Saying farewell to the less cute half of Venice, we boarded a very lovely new train up to Ponte Nelle Alpi, where we were to be picked up by our second WWOOF hosts for the trip.
On the way up, a lovely Italian woman said to us in perfect English ‘excuse me - if you want to take photos of the lake, this next part is the best bit’. She was right, it was the best bit: Lago di Santa Croce is that classic glacial green that doesn’t seem to exist in any other context.
Meeting Andrea at the station, we swung via a beautiful little wine shop that seemed to only sell wine from two different vineyards. He gave us a new sparkling rose to try, and Andrea bought a 5 litre bag of Pinot Grigio. For €12.
Our closest village is Sopracroda, which literally translates to ‘upper cliff’. We’re above Sopracroda, on a 2 hectare farm that is 1 hectare forest. Simone grew up in between this area and Germany, as his parents ran a gelato shop there. As such, he is completely bilingual, in addition to English, Spanish and Japanese as ‘second languages’.
Andrea grew up in Milano, which isn’t all that far from here, but we’re starting to understand that it is a long way away, anthropologically speaking. The two met in Germany, eventually moved to Sicily and then, when Simone’s dad suddenly passed, they chose to move into his house here rather than sell it.
The boys gave us a gorgeous lunch and then sent us off to rest, whilst they did ‘boring’ work - by which they meant, their office jobs. Jess lay in the hammock, I rested in our caravan, and then at 4pm, we started our work.
Today’s task was to weed some rows of Edelweiss, which between the excess rain and weed competition, were struggling. We removed the weed element from this equation, accidentally pulling a few baby plants up in the process.
Andrea showed us that these pups can be replanted, and I automatically poured some water from my bottle onto it, to water it in. Andrea, recovering from a year of monsoonal rain, let out a tiny gasp. A minute later, I checked that we weren’t pulling the oregano out. Andrea said ‘yes - the oregano is the most arrogant - it needs to come out’. This was my turn to gasp. Imagine pulling out oregano!
After a couple of hours of wedding, we were excused from farm duties and encouraged to come inside. Their friend - Simone’s childhood friend - had popped in for a drink, so we chatted to all of them for the evening.
At one point, they were comparing dialects - Andrea would say a word in the Milan dialect, Simone in straight Italian, and then their friend in the local dialect. In many cases, the words had no common features whatsoever. They explained that learning Sicilian for them was almost like learning Arabic, because the Sicilian dialect has more in common with Arabic than Italian. In other parts of the south, the primary language is Albanian, due to the historical ties between countries.
Jess asked why doner kebab was such a big thing in Berlin, and Andrea explained that after WWII, their working population was decimated, so they imported lots of people from Turkey and Italy. This echoed what Hannes and Olympia said about the Stuttgart car industry - that many Mediterraneans we’re imported to prop up the car industry post WWII and never left - meaning that some words like ‘ciao’ have been normalised in southern Germany.
We also discussed the presence of the mafia across Italy, the division of agriculture vs factory-based industries across the country, how behind Italy’s same-sex rights are (they can’t legally adopt, even when married), and of course how many Australian animals can kill you.
We were given sips of their lemon verbena liqueur, which was beautiful, and reminded me a bit of an alpine bush from the snowy mountains. We were then given sips of their edelweiss liqueur, which smelled incredible and was unbelievably delicate and sweet. What a special corner of the world we are in.
Heading to bed in our caravan, the local ‘wild’ cat has shoutingly arrived and has now fallen asleep on our bed. She actually smells like herbs.
This featured blog entry was written by OaksGoWalking from the blog Hattie and Jess Go Walking.
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