Castel del Bosco

For those of you who have been following my year on Facebook, it comes as no surprise that I have been in dire need of a vacation since about... oh... September 2nd. I started planning for my summer holidays about a week after that. I knew that wherever my travels eventually would take me, I would start in my beloved Castel del Bosco in the Province of Pisa. I first came to CDB in 2002, settling here after having spent two summers essentially backpacking through Italy. I knew that Tuscany was where I wanted to set up shop, and by pure accident I found this apartment on a quiet lane, about a mile from the FI-PI-LI autostrada at Montopoli Val D'Arno. When I first arrived, via Rafaello was a road of about 15 houses and 20 families, all of whom had been here for at least 2 or 3 generations. They were a community, close knit, like what you would expect from reading guide books on Italy. Today, some 8 years later, the building boom as hit even Castel del Bosco, and there are apartments, and **gasp** even a pizzeria!

But, even with the additional population and all that entails, the core community still remains. You still see families walking up the quiet street after dinner, taking their nightly constitutional. You still see the men-folk playing cards outside on a plastic table, sipping prosecco and gabbing about world cup football, or the economic crisis, or the influx of immigrants. You still find women sitting (now in the new piazza) smoking cigarettes, watching their children play until the church bell tolls their bedtime.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The 5 summers I spent here prior to settling in Siena allowed me to become part of the fabric of the community. I was able to get to know everyone's backstory: the marriages, the divorces, the pregnancies, the illnesses and in fact, the deaths. I was able to integrate into the cycle of life in this small village. Even after three full years in Siena, I never fully felt myself to be Senese in any sense of the term. I was always the American at the university, or in my apartment complex, where people scurried like mice back into thei holes of their apatments at the mere sound of footsteps. In Castel del Bosco, I was a de facto citizen of the town.

Last night, after being back for a week, Vivetta, my upstairs neighbor, landlady, dear friend, and second mother, and I after having sat out on the front porch and caught up on the goings on of the weekend, decided to take a short walk down to the bottom of the road, and see who all was out in the piazza tonight. We could hear the gleeful squeals of children, so Vivetta predicted that Mario might be out with his children and perhaps his mother, Marcella and her sister Luanna would be there, too.

So, we set out. Alas, we had spent too much time gossiping on our own, because when we arrived, all we saw were the remnants of the group, a few stragglers, our friends having just turned in to pumpkins and having headed for home. We wandered in the other direction to find Marco, Vivetta's husband still playing cards with Luigi, Carlo and Moreno, at Luigi's house, Gloria, Luigi's wife was watering the lawn. When we walked up, all smiles and 'ciao's' it felt like a real homecoming. "Lauri! How are you? How long has it been? How are you enjoying being back?" (nobody asked when I got here, because in a town this small, you would have to be living in a cave not to know when someone comes to town). After the quick answers: "I am great, how can you not be great on vacation. It has been at least 4 years since I have spent the summer here, I LOVE being back," we said our 'buona notte's and promised a longer visit another night.

That's the beauty of Castel del Bosco, there is always tomorrow.