Martin Fuggle Downunder

The weather has deteriorated and it is pouring with rain again. The forecast however is good from tomorrow and through the Easter weekend so there's a bit to look forward to. We started the day with lessons as usual and we were planning to do a tour of Sant'Angelo in Vado and some of the surrounding countryside however the weather is so bad that it has been deferred until Friday afternoon.
Instead we went to see the mummies at the Chiesa dei Morti. They were fascinating and the guide who talked about he mummies was very clear and informative. There were about twelve mummies preserved and displayed in glass cases in the church. It seems that they were preserved as a result of a certain type of mould which formed and extracted the water from the bodies and allowed them to be mummified. Most of them have been studied by Italian and overseas universities and the cause of death in every case was well understood. Their names and some information about their lives was known from documents that were preserved from the time of their death.
We spent the evening at home watching the quiz shows (L'Eredita and Affari Tuoi) as well as catching up on homework.

The weather continues to improve and the forecast for Easter is excellent. A new student started with Tanja and me this morning. His name is Robert and he was originally from Scotland but now lives in Belgium. He has a house in Acqualagna which he bought as a ruin and has taken it apart stone by stone and rebuilt it over a number of years. It's habitable now and he is living in it whilst he does the course at Scuola Italia. He speaks Italian very well and also speaks three other languages being French, English and Dutch.
Barbara returned to teach us this morning and we went through the present and past conditional. On top of the subjunctive yesterday it's quite a load. The difficulty starts when these verb tenses are used in conjunction with each other.
We had lunch with Stephanie from Bavaria and then returned to conversation with Valeria. She asked us to read a series of letters to a magazine and then choose one so that we could provide a response. They were the sort of letters that one finds in any of the women's magazines in Australia where the problems are typically a bit tongue in cheek and the responses had to be similar.
A few weeks ago we ordered some hand painted tiles from Silvio Biagini, one of the main ceramicists in Urbania. Urbania has a long history of producing ceramics of the highest quality and many of the main museums throughout the world have collections of Urbania ceramics. They will be displayed as ceramics from Castel Durante which was the original name for Urbania. We collected our tiles this afternoon and they depict a scene of Urbania and in particular the Palazzo Ducale which is now a museum. When we get them home we will have them framed and find a spot for them to be displayed.
We had dinner with Geoff and Sooi Lei and then went to the Cathedral to see Corinna and the rest of the choir practising for the Easter concert.

The weather continues to improve and we even managed to get out today without our coats. Italian lessons changed a bit because a number of people left last week and four new students arrived this morning. Barbara took the new students and Tanje and I were on our own with Simona and Valeria. Simona took us through 'il congiuntivo trapassato' which is tough stuff even in English. After the break Valeria, Tanje and I discussed music and then Jenny and I headed off for a pizza and to Kikki Rikki to see if anyone had sent us an email.
We went back to Scuola Italia to watch Pane e Tulipani. We had seen it before with English subtitles but it was good to see it again. Before the film we met the new students although I don't remember their names - we will possibly get to know them a bit better as the days pass even though they are only here for a week and the week is short because of the Easter holiday.
Now that we have the car we are able to go out of town and after school we went off to Sant'Angelo in Vado to see if we could buy some jeans. The main industry in this part of Italy is the manufacture of jeans and they export all over the world. I managed to get a pair that fitted me and they were able to shorten them on the spot. On the way back we stopped to do some shopping, then have a gelato in Bar Centrale where we met Sooi Lei and Geoff before going home for some pasta and homework.

Palm Sunday is an important religious festival in Italy and the fact that they have no palms means that everyone goes to church with an olive branch. The weather seems to have improved and we set off with Sooi Lei and Geoff for Gubbio. We decided to take a scenic route and went via Piobbico and Acqualagna where we stopped off for a coffee. There was a procession to the church and we watched a little bit of it before heading on towards Gubbio.
We parked close to the centre and walked up the hill towards the Piazza Grande. We had a look at the various ceramic shops and then went on towards the Funivia which consisted of a few 'dustbins' on a thing much like the chair lift at Arthur's Seat in Melbourne. The main difference was that this one was enormous and seemed to work quite well. the church at the very top of the hill.
Jenny was not feeing well so we wanted to get some Panadol or the like. The trouble was that it was Sunday in Italy and nothing happens. However on this occasion we went into a small shop and asked the fellow behind the counter if he knew where we could get something for Jenny and he was kind enough to shut up shop and take us to his cousin's pharmacy and bring us back.
We had some lunch and then went up the chair lift to the basilica at the top of the hill where we saw the mummified body of Saint Ulbardo, the patron saint of Gubbio. On 15th May each year there is a 'festival of the candles' where there are three huge timber symbols of a candle which are carried from the Piazza Grande to the Basilica at the top of the hill (an incredible distance and climb) to remember the death of Saint Ubaldo on 16th May 1160. The fact that it is still possible to see his mummified body in the church is amazing.
Tomorrow is the start of our last week at Scuola Italia before we leave for Venice and there are four new students starting. Sooi Lei, Geoff, Jenny, me and Tanja will be the only ones left from last week so it will be good to have some new blood in the class. It will be a short week because of the Easter Holiday which starts next Friday.

We set off early this morning because we had planned to pick up a rental car in Pesaro. Pru was heading off to the station to go to Bologna to pick up the Eurostar for Naples where she will meet her daughter who has lived there for the last five years. We caught the bus at 7.20am, arrived in Pesaro at around 8.30am, farewelled Pru and walked for about twenty minutes to the Hertz place to pick up the car.
The weather was fantastic - no rain, sunshine and about 15 degrees. Let's hope it stays that way for the next few weeks.
We drove down to Fano Torrete to see if we could find the place that we camped on the beach about 35 years ago. We failed miserably and it looked very like the Rosebud foreshore with more buildings. We decided to retrace our steps from the previous weekend when we tried to find Al Vento di Focara for Sunday lunch only to find it booked out. We drove through Pesaro and up to Fiorenzuola di Focara and wandered into the restaurant which was absolutely empty. We walked around the town and then had lunch. The antipasto di pesche consisted of lumarchini del mare and vongole. The lumarchini (snails) were very tasty if not a bit difficult to get out of the shells with just a few toothpicks and the vongole were a bit easier to deal with. Jenny then had insalata di pesche (or rather had some of it) and then I had a grilliata of a few different types of fish. It was much better and half the cost of what we had the week before at the Taverna di Pescatori.
We drove down to Gabbicce Mare and then back to Urbania via Urbino.

Raining again today and lessons as usual in the morning. Tanja returned today after she had been unwell yesterday. Patrick leaves tomorrow to meet his wife and daughter in Florence so he was keen to go through the formal and informal modes of addressing people and the circumstances under which each form is used. It is a lot more complex than it seems. In reality though much of it is common sense and applies equally in English even though we do not have the same formal/informal structures in the language.
We went up to Kikki Rikki to access the internet only to find that we had pput some washing on at the apartment and had forgot to put the outlet in the sink. Jenny raced back expecting the place to be absolutely flooded but fortunately it wasn't too bad. I sent a few emails and had a look at the news. It seems that the Howard Government has at last been forced by public opinion to do something about David Hicks. It's amazing what Howard will do when there is an election in the offing. However his silencing Hicks until after the election further demonstrates the Howard government's self interest rather than the public's 'right to know'.
We had our last cooking lesson at Guisy's and Patrick and Pru joined us for the last lesson. It was a mammoth lesson with about six courses and we could hardly eat all of the food. We exchanged names and addresses with Giuseppina, Gioacchino and Sara and headed home after a terrific night. It turns out that Geoff and Sooi Lei live in the same street in Melbourne as Maureen and John Bayley and know them quite well. It's such a coincidence that we go half way around the world only to meet people from Melbourne who live about ten minutes away from us in Melbourne.

Lessons and rain in the morning as usual. At lunchtime we went over to San Angelo in Vado where Joachim and Ricarda have an agriturismo on top of a hill about 5 kms outside of San Angelo. The house had not been lived in for thirty years and Ricarda had done some wonderful work to renovate it. She had made four or five apartments on the ground floor and a wonderfully rustic room upstairs which contained the kitchen and living area. There were peacocks in the garden displaying their feathers s well as horses, geese, a donkey and many wild deer in the surrounding hills.
We got back in time for the conversation class with Guido and discussed 'I Problemi Italiani'. I clandestini, disoccupazione and the cosa nostra, camorra, 'ndragheta and others.
We decided to eat at home and catch up on our homework before I went off to the Duomo to listen to the choir practice before they give a concert at Easter. The acoustics were great and we sat up in the choir stalls with the singers behind the organ. The only problem was that the organist and the main two sopranos didn't turn up for practice. We might go next Tuesday when they have their final practice. Corinna and her father, Raimondo, are in the choir and Raimondo played the organ in the absence of the principal organist - he is multi talented!

After the morning lessons we had an excursion into Urbino with Barbara to see the Palazzo Ducale. We had been to Urbino last Saturday and been through some of the Palazzo but there is nothing better than going with someone who can tell you about the building and the paintings on display. This time we also went to the kitchens below. The whole place was absolutely amazing. The plumbing was stunning and there were large stables for the horses - a sort of 'parcheggio' for the transport of the day. We saw a few of the well known art works including Piero della Francesca's Flagellation.
We got home just in time to go off to Il Mulino della Ricavata for dinner with all of the others (and a few more). The old mill is an agriturismo and we made a special booking to have a meal there. The place is incredible. The building is on land close to the river and is an old mill where olives were crushed for oil. The mill is set on the side of a hill and the water from the hill comes into a cave which is incorporated into the house. The water is full of calcium and the cave contains stalactites and stalacmites which have obviously developed over many years. Upstairs we had a room set up for the ten of us and the food kept coming. We had about three antipasti followed by a pasta dish, then pork with wild asparagus and a dolce. It was all sensational and the wines, which were home made, including the grappa and a desert wine made from cherries (I forget what it was called) cost 30 Euros each which was fantastic value. Well worth the visit. In part we were farewelling Brigitte, Patrick and Pru since they are all finishing at then end of this week. We hope that we might be able to meet Brigitte in Venice but there is nothing planned yet.

We intended today to be a bit more relaxing and by and large it was. Lessons in the morning were as normal and instead of having Simona for conversation we had Guido who is Corinna's brother (Raimondo's son). The conversation topic was 'Le Corna e Il Diavolo' which is really about superstitions and the Italians. It was a difficult topic but we got there in the end and superstitions seem to be much the same the world over. We had dinner at Doddos and otherwise an early night.

It is raining again and the weather doesn't seem to be getting any better. The 'cippolle' are forecasting variable weather for the rest of March and April in Le Marche but I hope it is a bit better in Sicily.
The day started as usual and in the afternoon we saw a short film about the making o the ceramics in Urbania and then visited a workshop where we saw Vittorio make three vases. One was a typical straight sided vase that would be used in a pharmacy for the storage of stuff. The second was a more traditional looking vase and I have some photos of them which will show the types of vase that were being made. The third was a sphere which was just showing technique. Once a pot has been made on the wheel it is put in the oven at around 1000 degrees centigrade and then dipped into smalto (a liquid made mostly of tin) so that it is impervious to the paints that are then used to decorate the piece. The design is painted and then refired in the oven at around 900 degrees centigrade. During this process the colours change dramatically and the piece gets a lustre which is brilliant.
We met a new student from England called Pru and she came to Giusy's place for Italian cooking lessons. As usual the meal was excellent. We made a pasta typical of the region around Urbania called 'passatelli' (the pasta not the region). We also made an insalata, panna cotta and a meat dish with contorni of onions and mushrooms all washed down with some good wine, limoncello and grappa.