Things I love about Italy

Daydreams

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

The Tour de France is coming through our little village this year. Not only that, but it’s coming right down our street. We can hardly believe our good fortune. Tony’s already setting up a photo shoot in his head. He wants to catch a few bicyclists going by our house, with me and the children waving down from the window. Maybe he’ll make it a video.

Yesterday I sent out the annual newsletter for the study abroad group with which I spent half a year in the Middle East. We spent a semester studying Arabic in Damascus, Syria, and then took it on the road to Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, and Spain.… Read more

We love Luigi

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

Officially, he’s our real estate agent in Saluzzo. But he has gone above and beyond the call of duty. When we had just arrived in Italy, we were naively going about looking for a short-term housing contract. We needed a furnished place, and we thought we’d like to rent for six months. Every real estate agent told us the same thing. Rental contracts in Italy are for four years. Four years! We’d never lived in the same place for one year. We were utterly incapable of committing to four, especially without our furniture.

Enter Luigi. He showed us three different apartments he had for rent.… Read more

Casteluzzo

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

I’ve changed the name of my blog to be the same as the URL. Casteluzzo (“little castle” in Italian). It’s the name of the house in the country we’re going to have someday. And I’ve subtitled it “In Search of a Dream to call Home.” We’re not sure exactly what our dream is, but we’re pursuing it nonetheless. As Bilbo says, “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

I also decided to merge my old, very infrequent blog with Casteluzzo.… Read more

Centro Migrante

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

Today we met Alicia at the train station in Cuneo. She took us to the Centro Migrante, where she works. They were the ones the Post Office said to visit for help filling out the Permesso di Soggiorno forms. And she was amazing. They said to come back next Tuesday, since they were in a meeting. But she kept going in and asking questions.

As usual, even when we have a specific question, people always want to start by trying to decide whether what we want to do is even possible. The people at the Centro Migrante had doubts about whether two generations of maternal line would work.… Read more

Lockout

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

If we were to tell all the kind Italians who’ve helped the poor inept Americans do everything from buy bread to open a bank account, that we are actually responsible, competent people in our native country, I don’t know that they’d believe us. Yesterday, we locked ourselves out of our apartment.

It was a Saturday, and we were going out for our sacred weekly gelato. In the excitement, it slipped both our minds. We weren’t sure what to do. The door is like a fortress. It latches with four heavy pins, and then the dead bolt locks it like a hotel door chain.… Read more

House Hunting in Saluzzo

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

Our (and our relatives’) efforts at procuring lodging in Lagnasco having proved vain, and having discovered that there are neither busses nor reliable internet in Lagnasco, we have decided to move to Saluzzo. We’ve been staying there anyway, and falling by degrees in love with it. The town is built right up against the hills, on the edge of the fertile plain. The beautifully preserved but still very much alive old city winds up the hill, culminating in its own castle, currently under renovation. We found a beautiful little apartment right in the middle of it, cobblestone streets, painted frescoes, and spacious vaulted ceilings and all.… Read more

House Hunting in Lagnasco

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

April 1

Monday we drove back to Lagnasco. Tony spent a long time practicing the following phrases in Italian, to explain to his relatives who he was and why he was here:

Mi chiamo Tony Familia.

Mi dispiace. Parlo piccolo Italiano

I miei antenati vivevano in Lagnasco. Sono Bodreri. Siamo parenti.

Vorrei vivere in Lagnasco. Desidero affittare un appartamento amobiliare.

abbiamo bisogno dell’aiuto.

Tony’s relatives in Logan had shown us photographs of the Bodrero family they found in Lagnasco, and told us that the flower shop was owned by Roberta Bodrero. Accordingly, we went and knocked on the door of the shop.… Read more

In Italy

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

We are in Italy. Our first adventure (after over 24 hours of airplanes and airports) was our rental car. We packed all our seventeen (more or less) bags into it and set off, map in hand. We had gotten almost out of the airport parking lot when the car began to smell bad. And then worse. We turned around and headed back, concerned. A passerby flagged us down, pointing to the engine, from which smoke was beginning to billow. Tony parked the car and rushed back in to the car rental place. I was still sitting in the car with the children when a man came up to the window and said I should get out, and asked me where my husband was, and said the car was on fire.… Read more

Der Himmel über Berlin

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

We were at BYU’s International Cinema yesterday, watching “Wings of Desire,” or translated literally from the German title, “The Heavens Over Berlin.” “City of Angels” was based upon it, although characteristically, the depth was minimized and the sex maximized in the Hollywood film.

The original German film is a beautiful, thoughtful meditation on mortality and the Fall. Damiel the angel has watched humanity unfold for thousands of years, and finally wants to personally step into the world he knows so intimately from above. After his fall and the revelation it brings, his final words in the film are: “I know now what no angel knows.”… Read more