22 nd September

Pensione Italia??..

After arriving in BOLSENA yesterday night, I had a walk along the Promenade on the lake looking around for a hotel with a balcony towards the lake. It all looked fairly posh and nothing really took to my fancy.
Going back in the old part of town I spotted a sign saying PENSIONE ITALY which had loads of rooms available at affordable price. When I was shown mine, I just fell for it.
And it had a bathroom with a real bathtub plus a rooftop solarium with view towards the lake ?. All a bit decrepit, but great fun.
The place seemed to be run by about 5 cats plus three women who looked like grandmother, daughter and granddaughter, who was also running a shoe shop in town, whilst what probably was a cousin apparently ran a Trattoria which was immediately recommended to me.
I had - what was to be, my only real bath – before going out to have a look at that trattoria. It didn?t really look that inspiring and I walked uo to the old town when I noticed what looked like an arched kind of garage entrance with no door but a stringy plastic curtain. A sign above it said OSTERIA.
If you never experienced travelling through time, go there, but only if you don?tr want to it,
It is a long garage type of room into the mountain, with tables along the side of the walls, the a few steps half way down where there was a few casks of wine.
There was only about five guys of all sort of ages sitting at one of the tables, but they were making quiet a racket drinking wine and eating pizza.
It looked fine enough for me to have a quick – I thought – glass of the local white wine to try to celebrate my monthly bath, before deciding where to eat, as I hadn?t even had a sandwich for lunch.
I might add, that I probably looked a bit out of place. To these locals, but that was exactly why they asked me after only about 5 minutes to join their table and share their pizza, (which was absolutely delicious, by the way), because they wanted to know what sort of animal I was.
It was an error in terms of getting some food, because apart from going next door to the Pizzeria which was run on some communal subsidy, which was explained to me but at a stage when my faculties of understanding it was already rather seriously affected by the wine that as flowing at an impressive speed, to get a few more slices of that delicious stuff, I never had any other food again that day.
It was not an error in terms of spending the evening though. They were a very friendly bunch and a great laugh and very capable drinkers. I spent a couple of great hours in there and was sitting there at some stage, saying to myself that it was like I had travelled back in time by some 100 years.
By about half past ten everybody rushed off, apart from GINO the owner with whom I had another drink before deciding that this was enough now.

That was actually what I did yesterday evening and only serves to explain why I didn?t get up too early and felt slightly on the heavy side this morning even if GINO, the one and only, had promised that not even 3 litres of his wine would do you any harm. Not that I tied, but I had had a reasonable number glasses of it.

I decided to dishonour the promise that I would be their to try out their local midday menu, because I distinctly felt that this would not have a favourable influence on the the plans I had for the afternoon, in favour of some very nice grilled fish from the lake in the pergola of a very nice restaurant in the old town.
There was some washing to do, postcards to purchase, local a flower shop for Olivia?s birthday, do her web birthday page and have another battle with a telephone line to see whether it would speak to my computer.
None of this really worked out properly, so I might as well have gone to the Osteria, you might say.

I did, in the evening though.
I picked up a thin slice of pizza, (olive oil and rosmarin) next door and took up my courage to cross the plastic beed curtain (in bocca al lupo) to see what was going on in this cave tonight)
Two blokes on one table which I hadn?t seen eating subsidised pizza, Gino eating with his wife on another and his business partner (Gino is courageous to stick to him) completely plastered and announcing this to meproudly, as soon as I entered, at 7 pm opening a bottled of local bubbly, that spelt all over the place. Sittting with a guy that looked like a mix between a Navajo Indian and a Neapolitan geezer. These two left quite soon, fortunately enough, because I was in some sort of difficulty understanding what was going on.

Gino took over after that. He?s a fit guy for his 75 years. No grease. And a tremendous voice. And he started singing for serious. A sort of mixture between Corsican medieval Mass signing, North African voice modulation and Italian fun.
I suppose, you will now understand why I spent yesterday night at that place:
There were four of us left: Gino, a convinced communist, the funny couple of guys composed of an auto-declared fascist and anarchist. I was defined as the socialist representative, but the only one that could really sing was Gino.

Soon enough everybody was at the same table, apart from GINO?s wife, who went back home as well.
I was told off by GINO for not turning up for lunch and when |I left later on in the evening, he mad me promise to come back again when I was in Italy next time. I did, and |I hope there will be another occasion. He?s a lovely bloke and can sing!!!!