I loved our stay in Tropea and snorkeling in the clear turquoise water of Capo Vaticano, but it’s time to go and continue the adventure. Next on our itinerary is Monasterace, an ancient seaside city about two hours from Tropea straight across the instep, from the top to the bottom of the sole. We decided to take the mountain pass and we were not disappointed. It was so surprising to start our climb and leave behind the tired roads of the coastal area of Calabria and enter into a totally different world.
We suddenly saw pine trees and ferns and dense green forests. We climbed and climbed along these mountain roads until we came across the city of Serra San Bruno. I was struck by the cuteness of this town so deep in Calabria. It look like a Swiss town or something you would find up in Northern Italy.
There was a river that ran through it and wild flowers dressed in purple surrounding the river. It was such a contrast to the shabby roads along the coast that I was awestruck. This forest is called Aspromonte and is mountainous and wooded, offering a cool break from the hot August sun. We want to linger here but we must continue along our way, our friend Giuseppe was waiting for us.
We finally pulled up to Giuseppi‘s house. This is actually his beach house, he lives near Rome. The land this house is built on belongs to his wife’s family. The other families that own this land in Giuseppis wife’s family are also here, it’s August, when anyone who has a house in Calabria is here for the month. The house is simple, in a state of remodeling. We see a bunk bed tucked in the corner of the kitchen and we think “oh no….it’s our new sleeping accommodations” but our host is so gracious and shows us to our room, he will take the bunk bed. Our room is comfortable but has no fan and we are a little concerned about how we will sleep in the hot breezeless night. I start to realize how very pampered we are and how much more we need to learn about what “sustenance and covering” really means.
We attend an Italian meeting that night because even though there is an English group here they only meet in English on Sunday’s. The hall is packed out from August vacationers and we almost don’t get a seat. I’m starting to get better at my Italian, now I can sing the songs and understand…maybe half?
We return to Giuseppis house and eat the dinner he has prepared for us. We sit outside and are eating at 9:00 pm, Italian style. We see the other family members that live on the property also sitting outside eating their dinner. They sit at simple wooden tables covered in plastic tablecloths under a green tarp. Our cars are not parked far from where we sit. It’s not the Italy of our dreams but the Italy of reality. Not the Italy where the table is sat under an arbor with wisteria dripping down, overlooking a vineyard, but an Italy where families have enjoyed a day at the beach and dined together in the cool of the evening. Practical and unpretentious. But who am I to complain? My meal was beautifully and lovingly made, pasta with ragu, goat meat, meatballs and a salad made of cucumber, tomatoes and Tropea red onions. A glass of wine served in a juice glass and a crusty loaf of local bread.
By the time dinner was finished it was 11:00 pm and I was ready for bed. Giuseppe tells us that his brother-in-law from next door will be coming over for coffee. These Italians! They are unstoppable! I have definitely hit a wall but I make my way to the kitchen because I cannot allow Giuseppi to do the dishes. I wash up the plates and forks and go to bed without saying goodnight for fear I will be convinced into staying up for coffee. I climb into a cold shower to cool off then lay on my stark bed in the still, hot night. My window is open but no breeze flows in, I can hear the guests talking over coffee and cookies outside my window but sleep soon comes and the warm of the night does not bother me at all.
The next morning Giuseppi takes us to the beach, the beach is partially sandy but at the waters edge it is not sand but smooth stones. The effect in the water was beautiful, causing the sea to be the same beautiful turquoise blue as Tropea but to walk on the little stones was painful! I didn’t think I had sensitive feet but you should have seen me trying to get in and out of the sea! It was a sight for sure with my face grimacing and my arms flailing, my steps exaggerated and stumbling. It really shocked me when little local boys ran along the waters edge at full speed! How!?!?
We ate lunch at a little casual cafe bar on the beach, we had Peroni beer and Aranacini, those delicious fried rice balls from Sicily, you can get my recipe for them here…After spending most of the day at the beach we returned to Giuseppis house, showered and rested a little bit while we talked to the family that paid us a visit. Next Giuseppi drove us to his childhood town of Bivongi, this became the highlight of my trip…
This is a picturesque ancient city nestled on a hillside, complete with cobblestone streets and narrow alleyways. The entire region of Reggio Calabria is hilly, in fact the mountainous area we crossed when arriving is called Aspromonte or the Southern Alps, it’s even possible to ski here in the wintertime.
Giuseppi was raised here in these hill towns, as was his wife. She came from nearby Stilo and he was from Bivongi, two hill towns connected by the people who lived here. I absolutely loved hearing Giuseppis stories of living here, raised in the lanes of this ancient city and playing in the mountains and rivers as a boy.
Giuseppi was born in 1952 and his life is remarkably similar to my mothers childhood, although they were worlds away from each other. I also love to hear my mothers stories of life on the farm, only her farm was in Kansas and Giuseppi’s was in Bivongi, Italy. Part of the reason my blog is called The Homestead Traveler is because I feel such an attachment for growing food, preparing it and the stories of how things used to be. Of course the other reason is my love for traveling and seeing the world through different eyes. So what a treat it was for me to accompany Giuseppi as he showed us his childhood home and the farm he was raised on.
I was always so shocked when my mother would tell me about living on a rural farm in Kansas, how they didn’t have a bathroom or running water or electricity. How could it be when my mother was born in 1945 not have these basic things we take for granted? But my mother was not poor nor was Giuseppe, all of their neighbors were just like them. My mother killed a chicken everyday for their dinner of fried chicken and mashed potatoes. Her father and brothers worked the small family farm. That was their work, that was their life. So here I am with Giuseppi in Italy walking these cobblestone streets a world away from my mom and her farm, yet they were not so different.
So many times I have wandered the adorable narrow streets of Italian hill towns and peered up the staircases into the lit rooms above and wondered what kind of life the people had here. I often dreamed of medieval times and ladies and lords but I never dreamed of farmers. Now it was my chance to climb the narrow steps and wind up and up into the old building where Giuseppi was raised.
I hope as you read this you are picturing those beautiful scenes out of Italian postcards that show old buildings piled on top of each in the most romantic fashion, scenes from Amalfi Coast or the Cinque Terra, buildings with plaster chipping in colors of Siena, mustard and green. That would be the correct image. Not new apartment buildings and not a villa on a hill, no…twisted turning cobblestone streets and ancient cities is what we are describing.
We wind up the stairs until we enter an apartment, “Permesso”, Giuseppi calls out to let the nurse know we are entering. Giuseppe’s father is still living at 97 and still lives in the house, he has a nurse that is caring for him. I peak into a small bedroom just big enough for a twin size bed and a small table. There is a large room where Giuseppis father is and old pictures all around the room. Pictures of the family and Giuseppe’s father when he was young and newly married. We greet his father and Giuseppi spends a few minutes with him but he is not feeling well so we say our goodbyes. Giuseppi leads us up to the top floor where the kitchen is, I am bewildered by the sheer number of stairs leading up to the house, 52 steps up. Giuseppis father continued climbing these stairs everyday until he was 80 years old. I can’t imagine.
When Giuseppe’s father first started having leg problems at 80 years of age, Giuseppi offered to rent him an apartment on the main square of town, at ground level, so he could still sit in the piazza every evening and talk to the other old men on benches. That lasted for one month and Giuseppis dad wanted to return to his own house and the comfort of his memories there, so up he went the 52 steps not to come down again.
Giuseppi tells me that people in the village live long lives, some to 108 and others into their hundreds. How can that be? They were on the brink of starvation most of their lives, living on bread, milk, beans and vegetables. They did back-breaking farm work, walked miles uphill, 52 steps to their homes, breathed in smoke from the fires that were burning in the corners of their rooms for cooking and mold from the walls, no access to doctors and they lived for over 100 years! Maybe it was this life that kept them healthy. One bath a week, drinking fresh goats milk, water from the mountain and wheat they harvested and ground themselves…
In the small kitchen on the top floor of Giuseppi’s childhood home, there is a large fireplace for cooking meat, when there was meat to be cooked and a pizza oven in the other corner. Both are wood fired. His mother cooked with these when she was still alive, but no one uses them now. There is a new addition of a stove but that was not there during Giuseppi’s childhood.
I stepped out of the kitchen onto the small balcony. From here I can see the mountain range in the background and the balconies of neighbors directly in front of me and all around. I see the neighbors sitting in their balcony in groups of three or four, enjoying the cool of the evening and talking together high above the street below. In Italy you see community everywhere you go, people talking together on balconies, women on the door stoops talking, old men on benches in the square and children playing in the cobblestone streets. Community.
Giuseppi pointed out the levy he installed 20 years ago that hoisted goods from the streets below to the top floor. Can you imagine hauling groceries or supplies up 52 steps every time you wanted to do something? He installed it during a time they were doing remodeling of the kitchen, bathroom and floors. I imagine heavy bags of thinset and tiles and grout that would need to be hauled up and all the refuse that needed to be hauled down. Even when he was a child, to think about the groceries that his mother would need to cook for a family of seven is daunting. That was before the hoist was installed.
He also pointed out the cement washing board and sink on the balcony where his mother did the washing. Wow! What a life! Giuseppi pointed to one of the mountains in the distance and told me his father was a farmer, a Contadina. In fact as we wandered through the old town I noticed several doorways had old farming implements displayed on the walls and poems dedicated to the farmers.
So this was a farming community, maybe all old towns were farming communities. What occupation did I think people had in the past? They couldn’t all be ladys and lords. No, I’m sure they were farmers. Come to think of it, every small hill town I know is surrounded by farm land. They were farmers…like my mom. Sure, somone was the doctor, the teacher, a mayor and a postman. But most were farmers.
Guiseppe said everyday of his fathers life, from the time he was just a boy, he would go work his land. Up the mountain, an hour and a half there before dawn and an hour and a half back. After a days work, he would walk back home again. All year round he tended his patch of land, the olive trees and orange trees and the garden patch for vegetables. In the beginning he worked it alone or with his wife, later he was joined by his young sons, then he bought a donkey and the donkey was his constant companion.
Giuseppi remembers when his father bought the donkey, he was only a boy of 8 or 10 but he remembers being really happy because he no longer had to walk the hour and a half to the farm each day, instead he could ride the donkey! So everyday Gouseppi’s dad would leave the house and retrieve the donkey at the edge of town where he had built a small barn and walk to the farm. He would cultivate the soil, plant, harvest, prune and graft then he would load everything on the donkey, including his small boy, and head home.
Giuseppi also remembers a time when his dad had a goat, a white one, the goat he would also take with him each day up the mountain so it could graze and each night he would walk the goat and the donkey home. I can just see the old farmer walking home from his fields, trailing a donkey and a white goat and his small boy.
The goat did not stay in the barn with the donkey on the edge of town but went into a small room on the bottom level of the house. I remember seeing these rustic doors on the ground floor of old cities. I always thought they are wine cellars or garages but now I know they were for the animals. Giuseppi says in the evening and early mornings you would see the animals walking the narrow cobblestone streets being lead by the farmers and put away in the areas with a small wooden door on the ground floor of the old city.
A goat would be so handy to have, everyday you milk it and it provides milk for the family and cheese. Goat cheese is still very valued here in Italy. But Giuseppi’s goat only lasted a few years. Maybe it was easier to buy milk from the local milk man. This is how Giuseppi met his wife, she lived in the neighboring hill town of Stilo. Her dad had several cows, he would milk them everyday and load the steel drums on each side of his horse and trot over to Bivongi to sell the milk.
The towns women would fill their bottles with the warm milk. Yes, of course it’s warm milk, it just came out of the body of a warm cow and at this point they didn’t have electricity in their house let alone a refrigerator! This was in the post-war years when there wasn’t much to be had so often a meal was bread and milk. The beautiful daughter of the milkman caught Giuseppis eye and he made her his wife. He was 20 and she was 17. They were married for 40 years until just a few years ago when he lost her to cancer.
But Giuseppi has more to tell about life here in this hill town village and the farmers who lived here. He remembers when the only heat in the house came from the warm fires in the kitchen and how the whole family would sit in chairs around the fire. He remembered when all of the children slept in one room with one bed. Until later, when his father bought the next level up, the one with the kitchen and balcony. He remembers oil lamps before electricity came to the city and using the wooden outhouse that was perched on the second floor that was shared by two families. Before water was piped into the house the had to haul the water up to flush.
He remembers when his mom would make pasta but he also remembers eating beans, a lot of beans. He remembers the vegetables from the farm and even buying pasta in bulk in town and tomato sauce by the ladleful when his mom just needed a break. He said “meat? No, we never ate meat, who could afford meat?” You couldn’t eat chicken because you needed the chicken for eggs and you couldn’t eat goat because you needed the goat for milk. Maybe if the goat broke it’s leg, then you could eat goat.
Giuseppi said there was a doctor in town but no hospital and that was a problem if someone has a serious medical issue. His mom gave birth to all five children at home, that’s how they did it, gave birth at home. No one had cars either, maybe there were 4-5 cars in the whole town. He said his dad has never had a car or truck. A goat and a donkey but not a car or truck.
I asked Giuseppi how his dad met his mom, he said his mom and dad were both born and raised in Bivongi. They were also very young and when Giuseppi’s father asked to marry the daughter, the father said “No! Because you are a mafia man!” “What would make hm say that?”, I asked. “Because my father was a tough man, he carried a gun tucked into the back of his pants”, was Giuseppis reply.
Vincenzo (Giuseppis father) told the father of his soon-to-be-wife “If you don’t let me have her, I will take her anyway”….so they were married. At that time Vincenzo was not yet a farmer, he had not yet bought the land. He had no work, but it sounds like many men didn’t have work. After they had several children they found themselves without anything to eat, so Vincenzo walked to Crotone to get some wheat for flour. Crotone is two hours by car on today’s roads, it took Vincenzo 2 days to walk to Crotone. He had to walk there because he had no money for the train and there was no wheat grown on the hills where he lived. In Crotone, they grew wheat, so Vincenzo made the journey by foot so he could glean the wheat left over in the fields after harvest. After gleaning, he took the wheat to the mill and had it ground into flour, then he slugged the heavy flour bag onto his back. For this part of the journey he paid for the train so he could haul his flour home. This sack of flour kept them in bread for the winter.
Another time, when Vincenzo found himself without oil for the family, he went to the “rich man” in town who owned many olive trees and asked if he could pick some olives for his family to have oil, how could the rich man refuse when Vincenzo showed him the gun tucked into the back of his pants? Hmmmm, maybe he was a Mafia man!
Apparently Vincenzo’s father never worked either, he would just go into the forest and cut wood for steaks that the farmers used to trellis their grapevines. This was illegal activity to cut down the trees in the forest and he could have been arrested for it. But to make matters worse, he would sell the steaks to the farmers and in the night he would steal them back and sell them to someone else! We were told that the forest was a dangerous place because the mafia would hang out here. It’s a good place to hide and dispose of someone if you needed to! Yikes! I think they were mafia men!
But Vincenzo wanted more out of life so he made a few trips to Germany where he did roadwork and construction until he had enough money to buy his own beloved field in the side of the mountain. He still carried a gun tucked into the back of his pants but he made his money the honest way, in farming. Giuseppi showed me the little section of the house that he lived in before they bought the second floor with the kitchen. It was a small room with one double bed that all three boys slept in. There was a small window next to the bed and one morning Giuseppi’s mom came out to find one of her small sons hanging halfway out the window, fast asleep. Apparently he was trying to stay cool in the heat of the summer. At the foot of the bed there was a fireplace for cooking. Giuseppi said it kept them very warm in the winter but it was hot in the summer.
His parents had a small room in the back, the original bed and mattress were still there. It looked like the same furniture my mom had in her farmhouse in Kansas, attractive but simple “Art Deco” furniture of the depression era. Giuseppi said the mattress used to be stuffed with corn husks. Each morning Giuseppe’s mom would thrust her arm inside the mattress to fluff the corn husks back up. Once a year she would dump all of the corn husks into the river, wash the mattress cover and stuff the mattress with new corn husks. When Giuseppe’s dad, Vincenzo was climbing into bed that night, Giuseppe’s mom told him ”You will sleep good tonight because I replaced the corn husks”. Vincenzo jumped out of bed and said “Where did you dump the old corn husks?!” His mom said “Down at the river”. Vincenzo jumped out of bed, pulled on his trousers and ran down the cobblestone streets, out of the city and down to the river, digging in the river and the corn husks until he found what he was looking for, his two guns he kept hidden in the corn husk mattress.
Since during our visit we have driven the short distance of 15 minutes to the beach -almost everyday, I asked Giuseppi if they went to the beach as a family when he was a boy. “The beach? No, never did we ever go to the beach” who had time for such frivolities? He said at that time no one went to the beach for recreation, just the fisherman. But he managed to gather two broken bikes together and make one useful bike for himself. One that he built, his father would never have bought him a bike. So in his early teenage years he rode his bike to the beach, a journey of an hour and a half. He said maybe four times in the summer he did that. I’m sure his father was not happy about that since he could have used his help in the field.
Giuseppi stopped school after five years, he would rather hike up to the top of the mountains and explore the monasteries and broken down churches that gave Monasterace its name. He knows every river, waterfall and mountain. Not that he wasn’t also a hard worker but farm work wasn’t for him and he knew that early on. He went to work for an uncle in a neighboring village in construction work and that is how he has supported his family ever since.
His father loved farming and Guiseppe says his dad had the best patch of land because there was a ravine that the water flowed to from the mountains. There was always water there, even in the heat of the summer. He said his dads oranges were the best around and they picked the olives by hand to make the olive oil. His two older brothers worked with their father in the field until they immigrated to Canada the first chance they got. His father thought of immigrating also and even traveled the Canada when Giuseppe was 13. His mom was very excited thinking they would all immigrate to Canada to be with her two successful sons there. But one day a letter came that said they would not be immigrating to Canada, Giuseppe’s dad wanted to come home, home to his farm up in the mountain. His mom cried when she read the letter. When Giuseppis dad returned from Canada, they had a toilet installed in their house, this made his mother feel better. They got electricity about the same time, Giuseppe remembers.
Giuseppe himself went back and forth to Canada to work with his brothers several times but he too felt the pull to return to Italy. I met Giuseppe while we lived in Nettuno, he had moved to Nettuno shortly after marriage and raised his family there but Calabria still ran strong in his veins and his wife too. Obviously it ran strong in his father who couldn’t leave his mountain town and farm even when he was too old to climb the 52 stairs, he would stay there in the family home. No one can convince him to live anywhere else. Today no one works the farm, the olive and orange trees are still there but their valuable produce just falls to the ground. The days of the small farmer are over, now he cannot afford to pay someone to work the land, you wouldn’t make a profit. It only made sense to feed a family and make a little extra to send a son to college and install a new toilet.
I’m so glad to have had Giuseppi as our resident guide in these Calabrian hill towns, happy to see the land his dad farmed, to see the rivers and mountains and to see an old Borgo (neighborhood) through the eyes of a man who ran here on the cobblestone streets as a child. Someone who could point out where the animals spent the night and where the wine was made and stored. A man who still knew everyone in the Borgo by name and greeted them all with a kiss. Who knew where to buy the best lemon granita and could tie together the pieces of my present Italian reality with his Italy of the past.
Other Articles About Traveling & Living in Italy:
The Ancient City of Matera(Published August 2019)
Alberobello, in the Pulgia Region of Italy(Published August 2019)
Our Roadtrip to Calabria, First Stop: Crotone(Published August 2019)
Our Roadtrip to,Calabria, Next Stop: Tropea (Published August 2019)
House Hunters International in Italy(Published April 24, 2019)
A Californian Surfing in Italy(Published May 1, 2019)
Our New Town in Italy(Published June 17, 2019
Life Lessons from the Secret Garden(Published June 21, 2019)
Homemade Pizza in a “Wood-fired” Pizza Oven(Published July 5, 2019)
Summer Guests(Published August 3, 2019)
Wild Boar, Cows on the Loose and Rabbit Stew(Published August 2019)
