Under the Tuscan Sun: Part 2

I left Florence Wednesday July 9 and took the train to Pescia, only about an hour ride from Florence. I was greeted at the station by Sabrina, and Alberto came with the car just a few minutes later. We drove to the house where I'd be staying, which is where Alberto's mom Paola lives. Alberto and Sabrina live just a few minutes away. We had lunch and then Alberto and Sabrina showed me around the property and then left to work while I unpacked and settled in. The rest of the day was pretty low key.

My schedule in Pescia was similar to the schedule in Prabstorf:

7:15ish Breakfast
8:00 Projects begin
10:00 Water break
1:00 Lunch, then free time

Thursday was the first day of work, and gauging by this day I figured the work was going to be pretty easy. Alberto and Sabrina have land where they grow olives, and all sorts of fruits and veggies. They are converting an old shed into a kind of outdoor kitchen where they can process and package olive oil and other products like sauce and jam. Alberto also has a company that builds houses/apartments so this old building was filled with supplies for that. The previous helpers cleaned everything out, and now it was time to start building a wall. There was fibreglass plastic all along the top part of the building, so we needed to tear that down. Alberto was busy with his other job so it was just me and Sabrina. Sabrina doesn't speak much English but I think after living abroad for the last 6ish months I'm accustomed to communicating with broken English, hand signals, and electronic translators. Plus, Sabrina speaks better than she thinks she does :)

First order of business, build some scaffolding in order to get to the plastic...

Then Sabrina cut down the plastic while I watched and waited for her to throw it down (thus, thinking the work would be easy) then I rolled it up into giant pasta-looking tubes in order to dispose of it easily. 

Lunch was pasta with pesto (I love pesto!) and I learned that we would have pasta for lunch every day. I was ok with that...seems fitting while in Italy! After lunch I decided to go for a walk around Pescia, and Alberto drove to Pisa to pick up the two new helpers. When I got back from my walk (didn't bring my camera, but bought some gelato...obviously) I met Olga and Petra, two girls from Czech Republic who had just been on a help exchange in Corsica, France. This was my only help exchange where there were other helpers along with myself, so that was a nice change. Alberto, Olga, and Petra all asked that I feel free to correct their English throughout the course of my stay, so I quickly developed the nick-name of "teacher" and Alberto will always remember me for helping him understand the proper use of "told" and "usually". 

Friday was the first day of work for Olga and Petra. They had asked if the work was difficult and I had said no... I'm pretty sure Olga thought I was either lying or I was crazy. The work turned out to be a little different than what I had experienced the day before. It wasn't particularly difficult, just incredibly physical...lots of heavy lifting and lots of dust. We had to lift cinder blocks up onto the scaffolding that Sabrina and I had built the day before in order to build up the wall where we had torn down the plastic, then build more scaffolding and lift more cinder blocks. Like I said, lots of lifting and lots of dust. Add some extra heat into the mix and it made for some pretty hard work. Sabrina had asked me when I arrived what kind of work I had done on my previous help exchanges. When I told her, she kind of chuckled and said "the work here is a little dusty."


This is what "a little dusty" looks like...

That afternoon after lunch Alberto drove me to the station and I caught the train to Lucca, which is a little walled city recommended to me by my friend Adam (Steed), he said it was one of his favorite places in Italy. That's actually why I chose this particular location for a help exchange...it was close to Lucca, close to Florence, Pisa, Cinque Terra etc. It's a great location to stay in! So I went to Lucca to meet my friends Adam (Christensen) and Rebecca. It was SO nice to see people from home! I've made some good friends and had some great experiences while being in Europe, but it was really nice to be with people I've known for a long time...

We spent the afternoon in Lucca, just wandering around and checking out the city and what it had to offer. There was some really interesting cardboard art around the city, like this...

And some cool little shops, one with a lot of kitchen tools made out of olive wood, and a few other stores with some amazing smelling hand-made soap. Rebecca and I sniffed until our noses stopped working...or I did, I think Rebecca mostly just made fun of me. We ended finding a place to eat near the town square where they were set up for the Lucca Summer Fest, where they have concerts going for pretty much the entire month of July. "Hallelujah" by Rufus Wainright was playing on loud speakers, but then we were a little surprised when mid song he started speaking! He was there to perform for the show that night and was doing a soundcheck, so we got to listen to him practice and whatnot for about 20mins while we ate. We got dessert (I'll give you a hint-although you probably don't need it-it starts with g and ends with elato) and then I caught the train back to Pescia and they headed to Florence. 


Lovely Lucca...

Saturday meant Alberto had the day off from his other job, so he was able to work with us. We learned how to make cement, and then we started building the wall. Alberto said nobody would believe that this wall was built by one guy and four women! Sabrina and Petra made the cement and me, Olga, and Alberto built the wall. Olga laid the cement on the bricks, Alberto added the new bricks, and I filled in any spaces with cement and made the wall look pretty...a wonderful job for the perfectionist in me! 

The rest of the day was lunch and a bit of a party. They had friends come over to use the pool, eat food, and watch the World Cup. We spent the afternoon by the pool until it started raining, then went to the grocery store with Alberto to get some food for dinner and whatnot, then set up the food and watched The Netherlands beat Brazil for third place.


Sunday was an adventure. I decided to go to church in Florence, so found the church online, the time it started, and directions for how to get there. I left the house at 7:00am to catch the 7:23 train...cancelled. Waited for the 7:44...cancelled. So I went back to the house to eat some breakfast and wait for the 8:50 train, and at least make it to sacrament meeting during the last hour of church. Petra and Olga wanted to go to Florence too, so we all left for the 8:50 train...cancelled. We walked around Pescia to kill some time and then walked back to the station for the 9:50 train...cancelled. So we went home and sat on the deck and decided to try one last time for the 10:50 train and if it was cancelled we would just stay put and check out the area around Pescia. We got to the station and everybody else who had been waiting all morning to get to Florence were eagerly waiting and hoping. The computer screen said the train was still scheduled. An announcement came over the speaker system and everybody had their fingers crossed, listening in anticipation. And then...applause and cheers! A few minutes later the train arrived, and we were actually on our way to Florence! There was zero chance of getting to any of church, but it was still nice to be able to go.

So excited that the train is coming!..

We spent the day in Florence and didn't see much that I hadn't already seen, but it was nice to be wandering around with other people and not by myself!

Love me some gelato! This place is called Gelateria Vivaldi and it's in my top three favorite places for gelato. The other two are Giolitti in Rome (which I've already covered) and Grom, which is actually a chain and had a few locations in Italy, and apparently in NYC as well! I've had too much gelato...

Ponte Vecchio

Hercules with the head of Medusa...

Some might argue that this is the best view in Florence...haha!

Others say this is the best view in Florence...

The crowds!

Oh, and we did see this, totally normal...

Paola had said that Florence had the best sandwiches in Italy, so we made sure to get ourselves some sandwiches to eat. And apparently this place has the best of the best sandwiches...so we stood in line for like 15-20 minutes to wait for a sandwich. 

We were a little worried that we would have the same trouble with the train on the way home as we had coming, so didn't want to wait too late to get home. Petra and Olga stopped at a cute shop near the station and I went on to check out the schedule. The departures screen was covered with delays and cancellations. Seriously, what was going on?! The next train scheduled to leave for Pescia was cancelled, the one after that had a 40min delay, only to be cancelled 20mins later. Cancelled, delayed then cancelled...etc etc. Time went on and there was a train scheduled for 9:10 that was still showing as confirmed. We went to a restaurant area to sit for an hour-ish and kept checking every 10-15mins on the status of the train. At 8:55 it was still set to leave at 9:10, much to our delight. At 9:00 it updated that it was leaving from platform 1 so off we went and boarded our train. And then we sat...and sat and sat. We started to worry something would happen and they'd come and tell us we had to leave the train, and there was only one more train scheduled to leave for Pescia that night so hopefully it wouldn't be cancelled too! But about 30mins later we rolled out of the station and breathed a sigh of relief. When we approached Pescia we went to the nearest train doors, and when the train came to a stop we pushed the button to open the door...but nothing happened. Tried again, nothing. Realizing the door was borked we ran through the car to the next door and got there just as it was closing. Tried pushing the button to open it but the train started moving. And of course we were on the fast train that doesn't stop at every little station. So we got off the train at the next stop, looked at the schedule and realized the next train for Pescia left in 45mins. We looked at where we were, 8km away from the house, and entertained the idea of walking home but then decided to call Alberto and let him know what was up. He answered and said "will you be home before midnight?" to which I responded with our situation and he said "stay there, I will be there in 10mins" Rescued! He arrived and greeted us with a "in the middle of the final!" Haha we felt bad. He said he hung up the phone and asked his friends for volunteers to get us. He had plenty of people offer to let him use their car but nobody was going to give up watching the World Cup Final! He also told us that there was a transit strike that day...that explains a lot! We got back to the house and it was still 0-0 so all was good. We finished watching the game and everyone seemed pretty happy that Germany won. 

That night I looked at Facebook after not having wifi all day and had a message from my friends Brian and Robynn. They had been traveling through Europe and we were trying to meet up. She let me know that they'd be arriving in Florence around noon that day... Dang! We were in Florence all day on the same day and didn't even know it! And then with our respective schedules it wasn't gonna work out to see each other.

Work on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday...build scaffolding, demolish walls, lift cinder blocks etc etc. Dusty, physical work. 

Tuesday I bought a birthday present for myself. Olga, Petra and I went to see The Lumineers in concert in Pistoia! We got there about two hours early and asked a girl where to get tickets, she looked at us like we were crazy and said "I have no idea, I bought these two months ago!" Okaaaay. We ended up finding a booth selling tickets and got tickets with no problem, then walked in to the piazza and ended up sitting pretty close to the same girl...I bet she was SO happy and relieved that she had bought her tickets so far in advance! We sat on the ground with a couple hundred other people and just waited for a few hours for the show to start.

The concert was really good and made me really happy! I love concerts! This was my 30th concert...a good 30th birthday gift to myself, I'd say! Alberto and Sabrina had gone to see Chiq I'm concert in Lucca that night, so when their concert was over they came to pick us up at the Pistoia train station as we would've had to leave the concert early to catch the last train back to Pescia.

Wednesday was Sabrina's birthday and we went to her family home by the sea. It was a beautiful area with great views. We had an awesome dinner and visit. The food...oh my goodness the food. It was so delicious. This cheese/zucchini bake that Sabrina ended up giving me the recipe for. Calimari, grouper with onion and vinegar (sounds less than awesome but it was delicious!) shrimp and onions, egg crepes with salmon cream cheese and dill, stuffed mussels in tomato sauce, steamed mussels, cake, ice cream, and fruit. So delicious! It was a wonderful night.

Thursday was so hot! I mean, every other day felt like I was living in an oven but this day...this day was the worst. We were really grateful they had a pool that we could cool off in after working. Anyways, Thursday we trimmed some hedges along the driveway..

I made friends with a cat...

And then went up to the land they have that overlooks the valley and they grow their olive 

trees and other vegetation. Our job there was to clean out the rain drains that had been placed up the driveway.

I was originally planning on staying with them for two weeks, but Adam and Rebecca had offered to drive me to my friend Carina's in Germany on their way to Frankfurt where they were flying out of. So I ended up leaving on Thursday just after lunch and thus ended my time doing help exchanges in Europe! But as a result of leaving earlier I didn't get to see Cinque Terra! So sad. I had planned on going there the following weekend. I guess it just means I'll need to come back to Italy!

I really loved my time in Pescia. It's a great location and it was really nice to have Petra and Olga there as well. But most importantly Alberto, Sabrina, and Paola are all so lively, friendly and inviting. It was a lot of fun staying with them and I certainly hope to be back!! Maybe some fall to help with the harvest and make olive oil!

Ciao Alberta, Sabrina and Paola!!