Sunshine/Snowfall

Deep into the mid-30s (that's Celsius...I'm too hot to do the calculations for Fahrenheit for you - please do them yourself) here in this Roman summer, and it stands to reason that a pale person whose ancestry is confined to geographical points far north of here would turn her thoughts to cold things. This is partly due to the need to remind the self that yes, it is possible to feel cold.  Here are the pictures to prove it.

If you are one of those types who seeks the sun, who left a colder clime for a tropical one, who dreams of feeling more or less cooked on a beach, who relishes steamy, sauna-like experiences, who would just as soon never see another snowflake in their lifetime...

I salute you.

And I gently suggest that you skip this post. 

You *can* visit this lovely town when the temperatures are warm, and go shoulder-to-shoulder with all of the tourist throngs that visit then, too.

I just won't be joining you.

In January, we planned a brief weekend getaway to Assisi. The Spouse had never seen this hillside town, and since he's a big fan of St. Francis, it seemed like a good idea. 

Our time there began like this, with beautiful blue skies and a chill in the air.

And our time ended like this, with sporadic snow and wind.

Same church, different view.  DECIDEDLY different. 

When we arrived, we took a tour of the double-decker church of St. Francis.  

Led by a Franciscan monk, of course. 

The church has two full floors, which is unusual.

It is decorated by a an enormous number of frescoes - some of them by some of the most important figures in early Italian Renaissance (rewind 200 years before the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Raphael, Michelangeo, etc) painting

This geometric decoration is characteristically Tuscan...so much variety set within one space is dazzling.

Frescoes in the upper level of the church are considered by many to be by Giotto di Bondone, the famous 'Father of Renaissance Art.'  For more info on the time period, works by Giotto and this church, visit the links. 

(I'm sneaking photos, here, so apologies for the quality.  The finger-wagging monk was watching me)

So I'd said that the artists who decorated the upper and lower levels of the church were 'early Renaissance,' but it's fair to also say that they were 'late Gothic,' too.  Shifts in trends - in art or other fields - are slow to move.  During such transitions, you would see the evidence of both styles at play.  Hence - the presence of pointy, arched windows, which we would readily classify as Gothic in style.

That central, 'rose' window is also emphatically Gothic in style.

Once we exited the church (right), we paused to take in the view, since Assisi is perched on side of steep hills...a preferred location choice for many Tuscan towns.  Better to see the enemy from afar that way.

We already knew the weather forecast included the possibility of snow the next day.  The quality of that sunset certainly confirmed the changeability of weather.

Have I mentioned that it's a GREAT idea to visit these places when they are not covered up in tourists? 

Situated in front of the church (left) was the elaborate, life-size nativity scene still on view from the recent holidays.

25 steps from this view was an enoteca.  The light was closing in predictably early on this winter day, and it was really too soon for dinner. So the next best choice was to do some wine tasting. Below are some photos of the ones we sampled.

If you want to impress the recipient and really make them happy with a bottle of red wine that they can keep for a long while without opening it, and then enable them to still enjoy it immensely when they finally uncork it, then choose a Brunello di Montalcino.  It is the smoothest red I know of.  You can find it in the states, but be braced for the price.  It's really not that cheap here, either, but there's a significant reason for that.
Also, that stuff just beyond this bottle is an array of Norcia salsiccia (dried sausage). 

We also sampled other reds.

We sampled whites. 

A better shot of those sausages.

We spent awhile at this place.  Can you tell? To be fair, we had a thorough experience, with cheese and sausage pairings.  And we had ALL the attention of the gentleman leading the tasting (yet another reason to do this kind of thing in the off-season)

We finally left, walked to dinner and then to our hotel.  For all of these experiences, we stayed on this same street, with the double-decker church in view. 

'Sister Moon' - our hotel.  I doubt that we would have wanted to stay here in the height of summer season, because the prices would have been decidedly higher. 

The following day was a Sunday, with an overcast sky and a brisk wind. It was so, so quiet here. We just walked around.

We chanced upon a monument to Assisi monasteries and convents which harbored 300 Jewish refugees during World War II. 

Crucial to this enterprise was Bishop Nicolini, commemorated here in a statue. The refugees were given falsified identity and ration cards.

The views are available from several vantage points.

Of course we visited the 13th century basilica dedicated to St. Chiara...a follower of St. Francis and the founder of the Poor Clares. She was the first woman writer of monastic guidelines for women.   Legend tells of an instance in her life when she was too sick to attend St. Francis' sermon.  She experienced it in a vision instead.  For this, she was made the patron saint of television in 1958. 

As you might expect for the founder of the barefoot Poor Clares, the church is rather spare in its decoration.  

That long view from the hilltop town indicated that indeed, the forecasted snow was here. 

The wind and the wet didn't really stop us from enjoying the place. 

Or from picking up some sweets for the train ride home.

Yeah - that's snow in my hair and on my clothes. Not exactly blizzard quality, but I'll take what I can get.  

And as we sweat through the dwindling dog days of this season, let us all try to remember that time - wherever and whenever - when we couldn't feel our faces. And let us all remember that that time will come again. Have faith, cold weather friends.

An Open Letter to: Indigenous People of 'Touristy' Towns

Dear all Indigenous People of 'Touristy' Towns,

Because I have now walked a number of kilometers in your mostly tiny shoes, I need to tell you that I'm pretty sorry.

For years, I took student groups to  - and I also travelled with a companion for vacations - to your hometowns, and I fear that we often got in your way.

We walked too slowly, stopped abruptly in pedestrian thoroughfares, and almost got ourselves killed or maimed by mindlessly stepping into heavy traffic.
We took up the entire width of countless sidewalks, entrances to sites, doorways, lobbies, ticket offices, gift shops, bathrooms and restaurants, heedless of your need to Get Somewhere.
And thus, we kept you - however temporarily - from being able to fully live your lives.

We flouted custom - often. Or we didn't bother to learn custom to begin with.
We concentrated so heavily on our selfies that we may have failed to truly see whatever monuments or sites you hold dear as distinct parts of your heritage.

We most likely took photographs of things that we were told not to photograph. We touched things we weren't supposed to touch. We wandered into prohibited spaces, and when you asked us to leave, we may have gotten unnecessarily touchy about it.

We could have neglected to honor your elderly or infirm on public transit by voluntarily offering them our seats...or we failed to put our bags in our laps to free up a seat for someone.
We probably left some trash in our wake.
And when we had the opportunity to place select items in recycling containers, we failed to notice them.
We were cranky and goofy with jet lag.
We often massacred basic pronunciations of your simplest and most commonly used words.
We were sometimes loud and abrasive. And were we guilty of upping the volume when we mistakenly thought our native tongue would be better understood that way? Yeah, probably.
We most likely wandered your nighttime streets, a little too tipsy from the drinks we had at dinner, singing and talking at the tops of our lungs - while you tried to get 7 hours of sleep before going to your 9-to-5 jobs.

We stopped and asked you for directions when we couldn't figure out the map.  And we still got lost. A lot.

We could have talked - within complete earshot - about some of you as if you couldn't understand us, our gestures or facial expressions.
We wondered aloud about your unique customs and probably sounded as if we didn't appreciate them. We reimagined the things that you love about your home with whatever 'improvements' we would impose, if we had our way.

We may have greeted some of your most treasured recipes with grotesque curiosity, or even horror.
We may have complained that your authentic dishes didn't taste enough like the corporate-ized facsimiles we expected to have instead.

We could have become huffy over the fact that you wouldn't take a credit card for a bottle of soda.

We may have mistakenly confused your dependency on the influx of tourist money with our bizarre "right" to behave badly.

Many, if not most or all, of us had never been where you live, before.

And if you are in possession of some of the great artistic/architectural/archaeological/natural wonders of the world - things that you pass by every day, and accept as your heritage, the ordinary backdrop to your familiar world - then yes, you got to witness our very first sightings of those things.
Our awe.
Our standing stock still in the middle of one busy thoroughfare or another, as we took in the vision of that amazing art/building/structure/pile of rocks/etc., is hard to accommodate when you have bags of groceries to carry home or an appointment to keep.
Your (perhaps grim, possibly exasperated) visage found its way into our snapshots.  How many times are you accidentally included in some foreign stranger's collection of souvenir images and albums, do you think? Over how many years of swarms of tourists do you appear in a fragment or in whole in their treasured memories?

Rest assured, whenever I traveled through your hometown, I thought about you (even if I didn't consider you, which is a different and more important thing).  I would see your shuttered windows, or you unlocking your front door or tending your garden, and I wondered what your lives were like.  I mused upon the notion of living next to or in view of things that are pictured in my art history textbooks.  I contemplated whether I would stop seeing - and stop regarding - what tourists gaze upon, anew, every single day.

And now, however temporarily, I AM you.  I am carrying those groceries.  I am scurrying to my appointment. I am sometimes forgetting that these masses of strangers are seeing something impressive for the first time, and that they are forgetting themselves and their literal position in space.
They are sunburned, even if they don't feel it yet. They are rumpled and a little tired and squinting in the bright Mediterranean sun.  They are checking off a series of boxes before they get back onto a bus, or onto a boat, or collapsing in a hotel room (with a sagging bed and weak air conditioning). They will review their photos of the day, and they will not notice me in them: head down, intently focused on weaving through the crowds...and not noticing That Amazing Thing, whatever it is.

I'm standing on the other side of this scenario now, is all I'm saying.
And I am humbled and challenged and intent upon doing better next time.

love,
Me