Ulivi, yoga, sorgenti termali, pizza e la conversazione. Tutto bene in Italia.

Alright, now that I’ve properly vented about the atrocities of the Italian train system, I can tell you all about the lovely host we’re staying with.  The property is gigantic, she has a very successful veggie garden, a few (and by that I mean about 40) olive trees, and several houses.  It apparently used to be habited by monks many a year ago.  The host herself is a very wonderful, well versed and very well-traveled woman, I would guess in her 60s or 70s.  She has two sons that I am aware of, one who I will meet this weekend when he comes up from Naples (he spends his weekends here, but works there), and the other has been here with his wife and some others for a yoga seminar.  There are also four other HelpXers here, so it’s been considerably more social than our last host.  Not that her conversation was wonderful, but you have so many people to talk to here.

Our first day of work, we started with pruning olive trees.  If you know anything about olive trees, please don’t comment to tell me that I chose the wrong time to do this, because we know.  Basically, some of the trees (mainly the ones around the edges) have been a bit neglected for a year or two, and desperately need pruning.  Unfortunately, they’ve already started flowering, and once they start doing that, you can’t prune them any longer, for risk of preventing fruit (olives).  Well, it’s of a double edged sword though, because if we don’t prune them, they don’t fruit, but if we do prune them, the trees will go into shock and definitely won’t fruit.  I guess they’ve accepted the fact that they won’t be expecting many olives this season, and would rather prune them anyways rather than having loads of work next year.  I don’t blame them, but I must admit it’s quite grueling work.  Given the nature of the olive tree, the best branches make sort of an umbrella, so if you need to get to the base of the tree to cut out all the extra branches that are sprouting from the roots, you have a lot of bending over to do.

Last night they had an inauguration for a mosaic piece done for their big marble terrace, all a bunch of yoga business that I didn’t quite understand, but regardless it was beautifully done and made for a very enjoyable evening.  There were about forty or so people there, we met a nice soon to be med-school student from Ohio working at a B&B in a castle here in Rapolano, and enjoyed some songs by two of the people in the yoga seminars.  Wonderful voices, it was very lovely.

Yesterday started a bit more slowly, but with olive pruning again.  After that though, it very much turned into a lazy relaxing day for everyone.  The yoga seminar people and some helpers who wished to join did some meditation, another helper enjoyed a massage she won for figuring out the number of triangles and petals in the mosaic, and I just enjoyed the quiet.  Afterwards, a combination of us went to a natural hot spring, which was stinky with sulfur but very enjoyable, and then out for pizza.  It was really a very pleasant evening and I really needed it.  The day started with a bit of difficulty for me; I was tired for some reason, despite what I thought was enough sleep, and I wasn’t that enthusiastic about the work.  To be honest, I think I was feeling a bit homesick.  Enjoying some swimming, some pizza and some wonderful conversation really put me back into the swing of things, and I think I’ll be better for it today.  Unfortunately the yoga seminar people invited us to join in their yoga class this morning, but when my alarm went off I stretched out to release some tension in my back, and fell right back to sleep and missed it.  I’m a bit bummed, but alas, its not like I can’t do yoga by myself.

Also, a little side note: there are a lot of accents here at the moment, but a plentiful one is English.  I’ve begun thinking with a British accent.  Seems a bit silly, but I did start dreaming in French while we were in Nice, so I guess it’s not all that unheard of.  I hope I come home with a cool accent!

Treni italiani sono terribili.

Alright, now to update you on getting to Italy.  First, the one sentence summary.  Then I’ll explain.

In order to get from Spain to our host in Italy we took: one bus, two subways, one plane, two trains, sleeping in a train station, another train, sleeping outside a train station, and a car ride.

The Italian train system frustrated me before, when we visited Torino, but I never thought that I could feel so frustrated that all I could think about was going home.

The day started early, with a 7:20 AM bus from our host’s village to Madrid.  We were exhausted from being up late packing, and spent most of the trip dozing off.  When we arrived to the bus station we took two subways to get to the airport, had to pay an extra fine even though we had a boarding pass (oh well, just a euro), and proceeded to figure out the RyanAir process.  Which by the way, I’ll be taking RyanAir out of my Travel Resources page, because it is not as wonderful as we thought.  Went through checking our bags, the visa check, and proceeded to our gate, still with two hours to spare.  Not a big deal, but with recent events we thought security would be heightened, so we had the mindset of “better more time than no time.”  We got on our plane, got lucky with two bulkhead seats, and was annoyed by RyanAir flight attendants constantly trying to sell the passengers food, perfume, lottery tickets, those scam “energy bracelets” and all sorts of things.  So much for napping.

When we arrived in Pisa, we bought a train ticket from the airport to Florence, with the plan of getting off at Empoli.  We forgot to validate our ticket, so we almost got busted and fined for not doing so, but the train guy decided to show some mercy and validated it for us for 5 euros.  Not a wonderful start.  It was also then that we found out that the train wouldn’t be stopping anywhere, it just goes straight to Florence.  Okay… Not the end of the world, we’ll just take a train from Florence to Siena.

Unfortunately, all the trains from Florence to Siena were cancelled due to an electrical problem on the route.  So Jon stood in line for over an hour to ask some one for advice on how to get to our final destination, and after them assuring us that the train to Chiusi would get there in time to get on a train to Siena (and then get off on the stop for our host), we ran to the platform and hopped on the train.

Well, in order for us to make it to Chiusi in time for us to train towards Siena, the Italian train system would have to actually run on schedule.  We got there, only to find that we were in a nothing town, and had just missed the last train by 5 minutes.  We called our host, and after finding out that she wouldn’t be able to pick us up from the first train back home, we had to wait until 9:30ish the next morning until we could have some place comfortable to sleep.  After spending nine hours in the Chiusi train station, failing to get any sleep and freezing our butts off, we decided to hop on the first train anyway, with hopes of the station in Rapolano having a better place to sit.

Wrong again.  The station was tiny, but worse, the building was closed.  Now we had about four and a half hours, most of which we spent freezing, to wait outside until our host could pick us up.  I felt like I was going to be cold for the rest of my life.

I will, never ever ever again, use the Italian train system, unless I can start at the crack of dawn and hopefully avoid the chance of getting stuck some place after missing the last train.  I had a very poor first impression of Italy; its people, its transportation and its organization.  All that being said though, our host is wonderful, there are tons of people here, and we’ve had a good time since we arrived.  I’ll fill you in on that bit later though.