What is this a photo of? Who cares? It is the funnest!…But how does anyone make a living doing this?
Five weeks ago I wrote about a twice a month dinner I host – whereby we ‘ex-pats’ speak about what is on our minds. It is sort of an updated, but toned down Gertrude Stein Parisian Salon styled affair in a quiet Tuscan village. The Weather was the big topic. It was record breaking hot at the time. It is still hot; but we don’t talk much about it anymore. We just slog thru. I wonder if that is how many of us behave with most of our problems. Anyway…There is a wine festival being set up in our piazza, I don’t drink wine. There was a big meat dinner (Local sausages and beefs) in the piazza the other night. I don’t eat meat. People ask me, if I understand their language correctly, why I live here in the first place; not participating in the good wines, and good meats. Well: It is beautiful and the people here are very friendly and happy…and all that grows on one. At 7:00 in the morning – out my bedroom window, I hear men laughing as they have their morning off-to-work coffee. I mean laughing loudly. At 10:00 at night I hear children playing loudly in the piazza,,,loudly laughing. I have to step over pet dogs – large and small – to get to my morning coffee (62 steps from my door), where the Barristas make friendly jokes about my appearance and lousy Italian… The place is truly an adult Italian version of Sesame Street without Snuffleopolus – and I want to keep on being part of the show.
FYI: Many of the ‘Locals’ have been here for several generations…but there are also Romanians, Albanians, Croatians, Africans, European and other ex-pats (this part of Tuscany used to be called ‘Chianti-shire” by the Brits)…all sorts of people living here: men, women young, old…most speaking who knows what languages, probably most of the world’s major religions represented…but we more than get along. I mean; how hard can this be to accomplish?
Maybe I should not reveal the exact location for too many people might come here, and ruin things like they are doing in Venice and Miami…or worse, somebody with a strong personality and rigid ideas on who should enjoy what might want to shut it down.
Be careful out there.
