After our dismal coffee experience yesterday and Sarah’s crash course in UK “coffee” we put a little more effort into a place to patronise today. The girls had heard good stuff about The Boston Tea Party so we made a bee-line there. It turned out to be a place Mike and I had been to last year! Over coffee I presented Sarah with a birthday present to adorn her little cottage in a Tasmanian town with the delightful name of “Snug”.

Mike and I had been looking forward to re-visiting the abbey so we could shoot it in HDR this time.

I mused how much taking an interest in photography has affected how I now perceive the world around me. I got sooo much more out of our visit this time around – noticing details that I don’t even remember seeing before.

We briefly considered having a bath but thought better of it after realising (a) the price, (b) it would be all modern looking rather than ye olde Roman ruins and (c) it would be hot and it was a rather warm day already. We frugally decided to have another picnic and stopped by Marks & Spencer for some supplies. We struck on the brilliant idea of buying some cold white wine and a birthday cake for Sarah as well.

We found a spot by the river and sat down for a long, leisurely lunch, cheap wine, good conversation, and a dodgy supermarket birthday cake.

We went for a stroll to the The Crescent and read an interesting bit of trivia about it – Only the facade was constructed and then it was sold off in lengths and people built the rest of their house to their own specifications. We took a walk behind it and sure enough it was all higgledy piggledy.

Mike and I had yet another history geek moment when we read that the lawn in front of The Crescent has a ha-ha. A “ha-ha”, as described in “At Home: A short history of private life” by Bill Bryson, is “a sunken fence, a kind of palisade designed to separate the private part of an estate from its working parts without the visual intrusion of fence or hedge. Because they were unseen until the last instant, people tended to discover them with a startled cry of ‘Ha-ha’! – and hence, so it is said, the name”.

We also pointed out a feature of many houses in Bath that were the butt of many jokes on a comedic tour of Bath we went on last year. There are many recesses in the walls that look like there should be a door or window there. We’d read that when glass was still quite expensive people would paint these recesses to look like windows and doors – I’m still not clear on why doors where expensive though…

We waited out the train’s departure time at a very grand looking cafe over enormous beverages – what is it with this country and pints!? After our time with friends I was feeling a bit philosophical and reflected on how sad it is that, although I’d love to spend more time with friends, even if we were to move back to Australia half our friends would still be on other continents. Then I felt even sadder when I thought that we would still be spending more time with friends there than we can here and it will most likely be a few years until I see Sarah again. I at least count myself fortunate to have so many people to miss so much – I’d take that any day to the alternative.

After saying goodbye to the gals I couldn’t quite bear the thought of going back to Nettle and eating, just the two of us, so we grabbed some very tasty pizza in Bath instead. By the time we left we were racing the sunset, not relishing the thought of cycling through dark fields lined with thistles and hoisting our bikes over stiles surrounded with nettle (no, not that Nettle!). Luckily we made it just in time and rolled into our CL to the sound of our neighbour playing a lovely little tune on a harpsichord. He was sat outside but facing towards the open door of their little old caravan – I think he was serenading his wife. It was really nice way to finish the day – thanks little old harpsichord playing man!

As we drove up the driveway we were delighted to see that the field we’d taken an awesome panorama of last year had now been planted with wheat, so although the tire tracks were still there they were highlighted with bluey-green wheat instead of tiny white flowers.

Then

Now

Also, I had no idea wheat is so colourful!

We had a couple of days to kill until my high school mates – Sarah, Carmen and Sarah’s mum Diane – arrived in Bath. We were without electricity, however, and with a busted leisure battery, so Mike got a lot of reading done (of the ‘dead-tree’ kind of book, that is – Mike) and I put the finishing touches on a painting and whipped up a little birthday present for Sarah (who’s birthday is in a couple of days).

When the gang finally arrived in Bath we arranged to pick them up the next day and head out to the Cotswolds in Nettle. On the way to Bath we got a little lost thanks to GPS’ charming tendency to discombobulate in built-up areas – just when you need it the most. Unfortunately our “little late” turned into a lot late when I proceeded to walk around Bath looking for them, having made the mistake of relying on my memory instead of the map in my hand. Peeps finally found, we headed back to Mike and Nettle, generally mooched and caught up then discussed our plans for the day. The hefty responsibility of choosing which Cotswold towns to visit was delegated to me as I’ve been there before. Our first destination was Oxford. I’d only seen Sarah twice in the ten years since graduation from high school but we easily slipped back into our friendship and were giggling uncontrollably at the slightest thing like we always used to. It was hard sitting in the front, I really wanted to chat with the gals but Nettle’s rather prohibitively loud when she gets going.

Once in Oxford we made a bee line to a park and had a picnic lunch that the girls had brought along, of baguettes, soft cheeses, dips and fruit. Our first port of call was Christ Church College as a few scenes from the first couple of Harry Potter movies were shot there. We didn’t end up going in as the admission fee was a cheeky £6 and we couldn’t really do it justice given that we wanted to see a couple of villages as well. We settled for wandering around the grounds instead. We looked on rather bemusedly at the things the girls decided were photo-worthy. It reminded me how it felt when I was here for the first time – coming from Australia where anything older than 100 years is considered historic and the grandest building I’d seen was St Paul’s Cathedral in Melbourne with an impressive 125 years of history. Given our speedy itinerary I suggested we just stroll through the city centre a little bit instead of heading to any sites in particular. For the next 20 minutes we walked through some pretty ordinary looking bits of town until we turned a corner and Wham! There you are, Oxford! Unfortunately in all the excitement of having new people around we don’t seem to have taken many photos. Here’s a vaguely interesting building for you:

We stumbled on an exhibition of an edition of Alice in Wonderland illustrated by Salvador Dali. I was a big fan of his in high school and of course love the story as well so we eagerly checked it out. I was kind of expecting he would have toned down the crazy for the project at hand but it was pretty much standard, wacky Dali. Definitely not children friendly. Oxford was absolutely teeming with tourists and even if we’d had a whole day scheduled for the town I’m not sure we would have chosen to stay for much longer. Eager to escape the masses we headed back to Nettle and onto Bourton on the Water – the name rung a bell so I was hoping it was the one I’d visited way back in 2003. On the way we spotted a field of deer. Like big geeks we reversed back and got out to take photos.

Mike and I saw a very pointless looking little structure sitting in the field and wondered if it was a “folly”. We’re reading a fabulously informative book at the moment, called “At Home: A Short History of Private Life” by Bill Bryson and are learning all sorts of random and fascinating things – from the ice trade, to Palladian architecture and the history of beds. A “folly” is a building on an estate “designed with no other purpose in mind than to complete a view and provide a happy spot for the wandering eye to settle“.

Arriving in Bourton on Water (Mike – ….and trying to get the song “Smoke On The Water” out of my head…) I instantly recognised it as the right place and just like the last time I was here there were quite a few people out enjoying the nice weather and dangling their feet in the icy water of the little stream. We leisurely wandered about, spotted some cute little ducklings and grabbed a coffee which we optimistically hoped would taste a bit better than brown water. After laughing at my latte being more like a cappuccino and Sarah’s cappuccino being more like a latte, Carmen and I declared that they didn’t taste too bad at which point Sarah kindly informed us that we’ve been in the UK for too long and have obviously forgotten what coffee tastes like. We defended our statement with the facts that it didn’t taste like brown water, the beans weren’t burnt, ergo not a bad coffee by UK standards, at which point Sarah died a little inside. There was a rather unfortunate but humurous moment when we were having this discussion when Carmen began to say that “we at least shouldn’t complain until…” with the waitress standing right behind her ready to serve the rest of our order. I felt bad for her when we all started laughing after she left but it was just such unfortunate timing we couldn’t not. I hope we didn’t hurt her feelings. Maybe we should have explained to her that we are Melburnians and therefore gigantic coffee snobs. Ah well…

A bit of engaging conversation and a joyless caffeine injection later we headed off for our final Cotswold destination – a town I may or may not have been to – Stow on the Wold. In Stow on the Wold we noticed little yellow boxes dotted around with the word “grit” on them. We were intrigued and opened one up not having the faintest of what we would find within… It was a substance that looked remarkably a lot like… well, grit. At which point we cracked up laughing and imagined people going around saying “I could really do with a bit of grit right about now”. We managed to deduce by the added ingredient of salt that it is for sprinkling on the roads when it snows – probably something quite obvious to most northern hemisphere dwellers but we’re Australians so allowances must be made. Now, who’s for some grit?

I didn’t remember much about Stow on the Wold, including if I’d actually been there before, and there certainly wasn’t anything that memorable about it this time around either. We strolled about the deserted streets and Mike and I had our second history geek fix when we spotted windows with a circular lump in the middle of the glass. We’d read that this method of production was much more affordable when glass was still quite expensive. As we walked Carmen relayed the history behind a couple of phrases she’d learnt about when she was in Edinburgh. To “cost an arm and a leg” stems from a time when cadavers were in great demand by surgeons who needed to practise their skills as much as possible due to the lack of anaesthesia and the need to work very quickly. Cadavers were in short supply however, as only those of executed criminals were allowed to be used. This saw a spate of grave robbing to supply the demand, as fresh cadavers fetched a pretty penny. Hence, something expensive cost an “arm and a leg”. Interestingly, as Mike and I had also read, a couple of particularly entrepreneurial chaps decided grave robbing was far too much hassle and a bit dangerous, what with the guards and all, so they decided it would be far more efficient to simply murder people. They did and one of them was eventually caught. He gave up his partner in crime and got off light. The other who was not so fortunate was executed, and in a very neat twist of fate his cadaver was used for surgery practise.

The second phrase was “to get shit-faced”. To get shit-faced stems way back to when people threw their effluent out of windows onto the streets below. If you’ve never before felt immensely lucky to be born in the time you have been born, feel free to take a moment now (I’ll wait). Apparently there was an agreed-upon hour to throw this stuff about which unhappily coincided with closing time of all the pubs in Britain. Inebriated fellows stumbled out onto the streets and in their drunken stupor looked up, instead of moving as quickly as humanly possible, when a warning cry came from above. Hence, the term “to get shit-faced”.

We admired a crooked building for a bit – anything slightly wonky is fascinating to a people who come from a country were everything is relatively new and therefore annoyingly uniform. On the way home we stopped off for a good old English pub meal – at a pub, incidentally, that was around long before Henry VIII was busy lopping off his wives’ heads – and a pint of cider. Sarah – a dietitian – ordered a burger with a deep-fried patty of spinach and two types of cheese – a dietitian ordered deep-fried cheese! We had a fascinating and horrifying conversation about all sorts of parasites and how they make their way into your body, punctuated with plenty of real life stories. (Mike – My favourite was the one about the African worm which made its way into its host’s foot, then all the way up into their bowels, where eventually it, well, made its way out, and out, and out, and out)

We dropped the guys off in Bath and flopped into bed as soon as we got home, absolutely spent and delighted to have spent a day with such awesome people.

The nearby hillsides became, if not less precipitous, more grassy, with little brown huts sprinkled liberally around. We wound our way down a couple of switchbacks in the road and through a beautiful pass lined with pine trees, nearby rocky peaks wreathed in cloud. The road wound along the hillside above a deep valley, a bright blue river snaking through it. We stopped briefly at a supermarket we came across to stock up on supplies.

The road continued to wind through the mountains, affording us some rather spectacular views of misty/snowy peaks. At one point, the road passed by a shallow and crystal-clear lake of brilliant blue. The mountains gradually decreased in size, and very suddenly we were on a motorway, and Noia the navigator was displaying the welcome screen for Germany!

Motorway driving is rarely anything but tedium, and today was no different; we drove until we’d had enough, and on a hunch I pointed Noia towards a green patch on the map that displayed a parking symbol within. Sure enough, we’d found a very pretty forest, interspersed with green fields, and a little parking area for walkers. We pulled up, and took the opportunity to take a walk in the intensely green woods — the stuff of fairy-tales.

For the next day, we’d identified part of a driving tour of the Mosel Valey that sounded promising, to the west and very near to our route. We headed that way, towards the Rhone-side town of Bingen am Rhein, arriving relatively late in the day.

After the success of the last night’s camp, I targeted Noia at a road in a large green patch beside the town, little realising at the time that the road in question was barely a footpath through the woods. So, we turned down this little road that got smaller and smaller, to our consternation, and had a slightly worrisome yet relatively pleasant drive through the woods, feeling a little sheepish as we drove past walkers on the track above. (Katherine: Mike handled this with remarkable poise)

We came out beside a little pub, and decided to pull up in the nearby car-park (also the car park for walkers) for the night. With Katherine’s high hopes for a schnitzel, we visited the pub, but found the restaurant closed. Still, we found a seat in the dimly-lit lounge, various animal heads hanging grotesquely from the walls — all seemed very “German pub”-esque — and had a few beers (Veltins, which the barman recommended and which we enjoyed immensely).

Rather desperate to fill up with water, the next morning we set out along the Rhone hoping to spot a caravan park or similar that we could drop into. Sure enough, Katherine spotted one a little distance down the road, and we negotiated our way under the railway line that ran alongside the river, along the narrow little lane, bordered by bright green rows of vines beside the river, and pulled in. The woman in charge was very friendly and happy for us to use the facilities; she was bustling about on various errands as we filled up, and kept making rather endearing “I’m run off my feet” huffy sighs with lots of exclamations in German, to which I grinned and nodded sympathetically.

While Katherine was filling the tank, she heard a hissing, and realised that the front left tyre was leaking air from the valve — just like what happened to us in Arezzo! Uh-oh. I poked at the valve until the hissing stopped, and we deemed it drivable, for now, as the pressure seemed to be relatively normal still. Hoping to find a tyre service facility like last time, we drove for a little while keeping our eyes open, but the one possibility was shut, whereupon we realised it was Sunday. I checked and topped-up the tire pressure at a petrol station, and we hit the motorway, hoping that it would last us until we could get it fixed.

When we decided to pick a town randomly to visit for lunch, the steering felt suddenly very odd, and sure enough, the tyre was down again. We pulled into a petrol station and decided it was time to put the spare tyre on. It’d been a while and my memory was fuzzy (I work with computers, not cars!), but Nettle’s manual, albeit in German, seemed to have all I needed. Out came the jack, and I wrestled the slipping handle until the wheel was sufficiently off the ground, and started on the wheel nuts (probably should’ve done that the other way around, but oh, well). I remembered something about European threads being the opposite to ours — probably the same phenomenon that makes water swirl the opposite way down drains, I guess — and the manual confirmed that clockwise was the way to undo them, so I laboured away, trying everything I could think of to loosen them. No luck, and I was scratching my head wondering what to do next, when a friendly German voice behind us announced the arrival of our saviours for the day. He was a mechanic, amazingly, and his wife spoke English, so we were in excellent hands — apparently, as she told Katherine, he rescues people like this quite frequently. Our benefactors took command, and I held my foot on the brake while he undid the nuts — anti-clockwise, of course — by jumping on the spanner’s handle. Within a couple of minutes, the new wheel was on, and we were good to go. We thanked them profusely. How lucky we are. (Katherine: We had a giggle at Mike’s masculinity taking a bit of a hit, especially given the super buffness of the mechanic in question. He still gets man points for getting the wheel off the ground though. I had an “I’ve watched too much Dexter moment” when I quietly wondered to myself if this guy has a “dark passenger” which he satiates by going around playing the good samaritan but actually sabotaging vehicles and sending their startled drivers to an untimely – and untraceable – death). We went and had a couple of schnitzels at a nearby pub. We were amused in the pub to see a race on the TV, and then realised that it was happening just around the corner, at the Nürburgring. Cool! We felt unreasonably chuffed at having had beer and chicken schnitzel in Germany. Our German experience is complete – at least this time around. (Katherine again: obviously our tire didn’t fall off sending us to an untimely startled death. Sorry for my uncharitable thoughts good Samaritan German guy).

So, with a fair bit of time lost, we decided to just hit the autobahn again, and skip the driving tour this time — how exciting, the prospect of having a “next time”! We crossed over the border into the Netherlands, to our surprise, as we don’t tend to do much map-gazing lately — navigation is more Noia’s realm now, as she’s been so great, we trust her to get us where we want to go. Within a few hours, we passed into Belgium. Belgium!

We headed into the city of Hasselt, where a friend, Kris, lives, who I’d met a year or so before through a WordPress theme I wrote. We’d arranged to pay a visit, so we found a park at a spot Kris had recommended, in the car park of a sports oval already populated with a few campers, reassuringly, and set out on foot to find him.

About twenty minutes later, we set out on foot the right way, as I sheepishly realised I’d directed us in precisely the wrong direction… twice. We walked along a busy, noisy road (Ah yes… This is why we’re not big city fans!), then towards the quieter town’s centre. We made our way under the train station and found Kris’s street on the other side, with lots of imposing brick houses lining the road. We greeted Kris (I experimented on him with some Dutch — “goede middag”), and he invited us in for a moment before we all ventured out into the evening. Kris took us on a walk around the inner streets of the town, and showed us a few of the sights (greeted a few very punk-band-esque friends of his that we encountered along the way), then we dropped in on the local Irish pub briefly — quite funny hearing Irish accents here. We asked for a recommendation from the bartender for a Belgium beer to try and ended up with an interesting beverage that tasted a bit like honey… and beer. We wandered through Hasselt (via the best veggie burger I think I’ve ever had), through the city’s impressive park, while we talked companionably. I was amazed with the depth of Kris’s knowledge of his town, and the amount of awareness and involvement he has in its community and local politics — a local council member in the making, there.

We decided to spend the night in Hasselt, and spent the next morning with a couple of errands — laundry, a little shopping; Katherine was excited to find a well-stocked art supplies shop and basically moved in for a while.

Then we hit the road again, and headed onwards; we left Belgium and entered France, finally ending up in Dunkerque. We stayed the night at the huge and rather fancy municipal caravan park, in preparation for our departure on the ferry the next day, to Dover. Quite fun to be speaking French again.

Whilst crossing the lagoon on the train and watching the surreal city approach, I got laughed at for eagerly pulling out Google Earth on the iPhone for an additional birds-eye view and showing it to Katherine — “How cool does this look!” — evoking the response that it also looked pretty cool out the window (she said bemusedly that I was missing it because I had my head buried in my iPhone). Andrea laughed knowingly, saying that he does exactly the same thing. We emerged from the train station onto the bustling streets of Venice. Andrea and Silvia took us up and over Ponte degri Scalzi, the bridge crossing the main canal, and proceeded to lead us through a warren of tiny streets, frequently crossing picturesque little bridges over narrow canals lined with boats.

It was very difficult to visualise the city as the collection of little islands that it is — it seemed decidedly more like a solid landmass interspersed by canals! As Katherine answered when asked later that night what she thought of Venice, “I thought there’d be more water”. It was quite cool to think that we were crossing between islands when we passed over those little bridges though. Katherine later remarked on the unusual quantity of graffiti (something I blithely failed to notice), noting that perhaps tagging a place so astronomically famous is quite the ego trip!

A big trade in Venice was in exotic carnival masks — there were lots of little shops selling them, representing a variety of Commedia dell’arte characters. These had Katherine feeling inspired, especially when she spotted the unpainted plaster ones you can buy and decorate yourself.

As we walked, Andrea pointed out one of the university buildings nestled amongst the narrow streets and canals, and introduced us to a great Italian word that we haven’t really been able to find an English version of: Simpatico, which Andrea and Silvia described as meaning something like funny, friendly; basically a word describing someone who’s good company, of pleasant character and who puts one in the mood they’re in just by being with them. (Admittedly, if said about a woman however, it means she has a nice personality but isn’t much to look at, as in “she has a great personality, but…“). It seemed apt, being introduced to the word by those two simpatici.

Andrea was explaining the verb ‘andare’ to me (to go), and a guy passed us and made a friendly comment to Andrea in Italian — something about giving the Americans language lessons and “Americani non parlano Italiano”. We stopped to talk for a moment; he asked us where we were from (actually, Australia!), and our conversation moved from there. and it turned out that Ben was an American who’d just kinda settled in Venice for a few months and had landed some sort of architect internship there – not a bad gig! He looked entirely Italian, and his Italian seemed pretty solid, so I was surprised when he switched to English to talk to all four of us. He was a friendly sort, and brainstormed with us about what to show his visiting mother later that day, given that Andrea and Silvia were being tour guides for the day, as well. When we parted ways with Ben, Andrea turned to us and explained “he is simpatico”.

Andrea grabbed simpatico Ben’s contact details, and we pressed on to Piazza San Marco, one of the main tourist draws of Venice. It was funny, our first visit there with Andrea and Silvia with the pressing hoards of other visitors had us almost entirely unaware of the square’s charms — it was difficult to appreciate the basilica with most of it covered with scaffolding, and the press of people left little breathing-room to look around.

Poor Silvia was feeling pretty drained by this point — our plans to have locals show us around had inadvertently resulted in us dragging a pregnant woman around Venice — sorry Silvia! With Silvia desperately in need of sustenance and a rest we sat down by the water and talked for a while, then pressed on and stopped for lunch at a little pizza cafe way off the beaten track (which made it consequently quite tasty, and very cheap!).

Some more ambling around back-streets and we came across a gelato shop — Andrea and Silvia had two rounds, so I suppose that must be high praise indeed. They laughed at our restraint (only one helping, pah!). We discovered later that the gelateria was listed in our travel guide: Quite a validation for Lonely Planet recommendations right there!

We jumped back on the train and made our way to Andrea and Silvia’s, in Padova. All four of us napped on the journey back (after plodding our way around most of Venice!), although not before Andrea and Silvia had to endure the apparently maddeningly inane chatter of two Italian women in the seats near us; the one benefit to not speaking Italian! We hung around on the couch for a while, and I pulled up an impressive recording on YouTube of Andrea and Silvia’s old band, “K”, playing a gig to a huge crowd.

Paolo and Vivian (Vivienne? Forgive me if I’m wrong on the names, Paolovigo!) had kindly invited us around for dinner, so the four of us joined them at “the cube”, their very Nordic-styled, gleaming house, along with Zage and his partner, and Paolo’s brother Robert and his girlfriend Alice. We chatted with Alice for a while, who spoke excellent English, and then gathered around as Paola and Vivian served up some absolutely awesome home-made pizza. We were startled when out came the shredded horse-meat — really, guys?

At the end of a really enjoyable evening with our new simpatici friends, Andrea and Silvia drove us back to “Monsangeles” (an in-joke name for Monselice that they couldn’t actually remember the origins of!). On the way we introduced them to one more favourite Aussie band, Powderfinger, which went down very well. We said a warm farewell, and promised that we would be back to pester them again — for longer, next time, and hopefully in Italian! Andrea gave us some Italian comic books to practise with – that’s how he learnt English! We’ve got no excuse now.

We’re really excited to have met them — for sure, they’re ‘our people’ — and we can’t wait to be back.

I found Padova, in a strange way, to be a bit like our home town of Melbourne in Australia. It doesn’t look like it at all but I found that Padova didn’t seem to have any grand tourist attractions to it’s name – just like Melbourne – but what it does have is a sense of “liveability”. It’s a nice city. It has pretty parts, it has a pleasant atmosphere and there seems be a lot going on. This was interesting to me as the longer we’ve spent in Italy the more I’ve come to feel that I wouldn’t want to live here. I’ve become very aware of the general lack of space – doors opening right up onto the road in towns, the “country” still being quite populated with at least a house or two always in view. To me, this has amounted to a general sense of crowdedness. This is something I love about travel and learning about other cultures – it shines a new light on our own country and culture. Intellectually I understood that Australia has a tiny population and is massive with wide, open spaces but I didn’t understand what that felt like until I felt what a large population in a small country feels like. It may have been because of our friends’ presence but Padova felt like one of the few places in Italy where I could live – I say “I” as Mike has felt there have been plenty of places that he would be happy staying put in.

It was absolutely wonderful spending time with locals and gleaning little insights we otherwise wouldn’t have gleaned. I love my coffee, I come from a city that has a well-known and respected coffee culture but I can’t for the life of me understand Italian coffee – the espresso. “Sip” and it’s gone! Andrea shed some light on it for me when he likened it to a small gourmet chocolate – it doesn’t last long but it’s a taste sensation for as long as it does.

We had a traditional “spritzer” – a cocktail – at “spritzer o’clock” – sometime in the evening before dinner – and watched the “fighetti” – comically fashionable Italian youth – strut and generally stand around looking rich and beautiful in “The Uniform” – the wardrobe that it seems all Italians have agreed to adopt. I asked Silvia, who expressed exasperation at “The Uniform”, where she does her shopping. Her answer – she doesn’t shop! She proceeded to point out her hole-ridden Doc Martins that were The Thing to have in the 90s!

Just as Andrea finished explaining to us what “fighetti” means, a very expensive looking car that barely came up to knee-level came to a screeching halt right in front of the busy cafe and a trendy young thing strutted out in The Uniform. Everyone in the vicinity turned and stared. Andrea turned back to us, shrugged, and announced, “fighetti”. We all cracked up as the guy sauntered off nonchalantly.

We talked for a while about the band they were in in their twenties, “K”. Turns out our new friends were quite the rock stars back in the day! Later that night at their apartment we watched a concert they played at to a massive audience, Silvia on guitar and Andrea the lead singer! That night we introduced the guys to some Aussie bands – Clare Bowditch and The Cat Empire. It was fun seeing Andrea rock out to a song about our home-town “The Crowd”.

We had a wonderful home-cooked meal with a couple of Andrea and Silvia’s lovely friends and the best strawberries I’ve ever tasted with nothing but a bit of water, lemon and sugar. After dinner we went to the “Gelateria da Bepi”, a gelateria with a very unconventional array of flavours, including basil, carrot, sweet potato, pepper, tomato, rosemary, sage, celery, pumpkin and salmon!

We discussed our plans for Sunday and couldn’t pass up the opportunity of visiting Venice with locals – both Silvia and Andrea went to university there, the lucky things!

The reality of it has been quite different though: Somehow we seem to have made more connections with people than when we were back in Australia! A combination of being more outdoorsey, and having more time to devote to social networking has introduced us to lots of fantastic new people, and some very strong new friendships.

I met Andrea through my iPhone app Loopy — he got in touch after giving it a go, and we got talking. He lives in Padua with his partner Silvia, and next on our itinerary was to go and visit them.

So, we left Poggibonsi and headed north up through Tuscany. This was one of our most beautiful drives so far, through stunning emerald-coloured countryside, all vines and olive trees, cute little terracotta-roofed villas and startlingly blue lakes. We passed straight through Florence (to our surprise — I hadn’t inspected our route in advance), passing right by the place we stayed last time we were in Tuscany. Of course, as is our way, we passed through right on peak-hour, so it was a slow plod through the city. We pushed on the other side, and wound our way up into the mountains.

We discovered the most beautiful wildcamp location (last photo above), but we hadn’t really fulfilled our 3 hour driving quota for the day, and pressed on; we started keeping an eye out for a place to stop about half an hour later, and utterly failed for the following several hours. We felt a little despair when we turned onto an autostrada that reminded us both of the concrete forest that was Seoul, and eventually pulled over by the road and very successfully found ourselves a decent spot off the road 10 minutes away using Google Earth. What a great tool for wildcamping!

The next day we made it to Padova and moved into our new site for the week, in Monselice by the canal. The town was very pretty, and we were pleasantly surprised by our new surroundings, expecting a bit of a “suburban wasteland”, as we two snooty hills-dwellers put it.

After talking to various people, I’d formed an image in my head of Northern Italy as something of an endless suburb, but it was much greener and more relaxed than I’d pictured, to my relief. What’s more, we were thrilled to get our first glimpses of scarlet fields full of poppies!

We got in touch with Andrea and Silvia, and they came to pick us up and take us out to a restaurant with their friends. If it wasn’t clear already, when we met them it became clear pretty quickly that we were going to get along with them very well — these were definitely ‘our people’.

Having not worn or owned any makeup since the beginning of our travels, Katherine took the opportunity to get her girl on. Although not usually big on the hair and make-up thing, she rather enjoyed not looking like the un-groomed, polar-fleece wearing vagabond that she usually does – her words, not mine (I would, in fact, say she’s a damn fine looking vagabond, but she wouldn’t believe me).

The restaurant we headed to was one that had been recommended to Andrea and Silvia, and we were to be introduced to ‘bigoli’, one of the local specialties, a thick egg-based pasta. It’s called ‘bigui’ in the Venetian dialect, which had become a bit of an in-joke after Andrea and some friends had mentioned on Twitter that they were going to introduce us to it, and I misinterpreted it as a software development tool of some kind (‘ui’ as in User Interface).

We filed in and were soon joined by the others, two other couples and a third couple with their adorable little daughter. I was struck by how many of us were musicians and programmers! Always a good sign; there’s something about people who’ve been involved in music. We greatly enjoyed their company, and they were kind enough to do lots of translating for us when the bulk of the conversation turned Italian (we still regretted not putting more effort into learning more, though! We shall for next time).

There was much laughter and good company, and some great pasta with quite spectacular sauce, that we’re forever going to be trying to replicate (we think it was the best pasta we’ve ever tasted).

Then a car pulled up and a greeting in a very broad Australian accent announced the arrival of two expat Australians who had noticed our Aussie flag sticker on the back, which we put there to inform the French that we weren’t British and please don’t hate us.

We invited them in for a cuppa and did a round of introductions: They were Ray (Raylene) and Sam, and had lived here for twenty-three years. Ray was a Port Adelaide girl, and Sam was born in Lucca, a town not far from Poggibonsi, and had spent twenty years in Australia. They were very friendly and curious, and we very quickly made weekend plans!

Sam picked us up early on Saturday morning and drove us around the Chianti region. Along the way, we visited an old convent, inhabited by six Australian nuns who were sent here thirty years ago or thereabouts. Sam and Ray had originally heard about them and dropped in to say hello, and had been friends with them since. We met two of them, very friendly and Australian in an ‘old school’ way (they used the word ‘wog’ to describe a flu they’d had! — to us younger Australians, it’s solely a derogatory term to describe Italians and Greeks in Australia!). When they’d arrived at the convent, it was falling down, the roof just about to collapse, dirt floors — they’ve been fixing it up ever since. They laughed and described it as a challenging time, and I wasn’t surprised.

Sam took us back to their house — with some stilted conversation in the car on the way, with Sam’s amusing tendency to either not hear or ignore much of what we say! — and we enjoyed a several-course lunch with them. Katherine was particularly excited by an Australian-style roast for the main course, as she is a little deprived of this kind of cuisine, with us being vegetarians at home (and not having an oven!).

After lunch they drove us out to a charming fortress-village — Monteriggioni — which we wandered around for a time, talking. The surrounding countryside was beautiful and emerald-coloured.

On the way back, they stopped via a shop that makes and sells crystal — something the region’s known for — and while we wandered around talking with Ray, Sam bought us a gift from them, a little crystal olive-oil dish. How lovely!

The following day Sam and Ray picked us up very early and we drove north west for three hours towards a little town called Villa Collemandina. The drive there was beautiful, heading through (or at least nearby) the Garfagnana, a spectacular-looking region of green mountains and valleys I’d marked as a place I’d like to visit.

We drove alongside a bright blue river, along its valley with multi-hued mountains around us, and stopped by ‘Ponte Diablo’ in Borgo a Mozzano, a spectacular bridge over the Serchio river. Ray and Sam explained the legend: In return for bringing about the bridge’s completion, the devil demanded the first thing to cross the bridge. It was a pig, and a pissed-off devil got some rather petty revenge by making the bridge the odd shape it is. Fair enough.

We drove upwards into the mountains and arrived in Villa Collemandina: Sam and Ray had invited us there to join them at a restaurant they enjoyed, Ristorante Panoramico. The restaurant were celebrating Italy’s Liberation Day (liberation from Nazi Germany, that is) by holding a very inexpensive banquet. First we walked around the compact town’s little paths amongst the tightly-packed houses. A rather disturbing (but slightly amusing) old guy laughed at my hair and asked (translated by Ray) whether I was masculine or feminine! Guess I probably do need a haircut. Then he became overly friendly with Katherine, which was a little off! Eww.

The view from the town was great, as it was perched high on a mountain:

So, we filed into the restaurant and were treated to a feast — prosciutto, slices of local salami served interleaved with slices of kiwi-fruit, a wild mushroom risotto, and some rather more dangerous risotto containing mortal quantities of cheese. For the main course, big hunks of chicken, lamb, and many other different kinds of animal. This prompted Sam to proudly recount the Noah’s Ark of animalia he’s consumed in his life, including snails, sparrows (he described how he built a trap to catch them), wild boar piglets, deer, budgies (of all things!), and donkeys — and lungs & tripe, body parts he was particularly proud to have consumed.

We’ve been curious about gypsy (nomad) culture too, having heard some rather extreme things said — mostly the impression we’ve received that they’re thought of generally thieving and morally deficient — which seemed to us too extraordinary to be anything but widespread prejudice. So we sought Ray and Sam’s impressions, which didn’t differ greatly from what we’d previously heard. In fact, they told us that they’d heard recently in the news that a young girl had been sold from one group to another because she was considered a skilled thief, and thus valuable. It still all seems a little extreme to me — that, generally speaking, one whole culture can be so ‘corrupt’ — so I reserve judgement until I know more!

We were interested in their decision to move to Italy, and Sam explained that Ray’s family had been hostile towards Sam as an Italian, calling him Mafia, apparently, and had made their lives so unpleasant they decided to move. Good old Aussie racism, but fascinating to hear that the family were so caught up in their prejudice that they apparently drove their daughter away to another country!

We were equally fascinated to hear Sam talking about Southern Italians — unprompted, he loudly complained that there was “one law for them, another law for us”, with car registrations, TV licences… — very interesting to behold those sentiments, particularly in light of their exodus from Australia!

After lunch we sat outside in the sun and talked with Ray — as it turned out, we seem to share a lot of similar opinions and we enjoyed discussing the big issues (environmental collapse, overpopulation, asylum seekers and immigration and the popular attitudes to it…).

Back home, we exchanged contact details, and we told them to get in touch when they visit Australia again (if we’re there!), and we said farewell.

It was very interesting to meet some locals who also have an Australian perspective, and we really enjoyed meeting Sam and Ray!

We set off from Perugia and took some steep and windy roads up through some more very pretty mountain landscape towards a little town called Preggio. We were headed there to meet up with Bruno, who I originally met when he asked a question about a WordPress plugin I wrote, Flickrpress. He recently noticed we were in the area, and kindly invited us up to his home (and agriturismo) in Preggio!

We found the cute little town and took the bumpy dirt track out to the house (Nettle: “Rrrmmmm! I got this!”), sitting atop a sunny ridge surrounded by blue mountains. Bruno waved us in and introduced us to his wife Elena, and give us a tour of the place, a lovely old farm-house exquisitely interior-decorated and filled with some very aesthetic artwork painted by Elena and her aunt — quite a talented family! Elena’s aunt, also called Elena, painted a large, extremely detailed, brightly coloured idealistic Umbrian countryside scene, which was absolutely spectacular. Bruno explained that Elena was in fact going blind when she painted it and had to be very close to the canvas to see what she was doing. During this story, both Katherine and I had missed whether the Elena Bruno was talking about was his wife or someone else. Katherine found it strangely unnerving talking to Elena at the beginning and not knowing whether or not she could see us.

Our eyes were caught by a piece of Australian Aboriginal artwork in the dining room, and Bruno drew our attention to the artist signature: It was painted by David Gulpilil, a famous Australian actor. Bruno explained that when they travelled to Australia, they’d come across an art gallery in Darwin and entered, passing an Aboriginal man sitting on the street looking like a beggar. Bruno and Elena perused the artwork there and noticed some was by David Gulpilil. When they expressed interest in the artist’s identity to the shopkeeper (they’d just seen a film with Gulpilil in it), the shopkeeper indicated that he was just outside the shop — he was the man they’d passed when they entered!

The four of us sat down to lunch, and Elena brought out bread made from their own spelt flour with cheese and prosciutto while Bruno presented copious amounts of very good local red wine. Then, a big bowl of their own home-made pasta with home-grown beetroot, which was creamy and spectacular. Finally, because in Italy there’s no point stopping eating until your stomach explodes, tasty frittata and a spicy salad of home-grown lettuces and various herbs that Elena had picked growing wild in the nearby fields.

Over lunch, Bruno and Elena told us about their lifestyle change, from living in Italy’s urban north and travelling in their camper (kindred spirits!) while they built rugged campers for a living, to this farm in Preggio — and the learning curve involved, as they now make olive oil, grow vegetables, keep bees and make wine! Elena’s even taking ballroom lessons in Perugia, which we thought was pretty cool.

Bruno noted that they have their own spring here and lots of water capacity, as they predict that water may well become an issue in the future — the little survivalists! Also, Bruno told us about Italy’s ‘feed in’ electricity scheme, which is providing for their retirement: They already have an extensive array of solar panels, and are going to invest a big bunch of money in more panels, which will earn them quite a decent income per year because the Italian government pays for energy you put back into the grid; the panels will pay themselves off in ten years or so! What a great scheme.

When I expressed interest in how Bruno came to be so tech saavy (he was right with me while we were talking WordPress), he explained that he was involved in Italy’s first domain registrar, Register.IT. He’d sold during the dot com boom, and did pretty well out of it — brilliant.

Then Bruno brought out a curious spirit called Amaro, which was quite pleasant (apparently it’s quite bitter further South, and I suspect it was the stuff we encountered in Forza D’agro’ made by naughty monks), which tipped us over into need-a-nap-land. So, we parted ways for the afternoon and Katherine and I drowsily watched an electrical storm happening around us from the couch in Nettle, then napped for a while. This is living!

They offered us the use of their washing machine and dryer, which we accepted with relish (of course, Katherine had just done some hand-washing that morning — she’s good at manifesting laundry opportunities that way) — Ahh, clean sheets.

We joined them again for dinner, which somehow Elena whipped up while we were lazing around. First was fresh, raw vegetables — carrots, some kind of leafy stalks that we didn’t recognise, fennel bulbs and cooked asparagus to be dipped in a dressing of our own construction, from olive oil (Elena and Bruno’s, of course), balsamic or white wine vinegar, salt and pepper. Fresh, simple and very satisfying! Then, Elena brought out an extremely tasty cheesy construction made from a vegetable that may have been rhubarb or silverbeet or a distant cousin, cooked with grilled cheese somehow. Next was a delicious simple risotto. Finally, with a rather worrisome introduction from Bruno — meat-based, not going to tell you what it is, for your own good, Bruno doesn’t like this dish but Elena does — Elena brought out a little casserole-like dish with some rather (as it turned out) innocuous-looking meat and vegetables. Well, innocuous once you get past the fact that I’m actually vegetarian, but for the purposes of proper culture-absorption relax my diet. It wasn’t till the next morning that we found out it was cow stomach! Yeech, I’m glad they didn’t tell us. It was chewy, tasty, and not like any other meat we’d had before (I thought it was a bit beefy, but I’m nominally vegetarian so what would I know).

I don’t know how Elena managed to do all that cooking, but it was a spectacular effort and we are so grateful for their hospitality!

While we were having dinner, Bruno and Elena first expressed an interest in the economic situation in Australia about which we were woefully incapable of enlightening them, aside from saying that living expenses are up and being joyful that we have escaped them to travel the world (nyaa, nyaa). Our conversation turned to the ongoing issue of Aboriginal welfare in Australia: They had seen the desolate towns in northern Australia, plagued by alcohol and drug problems and the like. I knew little about the complexities of the problem — how can I possibly comprehend how to restore pride and cultural integrity to a people whose culture we blithely destroyed, then excluded from our own culture, then grudgingly accepted as second-class citizens and more recently tried to assimilate into white Australian society with the aim of eradicating the Indigenous people once and for all? How do we now either integrate them into mainstream society or reverse the irreversible and restore their culture and way of life? — but we mused that a lot of money has been thrown at the problem in recent years — so, either it’s too little too late or the funding’s going to the wrong places. Of course, the latter is not inconceivable in a country that mindlessly logs its irreplaceable old growth forests for a quick buck, invests next to nothing in its education and research systems and plans to bottleneck its Internet traffic through a content filter to get rid of the Internet’s nasties (that can be effortlessly circumvented). A smart country, we are.

We noticed a photo on the cabinet in the dining room of a tropical-looking resort, and Bruno told us that it was Kenya — and the lodge was theirs! They’d visited and decided to buy some land and build a lodge there, together with a partner who moved to Kenya to supervise the building. He remarked on how widespread the corruption was there, and how they’d carefully done everything in strict accordance with the local bureaucracy but still had to resort to bribery to stop their paperwork from “staying at the bottom of the stack”.

We bid each other buona notte and headed for bed, parked in Bruno and Elena’s front yard.

We re-emerged in the morning for a late breakfast (oops — iPhone died in the night!) that our most gracious hosts provided, home-made bread, honey and jam with cereal and great coffee. Earlier that morning a framed painting had been delivered that we later saw was a beautifully-composed still life of pumpkins and other vegetables in peach and pastel orange hues that Elena had painted. That woman is amazing!

I attempted to fix our boiler’s issues by taking a vacuum cleaner to the outlet, thinking it may have been clogged, and did a few random things with Nettle while Bruno cast an expert eye over her. He shared some useful suggestions — solar panels, even a second alternator that can be attached onto the first one, and an approach we can take to diagnosing our leisure battery issues — and laughed at us and our indoor tendencies (we haven’t even opened our awning once).

So, we said farewell with profuse thanks for their kindness, Elena gave us some eggs from their chickens and Bruno generously presented us with some of their home-made pasta and two bottles of their olive oil, and continuing a tradition started by some friends, made us promise to send them pictures of spectacular places with the olive oil bottles in them. Will do.

We waved and drove up the bumpy driveway grinning and shaking our heads in wonder — I doubt we’ll ever meet a more lovely and interesting couple! Thanks Bruno and Elena!

All fuelled up (Katherine: …and feeling a little queasy), we headed out to attempt a few items on our to-do list, then realised it was Sunday. Damn!

Desperately in need of some essential groceries, we wandered until we spotted a little deli, and stopped in to pick up a big hunk of provolone cheese and parmesan, some eggs, bread, and a couple of other bits and pieces. The friendly shopkeeper was kind enough to look impressed by my “questo pane” when I asked for some bread. We need to work on our Italian!

Then underneath the railway bridge with “Ti amo” written all over it, something we see everywhere (a very amorous people, the Italians), and a stroll along the foreshore to Nettle.

I’d previously identified an area attrezzata (I forget that term and have to look it up every time), an ‘agriturismo’ called Il Giardino in a little town 45 minutes north east of Salerno, Contursi Terme. I called ahead, then we set off down the motorway, gasping with delight as every turn in the road brought us spectacular new scenery. I was very impressed by the craggy mountains in the distance, wreathed in clouds and dusted with snow (Katherine shrugged – I suspect she may have been thinking wistfully of Mount Etna).

We left the motorway and picked our way carefully along a tiny little country track, bounded by delightful farmland and cottages. Then, we saw the place, pulled into the car park that would be home for the next couple of days, and I jumped out to make our presence known.

The manager/owner sorted us out, and while he was taking down our passport details, an English-speaking relative dropped by to say hello, with a curious twang to his accent — His name was Antonio, and he’d lived for five years in Melbourne — in fact, not so far from our old neighbourhood in Carlton. His accent was very inner Melbourne Italian; he was very friendly, loud and likeable, and gave us his phone number to call should we need anything.

We had ourselves an insanely satisfying lunch of the bread and cheese we’d bought earlier, with some olive oil and the dregs of our balsamic vinegar.

We spent the evening and the following couple of days quietly working on our projects in Nettle. We must seem very strange to outsiders, arriving in a beautiful new place then sitting inside our car all day. We don’t even open our awning and sit outside! Nettle’s just so cosy, and our projects so compelling.

The weather was cold and grey, and very rainy, some nights with wild thunderstorms, and we felt wonderful and cosy, and ecstatic to be in Italy. Unfortunately, after pining for 3G all the time we were in Tunisia, there was only quite poor EDGE reception available, so, no new TV shows for us. Very sad.

After a couple of days, we ventured out. We walked alongside and over a raging river, brown with silt, then up the mossy stairs amongst the pine trees to Contursi Terme, perched atop a hill.

We wandered along the backstreets of the town, and found a little deli to pick up some more supplies (read: cheese). The shopkeepers were delightful and asked us about where we were from and how we liked the place. While they were going through the groceries we’d chosen, they kept saying “You don’t pay for this”, giving us various items for free. They were lovely!

We ended up with quite a lot of groceries, but we’d brought the back-pack and we loaded me up for the rest of our walk through the pretty town.

We were thrilled with the charm of the little town, and kept repeating “Ahh! Italy!” to each other as we walked through the cute little alleys, up a few flights of stairs to the main street. We hadn’t managed to find onions at the last place, and when we found another little supermarket, and asked for ‘cipolle’ (which I’d just looked up on my iPhone), the woman working there actually left the store to bring us some, because they didn’t have any! And then she gave them to us for free. Italians are so lovely!

We walked back down through the main street and back down the hill to Nettle, for a lunch of wine, cheese, bread and olive oil.

We spent another couple of days working, then it was time to move on. Katherine made a new friend as we were working up to leaving, an adorable black kitten who was very friendly (of course, she’s Italian!). She nuzzled and purred and chewed on our fingers for a while as we sat in the middle of the car park and played with her.

After playfully toying with the idea of staying another day to play with the kitten, we decided it was time, said farewell to the Il Giardino folks, and headed off.

Along the way, and for our drive afterwards, we were amazed by our treatment as we drove through little towns — everywhere, people waved or gave us the thumbs up. In one town in particular, everyone was in on it, jumping around and waving as we drove by!

We found a park at the tourist centre, and were immediately set upon independently by two men who apparently worked in souvenir shops within the centre. The first wanted to show us some trinkets to buy; we sent him off. The second was after the same, but first asked us for — you guessed it — whiskey. As always, they persisted for way beyond the time that would be considered polite and acceptable, and we felt quite furious by the time I saw the second man off. We swallowed our irritation (Katherine: “I didn’t swallow my irritation. I let it rage, baby.“) and reminded ourselves that we’ll be back in Italy in just a few days.

We had a quick snack, toasted cheese and tomato sandwiches again — so good to have cheese again! — and walked through the tourist centre (doing our best to ignore one of the irritating vendors), to get tickets to visit the site.

Katherine remarked on the unfortunate fact that she felt like she wanted to race through the ruins as quickly as possible so we could get back to Nettle, our comfort zone (and keep Nettle safe from any store vendors that thought they might have a go at break-and-entry, as unlikely as that would be).

Italy definitely can’t come soon enough, for us! We puzzled over what would lead so many men to ask foreigners for whiskey — it’s happened to us about eight times, representing a good proportion of the places we’ve stopped. I was kinda hoping it’d become a bit of an in-joke and be funny, but it’s just irritating. I wondered whether it might be a cultural thing — an artefact of the still-present Berber culture’s hospitality that makes it appropriate here for strangers to ask for such things; but it’s alcohol — there’s nothing acceptable about that! Particularly so in Tunisian culture, where it’s forbidden (therein lying part of the answer, I suspect). I suppose every society has its problematic individuals. We just seem to be meeting all of them, one by one.

Anyway, talking about the issue made it more intellectual than emotional and irritating, and we soon forgot it in the splendour of the ancient Roman town.

We were amazed at the preserved details, particularly the intricate mosaics in the bathhouses, including one large room with a completely intact mosaic floor. The temples, for which Sufetula is most well-known, are very impressive, towering above the surrounding rubble.

We pretended to each other that we were shocked and offended at the affectionate antics of a young local couple who were flirting with each other around the temple — a shameful display of public affection! We, on the other hand, as usual, would keep an eye out for onlookers and steal a hug or kiss before someone noticed (shows of public affection being considered rude here). It’ll be nice to hold hands in public again in Italy! Always feels weird just walking side by side.

We returned to Nettle and pondered our next move — we’d heard tell of a hotel nearby that lets motorhomers stay in the car park for a whopping 18 dinars (about $16 AUD or something like €9 EUR, off the top of my head). We thought we’d have a look, and laughed when the guy at reception told us 25 dinars! For a car park! We scoffed and drove onwards, keeping an eye out for a wild-camp suitably away from any towns and whiskey-seekers.

We drove for a long way and didn’t find any places that looked particularly appealing. We ended up settling for pulling over by the edge of a smaller quiet side road. We had waved to a girl leading a donkey in the nearby village as we did a U-turn, and after we pulled over, a louage (minibus taxi-like thing) pulled up and she hopped out — Just to say hello! At least, we thought it was her — kinda difficult to tell, given that she was all wrapped up in a shawl earlier. She was very sweet — as Katherine remarked, outgoing enough to come out to say hi, but too shy to actually say anything when she got here! I attempted a little conversation in French, but her French was worse than mine (hooray! I’m better at French than someone!), and she ended up saying a shy good-bye and leaving again in the louage!

So we settled in, at a rather large slant which, strangely, always makes it hard for me to walk around in Nettle, and Katherine made dinner while I post-processed photos.

A less pleasant interchange happened next, when there was a tap at the door — What the crap? Even out here? — I opened the window and peered out. There was a 14 or 15 year old boy, very timid with presumably very little French, who was asking for…something. Katherine picked up “l’eau” (water), and I repeated it as a question — you want water? He nodded, then said something about medicine. Medicine? For what? What kind of medicine? (In French, where we could). Blank look. Katherine wondered if he had a headache or something and was after Panadol — I prompted in broken French, medicine for the head? Yes, he nodded, medicine for the head. Um.

About five or ten minutes of prompting later, with me carefully repeating details and asking for confirmation, doing hand gestures, going around in circles, and suffering many long uncomfortable silences, he managed to change his story and communicate a very confusing and contradictory tale about needing 10 dinars to go home. No, not in a taxi or a louage, in a car. His friends’ car. Why was his friend asking for 10 dinars? Why didn’t he have the money already? Oh, it was a louage? Your friend is the louage driver? Why not pay him when you arrive at home? It went on and on, with me getting more frustrated and almost shouting at the guy in my appalling French. I suggested getting the driver to come here so we could pay him, I suggested hitch-hiking; he wanted 10 dinars so he could go home. 10 dinars. To go home. Who knows what that thing at the start had been, about water/medicine…

About twenty minutes had gone by, and Katherine had dinner ready and going cold on the table. We had only a 20 dinar note. Our choices were to close the window and have an audience for the rest of the night (or have a break-in attempt like at La Goulette!), to just drive off to escape with dinner sliding around the table, or to just give him the 20 dinar note and hope that we were doing a good deed and not just getting conned. Another item for our “Rascals” expense category!

Oh well. I guess we saved 5 dinars by wild-camping instead of staying at the hotel. It’s funny how the money never matters — $17 means very little to us, really — but there’s something about the experience of being separated from money when we feel like we’re being had that’s very uncomfortable. Hopefully he was legit, just a little slow and bad at communicating. Katherine remarked on how similar his manner was to the strange guy we met outside of Douz — the same long silences, just standing there staring at me, the same timid manner.

Just a few more days till Italy and being left alone!

For a silly end to a silly day, just as we were falling off to sleep around 11:30, a car pulled up outside and there was yet another knock at the door (we’re going to have to install one of those deli ticket serving systems out there , I think). We swore, jumped out of bed, threw our clothes on, put the bed up, put some stray dishes onto the floor where they wouldn’t cause trouble if we had to leave quickly, then I grabbed the keys, put them in the ignition and gingerly opened the window. This time, it was better than we’d expected — it was the friendly National Guard.

They kindly told us they didn’t think our last-ditch-effort wildcamp was safe (then the other guy disagreed and said no, there was no danger!), checked our passports, and then suggested we stay in the town. I explained the difficulty we had finding somewhere else to stop, and our aversion to staying in towns (whiskey, whiskey, whiskey), and they laughed and said we should tell any whiskey-seekers that we have friends in the National Guard (or something to that effect); pas du whiskey!. They suggested they lead us back into the closest town and drop us off outside the police station to stay there for the night. We agreed, they apologetically bid us good night, and we drove on into town to be deposited at our worst wildcamp ever: Right beside the busy main road amidst a louage stop! Loud trucks, motorbikes, passing right by our ears, yet we managed to fall off to sleep fairly quickly and slept well.

We ventured out, and headed to the livestock area. Wow! It was another world. The air rang with the bleats and yells of sheep, goats, and the shriller trills of baby animals of various species — some insanely cute goat kids. The place was packed, so we edged through the crowd, squeezing past animals and people alike. Not a woman in sight, I might add, aside from Katherine and another tourist we saw.

We passed some youngsters pushing a goat in a wheelbarrow; a man wresting an errant goat, a wheelbarrow full of chickens (and a man picking one up by its wing, which we weren’t too happy with), and a very bewildered-looking newborn goat — what a place to be born!

I recorded the sounds of the animal market, but was disappointed to find later that something had gone wrong with the recorder application, and the recording was gone. Oh, well.

We wandered onto the streets of Douz, thronging with people and lined with stalls. Katherine found a belt, and we met up with Birgit and Dieter, and their friends Manfred and his wife, who’s name currently eludes me, in the market square and had some very good sweet tea with them.

We also met a local souvenir vendor who we’d met the other day (Katherine bought some sunglasses from him) — he was actually an English teacher, but couldn’t find work, so he was getting by running a stall here! He had told us the other day that business was slowing down: The financial crisis was causing the number of visitors to dwindle, so he was wondering what he’d do next.

We wandered on, through the market square (we had a chuckle at the child’s jumper pictured below, for sale in one of the stalls. Right.), and on through the streets in search of water and bread, then back home.

I filled up our freshwater tank and said farewell to our friend who showed us around the other day, and who suggested a petrol station towards Medenine for emptying our grey water tank. We drove out and proceeded to get many, many blank looks while trying to explain that we were looking for somewhere to empty our grey water. We descended into absurdity for half an hour before we gave it up as a lost cause and decided to drive on towards Douz.

Our drive took us up through a rather spectacular mountain range with some great views over the surrounding lowlands; the horizontal marks on the lower hills made the surrounding countryside look like a topological map of itself. We passed through some ancient villages, clinging to the hillsides and after passing through the town of Matmata, down onto the plains again.

The low scrubby countryside became increasingly sandy and we had to pull over to take some pictures of the awesome ripple patterns in the sand.

Just a little further down the road, we passed these guys:

We pulled over for lunch just outside of Douz, just to hang around in the tranquil desert for a while before we hit the town. We were surprised by a knock at the door — I opened it to reveal a very strange young man staring up blankly. He murmured something incomprehensible, which turned out to be a request for cigarettes, then whiskey when I announced that we didn’t smoke. When I told him all we drank was water, coffee and tea, he stood in silence for a long moment, not responding when I asked how I could help — very odd. Then, after a minute or two he asked for water (we obliged), and wandered off into the desert.

Our strange new friend returned a few minutes later, to stand once again staring up at me for a while. He invited me over to see his donkey when I gestured towards it and asked if it was his, and I shrugged and joined him. Katherine rolled her eyes in exasperation that I would follow a weird stranger who asks for whiskey into the desert, and proceeded to regularly cast nervous glances outside to see if he’d stabbed me yet. Instead, he indicated a desire to exchange phone numbers, which we did (that will be an interesting phone conversation…), before he wandered off once more.

So, we drove on into Douz, and found the Douz Camping Club by guesswork, among a quite pretty stand of palm trees.

I asked if they had a place to empty grey water, and managed to be understood on the second attempt (phew!), only to be told there were no such facilities and to just let it out on the road outside! That was a long way to transport 100 litres of grey water for no reason…I guess Tunisia has a different attitude towards waste disposal!

We met a very lovely German couple, Birgit and Dieter, who remarked that we had been following them — apparently, they had stayed a night in Hammamet while we were there too, and were in fact the ones who were parked right behind us when the place was completely full!

So, we settled in amongst the palm trees, planning a “day off” tomorrow.

There were lots of little stands by the road with piles of plastic containers filled with something-or-other, funny men standing beside them waving at us frantically. Turns out they were selling fuel — Katherine spotted a car pulled over, being filled up with a pipe. We found out later that the fuel is brought from Libya, where it’s dramatically cheaper, and sold here by the road!

We were racing the clock a little, wanting to drive the 100km to Gabès and be safely tucked into a caravan park before dark — and we wanted to have the following day ‘off’ to do things like blogging, without having to muck about finding somewhere to stay. It was dusk by the time we arrived on the outskirts of Gabès, but we made it! Katherine navigated us to the place, Fella Parc, while I concentrated on not running into anything. We weren’t sure we’d found the caravan park when we did — the sign was broken and it was kinda dark; we wandered around and decided it must be it, so we poked our heads into the restaurant and found a guy who led us to the camping pitches, amidst a construction zone.

We settled in, and there was a knock at the door later by the manager who’d come out to greet us and point out the facilities, somewhat excitedly — it was a new ‘parc ecologie’, he told me proudly after pointing out the big cage for some poor future inhabitant. Right.

We stayed two nights, I did some blogging and lots of catching up on reading others’ blogs, which I thoroughly enjoyed, particularly Katherine’s blog; kinda nice doing something that isn’t programming for a change. While we were still in bed in the morning, the manager or someone knocked on the door — a little over-keen still, I think — and I managed to make myself understood that they should come back later. The manager dude eagerly showed me around, then somehow roped me into typing up some English translation of the website when he found out I was a programmer. Then he was on my case every time I saw him later about putting up an advertisement with an Australian motorhoming club! He wouldn’t let up! Just… weird and uncomfortable.

In return for the typing, he invited us to lunch at the restaurant, with what I originally thought he meant was his family (ma famille), which would’ve been interesting, but I think he actually said “your wife” (ta/votre femme), so it was just Katherine and I — eh, that works too, we’re not particularly social people. Lunch was fun, some Tunisian soup, a frittata-like slice thing, and lots of tasty, cinnamon-y couscous. Plus wine, ah, red wine, it’s been so long!

We set off with some relief from Gabès, headed for Medenine. The scenery got very deserty and interesting. There were more 4WD roadworks, and some hilarious bad-truck-driver shenanigans — big truck overtaking another big truck on a crest of a hill with zero-visibility of oncoming traffic, always a recipe for awesomeness. And, there was a whole lot of empty space.

We arrived in Medenine, had a little trouble finding our destination, but made it after asking someone; we were there to have a look at the Medenine ksar, a Berber construction: A series of mud-brick granaries built all together making a continuous collection of cave-like alcoves. It was all a bit disappointing — probably, a Google image search would’ve been sufficient to see what there was to see — and the aforementioned alcoves were chock full of pushy souvenir vendors. Still, Katherine managed to score some bits that she genuinely liked, so not a total loss! The town itself was fairly unpleasant, so we were happy to drive out again soon after.

We were hoping to make it all the way to Tataouine and stay there for the night, but we know of no caravan parks anywhere near it, and we remain a little skittish about wildcamping still. We decided to stay in a caravan park/hotel in the little nearby village of Metameur, Hotel les Gorfas.

We had read that the place was converted from a ksar, but when we got there we realised we’d done a lot better than we’d imagined: The place was beautiful, the mud-brick hut things all piled up on top of each other whimsically. It was a vastly more awesome ksar than the one we’d actually come to the area to see. It was also very peaceful and quiet, something we hadn’t really had yet in Tunisia.

What was even cooler was the reception we had. A young man and older woman, both incredibly sweet, showed us in and pointed us to the facilities, then the adorable older woman offered us some mint tea and showed us around the impressive ksar.

Then, just after we thought we might take a walk through the village, a friendly guy around our age said hello to us and took us on a tour through the village!

He showed us several ancient Berber residences, part of the ksar, and pointed out the house (now abandoned) where his grandmother once lived.

He introduced us to someone who I assume was a family member (we spoke in French, and most of it’s guesswork for us!), in a yard with two frolicking horses. He was working on a stall, and discovered a scorpion in the process, picking it up in his hand, then offered it to me. Jibbley-jibbley a real live scorpion in my hand, but not killing me apparently cos here I am still alive. Also I may be overstating things slightly.

He pointed out the village graveyard, and the area where some of his family members are buried, and he asked if Katherine and I come from the same village, which hurt my head a little trying to think of our home towns as villages.

Then he showed us how the Tunisian scarves are worn:

Awesome! This place and its people are the greatest!

We inched our way through the city traffic, weaving around pedestrians and motorbikes (not the other way around, of course), and with minimal pain found a spacious manned car park. We were here to visit the medina, the ancient marketplace, which we’ve read is one of the most ‘real’ and un-touristy, where others tend to be packed full of pushy souvenir vendors.

Sure enough, it was brilliant — no hassling whatsoever. We just wandered around amongst the locals, with a friendly “salut” or an “aslama” here and there.

We met a guy working a stall when he asked where we were from as we passed by — we paused to answer, and we just kinda kept talking; His name was Baha, and he spoke English, which was refreshing. He got a neighbouring vendor to watch his store and took us around the corner (we lagged behind a little, cautiously) to where his brother was selling drums and some other freaky-looking traditional instruments.

He surprised us by not asking us to buy anything, and instead took us for a coffee, which was great — he told us he lived in Tataouine (you know, where Anakin Skywalker lived), and travelled in to work sometimes. As always, there was a bit of a communication barrier, but we got by. He showed us how our names were written in Arabic:

And he wrote down his address in Tataouine for us, in case we needed him! We’d read about the persistence of the hospitable Berber culture in Tunisia, and I think it’s definitely apparent.

We’d just said farewell to Baha, and were wandering through some back-alleys taking pictures of some excitingly grungey-looking doors, when two young women paused to puzzle over what we were doing, and one jokingly posed for me in front of a door:

They surprised us by speaking to us in excellent English. They gave us funny looks and asked us why the hell we were taking pictures of grotty doors, and what on earth we were doing in Tunisia of all places. Classic!

They were art students at the Sfax art university, Sirine and Amal, and after checking what our plans were, they invited us to have coffee with them at a café/studio they were headed to.

It was absolutely brilliant to be able to meet some Tunisian women finally — we were a little frustrated at talking with just guys, not having a woman’s perspective at all; in fact, just the day before Katherine had voiced that frustration, so it was great timing! Plus speaking in English helped massively — we really aren’t at the point where we can understand very much at all. We just tend to make up for ourselves the other person’s side of the conversation, which can have interesting results. They said it was nice to speak English for a while.

So, we joined them at the café, an artist’s haunt, with a room upstairs for painting and milling about creatively — Sirine negotiated for us to head upstairs briefly to say hi to their friends (I admit, at this point I was remembering the art scam that got Kevin Rose and Glenn McElhose in China, but once again, all was well!). They spoke for a moment in Arabic, and when I observantly noted “that isn’t English!”, they explained that they were commenting on my beauty. It’s the hair, you see. I nodded modestly and agreed that I was quite the looker.

So, we four grabbed a table downstairs and spoke for ages about a variety of topics — life in Tunisia for women, and in Australia, and marriage; Sirine was, I suspect, a tad baffled at our opinions towards marriage — “but you love each other, why not just get married?” — We explained how marriage has much less weight in Australia, for various reasons, and that with us two it was just something we didn’t see as necessary; We know we’re going to spend the rest of our lives loving each other, and that was enough, at least for now! Of course, that’s a very big contrast to here in Tunisia, where you’re not even really allowed to even go out at night as a woman until you’re married. It’s actually illegal to live together here unless you’re married! Luckily, there’s a little lenience towards tourists. It sounds a bit like one remains with a child’s restrictions until the ring is on your finger! Sirine mused that she’s probably quite fortunate — her family sound quite tolerant and moderate!

We spoke about family life and obligations, the art university and it’s modern and moderate nature, and their chosen specialities — ceramics for Amal, and sculpture for Sirine. They told us that teaching art was a very good career, and well paid.

We also spoke about being a traveller in Tunisia, and they warned us about being too trusting, like when meeting someone who offers to take you somewhere. We gave them a look — “well, not us!”. I think they should make the evil-doers wear a badge or something. Sirine said something disparaging about my manly strength compared to the big strong dangerous local men. I think she probably had a point. Maybe I could defeat them with my mighty brain? It’s an interesting conundrum, though. Do you play it safe all the time and never have any new experiences, or do you take chances and risk your safety? Maybe we just need to learn how to improvise a shiv from nearby objects.

Sirine was engaged to a Tunisian man — from Sfax — living in Paris, and was happy to be getting out of Tunisia. She told us that she always knew she wanted to marry a foreigner (I guess this way she keeps the family happy and gets to marry someone who’s living overseas and is all Frenchified!). She actually suggested that we come and attend her wedding in Sfax in August, which was very touching, although we couldn’t have made it. We’re totally going to catch up in Paris though.

So, Amal and Sirine gave us their full names to look them up on Facebook (man, that thing is so international!), and we’re going to stay in touch. It was just brilliant to meet them, both to talk about how they lived and just to hang out with cool people in our age group! We wished each other well and parted ways.

We wandered our way back to Nettle, who was still there and still in one piece — awesome — then had a quick lunch and headed out of Sfax. People here drive…differently to people in other places.

I finished off a project, Talkie, and got it on the market, as well as working on some other upcoming projects, and properly setting up the ‘public’ face of my obsession/business, A Tasty Pixel, with some awesome concept/design ‘consulting’ from Katherine (all the pixel character ideas came from her — the freaking genius).

Katherine made the first steps towards setting up her art business, doing lots of blogging in the process, and created some killer paintings as well in the ‘studio‘.

We started most days about 10 or 11. Sometimes I’d venture out to the local boulangerie (bakery) for fresh bread — which costs basically nothing, being subsidised by the government. Four loaves of bread costs around 0.700 DT (about AU$0.56, €0.35). Together with croissants and cake, it was a couple of dinars. Awesome.

We’d work in Nettle till about 3-4pm, and one of us would cook ‘dinner’ (we started referring to it as dunch); then we’d keep working until about 1am, occasionally 2 or 3.

And we both loved every minute of it — working on the things we love, entirely unrestrained by logistics like power availability, or diurnal waking cycles. Or eating three times a day. We’re fortunate to be so well matched, that both of us tend to feel like doing a thing at the same time — in this case, doing 14 hour ‘work’ days, sitting inside a motorhome.

The internet access was kinda crap, failing entirely about half the time during the evening, but we were grateful we had access at all — it’s remarkably progressive of Tunisia to have a feasible data plan for mobile internet. Beats the hell outta the system in France. I discovered on the last night that our flaky connectivity was due to a dodgy DNS server, and solved the problem by using Google’s public DNS instead, for our final evening. Brilliant. (If that didn’t make sense to you, replace the confusing stuff with the word “Magic!”).

We cooked every night, with fantastic results, having access to vast quantities of exciting spices, and our increasing flair in the kitchen! Shopping was less fun — it really was quite disgusting out there, a dirty, loud street. Getting to the little mini-mart-esque shops was a bit of a gauntlet run, with beggars, pushy taxi drivers and friendly-but-kinda-mocking locals with carts full of clock radios and shoes. Plus there was the shop with the two guys who kept laughing at me! Just because I speak French like a slow four-year-old. Big meanies.

During one shopping expedition, a friendly local in his early thirties started speaking to us, and invited us to have a coffee — we accepted and joined him in his favourite café, all Arabic-looking tiles and fancy bongs. He didn’t speak any English, so we spoke in French, with mixed results, but it got the job done. His name was Taoufik (too-feek), and he lived nearby and worked as a chef in a local hotel and also in a grocery shop. We caught up with him a few times after that, once for dinner at a local café — total bachelor food! — followed by the best tea we’ve ever had (mint tea, very sweet) in a different café/bar. I joined him solo several times too, for coffee or a stroll — we spoke about his work; he told me of his passion for working with spices, and he was fascinated by our grand make-our-living-on-the-internets scheme. He even invited us on a trip north to visit his family, but that didn’t end up panning out.

The staff at the caravan park were quite friendly — one of the dudes who worked around the grounds (he always seemed busy doing something or other) brought us cut flowers a few times, which was lovely. He also bought us some olives from the trees of the caravan park!

We felt keenly for the dogs that were tied up around the caravan park, for no reason that we could see — so far apart from each other that socialising would’ve been impossible, and on short leashes that meant their world was about 3-4 square metres. One dog that we came to know was tied up near where we do the camper-service thing; he’d go absolutely bananas when you came close, begging for attention and play. I went right up to him and tried to be friendly for a while — but it was difficult to stay, as he just kept jumping and licking constantly, pushing me over. I made myself say hello every now and then, but it was a real endurance test. Poor little guy; we’d read about the most horrendous animal cruelty in Tunisia, and I guess this is just a slightly more chronic form. Awful.

During the last week or two, a group of people were harvesting olives, putting blankets down beneath the trees, then sharing a ladder as they worked round each tree, pulling off the olives and letting them fall into the blankets below. They ended up with an insane amount of harvested olives, massive hessian bag after massive hessian bag. I went out to them and asked if I could take their picture.

Then, they invited me later to join them for tea, sitting around a little fire-in-a-pot with them while they had lunch, which they shared too — bread and olive oil, and a curry-like dish with lots of chillies. The tea was in a shot-glass, black and incredibly sweet. Yum. There were introductions (as usual, I introduced myself as “Michelle”), and my horrendous memory for foreign-sounding names let me down once more. It always feels slightly racist of me. I brought out some Nutella on bread for ‘dessert’ and Bi..Bilahh…Bilal…Dammit. ‘Bill-something’ pulled out a makeshift pipe — a copper pipe with holes drilled in it — and played some charming, very Arabic-sounding music. They were lovely people, and we waved and “comment ça va?-d” (how’s it going?) regularly.

So, all up, we had a quite lovely couple months — it was warm and sunny for the most part, the olivey surroundings were quite pleasant (we loved the little birds), and we were spending about AU$17-20 (about €10-12) per day!