Little Roads Europe

10/09/2024

We are having a couple of spritzes (limoncello for me, Campari for Matt) before noon (just before), to celebrate what we consider to be a big accomplishment: buying a washing machine.

Yesterday I ran a load of laundry, and afterwards we discovered some water under the machine. Matt bought that machine 5 years ago, when we were here in August 2019 getting the apartment set up. We had just purchased the place, and were planning to apply for our work visas the following September. If we got the visas, we knew we would have to move here by November. If we didn’t get them, which was very likely, we would cry a lot and just come here when we could.
Our apartment cost us €26K, which is a very low price for a home. But we are not rich people that just have €26K laying around in fat stacks of cash, so we were pretty stressed with all the financial output.
However, this house needed a stove, washer, and fridge. There was no washer. There was no stove here, only a hot plate. And the fridge was a dormitory-sized mini-fridge. A local contact offered us a free stove, and brought it here to us; but when the plumber saw it, he refused to install it – it was so old, he said, it would likely kill us.
All of these conversations were held in Italian, with the (very primitive) Italian we spoke in 2019, in August when it is hot as hell and there is no AC. We were sweaty and exhausted, and if you could have smelled us you would know that we definitely needed a washing machine.
And now we had a broken Death Stove in the house too, so all of that needed to be addressed.
So Matt walked over to the electronics shop in town and bought a fridge, a washer, and a stove. He negotiated with them to have all three appliances delivered, the Death Stove and the old "dorm fridge” hauled off, and all the new stuff installed and hooked up too. It was quite the win!

Today we decided to replace that old (now leaky) washer, which only holds 5kg of laundry, and change it out with a slightly bigger one, that can hold more than one sheet and one pillowcase at a time. How exciting! And now we are able to organize it all in our (now fairly decent) Italian, so we made ourselves understood, and we understood everything that was said to us.
We have a long way to go to be fully fluent, but it does bring some relief to be able to handle our business, and know we can figure s**t out.
I still get nervous about these conversations though, so I flop sweated through my dress. Good thing we have a new washer! 🇮🇹

10/09/2024

We have some clients traveling right now in Tuscany, and they sent us a few pictures from the places we have sent them, including these. They started out in Rome, and then engaged us to craft their trip in small town Tuscany afterwards. It is always a pleasure to get a series of photos from happy travelers!

09/09/2024

Tonight we had some new friends over, which is not something we do very often because our house is so small. Four people (including us!) is the maximum amount we can reasonably fit in here, and even then it is pretty cramped. 

We used to put on events in our old house for our chamber ensemble, and those parties would have 150+ guests - and we did all the food ourselves - so putting out a tiny spread like this should be easy. However, since our “kitchen” is so small (and it is also the dining room, and the foyer, and the laundry room), I have to carefully think about what I might prepare for guests, because we only have so many plates, and limited tabletop space, so I have to put a lot of thought into it all.

When I took this picture I laughed a bit because in my mind I thought “Hey the 1980’s called and wants its catering ideas back”, since there are these ludicrous prosciutto “cones”, and even deviled eggs too. 

That said, I will try to remember to take an “after” picture, because I bet they will eat it all :)

08/09/2024

Tonight we took a friend to a nice local restaurant to celebrate her birthday.
When we moved here, we didn’t know anyone. We have no family here either, so we didn’t know if we would spend every holiday or special occasion on our own… but we were willing to chance it to experience this adventure living in this incredible country.
It hasn’t always been easy, and we have met our fair share of jerks; but we are old enough to know how to separate the wheat from the chaff and just walk away.
We have been extremely fortunate to meet a few people here who are very important to us, a little “family” of our own making, who have enriched our lives more than they know.

We are so grateful to live here.

07/09/2024

Go Big Or Go Home (…Actually, Don’t)

Last night we played a small concert at a local agriturismo. Guests had supper first, followed by a concert of music we chose. One of the pieces was written 400 years ago, just 30 minutes south of here, by Alessandro Stradella. His music is wild and intense – shocking to those who hear the word “baroque” and think “dentist’s office”.

After the concert, a guest said “It looks like you have fun when you play. Do you?” And I answered yes, of course… but that has a lot to do with who I play with.
For example, in one of the pieces last night, I added an extra half bar, holding one note too long… and Matt just covered for me by holding his note too long as well. Since the piece we were playing was an American piece written 10 years ago, I feel pretty confident that our audience hadn’t noticed it, so they wouldn’t bust me right away with the mistake, like they would if I did the same thing in “Happy Birthday”. Matt immediately caught the error and just went along with me, and that is one of the things that makes playing with him fun. I know that I can screw the pooch on something, and if he can cover it, he will… and then we can laugh about it later.

Finding people like that to play with is about as common as finding people to be friends with who love to help you move every two years even though you only offer warm beer and cold pizza in return. In my experience it is not common, and if you do find someone like that to work with, you should do whatever you can to hold on to them. For a performer, building up that kind of long-term trust with colleagues is a game-changer when it comes to enjoying the work.

When we quit our gigs and moved here to Italy, we knew that it could quite possibly be the end of our performing careers. The idea of coming here and re-establishing a professional reputation – at age 50-ish, in a second language, in a country where we had no contacts – was not exactly something a career counselor would suggest as their first choice. But the amount we worked in the US was artistically and physically overwhelming to us both. Personally, I felt like a worn out dishrag; I felt like I was slowly fading and losing color and not able to have the time or space or energy I needed to produce anything artistic of value, and it scared me.

Here in Italy, we play much less frequently; but this pared-down life has given us the freedom to work less, and that has been so deeply important. I may not play as much as I want to, but when I do, I can bring my full self to the stage, which is something I just knew I was not going to be able to continue doing in the US with the type of schedule we were required to keep.

To my musician friends who might feel the same way: In general, in our field, we are trained from a very young age to think that a life of music is a sacred calling, and that music is something we must focus on 24/7/365, and that any deviation from that constant daily devotion indicates a lack of heart and a form of massive personal failing. I think it is just the opposite: we can’t create something beautiful and meaningful if we are exhausted to our bones. It is OK to walk away! For a week, or a month, or a year, or longer. I used to worry because I could feel that I had only a certain amount of artistic energy left, and I didn’t think I could spread it out for the rest of my career, and I didn’t want to just churn out Art Sausage. At some point, I realized that I would have to take a break, of some length, to be the musician I wanted to be; so I reverse-engineered the idea from there and tossed away a lot of “givens” that I had previously held. That, combined with a lot of research, led to the crazy life we have now. Everyone’s situation is unique… there may be an out-of-the-box solution for you, too. Making this move has certainly come with some big sacrifices, but thinking out of the box has gifted us with far more than we have given up.

We are so grateful to live here.

03/09/2024

Twilight tonight.
The people who live on the other side of the castle get the most incredible sunsets, but we get plenty of great views here. I have grown so used to this view in every season, that it feels like home to me, even though in many ways we are still strangers here. People recognize us, and wave or honk when they see us, and invite us into their homes, but almost everyone here grew up together, and went to grade school and high school together, and watch each other’s kids. It’s really quite a bond, and being Americans who (like most Americans) moved from place to place, it is a very interesting culture to witness.
The temps are just on the edge of what we can handle, having calmed down from the most brutal heat of summer (called “Caldo della Madonna”). Today we were out running errands and the wind picked up, and it rained a little, and it drove the rain into our faces, the droplets hitting with stinging pricks, and it was wonderful, we rejoiced. I made a big pot of minestrone full of garlic and vegetables and homemade veg broth; a vegan dish that is incredibly filling and feels like drinking vitamins. In these very difficult times it doesn’t escape our attention that we are able to shop and cook and walk and work and breathe.
We are so grateful to live here.

01/09/2024

“Influencers” only care about your clicks.

We read with interest a recent article in WaPo that highlights the effect of so-called “influencers” in one of the most heavily touristed areas in Italy. It's a starkly realistic picture of the tourist scene on the Amalfi Coast – a picture that is, by the way, decidedly NOT what visitors are hoping to find after watching "The Talented Mr Ripley" or clicking through Tik-Tok travel videos.

The article prompted us to codify our own thoughts, as travel planners about tourism (and over-tourism), and about the reasons travelers want to do the things they do – and how “influencers” encourage tourism that’s detrimental to the places they purport to promote.

[The link to our article is the first comment below; the WaPo link is below that.]

31/08/2024

An overview of our “Little Roads" impressions of Scotland - in particular, how traveling to Scotland compares to visiting Ireland.
We’re now working with our first Scotland travelers, and we’ll be crafting itineraries that include Scotland.

A lot of travelers contact us who say they want us to plan an itinerary for them to go to both Ireland and Scotland. The fact is, the two are not necessarily interchangeable – there are differences in the logistics and in the experiences; and to traverse from one to the other could easily eat up a...

30/08/2024

We got this duffel bag today, to replace one that had been irreparably damaged on our last flight.
Thirty seconds, literally, after unpacking it:

28/08/2024

Oops, I Did It Again

“Un bel infezione!”
So said the ear specialist at the hospital today, where I had to go because I have the Ear Infection That Won’t Die. “Hospital” sounds bad, but the word “hospital” here carries a different meaning, because it is not associated with punishing debt. Here in Italy you might go to the hospital to see a specialist, like I did today. (To be fair though, it would have made me less nervous at this appointment if the morgue was not just down the hall.)

I got this infection a very, very long time ago, and my “medico di base” (primary care doc) prescribed some ear drops. I used those, but the infection did not clear. So I used them for 4X as long as instructed (and 4X the quantity), each week, thinking “Oh, just another week of this will fix it.”

That sounds intensely stupid... and it is.

But I am just not able to shake my fear of doctors and all that comes with it, after living in the US for 48 years before moving here. Add to that that in my last workplace in the US, if your ailment was not immediately visible to everyone, there would be a lot of muttering and backbiting, so I tried to follow the general medical advice of “Suck it up and walk it off” whenever possible. I am finding here that it is very hard for me to change my habits.

Here in Italy, preventive medicine is the cultural norm. You go to your “medico di base” often, for checkups, or when you START to feel unwell, not when you have to carry your body parts into her in a bloody pillowcase and see if she can staple them back on. An appointment to talk to your doctor costs nothing, and there are no surprise charges that are going to show up in your mailbox 6-8 months later.

Before we left on our research trip to Scotland, I was getting anxious because my ears were no better, and it was starting to get painful and distracting. My “medico di base” was on vacation so I went to another doctor in town, who gave me some different ear drops. Unfortunately those also did not work, possibly because I was also getting my ears wet in the shower.

And so a few days ago I started to panic, as my hearing is now being affected.

So my doctor gave me a “ricetta” (prescription) to see a specialist. (This referral cost nothing, unlike in the US.) My friend came with me to the pharmacy, where I had to make the appointment. The next appointment was October 28. Well, I am not going to be alive on October 28 if I still have this infection then, because I would have long ago literally poked holes in my brain matter with a pencil, trying to scratch the inside of my ears.

And that brings me to another cultural thing I must learn here, which is that if the public system has too long of a wait, you can ask to see a doctor privately. We have already done this a few times (for example, when Matt needed an MRI of his neck, and got one the next day for €112). But Italians are accustomed to paying for their health care via taxes, not paying fat stacks of cash at every appointment, so they don’t always offer you the private option unless you request it. And they also would not think about driving very far away either, so I had to specify that I would drive anywhere, and pay anything, to see someone who could fix it. (Or, you could just not wait until you are at a major crisis point like I was, by blowing off going to the doctor because I was afraid.)

I was so nervous for this appointment today. I fully expected this doctor to ask “Why did you wait this long??”, something other doctors here have asked me, over the last 5 years, as I have practically waited until I had to be scraped off the pavement with a shovel until I showed up.
American doctors know exactly why we wait – they see it every day all day.
But Italian doctors are baffled. I hope I would get some brownie points from this doctor when I showed up with a written note in Italian explaining what I had done and when, to save him time.

One funny thing I realize all the time here is that it is not just learning a second language that is the hard part, it is learning all the cultural differences too. Learning a second language is more than just book terms too. We all use colloquialisms in our speech all day without thinking about it. For example, “Q-Tip” is a brand-name term that any American recognizes to mean “cotton swab”, but it is not a brand here so they respond with the same blank stare that I use when they refer to common Italian brand names.

One other thing that gets lost in translation? Hand-written numbers. This ear specialist gave me his personal cell number (yes, you read that right). I don’t want to publish his personal number, but here are the last 3 digits. I literally have no idea what any of these numbers are.

By the way, total cost for my appointment today was €102. Medicines I need cost me another €57. That is big bucks here, but I would have expected to pay at least 5 times that. Meanwhile, I am going to try to change my stupid habits and act more Italian.

We are so grateful to live here.

27/08/2024

It may have rained a bit last week when we were gone, but otherwise this is the first rain our town has had in 3 months or so. It's not a huge storm, but we'll take it.

26/08/2024

Vicini e visitatori di Soriano: vi aspettiamo per una serata di musica, vino e cibo, il 6 settembre a l'Orto di Hans! Suoneremo musica barocca italiana e musica scritta in America in questo secolo. Una serata di cibo e divertimento!

Neighbors, and visitors to Soriano: we are waiting for you for an evening of music, wine, and food, September 6 at L'Orto di Hans! We will be playing Italian baroque music and music written in America this century. A night of food and fun!

26/08/2024

Whenever we travel we pack our bags very lightly, then come home with them bursting with stuff.
(I’m working on a “packing tips” article I will post soon, so watch this space!)
Here is one thing we brought home from our trip to Scotland: Edradour Scotch Whisky. One night we were chatting with bar staff, and they got in to an extended discussion about which distillery is the smallest in Scotland. Several people agreed that the answer was indisputably Edradour. Well, we are not whisky experts, though we do enjoy it, but one thing we always enjoy is finding something unusual or rare. Turns our Edradour Distillery was close to where we were staying, so we went there the next morning, only to discover they were closed.
A day later, we were at a small shop specializing in whisky from small local makers, and there was a bottle of Edradour! We asked them about it, and turns out that the distillery only employed 6 people… and sadly, it has been closed for a couple of years. No one knows when or if they will reopen, so to my eye, that bottle suddenly got a LOT more interesting.
We each had a checked bag for the flight home. Our bags were stuffed to the gills with Scottish goodies we found along the way. Some for ourselves; a lot for our neighbors and friends.
I will work on that packing article and post it soon. Returning home with lots of fun stuff from a trip is a great way to make it feel like the adventure continues!

24/08/2024

Tonight we are up in Chianti to play a wedding. We got very lucky with this one because it is quite a short ceremony, which is really a gift because the heat in August is no joke. We always stay overnight on these gigs because it's just too far to drive home safely. Since we have played so many events up here over the years, I believe we have stayed in almost every hotel in the area! This time we are in a new one that happens to have a pool. Not bad at all 🏊‍♂️🇮🇹

24/08/2024

A funny side effect of the CNN piece that came out last week about our work visas and our move here: The article got picked up - stolen, really - by some external clickbait website, translated into Italian, and published online under a totally new (presumably fake) reporter’s name.
[We let the CNN reporter know, and she/they may or may not pursue the issue.]
A very strange element of this article hijacking is that our photos were used, but they were weirdly AI-altered, comic book style - I assume to avoid copyright infringement.
Below are our own photos, followed by the cartoon-ized ones. The one of me (Matt) playing the cello on our balcony is particularly silly.

23/08/2024

Well, we are back home and back at it!
Tomorrow we head to Tuscany to play a wedding. This couple wanted custom music, so Matt wrote two arrangements for them for us to play, one for the couple’s party walk and one for the bridal procession.
When we do these arrangements we always gift the couple with a hand-written copy of the first page of the score; it is a nice keepsake they can frame later on. That sounded like a great idea when I cooked it up when we started doing this, but I didn’t take into account that I never write anymore! So I have to write these pages out in shifts because my hand cramps after 5 minutes.
I can’t believe that 393822934 years ago, when I was in school, I handed in EVERY assignment handwritten on paper! It’s definitely NOT like riding a bike :)✍️

23/08/2024

Hoover has taken over this suitcase we left on the terrace. I guess we can never get rid of it now. 💼🇮🇹

22/08/2024

Bentornati!
We returned home to Soriano last night, after our research trip to Scotland. We loved the cool weather, the plentiful rain, and of course the stunning Scottish landscapes…
But we’re definitely very happy to be back home.

It’s still pretty hot here. There’s a common rule of thumb that a significant cooling-off of Italian summer occurs after Ferragosto (15 August), but thanks to climate change, people seem to think this may be an obsolete metric.

Nevertheless, today we braved the temperatures - mid-30s (35 C is about 95 F) to run few errands in our town. We stopped at the farmacia, wine shop, and fruttivendolo, before meeting our friend for a noon-time aperitivo. One of the snacks we got with our drinks was a glass of pretzel sticks, which we hadn’t seen here before. I asked what they were called here, and the barista shrugged and said, “Diciamo ‘stix’.” (The happens frequently here - our efforts to learn a new word result in simply the English word pronounced slightly differently.)

While we waited for a second round, our friend went off to run a couple of her own errands, and I walked up to one of our favorite spots to secure our lunch - a national award-winning pizzeria. Today they were bustling at lunchtime, serving up mostly tavola calda plates - basically anything and everything but pizza, and all delicious - to a couple of dozen people who sat happily lunching, despite the mid-day heat.

While I waited for my pizza, I sat outside chatting with a couple of Italian motorcycle guys, who had ridden up to Soriano from Rome just for the day, because they had heard how beautiful this town was, and how great PIZZERIA da GIGI was. (Also because it’s a lot cooler up here than down in the Rome area!)
I joked with them: Up here in Soriano, Rome is so far away.
Nah, it’s really pretty close, they said.
I shook my head and said, Maybe on a motorcycle it’s close, but for me in my little Cinquecento, it’s pretty far. (They got the joke - it’s always a relief when I land one in my second language.)

So, after ten Scottish breakfasts and pub dinners in a row, we’re really going to enjoy relaxing at home with our cats and eating this pizza.

We are so lucky to live here.

21/08/2024

We are at the airport about to take off so it seemed like a good time to post some funny things we saw along the way on our trip to Scotland. The last picture is an Xbox cake I saw in the supermarket this morning. If I did not have to hold this cake on my lap for the entire flight I would totally have bought this for my friend's children as a joke.

20/08/2024

Tonight is our last dinner in Scotland, and we saw something on the menu we had never seen before: dark amber cider. When we travel to a place and we are pretty familiar with the foods we can expect to see, when we see something we don't recognize we almost always order it.
Usually we ask for a little clarification from the server, which we did tonight. Unfortunately the server was completely wrong, but we did get a good laugh out of it (and yes, we did pay for it).
We were thinking that this dark amber cider was some type of unusual hard apple cider, and we both really enjoy that beverage which we can find nowhere in Italy. The server said it was dry and not very sweet so we were really looking forward to it.
Turns out it is actually a dark berry cider, which is a hard cider made from forest berries rather than apples (it is not Strongbow brand as indicated on the glass). That doesn't sound so bad, but in reality it is quite fake and tastes like a mix of Vicks 44 with Boone's Family Farm Country Kwencher, with a little scoop of IHOP boysenberry syrup.
No worries about that though, we fixed it with a great little glass of Laphroaig. 🥃🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

20/08/2024

We found some great food while here in Scotland. We made a point of hunting out gastro pubs and restaurants that either specialized in a certain dish, or sourced top quality local ingredients. We also looked for places that had a few rooms upstairs; our favorite places to stay are places that focus on food, but have a few rooms available too, so you can park the car before dinner and just chill out.
Here are some pics of the places we stayed and the food too. We are just beginning our itinerary service planning to Scotland, so stay tuned if you are interested.

20/08/2024

This morning I was in a small town and I took a little video just so you could hear this beautiful local accent. These two women were speaking.... I had to listen to this clip several times to make sure that they didn't say anything personal (I don't want to invade their privacy), but they were just talking about food.

One of the things we like to do is just stand still and listen to casual conversations, even though we often do not understand what is being said, even though it's in English! Here in Scotland we have had dozens of conversations with people and it is clear that they do not understand what we are saying much of the time either ;) 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

19/08/2024

Several times on this trip to Scotland, we have heard Italian travelers speaking to each other and we have then introduced ourselves and enjoyed long conversations in Italian.
A few years ago, I don't believe we could have carried on a conversation at this level, but after a few years of living in Italy they come easily. I have no doubt we are making a ton of grammatical mistakes, and certainly the people we are speaking to do not mistake us for mother tongue Italian speakers, but we have been pretty pleased with ourselves that they are not able to identify where we come from.
While we are here we have still been practicing Italian every day, but I did not expect to be practicing it in person with other travelers! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇮🇹

19/08/2024

Scottish breakfast roundup

We are just about at the end of our research trip, so we thought this would be a good time to post some pictures of the breakfasts we have had, with a bit of explanation.
Breakfast was included in every place we stayed save one (which offered it as an add-on). This is different from Ireland: Pre-pandemic, Irish breakfasts were always included, but post-pandemic it is not uncommon for breakfast to be an extra you pay for. At first we were a little disappointed with that, but that was because our imagination was greater than our stomachs. After a week+ of full Irish breakfasts, having a day or two off is a nice break.

And so we have learned that lesson again here in Scotland, where we have had full Scottish breakfasts available every day (except tomorrow). Generally the breakfast includes eggs to order, bacon, sausage, black pudding, haggis, mushrooms, beans, fried tomato, and potato scone, PLUS tea/coffee and toast, AND access to a buffet of cereal, yogurt, juice, water, and fruit. To eat, you know, before breakfast.

Rooms and food here are more spendy than they are in Ireland (even accounting for the currency exchange), and Ireland is already more spendy than it used to be only a few years ago. However, when you figure that you are eating approximately 4839392837 calories for breakfast, you really don't eat any lunch, and that opens the door for you to have something really nice for dinner, since this is generally the one daily meal to pay for.

In addition to the Full Scottish always on offer, there is usually a vegetarian Full Scottish as well, plus often an eggs and fish option (e.g., smoked haddock or kipper with poached egg, or salmon and scrambled), and a porridge option.

19/08/2024

It is a very rainy day here in Scotland but it is still quite beautiful! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

19/08/2024

Scottish friends: saw this in the market today. What do you use this for?

18/08/2024

Scottish harbor seals!

It was very fun to take a little boat ride today to see these seals. I may be just a little homesick but they remind me of my guy at home.

18/08/2024

Rainbow over Loch Ness! 🌈🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿