It was a quiet night in the oldest, darkest alley in Bra, Italy. A dark haired young foreign man strode quickly along in a sweaty white t-shirt and nondescript tan shorts. A small dog scurried by and somewhere, on a different street, an accordion was playing a tarentella. The thuds and shouts of impassioned men chucking heavy orbs of stone echoed over the rooftops from a distant bocci court. The cobbles were hushed and quiet, like an alley behind a busy opera house, or the reserve parking lot at a Devil Rays home game.
The dog sniffed a dark pile in the corner next to a trash can, lifted his leg toward a nearby fire hydrant, and marked his territory. Curious at the mound, the boy walked up and prodded it with his cheap sandals, turning it over with his toe. It looked familiar ... black backpack, mesh pockets, buckles, straps ... it was his luggage!
Such are my restless dreams here in steamy, sticky Bra. I would like to be able to report that I sit here writing in my crisply ironed, newly discovered clothes from home. But in fact I am still in the sweaty white t shirt and non-descript tan shorts I was in last night, when I stumbled on a Bocci tournament not far from my apartment.
Bocci is a funny game. Leathery old men in wife-beaters and frayed pants sit along the edge of a large clay court, protected from projectiles by a heavy two inch screen, painted dark green. They smoke cigarettes and, crossing their legs, watch the action unfolding on the court.
Here, under the glare of the lights, three games happen simultaneously. Fat men with skinny legs and small shorts stoically roll heavy black and gray balls from one end of the court to another, aiming for a small red ball about the size of a plum. The Goal: to be closest to the plum. The Rub: the other team is trying to be closest too. So if you get too close with one ball the other team sends up its number one sniper to chuck a surgical strike over everything and right down on top of yours, knocking you out of the game.
The sniper quietly pumps his fist, the snipee glances pleadingly towards heaven.
It's like horseshoes, bowling and curling combined. Men in uniforms smooth and mark the clay around each ball, using a large set of calipers to measure proximity to the plum. A judge watches all three games objectively from the middle, exchanging small jokes with the players. The crowd mutters at strategic machinations.
And I understood none of the subtlety or strategy. So I watched for an hour and moved on, in my twilight stroll of the outskirts of Bra. One thing I'd heard about Italy were that its dogs are remarkable. Almost always small, they are mangy, scruffy little mutts, but what strikes me about them is that they seem to all walk themselves. Since I've been here I've seen probably 30 or 40 dogs, and almost none of them are on leashes, or even with any apparent owner. They will walk up next to me at a crosswalk, pause to look both ways, and proceed with dignity (and more than a little pluck), on their merry way. They will sniff a bush and a tree, and then zigzag off down the sidewalk, looking for adventure. Perhaps more than the Italian people, who are in general well coiffed, clean, and clearly on their way to go do something, I identify more with these bright-eyed Italian dogs. A little mangy, no clear direction, but clearly on some sort of a wandering adventure.
One of these adventures I came across a genuine pirate party. Well, not genuine in the sense that we had a beer and then went off and carjacked a Fiat, but genuine in that there were big, black hats, and busty wenches, and swords (plastic) and tattoos (temporary.)
In truth it was an unofficial Slow Food party, put on by some of the workers in the biodiversity office. They had asked me to come and sing pirate songs, so I put together a list of tunes I knew from sailing on the schooners in Maine, including such maritime hits as "Rolling Down to Old Maui", "Whisky, Johnny", and every buccaneer's favorite, "All for Me Grog."
There is a great local accordion player named Moma, and we put together some of these songs ahead of time, including some fiddle tunes and some of her tarantellas and it turned out to be quite a gig. When at two in the morning even the local dogs were howling along to "Rolling Home to Old New England" I decided to call it quits and rolled home to my old bed.
You can understand now how the dream I described at the beginning of this update came to pass. And even though this week has been quieter than last I am still amazed at this new place, still enjoying myself, and I still get to spend some time every day on the phone with my new best friend, the Air France baggage claim clerk.
For photos and to see these updates together online, check out the new Middlebury-sanctioned web page !