Stazione Principe was just as I had remembered. It hadn’t undergone the major facelift like the one in Milan and it still retained much of its charm. We got off the train and exited the station. We were looking for wifi. I hadn’t reconnected with Enrico for a couple of days and I’m sure he thought we were still in Morocco. After asking several people I quickly determined that Italy wasn’t up to Spanish standards yet when it came to wifi in the larger cities. We walked down a busy street toward piazza Ferrari with Carolyn holding out her phone trying different connections as we walked. We stopped in front of a gelateria that had wifi and this gave us a great excuse to buy some ice cream. Italian gelato is one of a kind, and although many countries claim to sell it, it doesn’t compare to eating it in Italy.
Using Skype (the ONLY way one should use a cell phone while in Europe) we contacted Enrico and let him know we were there. He was shocked and thought for sure we have been in Morocco. We told him how our plans had changed and he agreed to come down the hill to meet us at the end of bus line one. We hiked back up the hill to the station and bought two tickets for 100 minutes each. It would take about 45 to arrive at the end of the line changing from the bus 20 which we now found ourselves on to the bus one.
The weather was uncommonly humid. We were already drenched and the hairs on my arms were curly. The bus ride was the usual jostling jolting experience that is synonymous with bus travel in Italy. There were an inordinate amount of foreigners on the bus heading to Voltri. In fact, I had never seen this many on buses in Genova. A very large woman with two children sat in seats a small ways down from where we stood. She seemed to speak some sort of Spanish to her children both of whom sucked on cherry popsicles that had already drizzled down the hands and onto their seats. At the next stop a ticket reader got one. These are people who work for the transportation system and enforce bus and train jumping. He walked by and asked people for their tickets. We showed him ours. He stared at the stamp carefully and was satisfied that we hadn’t exceeded our time allowance. Every time you board a bus in Italy, you need to validate your ticket by inserting it into a small orange machine on the bus. This machine stamps the date and time so that the ticket expires eventually. Some people try to keep their ticket in their pocket and not stamp it so that they can ride for free. Others have been known to board and hope that the ticket enforcer wouldn’t happen to select their bus to audit.
The auditor stopped at the foreign mother and her two children. She hadn’t purchased a ticket and he shook his head and began to write her a ticket. An elderly Italian lady chimed in and said that she wouldn’t pay it anyway because foreigners never paid their tickets and that there was no way of enforcing it. While she was right, and the lady probably would never pay, this opinion didn’t sit well with the couple from Ecuador that sat behind her. They began to yell at the old Italian woman speaking only with infinitives (unconjugated verbs, i.e. “You to be quiet, we to pay, you to want) but their message was clear. They said that she lived off of her retirement which was deducted from all the working people’s checks. They said she was a fool and some other worse profanities and they sat there fuming and gesturing after their verbal onslaught. The auditor tried to calm them down and eventually they all exited the bus.
As we stood waiting for our stop I made eye contact with an Italian woman waiting to get off. In Italy, this is usually all you need to do to guarantee some type of conversation. She began to explain that the non-Italians (extracommunitari: people who aren’t from the European community) were moving in and taking over the city. The tension was apparent that the Italians tolerated the foreigners but didn’t exactly welcome them.
We exited the bus without further incidents and met Entrico at the end of the bus line in the tiny faction of Voltri. Genova is divided into many sections, each with its own name and identity. From Centro (at the center of Genova) they are Cornigliano, Sampierdarena, Sestri, Pegli, Pra and finally Voltri. Enrico and his family lived about the town of Voltri in a tiny community called Crevari. He greeted us with the typical hug and kiss on each cheek and helped us put our bags into his Fiat Panda. We traveled up the hill that in the States would have been a one way street as it was just barely wide enough for a car to drive with ample room on each side. Cars came at us and squeezed by at an alarming speed with little space between us and the side of the mountain. I chatted with Enrico a little more about how he and his family had been until we got to Luisa and Luciano’s house. Carolyn sat and listened and tried to understand what was going on. I stepped out of my Italian every now and then to give her the gist of what was being said.
After greeting Luisa and Luciano they showed us to our guest room and then to the most important room in any Italian house – the kitchen. Luisa had already prepared pesto with fresh pasta and mozzarella “di burro” and we sat down and filled ourselves to our necks. This “mangia fest” forced us to our rooms where we quickly went to sleep.
We awoke refreshed. And sticky. The weather, according to the Canepas, was uncharacteristically humid and they complained about it two to three times a day (the television said it reached 93%). Because the house has no air conditioning, we walked around sticky and warm. We ate a breakfast of homemade apricot jam, steamed milk and Carolyn had a caffe macchiato. We left with Luciano to do errands. We dropped the car off at a mechanic near the store where Luciano needed to shop because his horn was broken. While we walked down the small street to the store an approaching car sped by and its mirror hit Carolyn in the hand. She still walks a little too close to oncoming traffic and probably isn’t used to the tight spaces in which Italians are used to operating.
Walking around the small town of Voltri with Luciano was a test of patience. Luciano is 82 years old and because he’s grown up in the same town and has never moved away, he knows every third person on the street. He stopped often to introduce us as his “friends from California” to everyone he knew. Carolyn was getting a lesson in Italian greetings and was learning to say “piacere” (it’s a pleasure) and salve (hello, formal) and she was getting her lessons in the best way possible – through constant repetition.
Luciano goes down to the market and store every single day. Along with introductions, he stops every 10 meters or so to tell a tale about something. Instead of walking while telling the tale, he comes to a complete stop. “There was a flower that grew here that had special properties. It got its name from an early Roman emperor who used the seeds from this flower to cure an illness that was widespread across the land. On one of his early travels he…” and so the tale would go. This story would continue for five to ten minutes and would occur every time we passed something he found interesting. In the last case it was a flower. It took us an hour and a half to walk three blocks to shop for five things and go to the bank.
After the shopping we stopped into a bread shop (foccaceria) and bought some foccacia. We ate several large pieces and a slice of foccacia pizza. The salty, oily bread is best served warm in the morning and best eaten in Genova. The town is where pesto and foccacia are the local specialty. Because we left the car at the mechanic we bought a bus pass at the newsstand to go back up the hill. Luciano told the guy that worked there one of his favorite phrases in Latin and introduced us. We boarded our small bus and headed up to the top of the hill above the sea. When we arrived, the smell of food filled the house. Luisa had prepared a sauce of mushrooms that Luciano had cultivated on the hill above their house the day before. Normally, polenta isn’t made during the summer months but Luisa had prepared it because we wouldn’t be here for the winter and she wanted to give us a variety. Carolyn stared at her plate with wide eyes as Luisa spooned a healthy helping of polenta into it. We had Luisa reduce her portion by about half because Carolyn had eaten so much foccacia earlier. We both struggled to finish our plates. The polenta hit hard and fast and I was probably full before my sixth spoonful.
Having gorged until the point of gluttony, we decided that a walk was in order. Actually, I was ready for nap. It was Carolyn who decided we should probably take a walk to help things settle. We walked up the tiny cobblestone roads up to the top of the hill. Along the way we met and stopped and talked to several of Luciano’s neighbors; a guy with a couple of cool Vespas, a man with a lab that had had seven pups and two men working on a project for the city that would connect an autostrada from Centro to Crevari. We might as well have thrown breadcrumbs on the ground. After we reached the top of the hill and took in the view of the entire coastline of Genova we saw a familiar figure walking up toward us. It was Luciano. He said he found us because he stopped and talked to the guy with the Vespas, the guy with the dog and the two workers and they had all told him where to find us. Needless to say, the walk back was punctuated with stops by many trees, bushes, plants and insects as he taught us their names, if they were edible and if they were indigenous to Italy or not. I learned that all the chestnuts in Italy are ruined this year because of a worm that arrived and has bored into all of the nuts. I also learned that the tiger mosquito arrived in the water left in rubber tires from China and wasn’t indigenous to Italy either. Carolyn and I hit the beds once we got home and laid on our backs covered by a small layer of sweat.
We awoke just in time for dinner. Enrico had made plans to take us to his favorite pizzeria for dinner where we were going to meet up with his girlfriend Christina. We zipped down the hill in the Fiat Idea and picked up Christina on the road near the pizzeria. We said our hellos and introductions were made and we all got out to get some dinner. We walked into the narrow take out restaurant called Pizzeria d’Asporto and up to the counter. A short middle-aged woman was calling out instructions to two young muscular guys in their 20’s that were making pizzas and sliding them into a wood burning oven with long poles. A young guy on a Vespa pulled up with a small box on the back and came in to load it with pizzas and drinks. We ordered our pizzas and chatted with the guys behind the counter. The woman was on the phone calling other pizzerias to purchase dough, she had just run out and ours were the last pizzas to be made. A guy behind us poked his head in and asked if he could order 17. The woman looked at him and laughed and made a typical Italian gesture for “no” while she clicked her tongue twice. Enrico had told me this place was popular and with margheritas priced at 3.80 euro you could see why.
The next day our pattern was pretty much the same. We awoke to Luisa bustling around in the kitchen. She was preparing a sauce that wasn’t very common. It was a sauce made of walnuts, garlic, oil, parmeggiano reggiano and pine nuts. After we pulled the skins of the walnuts, she put it all into a small food processor and blended it until it was a paste. She then salted it to taste. Carolyn watched intently and took notes as Luisa explained how the walnuts might not taste precisely right because they weren’t in season. She also explained how the walnuts in California were a little more clear and had a slightly sweeter taste. Luisa combined this sauce with homemade lasagna she had laid out and some pesto and we ate until we were ill. After eating, Carolyn and I went down to sleep yet again.
We awoke about the time that Enrico came back with his six-year-old son Danielle. The two wrestled around a little bit before settling down and eating some of the pasta Luisa had made. After the two had eaten Enrico two us down to exchange money at his bank. He came out extremely annoyed that his bank didn’t understand what he wanted to do, couldn’t calculate the exchange rate correctly, and then ran out of cash in euro to give him. He walked across the street to another bank and tried there. While he was inside Carolyn and I were approached by a dozen street vendors from Senegal at least one every couple of minutes.
Later on that day back up on the hill in Crevari Carolyn began to feel sick with all the food she was eating. According to Luisa, it was lack of proper digestion. While Carolyn lay in bed feeling like she was going to throw up, I feasted on tortellni filled with mortadella and parmeggiano and topped with a cream sauce. I checked on Carolyn every 15 minutes or so and she lay in the same fetal position, sweating and feeing nauseous. Luisa decided to prepare a tea made of Camomille flowers that she had picked in Menorca. She told me the best way to dry them was to wait for a sunny day and dry them in the shade, never in direct sunlight. She placed 12 of the tiny dried flowers into a cup of hot water, added some lemon juice from their tree and then a small spoonful of sugar. I brought this to Carolyn who had to be persuaded to drink it down. She eventually finished it and was asleep 30 minutes later. I played down in the garden with Danielle. He had brought a soccer ball with him and we kicked the ball back and forth until we were sweaty and tired.
The next day Carolyn woke me at about 5:30 a.m. refreshed and bored. She bugged me until I got up around 7 or so. We decided that we’d take a day trip to Florence. After some online planning using Enrico’s internet connection we were driven down to the train station in Voltri where we caught the train for one of the main stations in Genova, Stazione Principe. By the time we had arrived, a long line had already formed to buy tickets and we only had a 15 minute window before our train left. We used the automatic vending machines to schedule our train ticket and punched in the code on our Eurorail pass. Success! We looked for the place to put our money in and didn’t see a slot. I asked a guy in line if we could use cash in this machine and he shook his head and pointed to another machine down the hall with a small design of a bill and coins above it. We cancelled our ticket and ran down to wait in line for that machine. We had eight minutes left. We reached the front of the line, selected the trains, punched in our code and saw that many of the trains were full. According to Enrico, 4 million Italians were heading to vacation this weekend. Carolyn thought that we should probably buy our return tickets as well seeing as how seats were filling up fast. We started over and instead of a single trip, chose round trip. We had about four minutes before our train was supposed to leave for Florence. We put the six euro in the machine, it printed our tickets and we were off running down flights of stone stairs to find which platform was ours. We ran up and onto the platform for our train just to see it begin to move and leave the station. Our tickets were non-refundable and we were pissed. I blamed it on Carolyn’s decision to start over and purchase round trip but it wasn’t her fault. I was just so frustrated that we missed the train and lost the euro.
Because we missed the train we decided to stay around central Genova and then return to Voltri earlier than expected so that we could adequately prepare for our long journey south to Pompei then following day. We didn’t want to be rushed and wanted to get adequate rest because we’d be spending eight and a half hours on trains and travel was grueling if you were running with heavy luggage up and down stairs. Still fuming from our change of plans, we bought some foccacia and sat down by the station to eat. Pigeons surrounded us and we fed them and stuffed our faced with the fluffy, salty bread. After eating we were in better spirits and we spend the next several hours wandering the vicoli (tiny streets) of Centro Storico (historic Genova) where tiny shops lined the walls and people crowded the cobblestones so close the brushing shoulders was common. We saw piazza de Ferrari and the house the Colombus lived in before grabbing a train and heading back down to Voltri.
Carolyn found a wifi connection that didn’t have a password and we used it to call Enrico so that he could take us up the hill to Crevari. He told us he and Danielle were preparing to go to the beach and that we were invited. We joined them in the car as they picked up Danielle’s cousin Stefano and we headed to the beach.
The beaches on the coat of Liguria have small rocks that are the size of golf balls and to walk on them makes your feet ache. The sea was a great reprieve to the muggy warm air we’d be continually exposed to and we both jumped in. The only problem I have with the sea near Genova is the salt content. Several times a random wave would wash over my head and the water would splash in my eyes and nose. The water may as well have been gasoline for the stinging it caused. An old paper mill used to dump its waste into the sea near Voltri and for decades the sea had been to dirty to swim in. The last 10 years saw a change in the attitudes of the Italians and they decided to change the waste system for the mill and for the inhabitants of that area. Nowadays, all the waste from the area is pumped to a sewage treatment plant inland and the water is clean and beautiful. Because of this, scores of Italians were on the beach to take advantage of the cool water. Vendors from Senegal wandered amongst the sunbathers easily visible like flies on a white wall. One came wandering by with coconut, selling pieces for a euro. Carolyn didn’t have any money on her and when she went to get some, they vendor had left the beach. Of all the vendors that came by several times each, he was the only one that never returned. We ended up stopping at a Pam (small chain supermarket) for some coconut and other food for our trip the next day.
Our last night at the Canepas we ate tortellini with sugo (red sauce) and prosciutto, spicy provolone, swiss cheese and bread. We stood on the balcony and watched the city lights of Genova that competed with the tiny lights of fireflies that flashed directly below. Enrico held out his lighter and watched the flame flicker. There was no wind. He was hoping that the north wind would pick up because that meant that the humidity would cease and the weather would cool back down. We said our goodbyes and went down to bed because we had to wake up early the next morning to head to Pompei.
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