italia - vienna - romania

the afternoon air after the rain becomes luminous and young tree blossoms shine with an uncommon soft luminosity

 la grotta dell'eremita.

in the hermit's cave the early morning light enters and rebounds and illuminates and wakes up.

simone says that a man lived here alone in between the world wars.  he was called the hermit but many suspected that he was a spy.  at a dinner party one night an old local woman spoke to me in the piemontese accent, of which i understood little.  simone later told me what she had said:  her father used to come to the cave and hit the man who was a spy.  she seemed proud to tell us that.

i tell simone how such a troglodyte lifestyle would appeal to me and he says:  maybe you could become the new hermit here.   people would come to visit you and you would serve them chai.  they would give you food to eat.  it happens in india, and i think it could happen here too.

i had never considered becoming a troglodyte until then.

in vienna i stop by tim's place.  i met tim at a vipassana meditation course in india.   tim told me he was looking for a bike to cycle from turkey back to austria.  i told him that i had followed that route in the opposite direction and left my bike in turkey, and that he could take it back to vienna if he wanted.   

there was a strange feeling of familiarity upon seeing my old bike again.  so much road we had shared together.  it is wonderful to glide through the streets of vienna, but i now see the bike as heavy, cumbersome, and not nearly as conducive to meeting people as hitchhiking.

we go to the park to play tisch tennis.  as soon as one hits the ball one runs round to the other side and thus the threesome constantly circumnavigate the table, running and laughing and hitting the ball.  den Ball.  

 wo ist der Ball? i ask the children.  the ball has flown into the bushes.  no matter how much we rummage in the bushes, the ball will not be found.

"der Ball ist verloren," i have to conclude to the children.

outside vienna i hold a sign saying "ROMANIA" and soon a van stops going to romania.  gabril the driver first says that he will give me a lift if i give him money, then he listens to me and asks, "unde te duci in romania?"
"hunedoara" i say.
"ai noroc" he says, "eu me duc la deva, la jumatate de ora din hunedoara"
jump in
it is something like eight hours of travelling in his old van, stuffed full of bric a brac he has bought in the flea market in vienna and will take to the flea market to sell in alba-iulia, romania.  i help them by scouring the nearby wasteland to find a piece of wood to jam the back door shut.  it must be strong and of the right dimensions, gabril observes, otherwise the door could fly open and then everything will fall out on the motorway.  we stop for a bowl of hungarian soup and gabril tells me that i should keep talking to him to keep him awake on the road.   even so, even with my growing romanian conversation doesn't flow so very easily between us.  there is a limit to the number of things one can say before it becomes saying something for the sole sake of saying something.  speaking.  emitting sounds from one's mouth.  exchanging ideas between one intellect and another.  instead i strum my ukulele and sing in english.  no, i know no romanian songs.  on a piece of paper i draw the image of the dashboard as it presents itself to me, including gabril's hand resting on the steering wheel.  gabril's fifteen-year-old son then does the same and concentrates very hard on precision of line and makes a beautiful drawing.  every so often gabril beats his chest and calls out proudly "gypsy!"  he proudly curls the tips of his long moustache.  but what does it mean for you to be gypsy? i ask him.  what is a gyspy? i have to make my questions simple in our simplified way of communicating.  "skin colour" i am told, "a gypsy has dark skin.  and a curly moustache."

we cross hungary and enter romania after nightfall.  before reaching deva, gabril turns into a layby and says "ten minutes pause."  soon he and his young son are leaning on each other, fast asleep.  i don't know what to do.  i am also tired but cannot sleep easily in the cramped front seat.  i consider getting my sleeping bag out and stretching out on the flat ground outside.  after an hour the gabril wakes up and silently starts the engine.  in deva, his son recommends that i sleep in the plastic tower in the children's play area in macdonald's.  "no-one will see you there," he says, "no-one goes there at night.  you will be protected from the cold"

instead i walk out of town and snatch a couple of hour's kip in an orchard, waking up to see two shepherds standing over me and the sun climbing into the sky.  another friendly lift and a half hour walk up into the woods and i arrive at aurora, a young permaculture project high in the hills of transylvania.  i spot ioana collecting salad in the garden and make animal noises to announce my arrival.  cuba from the czeque republic is also there and is fond of making what he calls power smoothies - consisting of nettle leaves, radish leaves, radishes themselves, sunflower seeds and spices, all whipped together in a blender.  "not everyone likes it," he confesses, but ioana and i are instant fans.

we paint mandalas one evening - circular symbols of the never-ending harmony of the universe - and the next day in the rain we tie them to the trees to mark the path for future visitors.

we visit the beekeeping neighbours, and make a plan to prepare a few jars of walnuts to exchange for a jar of honey of theirs.  they serve us tsuica - strong grappa distilled from apples.  i say to the woman who is the daughter of the beekeeper: "ce frumos este aici"

"you really think so?" she says,  "i never liked living here.  i have always wanted to live in the city."

da simone, piemonte

of all the hazelnuts, the piemontese hazelnut is the smoothest, the richest, the most tenderly balanced.  taste these five nuts and tell me which is the piemontese one, the smoothest one, which is it?

each nut had a varying number of followers.  who thinks it is number three?  hands up, let me count you.  let me see, now who thinks it is number four?

it was number four.

it is official.  nut number four is the smoothest because it comes from piemonte.

in the village of alba it is vinum - where wine specialists stand behind stalls and pour small wine tastings into the glasses of those who have paid the entry fee.   simone and i pay for one glass and listen very attentively to the comments of the wine specialists regarding each individual bottle.  the quality of the wine from the nebbiolo grape varies depending on the degree of exposure to the sun on the hillslopes or valleybottoms of piemonte.  simone and i find the barbaresco decidedly aggresive, with some strong bottles offering what we decided to term notes of violence.  it was all bark and bite, its different elements lacked harmony with one another.  the barolo however, now there was a wine in which its elements were both robust and in harmony with each other.  the wine had found its inner peace.  it knew itself profoundly and was thus in complete tranquillity with the all of its essence.

all that good wine called for some good cheese, and we found it that night at sergio's, who had invited us for dinner at his wellmaintained old farmhouse with a wooden balcony amidst sloping vineyards and green trees.  i felt that the house was filled with vivacious spirits, very vivacious and carefree i felt them.  no doubt augmented by the speakers rigged up in every room pumping out eighties tunes loudly, the sad faded paintings showing the misery and comedy of the human situation, the energetic slim little dog with the impassioned urge to run everywhere all at once, to sniff everything and bite everything, bite especially my fingers and not even listen when i call sternly "sta' fermo, pepe"

he really is what one could call a crazy dog
he lacks inner harmony.

sergio - our animated old host wearing a jogging outfit - gives me a tour of the mystical house and in the stable i meet the goat trio - the ram and the ewe and the young 'un - all behaving especially timidly for goats.  we bring logs back into the kitchen and feed them to the roaring stove.  sergio serves us his own homemade wine from a big three litre bottle, and we eat softly steamed asparagus accompanied by a cheese sauce.

sergio is animated and avuncular.  sergio says to me: "i will shows you my workshop.  come" and from the worktop crowded with all kinds of tools he produces a slim piece of iron and proceeds to clasp it to the workbench before sawing it in two.  now - to demonstrate how well he could weld it back together - he welded it back together, finely, sanding down the melted bulges with a whirring spinning disk which emitted a dancing flame of soft yellow sparks.  "this is important" he said, and with tongs carried the glowing red bar to hiss it cold with water at the sink.  i return to the kitchen while sergio continues to work.  he comes in later and presents me with the finished knife, the blade sharpened nicely and gleaming whitely in the light.

it is rather a nice knife, but it is rather too heavy for me to carry everywhere in my rucksack.

when i first met simone in india he was already talking about his plans to live in a little house in the woods and grow vegetables.  he said that his longing to return to his family's land in piemonte only increased as he travelled through south east asia.  as soon as he returned in january he has been filled with vegetable plot and carpentry and furniture repair plans.   simone and i are both aware of and want to accept the diversity of people on the planet.  however, we are both convinced that a simple life in close contact with nature is not only what is good for us, but would be good for everybody, and for the planet too.

simone is undertaking his project alone, but he is happy to have my helping hand for a few days.  in the vegetable plot we plant a line of onions, already green and sprouting.  next to them we sprinkle a line of little carrot seeds and cover it with a thin layer of dark compost.  we cut young straight branches from the hazelnut wood, then skin the bark with a type of small machete.  back in the toolshed we cut them all to size and make a simple elegant robust wooden fence held together by screws.

later that night we light the grand pile of sticks gathered earlier that day.  it is simone's task to manage this woodland and he has decided to allow the big growing oaks space to grow even bigger by removing the smaller hazelnut trees.  the orange flame shoots up into the night sky.  we have made a massive pile of green branches, but they do not all burn at once.  besides, we control the little fire by pulling sticks from the big pile with a hayfork.  in the embers we roast potatoes and bake bread round little sticks held over the embers and construct a little grill to grill slices of aubergine.

this afternoon so far has been slowly spent listening to the rain falling on the trees outside, cracking open hazelnuts and toasting them crunchy and brown on the grill.  i am thinking of heading on soon but i have a cold -  a tickly throat and a runny nose and i sneeze quite often.   somehow so far simone has avoided catching it from me.  maybe if i am feeling better tomorrow and the weather is good - which the forecast says it will be - we will walk through the woods and follow the ravine down to the cave.  sergio says there is a very steep drop and the rock is big and strong and you can sleep in the cave.