Our summer season of exploration continued with a day trip to Bracciano, a medieval town 30kms from Rome, overlooking a large volcanic lake.
The availability and diversity of great places to visit within an hour or two of Rome is truly astonishing. After our trip to Gondolfo, also seated atop a volcanic lake, we decided to give Bracciano a go and were definitely not disappointed.
Arriving just before noon on a sunny Saturday, we strolled the medieval alleyways in the hilltop Centro Storico. We looked for viewpoints of the lake, got lost in the historical architecture and pushed the stroller around some very narrow streets, all before sitting down to a well-earned pasta lunch.
Bellies full, we turned to Bracciano’s main terrestrial draw, the Castello Orsini-Odescalchi, which provided stunning views of the panorama below and also stunningly difficult quarters for stroller movement! My cousin mentioned that Tom Cruise was once married at this castle and it’s easy to imagine either medieval or modern celebrations taking place here early into the morning hours.
Our final stop in Bracciano was at the beach! Beach hopping around Rome has been one of my treasured summer past times here and we thought it would be nice to try a freshwater dip rather than the salty and sometimes choppy coastal waters.
Again, aside from the challenging walk down and then up the hill to and from the beach, it was an absolutely lovely way to spend a Saturday afternoon. The cool clean crispness of the lake was a welcome reprieve to the hot Italian sun and Dalia enjoyed a long leisurely swim in the serene environment.
Overall, Bracciano was another great find and so easy to access from Rome. We’ll keep it in mind for future trips with visitors or when needing a break from the salty waves of Ostia.
This weekend marks our fourth wedding anniversary and notably the first as parents. In celebration, we had booked three nights at an agriturismo (hotel/farm) castle, with swimming pool, outside of Florence and then one night in the heart of Firenze. A nod to the four years ago visit we enjoyed during our monthlong honeymoon it Italy. I envisioned a relaxing day spent splashing around the pool, picking up my pen while Aleksander napped and reflecting on life as a married couple after a first child arrives. It’s a topic that Dalia and I have been discussing and dissecting quite a bit in the weeks leading up to our anniversary. And one that we both felt had not been shared with us by almost anyone, as first time parents, neither by personal acquaintances nor public figures.
Alas, after finishing work on Friday, we loaded up our recently purchased and serviced Subaru Outback and headed onto the A1 highway for a couple hundred beautiful Tuscan kilometres to Florence. If the foreshadowing hasn’t yet become apparent, our fairytale weekend didn’t get very far down the road. Little more than 30 minutes outside of Rome, the dashboard temperature indicator turned red, soon followed by a mysterious liquid explosion under the hood, then the three of us on the side of the 100 degree hot highway waiting for a two.
Two very friendly, helpful and modestly bilingual Italian service people showed up within half-an-hour and took us through the charming town of Orte, letting us know that our weekend plans would be heading in reverse, back to Rome via the train station. Update about the car to follow next week.
It was one of the most clear and salient ‘dad in the world’ moments I’ve had since being in Italy and somehow fit perfectly into the theme we had been reflecting on: living the unexpected hour to hour, day to day – every hour, every day.
Since about 24 hours before Aleksander was born, Dalia and I started the race of keeping him well, fed, thriving, comfortable, dry, clean, happy, rested, safe, loved, dressed, calm and secure. We didn’t exactly know we were starting such a race as first time parents but now, almost nine months later, there haven’t proven to be many breaks from it. Add in work for me, plus a pandemic, plus a move to a foreign country and it can, at times, feel like a triathlon that you were dropped into when you were just casually on the way for your morning coffee.
In comparison, our courtship and three some years of marriage were a stroll. Not always along the beach, but at least in the woods, or alongside a canal, or in the worst case, a partially shovelled sidewalk. We were fortunate in that way. People talked about the challenges of marriage, especially in the first year, and we’d usually share a glance and really not understand what they mean.
Well that stroll into triathlon nano-moment-transition has often left us out of breath, occasionally out of sync and rarely, out of it all. Nothing is as it was. And we’re constantly trying to navigate the new hyphenated reality of married couple-parents.
Weekends like this one we had planned allow us to momentarily take our feet off the gas, assumer a more leisurely pace and re-connect as a trio. Hence, the extra sourness of possibly having bought a silver Subaru lemon.
Just this past week, I began twice weekly Italian classes (nice thing), continued to study French grammar after Aleksander falls asleep (necessary for work thing), got an Italian text message saying that neither our cable or internet bills had been paid (baffling thing), tried unsuccessfully for hours to contact someone at my online-only European bank (infuriating thing) and kept the marriage-baby-work train on the rails (triathlon thing).
Then the newly purchased and recently serviced car goes bust. The dad-in-the-world highs are absolutely phenomenal but it’s not always only gelato, castles and sunsets on aquamarine seas.
This weekend, we’ve officially been Roman residents for one month. It’s been an enjoyable but intense first four weeks in the Eternal City and since I’ve always believed that initial impressions capture something magical and crystalline, I thought I’d jot some down here.
The first thing to note is, at the beginning of the end of the covid pandemic, Rome belongs entirely to the Romans. All the world class sites, postcard views and historical remnants are currently just the backdrop for everyday life; and not the draw of bus, plane and train loads of international tourists. This has worked out quite well for us. We take Friday strolls to the Colosseum, walk into St. Peter’s with no lineup and manage to take pictures at the Trevi Fountain with not a single unknown stranger in the frame. It feels like you’re the first one in a nightclub and you know eventually you won’t be able to move, but now the place is yours.
The weather has been cooler and wetter than we expected. Dalia and I both visited Rome in April some years ago and remember a sweltering and manic city, with heat radiating from the concrete with barely anywhere to hide. Thankfully, we now have a comfortable apartment to retreat to and more time to discover and linger in spots we enjoy, like the Villa Borghese park, our nearest and favourite big city green space.
The Romans have been very kind, energetic, welcoming, sincere, sometimes outlandish, most times impeccably mannered, elegant and straightforward. They ooze Italianness in a way that I don’t think I can describe any more precisely than that. Most people look good, their clothes seem to fit them all very well. They wear on average two more layers than a Canadian who’s just arrived but that’s ok. They love their families and take all the generations to the park on weekends. They talk to their dogs very seriously, which is particularly entertaining to someone who, like the dog, doesn’t understand the language. They’re emphatic when they talk on their phones – with no one, or everyone, around. When they’re with each other, they’re not on their phones. This is almost as astonishing as an empty Rome to a North American. We still stand out because we use our phones almost all the time for directions, pictures and translations. Eating in Rome is a rhythym we still haven’t figured out. Lunch is a hard stop by 3pm and dinner starts at 7, 730, earliest. So ya, no pizza or pasta when the belly is empty after work around 5 or 6. More coffee and gelato have become the caloric stand-ins of choice.
We’ve also had our fair share of linguistic challenges thus far. One of the main drawbacks of there being no tourists arounds is that no one expects you to be a tourist. In the best cases, we stare back blankly when locals machine-gun respond to us in Italian, somewhat like untrained monkeys. In the worst cases, we exit to hyperventilate and make a mental note to never return to the establishment where our entire family legacy has just been tarnished. It’s a bit of an exaggeration but also, in a very real sense, our biggest challenge, maybe one of the only challenges, until now. There’s something almost indescribably frustrating and embarrassing about not being able to understand the simplest things in a new language. No matter how many degrees you have or how solid your CV is, not being to understand a cashier ask you if you want a bag or teenagers ask if you want whipped cream on your three gelato scoops, makes you feel so humbled that you almost disappear.
Finding time and energy for language study, or any other ‘nice to have’ has been very hard to come by in our first month. With a new job in a new country with new colleagues; a gorgeously demanding six month old; and the myriad of things one needs to do to set up life: internet, groceries, SIM cards, pediatricians, ironing, there’s not much juice left for other concerns. Dalia tries (and mostly succeeds) to squeeze in a workout during Aleksander’s morning nap and I’ve averaged one workout so far every two weeks (far from a blazing start!). We haven’t eaten out because of covid, we haven’t travelled because we don’t quite know where to begin, and we haven’t shopped much because it just hasn’t really made much sense yet. We did buy an espresso machine and are perfecting our morning cappuccinos. We’ve tried almost every gelato shop in our neighbourhood and manage about 3 – 5 cones per week. And we’ve narrowed down some solid pizza options and toppings for any given moment.
All in all, our first month has been great. We feel incredibly lucky for an opportunity like this at a time like this. We look forward to the eventual visits of friends and family; to Aleksander’s first steps in the streets of Rome; and to the ability to share our thanks and gratefulness with Rome and the Romans in their mother tongue, without embarrassing either side.
Dad In The World 