Took a bus with no one else that spoke English and got off a stop we were hoping was Arcidosso. We think it was, there was a castle off in the distance. Hiked our way up to the castle, because there was a house with a funny-looking swirl on it we thought was the place we were staying.
Yep! We knocked on the door and eventually just went inside, because no one answered. He was cleaning and blasting Indie-electronic-Italian music, so he didn't hear us. After climbing over a desk, a kitchen table, a countertop, couch, plenty of chairs and knicknacks, we made our way inside.
Welcome to Arcidosso! It's not heated, except by a fireplace at night. My fingers are cold. It's beautiful. We had an awesome dinner last night. I'm practicing Spanish, and realizing that I actually know something! Kirstyn is champing French, of course. (So, dinner was Lorenzo talking English to us, Spanish to the 3 other couchsurfers staying with us, Bridget understanding most of the Spanish, me making it up as I went, and sometimes me and one of the other couchsurfers talking French). Met some amazing people. The three other couchsurfers are a mom and her two daughters (ages 12 and 15) from Argentina. The mom (Marissa) speaks a little English and French, but the girls only speak Spanish.
We might need to get dreadlocks to fit in here. Given that we haven't showered recently, that might not be so difficult. Oh, because there is no hot water in the house. Ate vegetables that I'm positive were acquired from a dumpster. They still tasted fine. Petted lots of cats. Ripped our clothing climbing under barbed wire fences. Safety pinned my winter coat back together. Wore hippie pants and long johns all day yesterday. We ate oranges after dinner, except we weren't allowed to throw the peel away - that went in the fire - and the seeds went in a seed bag, because one of Lorenzo's pasttimes (our host) is putting a bunch of seeds in a clay pot and throwing it outside. To let the seeds grow, I think.
Sorry this is so disjointed. It fits in around here :-) After dinner another girl showed up, and hugged Lorenzo so hard we thought they knew each other. Apparently not. Sally is from Florida, but has been in Italy for a few months. She had a crazy story of how she got here -- including being stranded with no money or place to stay, and being totally taken care of by random strangers. She's awesome. I like her a lot.
The room with beds is downstairs, but you have to go outside and around the back of the house to get in. It is freezing, but lots of blankets make it ok. Maybe in other circumstances I'd be bothered by using blankets with so many questionable stains, but that was ok also. Before dinner, Lorenzo 'washed' all the dishes in the sink. That was in quotations, because we're not exactly sure what that entailed. Except he didn't use soap, but used ash instead. He makes his own soap though. There are murals on the wall of Mexican stuff -- the face on the Mexican dime, and the Mexican god of fertility. I'm pretty sure if we decided we wanted to paint a mural on the wall too, he would be totally ok with that. He has 2 guitars, but doesn't play either of them. His wifi is turned off and on, because "the waves are bad for you".
Basically, it's been an experience here. A good experience, though. We did do some questioning initially about whether we actually wanted to stay or flee, but God's got our backs, especially when we just gave it up to him. Meeting the other couchsurfers was wonderful. We are leaving soon here to head to Rome though. Buses seem like they may not run on Sunday, and we don't want to be stuck here...
No comments:
Post a Comment