nearly impossible to follow without an intimate familiarity with the service.

In addition, the orthodox siddur had only Hebrew -- not a single word of Italian, English, or any other language.  Thus, one had to read the instructions indicating what to include or exclude and what page followed in Hebrew.  Most of the congregation was lost, and simply listened to the rabbi.

The seats were not made for comfort.  There is an old Yiddish expression "es ist schwer zu sei a Yid" (It's hard to be a Jew), but I didn't know that the saying applied to the seats in shul.

I understood fewer than 10 words of the rabbi's dvar, but we all smiled and pretended.  I did understand that kiddush was sponsored by someone celebrating a first anniversary.  We met the young American and his Italian wife as well as her parents at the oneg.  He offered to show us and recommend some restaurants, and we took him up on his offer.  We went to dinner with the Americans, Michael and Peggy from Sonoma, CA.

At dinner I took another chance and ordered stuffed zucchini blossoms.  With melted cheese inside, the blossoms were interesting, but didn't have a particularly interesting flavor.  After a pleasant, several hour dinner, we parted company and walked back to our B&B at about 11:00.