Italian Armchair Dreaming

          My brain tells my eyes to open but they refuse, heavy with the burden of a night fuelled by alcohol and a bright new friendship. As I struggle to my feet, a feeling like someone is driving a screwdriver into the middle of my head materializes. A wave of nausea rises in my throat, but I fight it back. Jesus Christ. What happened last night?

            I am at a small agroturismo in Lou Porti; a tiny, idyllic hamlet located at the foot of the Piemontese Alps in norther Italy. I will be working here for a week for room and board and a healthy dose of local culture. It is the last stop on what has been an incredible six-month tour of The Boot before I head home via Paris, and it is off to a roaring start.

            As I shuffle into the kitchen I notice Remo, the owner and farmer, is not yet up. Weird, I think, the farmers are typically up way before the help. I load up the ever-present Moka pot with coffee grounds, fill it with water and brew some strong coffee; we’re probably both going to need it today. I spy out of the corner of my eye an empty bottle of pastis (that was made by a small batch producer friend of Remo’s) and an empty wine bottle: the culprits guilty of the the fiery hell I am currently enduring. Another wave of sickness crashes over me.

            I hear a bed creak, a hurried shuffling and the echo of, “Fanculo! Fanculo!” I look it up on my phone, and it roughly translates to Fuck! Fuck! It becomes abundantly clear that he has not meant to sleep in today. I hear him stumble down the stairs from his attic bedroom and the kitchen becomes a scene Rick Grimes would feel quite at home in, the two of us shuffling and moaning with eyelids hanging half closed. I’m pretty sure we would both welcome his shotgun blast at this point.

            Remo is a short, tanned fellow who sports a salt and pepper beard of a length even The King Of Hipsters would drool with envy over. His mouth is perpetually clenching a hand-rolled cigarette, but his twinkling hazel eyes do all the smiling anyway. He is one of the kindest, most generous souls I have met and is fiercely proud of his little corner of Piemonte. He is an ardent supporter of his friend’s pastis company, a bottle always hanging around somewhere in the organized chaos of his kitchen.  He loves the cheeses that are produced in his area, which are admittedly outstanding; the chestnuts, whose sea urchin-like shells litter the field in the back of his house; and like every other good Italian, he is a soccer superfan, occasionally ducking out to his local pub to take in a game. His girlfriend Marzia lives in Torino, and frequently accompanies us on our adventures through and around the mountainous terrain this little farm finds itself surrounded by. She is a font of Italian knowledge, and like Remo is incredibly kind and generous. She will take me on an afternoon tour through Torino just before I leave.

            We slug back three demi-tasses of the coffee each, and with the caffeine quickly enlivening our battered bodies, we stride out to the forest behind the agroturismo to begin the day’s task: to fell trees and drag them back to the farmhouse for firewood and fencing repairs. The air is bracingly cold, and as I take a deep breath and look at the alpine goliaths that surround us I smile; this is why I came to Italy. I could live this simple life forever.