[Editor's note: i don't have dates for these bits... but alexa has been home for weeks.]
Arrived by plane in Milan early in the cold morning and decided to take the train into the city, greener than the bus, same price, but less frequent service. Arrived at the rococo train station and began looking for Internet cafes to find directions to my couch. Finally a helpful soul at a nearby McDonald's obliged me with her netphone and I set off on the Metro to meet my Polish hostess. She only had a night to give me, but convinced me to go back into town with her and see the sights. We walked around the Duomo (cathedral) and found a free exhibition of the paintings of Bob Dylan in an old palace! The train station had the most expensive pay toilet I'd seen in Europe; one euro, or $1.30. Europe a lot pricier than Asia. Subsequent ones went down to a more reasonable 25 cents. Agnietzka cooked her first meal in her beautiful studio apartment, courtesy of her employers.
I had an open invitation to Lorenzo's couch in Arcidoso, in Tuscany, called Amiatautogestita. We researched the transport online and the next morning I was on a train for Grosseto. But since it was Sunday, the buses to Paganico and then Arcidoso were not running. But the sun was out, and so was my thumb, and three kindly Italians saved me. An angel in white headed for Bologna left me in Paganico; a bearded father of ten stopped in his old van with his oldest son and left me at a bus stop one village away. When the local bus failed to arrive, another man delivered me to Arcidoso and I dragged my luggage up the cobblestone street to the castle on top of the hill. A man pointed at Lorenzo's anarchist library/free store/600-year-old couch haven opposite, calling it 'bed and breakfast.'
From the website and Facebook's translation: "AMIATAUTOGESTITA believes that through free education and work (we) can become individuals capable of developing the necessary strength to deliver us from the nightmare of the injustices perpetuated in the name of capital. Learn to be active and responsible individuals producing our food together is just one of our activities that serve to learn love for what surrounds us."
I was impressed that Lorenzo was a vegetarian who didn't want to pay the murderers who provide meat. Always great to meet people more radical than myself! Another local Italian named Yuri and an Iowa backpacker appeared. I browsed the free store for warm clothes and boots and the library. The English books were non-fiction but I enjoyed beginning The Prize, about the history of America's oil industry. There was a pile of wood outside to keep the fireplace blazing. That and the cigarette smoke gave me a cough that hung on until I reached Lisbon.
The next day, the Iowan gone, Lorenzo, Yuri and I walked down the hill and up another to a small plot of land, the commune's garden. My job was picking weeds and roots out of the turned earth. We went back another way, stopping at Yuri's parents, who welcomed us with an impromptu dinner of eggs, bread, cheese and wine. His mother gave me shoelaces for my 'new' boots. Kiwi and cream for dessert. I still had a rabies shot to get and Yuri mistakenly advised me to go to the next town, 3 kilometers away for it. It was a nice walk but the hospital directed me back to a district clinic 200 meters from the couch! The doctor would be in the next morning. When I returned, he took me from the packed waiting room, copied all my paperwork, and explained I didn't need any more tetanus, it was part of the TDAP series I'd gotten in the states. I got my last rabies shot for free!
Rain and cold precluded any more garden work. I made several trips to the local supermarkets for beans, bread, cheese, pasta, wine, which didn't last long in that crowd. A Russian fellow arrived and left. Other local Italians dropped in to eat, smoke and discuss. An Italian girl from Perugia arrived, and she and Yuri got busy restringing and upholstering the kitchen chairs. I had my own bedroom and double bed. You had to fill a bucket to flush the toilet. My Indonesian rubber poncho finally got some use. A young American couple who had been WWOOFing joined us (doing construction and planting on an organic farm).
I took a morning bus to Florence (Firenze). I had missed visiting the Boboli Gardens and Piti Palace in 1995, but despite a four hour layover, I couldn't make myself pay 5 euros a bag to secure my heavy luggage at the station. I also resented a 10 euro booking fee I'd paid in Arcidoso, when I got on a half-empty bus, until in Florence I got on the bus for Dijon, packed with Arabs and Africans. I might have been stranded. I had found a couch in Dijon and it was a reasonable distance from Nancy, my next destination. Another night on a bus, still reading MacKinley Kantor's Spirit Lake. The Iowan knew of the book, which takes place in frontier Iowa, and ends with a massacre (spoiler alert).
I read more when I arrived in Dijon in the shelter of the train station. My hostess would not be ready for me for hours, recovering from a birthday party the night before. Finally with some help I got a tram ticket to the Place de la Republique, and finally found someone with a cellphone to call her. Veronique was nearby in the square, a divorcee of Italian descent with a lovely old ground-floor apartment. I was given her now grown son's room. We went to a Chinese restaurant and then to a film, Bill Murray playing the philandering FDR, reassuring the stuttering King of England of American support for the war. Veronique had a map of Dijon and the next day I discovered that lovely old walkable town. President Hollande was visiting and I photographed a demonstration on my way back from the botanical garden. We had a lovely meal of pesto pasta and the next day I was on the train to Nancy, and Marianne, the daughter of the mayor of nearby Toul, where my Army father was stationed in the '50's.
Elegant Marianne lives in a lovely old apartment off the beautiful Place Stanislas I'd visited in the summer. She had the kitchen and bathroom, indeed the whole place remodeled since her mother's death. She cooked lovely meals and we enjoyed French TV from her mother's adjustable bed. This visit I would see the museums. Marianne took me to the Beaux Arts and the Ecole de Nancy (Art Nouveau) and along the canal and the old town. My camera got a work-out. She gave me a warm wool sweater and an English book, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society. She cooked marvelous meals but spurned my beans from Italy. I went to an Arab Internet place to plan my remaining days in Europe. I had wanted to revisit Trets and Marseille but time was getting too short; I booked a bus to San Sebastian, Spain for a last visit with my old travel partner of the '70's to India, Tino.
It was a long cold wait for the bus to Spain but it finally arrived, coming from Germany and ending in Portugal. I was sorry another all night trip gave me no chance to enjoy the scenery. I arrived in San Sebastian before dawn and sort of recognized my surroundings, but dusted off my rusty Spanish and finally found Tino's apartment building. The name of the street had been changed back to Basque. Luckily it was Sunday so I could join him for his weekly dinner at his sister Marife's flat, with another sister, now a joyful grandmother, Coro, I had met so many years ago. Marife gave me a soft wool hat for my baldish head. Why did I think getting it shaved in Malaysia was a good idea?
Tino shared his library, his videos, his CDs, his washing machine. I wore my Frieda Kahlo self-portrait shirt and clown pants from Italy. He urged me to keep my hat on and hide my head; my hair is slow to grow back. We watched Frank Sinatra in The Man with the Golden Arm, which I'd never seen. I read a book in two days and I can't recall what it was! He couldn't part with Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye but gave me Looking for Mr. Goodbar instead. I didn't remember most of it; it kept me occupied on the train to Lisbon. The sleepers were sold out and somehow I lost my precious Burmese umbrella at the station.
I took a bus and a tram to Cascais, outside Lisbon, to spend one night with my very first couchsurfing hosts of nine months earlier, Ruis and Isa, the naturists. Isa picked me up at the tram station and took me to their big new apartment, walking distance from the beach. She also removed her sleeping three month old son, Santi (Santiago), from the back of the car. Surprise! He joins their two large German shepherds. Isa, 25, trains dogs for the Portuguese Air Force. Ruis, 45, trains dogs privately the dog whispering way (Cesar Millan). We walked the dogs and drove out to his inlaws for a weekly dinner and baby-sharing. Santi tried solid food, fruit. Though Isa's mother doesn't know English, she wanted to be my Facebook friend, as Rui and Isa are. The table groaned with good food.
Isa found a spare pair of hiking boots for me that fit me better than Lorenzo's, which she promised to give to the homeless. Another walk the next morning with the pooches through their leafy upscale neighborhood, past the first shopping center ever built in Europe. Then it was off to Lisbon airport, courtesy of Isa (as in Isabelle; the name means Jesus) and Santi. Rui was dog-training. Isa returns reluctantly to work in another month. She has a pierced tongue and a pin in her back, plus tattoos; a stunning woman. Rui got it right when for his fifth wife he chose a military bride.
Cheap-O Air, which sold me my round-trip Aer Lingus ticket, kept changing the time of my departure from Dublin to New York until the layover from Lisbon reached 23 hours 45 minutes! I must have sent 15 couch surf requests to Dubliners before Cathy, a Frenchwoman with two girls, Mia, 1 and Chloe, 10, accepted me. Cathy lives in Balbriggan, a half hour bus ride from the Dublin airport. Chloe speaks English and French and is learning Irish in school. We drove in the cold rain down flooded streets to look at the raging sea. We stopped in a pub for a Guinness and a hard cider. I bought a loaf of soda bread. I slept with the fishes in the living room after a tasty meal of fries and chicken wings. Chloe loves an American series about witches I never saw before. Mia was a happy baby holding onto furniture to get around.
The morning of my flight we drove to a local castle by the sea to walk through the cold wind. We stopped at a supermarket for lunch makings - cheese and ham, bread and olive spread. I divested myself of my last euros and was delivered to the bus stop back to the airport for a six and a half hour flight to JFK. First I watched Argo on the little screen before me; then Lincoln, and was halfway through a third film when the strip of Long Island appeared out the window. I found the Airtrain back to Manhattan and after a couple of anxious hours and phone calls, my hosts returned from the theatre and once again I slept in my last couch on the West side. The next day I explored the Brooklyn Museum and celebrated Passover with my hosts. Tomorrow a bus to Philadelphia to see old friends, then back to New York for my last all night bus ride to Columbus. Another bus to Nelsonville, my cats, and Easter dinner with my sisters!
The end!
