5 Reasons to work on an Italian Organic Farm and AgriTourism Project….

Before leaving NZ I was sure that I didn’t want to own my own property (especially one with land requiring maintenance) for a long time. After working on Sebastiano’s farm in Southern Italy for 3 weeks, I’m looking forward to having my own place where I will be able to grow and eat my own food, and - cheesy as it sounds - get my hands dirty in the garden. There were plenty of other great things about our time on The Petrelli Farm, so I’ve done my best to round up the Top 5...

1. Food (surprise, surprise). With 80% of what we ate and drank coming from the fields where we worked every day, and most of it picked within hours of eating, we ate well. This was helped by the fact that Sebastiano (our Host, Boss, and Chef) was exactly the sort of person that you’d hope to find in an Italian kitchen. When we would say, “Seb, this pasta is amazing!“, he would reply, “I know. It is incredible” - this was not just an Italian’s lack of Kiwi excess modesty, as he would go on to credit the ingredients for the quality of the meal (of course mentioning that he had grown those as well). So although I did my best to pick up tips and recipes, it seems that I’ll just have to get my Green Thumbs into action once this travel business takes it’s next break.
   
   
   
2. Sleep (surprised?). Waking early to make the most of working in the cool mornings, we would take an afternoon siesta that is the only real option once you’ve been toiling (I know, it was as tough as it sounds) in the fields all morning and have a tummy full of goodness from lunch (sparking the inevitable food coma). Another few hours work in the late afternoon would create enough fatigue for another deep, instant sleep at night.
   
   
   
3. Wine (sorry, still no surprises). Having a number of vineyards, and a brother who won Italy’s Organic Winemaking awards last year, made it hard for the wine from the previous harvest (that we decanted from the huge vats in the cellar) to be a bad drop. Again, “Seb, your wine is really good!”…. “I know - it’s really great”.
   
   
   
4. People. Seb welcomed us in our (sometimes strange) capacity as a mix of workers, guests, and family, sharing his own friends and family with us.
   
   His mother Fiarma - a “Real Italian Momma” - comes to live at the farm for a few months every summer, and is the true boss of everything(at least while she is there), including the surrounding villages. We learned to tune out the Italian shouting matches between Mother and Son (both well meaning and very headstrong, with even more than the usual amount of Italian passion and drama thrown in for good measure). We also had many hours of learning about the corruption of Italian politics in Fiarma’s hyperbolic vocabulary, and her endless fight and activism against the “terrible” people in power and their “’orribull” power games. But underneath it all we came to know the soft Fiarma who took us under her wing, brought us treats, and baked us a special soufflé on our last night before asking us to visit her at her home in Tuscany.
   
   We met Seb’s friends who would visit from around Europe and all walks of life - art dealers, bankers, artists, hospital charity workers, and more - coming for a few nights, or sometimes just a meal (our first being swordfish caviar pasta). Our favourite was a Swedish girl who he had met and invited away for a romantic weekend, we took her into the fields to escape the attention of the Italian Momma, and got to be the nosy workers asking prying questions about their boss’ “other side“.
   
   Our last few days overlapped with Mariana from Brazil - the next worker - who imparted our now considerable knowledge of the farm’s workings (particularly how best to handle the contradicting double-boss situation, as well as the subtleties of goat milking technique).
   
   But the most interesting person was Sebastiano himself. An eldest son whose father died young and who never got along with his mother, he was a banker and entrepreneur in London for 25 years before deciding to take over the family’s various neglected plots of land in Southern Italy: His plan, to restore the ruined 17th century buildings and create a boutique AgriTourism project and retreat. With a strong emphasis on organic farming principles and restoring the buildings to their original glory (rather than modernising), the farm is truly a special place, and his vision for the eventual completion of the project is impressive.
   
   And Seb is manic. Juggling lazy builders. Dealing with endless Italian bureaucracy(NZ has no red tape in comparison). Chasing grant/funding requests (so far he has been granted over 600,000 Euro for development of his project, but seen none of it). Recruiting, training, and feeding workers such as ourselves every 2-4 weeks. Keeping his mother off of his back (or trying to). Running thee farm, milking goats, pruning vines etc. And still inviting friends and visitors to stay. But he loves it. He loves the challenge, he loves that he is doing something that he truly believes in, and that it will be good for others too.
   
   And every now and then, through his often abrupt manner and general whirlwind pace, you get to see Seb’s soft side. He will stop the tractor, jump off the wheel arch to grab a ripe pear from a tree for you, or put aside a special part of his “amazing” meal for you. He will take you for a 45min bushwhacking hike to his favourite, otherwise inaccessible seaside spot and share it with you. He will drop the brisk, business-like efficiency and put on his favourite alternative 70’s trippy film soundtracks after dinner and talk about his favourite bands and directors over some fantastic wine. Or most often, he will drop what he’s doing to run off and play with his best friend, Baikal.
   
   No wonder we didn’t miss television or internet while on the farm.
   
   
   
5. Working the land.
   
   Spending hours in the vege garden with the chickens and their stray guard dog Phee(this was what we named her - apparently every set of workers renames her something different), who is still a puppy and doesn’t quite have the grunt to scare off the foxes just yet.
   
   Making friends with the dogs (Seb’s Baikal, a Welsh hunting dog and ultimate best friend whose dinner is cooked and served before humans each night, and Fiarma’s super intelligent German Shepherd, Tsar, whose arthritic hind legs don‘t stop him from trying to hunt the goat and pigs - even though he also gets his own meal of puffed rice and meat cuts cooked each evening too).
   
   Convincing Penny the goat to let us milk her each morning so that we can make fresh cheese, while keeping the pigs at bay with their daily ration of pizza crusts from the local restaurant. Very Italian pigs.
   
   Learning the hard way how not to harvest buckwheat, how heavy hay bales can get after throwing them for two hours, and how many fennel plants it takes to fill even a small container with seeds.
   
   Learning to drive a tiny Fiat Panda on crazy mountain roads (or fields), through villages not made for cars. Or just learning to sit in the boot with the dogs while Seb treats every trip like a rally stage.
   
   Getting your hands dirty and earning your dinner.

In short, we loved our break from being on the move, and grabbed with both hands the chance to be part of something rather than just being a traveller who looks in from the outside. We will miss our new found Italian home.

Pictures: Our Fiat Panda, with which I learned to drive like a true Italian, and a standard breakfast on the farm (views over the mountains to the sea included)

Dirty, dodgy, and dangerous

Every person we mentioned it to said not to go to Napoli, but that if we did, to be careful. Apparently it is supposed to be more dangerous than Afghanistan, with numerous stories of muggings, kidnappings, and Mafia.

The only thing in danger while we were there were our waistlines. The birthplace of Pizza (yes, with a capital “P”), we topped off a day of multiple gelatos(including a chocolate fondue one), pastas and pastries with the (reputably) best pizza in Napoli. And yes, it was good. Oh, so good.

Other than food, Napoli was a great change to the usual touristy areas of Sorrento where we had been frequenting. With just the right mixture of funky boutiques, pop culture, and Grit (ambiguously identified as dirtiness, dodginess, danger, hardship and a general lack of polish), we had a day free of museums, American accents, camera flashes, guided tour groups. In short, we loved the lived-in Grittiness of Napoli, and just for our Mothers’ sake, made sure that we were on the train back to Sorrento before it got really dark.

Travellers, Fat Cats and Facetious Ancients

One of the most attractive qualities of a big city like Rome is the diversity of people that are drawn together, and how they choose (or otherwise) to get along with each other (or not). In this respect, Rome didn’t disappoint.

One week in Rome saw us:

• doing the classic backpacker gig of sleeping in a sauna temperature 13 bed dorm with comatose freight-train snorers from at least 5 different nations
• Sharing stories on Dave’s concrete floor. At forty, Dave chose to live in Rome for a year. He opens up his underground basement apartment/bomb shelter to travellers to help them out with accommodation costs (and to meet some great people). I would say that we were four people sleeping in a broom closet, but there were two American girls who the actual broom closet. In the kitchen we were two Kiwis, a Brazilian and an American - somehow we managed to avoid sleeping outside in the corridor with the other American guy :)
• Living the high life in Rome’s coolest neighbourhood (sleeping in real beds!) with Chiara, a film and TV script writer turned short story novelist. We loved Gatto (her parent’s overloved and overfed cat who got grumpy refused to be stroked when Chiara attempted to trim his calorie intake), and endless morning coffees discussing what brought on her latest short story about an eight year old boy murdering his 4 year old sister. Rather than disturbing, we found this plot to be hilarious - Chiara couldn’t be more gentle and kind if she were fictional herself (lucky for us, eh?), so discussion usually centered around where these disturbing thoughts came from.
• Hanging (in spirit, at least) with Socrates, my most memorable “character” of high school Classical Studies. He brought a smile to my face as we took a water break from the mid summer heat in one of his favourite haunts, with the memory of his argument which hit new levels of facetiousness, “I’m significantly wiser than you because I know that I’m not wise at all”.
• Cruising through the bedrooms of former Popes to see the interior design skills of Raphael & Co. Unfortunately the Big Man with the Big Hat was away on summer break, but that didn’t stop a 6 person wide, 1.5km queue forming by 8.30am outside the Vatican on the first Sunday we arrived (it’s free entry on the last Sunday of the month). Needless to say, we went off for a gelato and postponed our Vatican experience a few days.
• Doing what the cool kids do, sharing stories, opinions, laughs and Mojitos with Chiara in the “artist district”. This is where having a local on your side is invaluable - Chiara made relatively short work of dealing with the odd incoherent local under the influence, and we really enjoyed a night in an area well off Lonely Planet’s “off the beaten path” path.

Photo: Emma, Chiara and I in the mean streets of Rome after dark

Those there Mountains need a good Climbin‘!

When you first see them, some things are obviously made for a purpose. The mountains of Meteora are definitely NOT made for monasteries to be built on top of them. But that didn’t occur to the locals 700 years ago.

Maybe their minds just worked a little differently to mine, but I saw them and thought, “Climb!”. So climb we did. The fact that our guide only had super grippy climbing shoes that were 2 sizes too small just made it more of an experience - I not only felt the thrill that only Peter Parker knows better, I also now know what Chinese ladies of days gone by felt when they had their feet bound into parcels half their size.

Not much more to say that pictures won‘t say a thousand times better, other than that there was a 95% chance that the American guy climbing with us was Vin Diesel, and a 5% chance that it was his twin brother or stunt double.

Photos of climbing and all other Greece fun and games can be seen here:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=456406&id=808690304&l=b5d2ab55c5

Hitting the Big Time

It was two months since our last big city, and what better place to get back into the groove than Athens? Stepping off the Metro and seeing the Acropolis watching over the city is a very, very cool feeling. Our three days in Athens were spent like kids in a candy store, moving from Socrates’ favourite hang-out, where he would stir people up with his arguments, to Hadrian’s Gate where the Emperor made sure that everyone knew who the city belonged to, and finishing with climbing up to the famous Acropolis - it was like a “Best of” 7th form Classical Studies, without the classrooms or exams.

Night times were spent with Vassia - our first CouchSurfer since Iran. Totally addicted to coffee, smoking, Damian Marley (and excellent music in general), and romance, her place was a reprieve from the mid-30s heat and ubiquitous electronic music. She slept on the couch so that we could have her bed, fed us our first Chinese food in months, made Emma morning Frappes (more essential than you would think), and had us laughing with her sharp barbs of humour that take you completely by surprise (just when you think you’ve got someone pinned as a nice, sweet, and almost quiet Greek girl!). The fun was elevated a level when Bernard the Tree Hugging Austrian (another Couchsurfer with long dreads, multiple piercings, an Anarchist philosophy, and a very gentle and considerate character) turned up to join us on the last night.

Thank you Vassia! (and best of luck in your Norwegian/Belgian/Spanish adventures ;)

Island Hopping: Marvel, Madness, Misery and Mykonos

Just tell people that you’re off to spend 3 weeks in the Greek Islands and their faces seem to take on a greenish hue. So we had an inkling of what was in store, but there were a few things that we didn’t see coming:

Marvel - Santorini: When your first stop is a settlement that clings to the rim of what was the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history, there’s bound to be some cool sights. Exploring the quaint white walled town, scooting out to see the sunset from the crater’s edge, and clambering around what is a geologist’s Disneyland made this a fun few days.

Madness - Ios. How to make yourself feel old at age 25? Go to Ios. We wouldn’t have partied past dawn for two nights if we weren’t enjoying ourselves, but when there are 20 year olds who have been doing that for a week and still want to play beach volleyball rather than have an afternoon nana nap, you can’t help but wonder if there are any Zimmer frames available at your campground. An incredible party scene, but three days was enough to push us both over the edge and into a crippling Man-Flu (I’m not sure exactly which strain Emma caught, but it was just as debilitating).

Misery - Paros. Initially we only planned 2 days on Paros - just enough to make the most of this windsurfing Mecca. Instead, it became 5 days of miserable ManFlu, made slightly less miserable by the fact that daytime naps were in hammocks on the beach, and salt gargles were replaced by light sea swims around the headland at sunset. This place was just what the doctor ordered (along with heavy doses of what Brad termed “ghetto medicine” - antibiotics, strepsils and Vicks Vaporub).

Mykonos - My favourite island, where you can (and we did, repeatedly) get lost in the winding white streets that were designed to disorientate pirates, stumble across “Little Venice“, countless art galleries, cool little cafes and creperies, and then find the landmark windmills before figuring out the way home.

With our glands still up, but ManFlu on its way out, we mustered for a night out on the town, finding that Mykonos lived up to its reputation of being a little older (than Ios), a little edgier and diverse (rather than the Ios model of having the entire island pulse to the beat of the latest Ministry of Sound release),and a little more “K Rd”. A great night out, with surprisingly less adverse health consequences than we feared (maybe we’re not THAT old yet).

It's OK if the Locals Do It...

Long-haul buses seem to be a great place to meet people, and the men of Central Crete were adamant that their buses would be no exception. On our way to Anogia (rebel stronghold up in the mountains - more on this to come), we had a 15 minute stop while we transferred buses. Just enough time, it seemed, for us to join a table of three old men sitting at a café by the bus stop for Raki shots and snails. It didn’t matter that it was 11am - what better time of the day to be raising your shot glass to the cry of “E Viva!”, and following it (very quickly) by a snail dunked in olive oil and vinegar.

Being shy little Kiwis, it took us a few minutes to accept the offer and fully get into things, and a few more minutes to learn the finer points of eating snails - like how to squeeze out the gastrointestinal tract and its contents before putting the snail into your mouth. Luckily our bus to Anogia came before we were stumbling around with oil dripping from the corners of our mouths.

Leaving Anogia, we were less lucky. Or more. It depends on how you like to spend the time waiting for your bus.

We arrived at the bus stop at 11am, and before we knew it, had been lured across the road to where a group of 5 old Greek men were switching between animated argument and hysterical laughter. It took three shouts of “E Viva!” before we realised that, for the second day in a row, we were being plied with alcohol before noon, and they managed to communicate (via charades, or course) that our bus was two hours away. As more and more rounds were poured, we learned about the village we were in, and the Cretan people in general (all of this was via charades, and then with the help of another man who joined our group and had lived in Melbourne for 30 years, so was happy to help interpret):

• Anogia always has been a rebel town, and still is. They resisted the Turks, the Venetians, The Ottoman Empire, and the Germans. Even now, the police won’t try and enforce he law there. We saw a police car drive through town as we were sitting there, and the men laughed and waved it away, “they will not stop in our village - they know they are not welcome”.
• The result of self-policing seemed to be an extremely strong community with some slightly unconventional conventions: (1) when a 10 year old boy was seen driving a ute up the main street, looking through the steering wheel it was explained by, “It is ok - he is getting his pilots license!”; (2) Every man at our table had not a hunting rifle or pistol, but a machine gun, in his home, “we will not let ourselves be invaded again”.
• The stubbornness of these people is legendary. As we were sitting with our recently adopted grandfathers, a man was sitting under a tree across the road dishing out wads of 100 Euro notes to people as they came to talk to him. We didn’t think that these men would allow drug dealers in their town, and they couldn’t be arms dealers (there’s no way that they would ever sell their machine guns), so we asked what the deal was. The answer? They refuse to put their money in the banks, so the government pension officer drives into the mountains with bags full of cash and delivers everyone’s pension in person. But he doesn’t mind too much - it means that he too can have a few Raki’s before heading back to the city.
• The hospitality of these people is just as legendary. We sat, talked, and drank for over an hour, during which time rounds would keep coming, stories would become wilder, and the men would wander over the road and return with loaves of bread and a round of cheese to soak up the Raki. Then the leader (if these men would follow anyone, it seemed that it would be this guy) stood up and walked over the road to his restaurant to light a fire. Then out came half a lamb on a spit - in case we might be hungry.

Turning down offers of more food, drink, and accommodation for the night, we stumbled onto the bus back to the city full of lamb, cheese, raki, great stories, and a strong dose of Cretan hospitality.

Enter Hania, my favourite place in Crete - winding alleyways with funky little cafes, art galleries and creperies around every corner, cobbled streets, museums and historical buildings, a quaint old Venetian harbour that used to be able to be closed from hostile vessels with a giant chain across the entrance.

This is the sort of town that you could eat every meal at a different place for weeks, and then want to re-visit each spot to catch up with the chef and try everything else that they offer. My favourite spot was sitting on a bench on the waterfront either (a) early in the morning watching the sun rise over the sea wall and seeing the shopkeepers casually open up for the day, chatting and fishing as if they didn’t need customers that day, or (b) late at night, when the days heat has left, and people fill the waterfront walkways talking and laughing, and enjoying a glass of wine or one of the many desserts on offer (my sweet of choice was a crepe with gelato, banana, amaretto, honey, and nuts).

Other highlights from our time in Crete include:

• Spinalonga Island: This Venetian Fortress (those guys knew how to protect a city) turned Leper Colony has been kept in the same condition as it was when the last members of the colony left in the early 50’s (when leprosy turned out to be a simple bacterial infection, and treatment became readily available).
• Sfakia: Southern coast port town where the Allied troops evacuated from in WWII, and which remained a resistance stronghold throughout the war. It had also been a centre for resistance against both the occupying Venetians and Turks, who legendary leader Daskalogiannis gave himself up to in order to save his men (he became legendary not just because of his leadership, but because he was skinned alive, and he suffered this in “dignified silence” - these guys are tough!).
• Samaria Gorge: Europe’s longest Gorge, and one of it’s most famous. A 15km hike down through forest and alongside rocky rivers was a welcome change to the barren terrain that dominates the Med. And the sea at the end was the perfect answer to the 35 degree heat.
• Meeting our new Canadian friend Tristan - a medical student from Vancouver that we managed to convince to come to Hania, then the gorge, then Sfakia too, with us. We shared plenty of laughs, wine, and crepes, and look forward to catching up when we make it to Vancouver.

Pics: Beers at sunset on the sea wall, and crepes at sunrise

Proud to be a Kiwi

Despite our enviable "greenness", reputation for friendliness, rich Maori culture and excellent offerings in contemporary music, being surrounded by literally thousands of years of rich history that stretches in every direction for thousands of miles makes being Kiwi feel a bit plain at times. Though maybe that‘s why everyone seems to think that we‘re so nice - we don‘t have millennia of grudges to hold against all our neighbours (just the Aussies).

But if this relative lack of history was manifesting itself as a lack of national identity or pride, it was remedied by our time in Crete. Visiting museums, and more importantly, talking to the old men at the cafes in the streets, made us realise just how important our grandfathers(and, by extension, their families) were to these people. Kiwi soldiers fought and died for Cretans, and those who didn’t get off the island before the Germans took control were hidden by local families despite German death threats - some for up to 3 years.

Mountain villages have memorial plaques for “all the males within 1km of the village square, who were executed on German orders as reprisals” for a string of offences. These included:

Hiding allied soldiers

Hiding (and being) resistance fighters

Assisting resistance fighters in kidnapping the German General in charge of Crete (this story was retold with laughter by the old men who we met by the busstop - more on them later, as they deserve a blog post all to themselves)

The curator for the Battle of Crete exhibition at the museum talked to us for a good twenty minutes about New Zealand’s contribution, and shared stories of family members of soldiers who have come to the exhibition. It seems that Kiwis have a special place in his heart, as he went into a backroom to get me a piece of memorabilia to take home with me.

As we go along we learn first-hand (and are humbled by) the identity and reputation that has been earned on our behalf, and often wonder how our generation would respond to similar crises.

The Ruined Ruins of Knossos

We’re no archaeologists, but in the last 2 months we’ve seen a fair few ruins of ancient civilisations. We’ve seen museums dedicated to ancient cities, we’ve been to excavation sites, and walked on the same marble streets as the Persian King Darius, Alexander the Great, numerous Roman Emperors, and many, many more. But we’re still just naïve travellers.

So when we visited the famous ruins of Knossos, in Crete, and found concrete steps, a bright red painting of a bull on a wall, and poured concrete columns, scepticism more than crept into our minds. It turns out that Arthur Evans, a wealthy English “self-taught archaeologist” had bought the site less than a century ago, excavated it, and built structures upon it to make what he thought it might have looked like thousands of years ago. He even decided that it was a totally different civilisation from any other "discovered" at the time, so coined the term Minoan.

While hundreds of people snapped photos and queued to look at the fake “artifacts”, our healthy Gen-Y cynicism kicked in more and more as we read the signs stating what “Arthur Evans believed to have been on this site”.

I generally try not to be too negative or to seem ungrateful(most of the time), so the big positive from visiting Arthur’s Minoan Fantasy Land and reading the “Ruins for Dummies, by Dummies” information boards, was an enhanced appreciation for the all the other places in the world that have been painstakingly preserved and restored.