36hrs later...
3:40am
I have arrived in a farmhouse outside the the city just to the SW of Bologna, Casalecchio di Reno, on the river Reno, in what seems to be state park land. My dear friend Stefano (clown name Geppo!) came to get me at 2 in the morning. My plane from Madrid to Venice was an hour late, but even people who tried to get trains at 6pm, long before my anticipated 8pm train, couldn't get a train leaving Verona (the switch-over off the Venice-Milan line) until past 1am. There had been a partial train strike from 9pm saturday to 9pm sunday.
Poor Stefano, who has to go early to Ravenna to his Iyengar yoga teacher training (he's amazing, and needs to practice teaching in english on me!), got stopped by the "Carabinieri" who are the cops, but here ALL the cops are state troopers. Really kind of sickening, quasi-military police. Driving his french housemates car we could barely find the car's documents, and we didn't get to his house til 3:20am. When we stopped for gas, there were more cops just stopping people in cars. One sauntered over, casually interrogated us, i.e. with out checking our documents, and we laughed after driving away. "Welcome to Bologna" Stefano said.
This place is gorgeous, at least it seems at night. we passed a hare on the road, and he told of boars and deer. Its a work-trade house farm project of sorts that him and his wife Sophie (french canadian, they met in india the year after I left) put TONS of work into the last two years, and now its just been going more and more sour, and they're getting out in a month, unsure what's next. Besides the very late departure from Madrid, flights were fine/nice enough. Madrid layover 5+hrs was quite nice, i ate lunch, read, napped, and played trumpet (THANKS GENEVIEVE!!) on a grassy hillside with beautiful trees in between two terminals. And I got started on my Italian tan, shirt off and all. Its quite mild here, tho cooler out at this farmhouse.
I'll be here only a day or 2, some conference regarding this house-farm project, but may well come back. Tomorrow priorities are getting a cell phone up and start contacting folks, for reconnecting and more housing. Especially seeing Lucia, who's also out in the country somewhere and has my lovely bike that's been waiting for me all these years. And dinner with Stefano. My objectives generally are: practice tamburello (that's pugliese tambourine, the one I had brought to my from puglia via milano 3 weeks ago in brooklyn), trumpet, yoga, italian, couchsurfing; work on english translations for Alessandro, who I have come here to work with and do this parade/street theater; find pugliese song/drum/dance/music folks to learn from, hopefully including my old pizzica crew; cry as much as I need to; visit a grave; eat well (mostly home cooking); reconnect with jewish community here; explore to the depths of my soul; connect with the Theater of the Oppressed group here.
I guess that's pretty specific.
I made friends with 3 young students waiting and riding that train from Verona, and got into talking a lot of local and Italy-vs.-"America" intercultural social issues. The run-in with the cops with Stefano seemed to leap right out of that conversation.
So this is all pretty detailed and expository. Maybe next one will be more about what the hell is going on on the inside.
(Thanks for the Sun Magazine, Auntie Martha, I've been traveling with them and I think its helping this writing just flow, free-style, minimal self-criticism :)
I have arrived in a farmhouse outside the the city just to the SW of Bologna, Casalecchio di Reno, on the river Reno, in what seems to be state park land. My dear friend Stefano (clown name Geppo!) came to get me at 2 in the morning. My plane from Madrid to Venice was an hour late, but even people who tried to get trains at 6pm, long before my anticipated 8pm train, couldn't get a train leaving Verona (the switch-over off the Venice-Milan line) until past 1am. There had been a partial train strike from 9pm saturday to 9pm sunday.
Poor Stefano, who has to go early to Ravenna to his Iyengar yoga teacher training (he's amazing, and needs to practice teaching in english on me!), got stopped by the "Carabinieri" who are the cops, but here ALL the cops are state troopers. Really kind of sickening, quasi-military police. Driving his french housemates car we could barely find the car's documents, and we didn't get to his house til 3:20am. When we stopped for gas, there were more cops just stopping people in cars. One sauntered over, casually interrogated us, i.e. with out checking our documents, and we laughed after driving away. "Welcome to Bologna" Stefano said.
This place is gorgeous, at least it seems at night. we passed a hare on the road, and he told of boars and deer. Its a work-trade house farm project of sorts that him and his wife Sophie (french canadian, they met in india the year after I left) put TONS of work into the last two years, and now its just been going more and more sour, and they're getting out in a month, unsure what's next. Besides the very late departure from Madrid, flights were fine/nice enough. Madrid layover 5+hrs was quite nice, i ate lunch, read, napped, and played trumpet (THANKS GENEVIEVE!!) on a grassy hillside with beautiful trees in between two terminals. And I got started on my Italian tan, shirt off and all. Its quite mild here, tho cooler out at this farmhouse.
I'll be here only a day or 2, some conference regarding this house-farm project, but may well come back. Tomorrow priorities are getting a cell phone up and start contacting folks, for reconnecting and more housing. Especially seeing Lucia, who's also out in the country somewhere and has my lovely bike that's been waiting for me all these years. And dinner with Stefano. My objectives generally are: practice tamburello (that's pugliese tambourine, the one I had brought to my from puglia via milano 3 weeks ago in brooklyn), trumpet, yoga, italian, couchsurfing; work on english translations for Alessandro, who I have come here to work with and do this parade/street theater; find pugliese song/drum/dance/music folks to learn from, hopefully including my old pizzica crew; cry as much as I need to; visit a grave; eat well (mostly home cooking); reconnect with jewish community here; explore to the depths of my soul; connect with the Theater of the Oppressed group here.
I guess that's pretty specific.
I made friends with 3 young students waiting and riding that train from Verona, and got into talking a lot of local and Italy-vs.-"America" intercultural social issues. The run-in with the cops with Stefano seemed to leap right out of that conversation.
So this is all pretty detailed and expository. Maybe next one will be more about what the hell is going on on the inside.
(Thanks for the Sun Magazine, Auntie Martha, I've been traveling with them and I think its helping this writing just flow, free-style, minimal self-criticism :)