Volunteering in Priocca, Piedmonte, Italy.

We had found Pino (our host) on Workaway, and he needed help preparing for the hazelnut harvest in late August. Pino lives just outside Priocca, which has around 2,000 inhabitants, in a big house and he has 4 ecological hazelnut plantations.

When we arrived and knocked on the door, the guy who opened it said 'Welcome, I am not Pino. Pino isn't home, but come in'. So we did, and as Pino wasn't  there, and the friends were busy preparing basil leaves for making pesto, we jumped right in a helped.

We had a wonderful dinner - the pasta with pesto was out of this world - on the terrace, and we felt so lucky going straight into a typical friends gathering on a Friday evening. It was our first experience of the real Italian culture, sure beats being couped up in a hotel room. We felt genuinely welcome by these warm friendly people, and with our introductory Italian language course taken in Vancouver, we could often understand the thread of the conversation or eureka, we understood what was being said!!

Pino is the guy looking at the camera.

Then the hard work started: We worked 3 hours in the morning until around noon, when it got too hot (35 degrees), and 2-3 hours after 16:30, when it cooled off till around 32 degrees picking all branches larger than 15 cm off the ground among the hazelnut trees as they would stick to the nets when the nuts were harvested, and would be a pain to get out of the nets.

or securing them with metal wire and pegs, so the nuts couldn't fall in between the next when they fell of the trees. 

 The cat was supervising Andy's work. Hard work!

A conventional plantation owner, would use a machine to 'vacuum' the area under the trees from branches, grass and leaves, another machine to harvest the nuts off the ground, and another one to blow air to separate the nuts from the 'cover'  - price around $50,000!

For a couple of days Pino had to do his work as wine inspector, so we were left to work alone, which we enjoyed very much. Every day we went to his ecological garden to pick tomatoes, zucchini, eggplant, cucumber salad or herbs for lunch - what a treat. And after lunch a well-deserved siesta - it was way to hot to be outside, let alone working anyway1

And there was always time for a gelato in Canale.

A typical village image in Italy:

Most evenings we didn't start cooking until around 20:30 (read: we chopped, Pino cooked), and we had some amazing simple pasta dishes, salads, bread - and, of course, wine!

Pino was a great host; Saturday evening he took us to the Peach Festival in Canale, a larger village about 5 km away, and we tasted food from different areas of the village, listened to music and soaked in this local event. He made sure to tell us we were sleeping in the next morning, which was great because we didn't arrive home till 1:30am. Note: This was not due to Pino's driving skills. Torino 500 anyone, just hang on and pray to the God of your choosing!!

Another day after finishing work in the evening, Pino took us visit his friend Angelo, who owns the vinery Cascina Ca'Rossa; we tasted some vines, and he gave us a couple of bottles to take home for dinner - no complaints there! Angelo is somewhat famous in Italy, having won twice the award for best wine under ten euros, and guess what he is in the finals again this year!

Tuesday evening around 20:00 when Pino came home, he suggested we go to Turin to have pizza - we were all for that, and got ready right away. It took about one hour to get there, and we had some great pizza. Pino had lived in Turin for 10 years, so after dinner he gave us a guided tour, and what a surprise Turin was to me. The city has had a sad reputation as a 'car manufacturing city' (FIAT factories), and not worth visiting, but the city center is beautiful. The tour gave us some sense of direction, which was helpful, as we were taking the follow day off to go there on our own.

Volunteering Experiences

- In the future, we have to make sure we choose places which are accessible by public transportation, so we have the option of doing some hiking or sightseeing when we have time off.

- We do not want to spend 2.5 weeks in a tent on a futon ever again!!

- We will avoid hard manual labour as we are both reaching the age where all the little aches and pains of middlessence start to add up!

- It was a 'healthy' experience to live back to nature, as it reminded us of how many things we take for granted, e.g. hot water, running water, and kitchen aids.

- We missed having time to ourselves; it takes it's toll tiptoeing around other people's homes, sharing bath rooms, and having to be social all the time. 

- It was wonderful to meet so many interesting people, and we feel richer as they all touched us in different ways.

No more volunteering until mid-November in Nepal, which will be yet another very different experience!

Florence: The Cradle of the Renaissance.

This is the city on whose streets Michelangelo played as a child, and in whose studios the Italian Renaissance had started!

The train ride from San Remo to Florence took 7 hours by regional trains, which are the cheapest, but also the slowest. We seemed to stop in every little town on the way.  We enjoyed the Tuscan country side, and the gentle swaying motion and repeating clicking had a soothing effect on us. We took a quick trip down memory lane as the train from Genoa to La Spetzia went through Cinque Terre, which we visited 4 years ago.

We book most of our on-the-road accommodation through Booking.com as it is easy to navigate, has no cancellation fee unless it is a really last minute booking, and no payment upfront. When we arrived at Hotel Veneto, located 15 minutes walk from the train station, they had no water supply on a whole floor, so we were offered a room on the 3rd floor in another building just around the corner with a great view - lucky for us.  Notice El Duomo on the far left!

The ancient Roman colony of Florentia was founded in 59 BC. Between the 13th and 14th century, at the time of Dante and Boccaccio, when some of the iconic buildings like the Duomo (Cathedral)

and Vecchio Palazzo were built, the city enjoyed a fertile cultural period, and Florence confirmed its economic power in Europe, particilarly with the introduction of the the gold florin, the first truly international currency.

In the 15th century, at the height of the Renaissance, Florence achieved its greatest moment, thanks to the concentration of brilliant personalities like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. Florence is called 'The Cradle of Renaissance', and since 1982 the historic center of Florence has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

At the Academia Gallery  we saw Michelangelo's famous statue ' David' as well as many religious paintings, sculptures and busts. David is a masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture created between 1501 and 1504. It is made of marble and is 5.17 meters high.

It is amazing to watch the sun set over Florence from Piazzale Michelangelo, a balcony over the city, where there is a replica of the 'David' statue.

When the sun sets over the Arno, it overwhelms Florence with tides of color that makes all the sharp lines dim and faint and turn the solid city to a city of dreams - Mark Twain

If you feel like a delicious local lunch or dinner in a less touristic area, we can recommend walking across Ponte Vecchio, which is a medieval stone closed-spandrel segmental arch bridge over the Arno River. It still has shops build along it. Butchers initially occupied the shops, and now it is jewellers, art dealers and souvenir shops.

Continue up the road for about 100 metres and turn right into to Piazza Santo Spirito, where we had a delicious dinner at Gusta Osteria, and we were also recommended the Osteria Santo Spirito, but we didn't eat there.

The Leonardo da Vinci Museum featured drawings and replica of some of Leonardo's many inventions. Already in 1485 Leonardo invented a projected a tortoise shaped vehicle, reinforced with metal sheet, equipped with and internal sighting turret and cannons.

Leonardo also designed a revolving crane, a hydraulic saw (we saw one in operation in Switzerland), a parachute, and many other inventions.

We chose to ignore pangs of guilt as we would rather relax in a square and watch the world go by than trudge on sore feet through another breathtaking palace, museum or church.

You can buy a Florence card for Euro75 valid for 3 days and it gives you access to 50 museums, and urban busses and trams. We were not interested in that many museums, so we didn't do that, but then it is recommended to book tickets to the museums online before you arrive or go to the various ticket offices and book for the following day, as the line ups for people without tickets were LONG, and it is uncomfortable standing in line for hours in 35 degrees sunshine.

One day we rented bicycles and biked along the river to San Antonio about 7 km outside of Florence. It was nice to get away from the heat and all the tourists. The temperature that day was in the low 40's.

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Every afternoon we have treated ourselves to gelato, and nobody makes ice cream better than the Italians; the most expensive one was Euro 10, and it was worth every bite - we forgot to check the price before buying it! Always check the price first in high tourist areas, particularly near train stations!

We bought salad, tomatoes, cheese and tuna at a supermarket, and had dinner by the river, finishing off the evening by watching the sunset from the bridge with a glass of Chianti Classico. 

What a perfect way to say 'Ciao Florence'.

Barolo

It took one hour by train from Cannes to San Remo in Italy , where we picked up the rental car, had lunch, and then headed towards Barolo in the Piemonte Province a couple of hours south of Turin.

We stopped for a swim in Imperia, as we would not have that opportunity for a while heading away from the coast.

We had bought a road map of Italy, but Barolo wasn't on the map, and we just couldn't find any signs showing us the way, so we asked at a gas station, and found it by help of a drawing after the guy had called is Mum asking for help - good old pen and paper!

Barolo is a picturesque village with 800 inhabitants  located in a valley and surrounded by vineyards and other medieval villages. Barolo is a small part of the larger Langhe wine growing region, and it is world famous for the red wines made here from the nebbiolo grape.

We stayed in a large room with a kitchenette at the Vicolo del Pozzo just behind a wine shop, and was offered a glass of wine upon arrival.  We wandered around town, and had a nice dinner of veal and rabbit both cooked in Barolo wine - very tasty.

The following morning we walked the 10 km return through vineyards to Monforte, another medieval village, had lunch on the town square, and bought a bottle of vine at a vineyard on the way back to Barolo. Wonderful views along the way.

Well back, we went for a drive, stocked up in a supermarket, and bought a bottle of wine at the Grand Cru Cannubis winery.

The following morning we visited the Barolo Wine Museum www.wimubarolo.it located in the former castle of the Marquis Carlo Falletti, and it was a  very interesting and interactive experience.

'The birth of great wine is the result of the incessant work of nature, in a lengthy and often mysterious process: all things considered, it involves the formation of a small universe, the creation of a living being. And while many different factors contribute - the heat of the sun and the cycles of the moon, the characteristics of the soil and the work of man - time is what marks the life cycle of the wine and brings the grapes to ripeness, commands the harvesting and crushing of the grapes and governs the transit of the must from the bat to the bottle. And time is the essence when the grape must rest in the barrels: the patient wait for the fermentation process to allow the wine to express it's full character'.  Amen!

'In the history of Western civilization wine has always been more than just a drink. At the centre of traditions and legends, it is even a metaphor for life. Wine has made it's mark in every era. It has accompanied the history of mankind since ancient times: from Anatolia to Mesopotamia, from Ancient Egypt to Greece, throughout the Roman Empire, Christianity and the Middle Ages up to the nineteenth century' - Barolo Wine Museum Brochure.

The first lovers of wine were the Gods and Goddesses!

Barolo also has a crock screw museum (embed link www.museodeicavatappi) where we saw this very for us relevant t-shirt.

Alora, enough wine for now, and on to Priocca about 50 km north east of Barolo to start our week of volunteering in an ecological hazelnut plantation.