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Being Where We Are

Posted on June 16, 2013 by Bill Steiner

I recently read something that brought to mind travel and how we are when we travel. This was amplified by two trips we’ve just enjoyed – one to Australia and one to Colorado.

Here’s what I read from Mark Nepo:

The moment we stray from where we are, we create a tension between two places – where we are and where we are thinking of being. It is this tension that blocks us from the sensation of being fully alive.

Having time to absorb a place: coffee and writing in Sydney

One of the things I love about travel, particularly to an unfamiliar place, is that we tend to be fully present. The new and different engage our every sense and we pay attention in a way we don’t when we think we know everything about all that is around us. Because all the senses are engaged it does feel very much alive, and intense, and rich.

This was our experience in our two recent trips. We were fully there and it was such a pleasure. We observe this same presence and pleasure in the people who travel with us on our Adventures in Italy trips. Interestingly, for them and for us, things change when we get near the end of the trip. At that point we are beginning to be both where we are and where we are going next. While natural, it is, for us, a bit sad to see as our new friends of a week, begin to look away to what’s next.

A beautiful pattern from downtown Sydney

I think this dynamic is one reason to opt for longer trips, rather than the shorter, long weekend trips that seem to be increasingly the norm. The longer your trip the longer you are more fully present, the longer you are more fully alive, and the more deeply you are able to experience and enjoy where you are. If you are having to think about your return shortly after you arrive, you don’t really get to experience a place. Longer trips lead to being truly there. In today’s world this is a true gift.

Kristi and Bill Steiner began leading “learning vacations” to Orvieto, Italy in 2003. Through Adventures in Italy they provide a cultural immersion experience. Many trips include the pursuit of some kind of creative work that complements and reinforces exploration of Italy’s culture. Relationships built over the years enable Kristi and Bill to provide experiences that a typical visitor to Orvieto never gets.

Trips are held in May and September/October every year. Their Discover Orvieto and Girlfriend Getaway trips are available to groups any time of the year.

Learn more about Kristi and Bill’s trips. Stay abreast of Adventures in Italy developments, and follow Bill’s musings about travel and Italy on his blog Make Haste Slowly. View Bill’s photos of Italy, Orvieto, and other memorable places at steinerstudiophotos.com.

Slow Travel Tours is an affiliation of small-group tour operators who offer personalized trips in Italy, France and other European countries.

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A Tribute to Rene Castanet of Castel Merle, Sergeac – ‘M. Cro-Magnon’

Posted on June 9, 2013 by Steve and Judie Burman

Rene Castanet

Rene Castanet, who Steve and I always think of as ‘M. Cro-Magnon’, died peacefully at home on the 28th February aged 90. His passing is a great loss, but how fortunate that his granddaughter, Isabelle has a similar passion to her grandfather’s and has been continuing in his footsteps for many years and is set to continue to do so. The first in her family to formally qualify in Archaeology (she studied in Paris), the site of Castel Merle which has been in her family for five generations is in safe and caring hands. Furthermore, she is mother of two lovely children who are showing signs of being just as empassioned as their Mum, Rene, Marcel and those who went before.

Here are some of Steve’s thoughts:

His last piece written for visitors to his museum only a few days before he died, was the story of someone living in the Abri Blanchard at Castel Merle who had made sign-notes on a fragment of mammoth ivory which would become a lunar calendar.

“One could imagine that as a Cro-Magnon intelligent, curious, searching and an artist, who, very probably, sat every night in front of his shelter to engrave in fine details on his little plaque the changing shape of the moon in its successive, regular phases from its rising to its disappearance behind the other side of the valley”.

All these qualities were Rene’s. He was enormously proud of being a Cro-Magnon and

Rene knapping in his garden

continued his explorations in archaeology throughout his life. One of the very last of the self-taught farmer/archaeologist/scholars, his intellect was quick and immensely generous – a wonderful role model for modern scholars. He insisted that what was found at Castel Merle should be archived there – for how else could researchers really understand this site? He also made it an absolute principal of his or anybody else’s research at Castel Merle that results should be published – shared not hoarded, so that we could get to know better and better those distant ancestors of ours.

A truly memorable experience for Judie and I, early in our life in the Vezere Valley, was when Rene took us round the site of Castel Merle. He wasn’t just passionate, but so deeply informed and knowledgeable about this as well as so many other sites.
He pointed out the spot where nearly 80 years before, his father Marcel had discovered a baby buried in a shell of red ochre, dating from the boundary of the Aurignacian-Gravettian periods. Rene brought an even greater richness to this discovery – he talked of George MacCurdy the great Harvard professor, giving him bars of chocolate! 5 minutes later he was showing us photos of this and other scenes from the 20’s and 30’s in his private museum.

This Ice Age ‘treasure house’ he would let me explore as and when I wished He allowed me to remove artefacts from the glass cases to handle and discuss. The effect of this generosity on us, our friends and guests is beyond my ability to describe. Rene himself would point out extra details not with a laser, but with one of his own Gravettian-style points stuck with birch glue to the end of a wand!

Rene with his ‘home-made’ pointer!

There wasn’t a day, he reckoned, since his childhood that he hadn’t knapped flint either at Castel Merle or in his garden at Sergeac. Seeing Rene working with flint in his garden, where he also had a collection of birds nests!, including some from Bower Birds from South Africa, next to the old Templar church, where he had excavated two Visigothic graves, in Sergeac, where he had been mayor for 42 years, we know we had had a hugely privileged snapshot of this French ‘agriculteur’ (his description of himself).

We are enormously proud to be called friends of Rene. Guardian and researcher of the sites of Castel Merle he pursued with passion and talent the legacy of his father, Marcel. A great man who left his mark on the story of Prehistory and great men never die!

Adieu, Rene, et merci.

Posted in Dordogne, European Travel, France, Southwest France, Steve and Judie Burman, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

How to Have a Perfect Day

Posted on June 2, 2013 by Heather Jarman

A perfect day for me is a day out with perfect clients, like this one last spring. I got up at 6.00 am to drive to Lucca in the rain to pick them up, not my idea of a perfect start to the day. But there they were, a little early, at the meeting point, smiling despite the grey clouds and drizzle. The couple climbed into my dirty car (Italian car washes aren’t silly enough to wash cars in the rain even if they would get repeat business the next day). I was relieved to find out they were both raised on farms.

There’s rain ahead.

We headed back up the Serchio River Valley from where I’d come, passing Sesto, Valdottavo and Diecimo, names derived from Roman times because the villages are six, eight and ten Roman miles from Lucca. We passed the 11^th-century Devil’s Bridge and I recounted the story of how it got its name. Through Gallicano, past Alvaro Ferrari’s fields of biodynamic eight-rowed corn, by-passed Castelnuovo, touched Pieve Fosciana and halted for a coffee and croissant at a bar in Villeta, all the while the cloud folding low around the mountains which the couple couldn’t see at all. Nevertheless they exclaimed enthusiastically about the villages huddled beneath the cloud and the glimpses of green on the hillsides. We were talking all the while, getting to know each other. They wanted to know what brought me to Lucca, and I wanted to know all about them. They’re on their honeymoon. Donnacha (pronounced don-a-ka) is Irish and Kristy Australian. Donnacha took six months sabbatical from work in Scotland to travel in Australia and is still there, desalinating water. Kristy teaches kindergarten.

Back in the car, through San Romano to Piazza al Serchio and then right, up the shortcut (scorciatoio in Italian — I love the sound of the word) to Petrognola and Paolo Magazzini’s bakery. By now I knew they lived in rented accommodation with hardly any garden, but undeterred they grew vegetables and herbs in pots and were hoping to have a smallholding one day, just enough for their own subsistence. I told them about my orto (vegetable patch).

My orto

I led them behind Paolo’s house and down to the bakery in the cellar, where Paolo greeted us and began the Garfagnana potato bread lesson. He only speaks Italian but is a great communicator and I translate when necessary. Since his enthusiasm for his work is infectious, Donnacha and Kristy soon had their hands in the dough.

Kneading bread under Paolo’s instruction

By the time the loaves were resting on the handwoven hemp cloth to rise, Paolo was enjoying himself so much that he suggested an additional impromptu lesson, farro pasta.

This is so much fun!

Paolo cultivates farro, which here in the Garfagnana is a more primitive species of wheat than spelt.

Kristy rolls out the farro pasta.

Donnacha masters cutting it into strips.

The pasta finished and spread on the table and the loaves in the wood-fired oven, we headed down to see Paolo’s beef cattle and were rewarded with a newly born calf.

Mangia! Mangia!

Paolo’s hole in the wall admits humans but not cows.

Back to the bakery to take the crusty loaves from the oven.

Donnacha takes his loaf from the wood-fired oven.

Me flanked by satisfied bread makers

Then it was time for a home-cooked lunch prepared by Paolo’s wife, Daniela. Lunch wouldn’t be complete without a tasting of farro beer made by Paolo’s neighbour, Roberto Gianarrelli. Since the micro-brewery produces several varieties, there’s a perfect one to pair with Daniela’s bean and farro soup and another to go with the farro pasta and ragù.

Farro beer goes perfectly with farro soup

On the way back to Lucca we stopped at Ercolano Regoli’s water mill, where Paolo takes his farro to be ground. As we left the mill, a rainbow arched over our perfect day — no pot of gold at the end, but instead, a field of young farro. By July it will have turned golden and will contribute riches to the pockets and diet of the local people.

A rainbow crowns our perfect day

Thank you Kristy and Donnacha for your wholehearted enjoyment and appreciation of the artisans of the Garfagnana.

Heather Jarman invites you on inspiring culinary tours of life behind the scenes that you won’t find in any guidebook — get to know the food artisans and craftspeople of Tuscany, Emilia-Romagna, Piedmont and Liguria. Come join me and my Italian friends and dip into a lifestyle where lunch is more important than business. Find out more at Sapori e Saperi Adventures and follow Heather’s own adventures on her blog.