Bettona, Asissi to Pompeii

Most people have probably heard of St. Francis of Assisi. From the house—Ben’s Breakfast—where we stayed, we could look down into the valley and see Assisi. We left the house about 1 pm with about a 5-hour drive in front of us.

While planning our trip, I had called the Pompeii Youth Hostel several times using Skype and made a reservation for the day after Maura flew into Rome from Spain. The boys and I were going to drive to Naples and meet her at the train station after she rode the train south from Rome. Then we would all drive to Pompeii. After experiencing difficulty driving in Italy, I decided we should get to the area a day earlier. This way we wouldn’t have look for the hostel AND see the ruins of the famous volcano eruption during our ONE day in Pompeii. I called the hostel from Bettona—they said they would be waiting for us. So I would get to the hostel on the same evening that Maura flew into Rome.

I naively thought that I would be able to use the directions from Yahoo maps to find my way to the hostel. These directions are great if you find EVERY landmark and signpost. “Drive 57 miles, turn right onto ramp” is pretty clear; but “Drive 40 meters, turn left. Drive 8 meters, turn right” does not leave much room for error. After asking six or seven people directions, I discovered that we were not even in Pompeii, but about 4 km north of Pompeii on the outskirts of Naples. The narrow two-lane road that lay between us and our destination was a cross between a New York Marathon for vehicles and a Cash-For-Clunkers graveyard.

Once I got to Pompeii, I had the address, which didn’t turn out to be much help. I would ask someone, drive until the end of their directions that I understood and ask someone else. Sometimes only 100 meters away. One time I stopped the truck in the middle what I thought was a deserted street. By the time I got back, six people were standing around my truck, annoyed that some stupid foreigner had parked his car in the way.

What were the boys doing while this transpired? Oskar was sleeping and I luckily had an excellent iPod story about a mouse in a castle, The Tale of Despereux, for Maxim to listen to. He loved it. Life continued as such for some 40 minutes, in Pompeii after we had spent 40 minutes in driving from Naples, and 5 hours driving from Bettona, until I arrived at the address.
Finally, when I found what was surely the address, the person asked about the hostel said, “The hostel is right there (I could see the sign for the Pompeii Youth Hostel), but it has been closed for a year.”

“What?!?” Those two question marks and one exclamation point do not near do justice to my feelings. While my outward voice and expression were muted, because I could see no point in looking like a hysterical foreigner who doesn't know how to travel, but inside my hopes collapsed. How could this be true? I had just called the hostel two days earlier and they said they would be expecting us. My wife was flying into Rome that evening; she would come to the hostel the next day, and then what? Did we have to stay at this empty building all night? What if she found out the hostel was closed? Would she even bother to go there? I told the people opposite the hostel, who were having a birthday party at a restaurant, that the situation couldn’t be worse.

“What number did you call?” they asked. When I showed them they said it was a Pompeii number. Their call was automatically forwarded to Naples—35 km to the north, via a road I never wanted to meet again. So even though the hostel—named Pompeii Youth Hostel was taking reservations, they didn’t bother to tell me that they were not IN Pompeii. The website still says that the hostel is a 5 minutes walk from the buried city. I’m still composing the scathing letter I am planning to post on some hostile hostel website.

Anyway, a man at the party where I made the call worked as a tour guide in the city. On his second try, he found a hotel for us—right outside the gates of the ruins. I didn't care how much it cost, ($140/night) I was happy to find something. The hotel was in the midst of hosting a Roman feast with greeters in classic Roman uniforms, swords and weaponry including fake snow machine to add authentic(?) atmosphere. In the end, Maura had sent me a text message on her phone telling me that she was delayed because of snow storms. Luckily, we both had enough money on our phones to communicate to each our plans and locations. She made it the next day without much incident, so the worry of the evening passed. My extreme worry and utter failure of logistics turned out not to be a problem after all.

Next installment: What did we listen to on the way to Pompeii? Second grader Maxim is a junky for news and information. We listened to a 90-minute walking tour of the Pompeii ruins—TWICE.

Bari to Bettona

We woke up about an hour before the ferry arrived to the port south of Bari, Italy at about 8 am. The boys had a good time on the drive north looking at magazines like Highlights, and Ranger Rick. Maxim has become an excellent and enthusiastic reader. The road was confusing at times—it seemed that we were always headed for a town such as Foggia, but when we passed the town, it looked as if the signs STILL said we were heading toward the town. It was such all throughout Italy, so there must be some nuance to the organization that I don’t understand. In general, it was fun. At one point, we turned off to find some food at a supermarket/mall complex. What was in the parking lot? McDonald’s! That place is everywhere. I took the easy way out and went to McD’s but it didn’t open until 11:00. I took this as a sign that we should not go, which was fine with me.
On the map, (click on the map to see an enlargement) it shows that we drove from Piceno to Spoleto. That route took us right through a national park. Delightful, rugged scenery, but we didn’t get there until about 4:00 so we weren’t able to see that much because of darkness. I didn’t even bother to take any pictures. In person, though, the landscape was breathtaking—the kind that makes a guy say, “uh” because nothing comes to mind that will do justice to the appreciation you feel. After asking about 10 people for directions, I found Romanian dude who knew most of the way. He said he had similar experiences in Spain trying to find places and he was happy to pay it forward. We arrived about 8:30 pm. As it turns out we were the very first people this bed and breakfast had invited to come work as part of the HelpX website.

After the boys woke up the next morning, the first full morning of vacation, the boys went straight to the magazines we brought with us. The picture shows them digging into their mags and me into UTNE Reader. The crazy boy picture shows the results of me figuring out the ‘quick shutter’ function on the camera. Soon, we packed on several layers because the house had no central heating. Yes, the place was supposed to be a bed and breakfast (Ben’s Breakfast in Oskar-speak), but not long before we came, their oil furnace had broken down. The weather still wasn’t too bad—slightly below freezing during the night. The two sisters who run the place had been waiting for just such an event. With the fossil fuel-eating, CO2-belching, environment-damaging monstrosity out of the way, they had an excuse to install a wood burning stove for the house. All well and good except it meant that we didn’t go out of our room until we wore an undershirt, two sweaters, and a coat. We survived—even when we all took showers one day.
Right after breakfast, which the two sisters made for us, we took a tour of the land. When I asked what I would be doing, Maria said she was thinking I could bring in some firewood. Later that day, Maxim and I brought in several wheel barrels full of what amounted to mostly sticks. It was a Hallmark moment with Maxim walking one-third of a mile with a load while the 9-month old mutt, named Toaw, that was already bigger than Maxim, ran along side with saliva dripping from his Goofy-grin. The kitchen, where everyone spent most of the time when we weren’t asleep, was heated by a wood-burning stove that used up the sticks quickly. I decided I was wasting my time getting the small stuff, and I remembered that we'd seen a few logs down the hill. The afternoon's work lay clearly before me.
The hillside was quite steep and there was no way I was going to be able to heave those babies up to the path. After dinner, I was not looking forward to starting their old, jury-rigged, three-wheeled cart with lawn mower engine; I understood that this was the machine the ladies called their 'tractor.' To start the contraption, a rope had to be wrapped around the flywheel, pulled, and then rewrapped after every unsuccessful attempt. I was not confident about my skills in starting such engines and I certainly didn’t want to waste an hour or two fiddling around with this old beast that hardly looked stronger than the wheel barrel anyway. As I walked out of the house, I turned the corner and what did I see? Our ridiculously big Nissan Patrol.

This is the truck that we bought sight unseen while we were still in Kazakhstan. Maura took the place of the principal in Albania. This guy had this truck to sell and we didn't want to be forced to buy something when we arrived, so we bought it. Its greatest selling point about this vehicle is that it is fully licensed—that means, I guess, that we can take it out of the country. Many vehicles don't really have any registration papers, so trying to go abroad with it is impossible. The mechanic I found to do some major repairs on it asked me what I do with it.
"Just drive around town," I answered.
"This is the kind of car you take hunting," he said.
It's true that we have never been anywhere we couldn't get out of. The other night, I backed up in the middle of the street and the front wheel dropped in a hole. Not a pothole, but a rectangular, purpose-built hole (for purpose, I don't know). It was about 2-foot by 6-inches and 18-inches deep. Even though the truck has some monster tires on it, a front wheel dropped right in. Luckily, I had recently been playing with the 4-wheel drive function and I was able to pull right out.

I realized instantly that I didn't have to fiddle around with some rinky-dink, pasted together piece of lawn furniture, I could use the fossil fuel-eating, CO2-belching, environment-damaging monstrosity that I had brought over from Albania. I was sure that it would pull logs up the hill with a quite nicely. All I needed now was a chain. No chain—but there was rope. This was exactly that kind of work I was after when I was looking for a job that would be different than teaching. I thought I'd sling the rope around a living tree on the other side of the forest trail (we didn’t have a pulley), tie the end to the log and pull with the truck. With the rope breaking only about five times for each log, I had a good time. I had my ipod plugged into the radio and listened to NPR's Science Friday or Stuff You Should Know. It was especially fun when I invited Maxim to come out and help/watch me. He saw how I pulled a 90% loose stump toward the road until the rope broke. Then I moved some trash out of the way and pulled it a couple more centimeters. Then I slung the rope around an upper branch and pulled the stump up for a few inches. Finally, I simply pushed the hard rock up onto the road. “I like coming out and working!” was a wonderful expression from the boy.
During the afternoon before we left, after I had pulled up all the tree trunks that were scattered on the hillside, I decided to cut down an old dry tree that was still standing. The slope was steep and it was at an inconvenient position. After trimming the extra with lots of volunteer shoots that were eagerly growing around the base, I started in on the 5-foot diameter trunk. The ground was quite slippery, so I cut it off several feet from the base.

When Maxim was younger, he would often ask me to sing him a song before going to bed. Sometimes, I would be more interested going to bed myself, so I asked if he wanted to hear the Lumberjack song—you know – "Timberrrrr!!!!!" Unfortunately, even though he and Oskar were in the back of the truck when this tree took its dive to the forest floor, they were too busy playing around, and didn't see the tree fall.

Cutting this tree turned out to be a problem, not only because the slope was steep and the ground was slick, but also because the Italian forest police enforce a law that people can’t do things that will damage the countryside even on their own land. The next morning, the Maria invited a young man to come out and help me cut apart the stump so the police wouldn’t come after us. As I understand it, the owner of the land must get permission to cut down trees, and the stumps must be cut nearly even with the ground. The young man and I spent the hours before we left for Pompeii throwing, staking and hauling wood—not a bad way to spend a morning.
Our delicious meals at Bens' Breakfast were provided by the owners. When they weren't out with me, the boys played with 20-year-old toys left by the woman’s son, and watched a couple James Herriot DVDs. At any rate, after three nights, we left for Pompeii.

Italian trip

Would you let someone you met over the internet come to your house and stay for five days? We were the lucky recipients of Caroline's hospitality when she did exactly that. I trawled the web for two weeks looking for a place where I could do some physical work while the boys are I were in Italy. No one was harvesting olives or grapes in mid December, but Caroline wrote to say that she may want someone to live in her house while she goes to visit family in the UK. We exchanged some emails and a phone call or two when, about three weeks before the trip, I called to say that we would definitely like to come. She sounded happy.
She told us later that she had second thoughts after she hung up the phone. "What have I done? I don't know these people at all. This is worse than a blind date. They are going to be living in MY HOUSE!" With the end of school and my efforts to plan the rest of the trip, I didn't think about it much.
I gave up on the finding-work plan and made a reservation at a youth hostel in Pompeii. The next day, I got a message that began, "We would love to host you and your sons for a week in mid-December." Then I changed the reservation and made plans to drive 5 hours from Bari, Italy after we got off the ferry from Albania to Bettona.

Six huge ships lit up like Christmas tree were exciting for all of us—my boys and I. Immature as a child? I'm guilty. During this off-season trip, there were about 6 cars on a deck that could hold about 100 cars. Regardless of this fact, we were directed to park close enough so that we had to squeeze out the window. The ship also carried about 20 semi-trailer trucks that were also packed in tightly. The trip over the Adriatic was mostly uneventful. We went to sleep right away because it was already 11:00 at night. During the night, I switched places with Maxim, who was on the top bunk, because the ship was pitching and rolling some 30 degrees. It was far enough anyway that I was afraid he might roll out. All arrived safely.

Albania Day

Albania Day was at the end of November. This was the day to commemorate the independence of Albania.

Maxim's First Concert

Maxim in his first piano concert. Trying to keep up with his cousin who can be seen here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_WWYVGL3Mg