neapolitan christmas
Tuesday, August 25th, 2009Battipaglia, Italy
As a child, neapolitan meant icecream to me. Chocolate, strawberry, vanilla. Of course, it is also “of naples”.
And today that’s where we went.
We only spent a couple of hours in the historic town centre, and most of that in one street, but it made an impression that will last. As every Christmas rolls round and we hang decorations on the tree (a new one every year for each child, named and dated accordingly), we will also remember our day on a steaming Italian street full of crib makers.
Monks in their monasteries used to make these cribs, and then “recently” in the 1600s the aristocrats started having them made for their private dwellings. Unlike the German and Austrian nativity scenes, which focus on the nativity story, the Italian ones are a declaration of Italian daily life…..big fat mamas cook spaghetti next to the baby Jesus. Shepherds have sheep – and so does the local butcher. Stars twinkle in the sky and pizza oven fires burn brightly.
You can buy your own ready-made complete scene if you like with any assortment of figurines, fountains, tiled houses, cork mountains and waterfalls…or you can buy a ceramic head, feet and hands – painted or nude – and put together your own angel or wise man or bread maker. Or you can do what we did. The children had been given the grand sum of two euros each to spend in Italy….it was supposed to go on sweets or some other special little treat, but as they wandered up the nativity street, they conferred with each other and then requested permission to pool their money and buy a set of handmade hand-painted ceramic figurines with a view to making their own backdrop when we return. We didn’t buy the cork or trees or bricks or haybales or buildings or stairs, but the children have visions of making them all. And attaching real cloth robes to the wise men, and painting Joseph’s hair brown so that he looks 16 and not 60, and making some camels.
We may not be in Italy at Christmastime, but we like the fact that we will end up with a nativity set that includes a Roman soldier. And we are always fond of handcrafted. And creative. So this will become an ongoing tangible memory to treasure.
Each year when we bring out our scene, we will also remember Mary and Joseph’s bumpy journey. Much of it will no doubt have been along dirt tracks. But I bet a good portion was on cobbled streets. Today we rumbled our way over cobbles for the better longer part of an hour, and when we got off them onto a smooth road, there were judder bars! After that were roads full of potholes. So we rumbled the whole trip. The vans rattled and rolled, at one instant lurching so far to the right that The Bear Cave almost took out a neon pizzeria sign with the roofrack. Rattle, roll, cling, clang, crash, bang.
Oh yes, there was a crash too. Two, in fact.
The bad one did not include us. But we only just missed it. A truck went off a bridge, landing upside-down on railway tracks – we came by just as people were running from their cars (which presumably had been following, but must have roared to a stop on the bridge), still telephoning (presumably the emergency services). We were to end up parking nearby and would see those services arrive, including the helicopter which dropped in two hours later as we ate our dinner (presumably to take the driver to hospital). We would also watch part of the recovery operation in the morning before breakfast….trees would be lopped down and the crane and trucks and fire engines put in position….but we would drive out of the “emergency area” through the police cordon before the truck was raised. But that’s all tomorrow.
Today there was one other crash. We concluded yesterday’s post with comments about Italian drivers. Today’s experience was no different. Unless you consider the fact that we are becoming more Italian ourselves. While nowhere near as reckless, we have had to abandon genteel courtesies and embrace nervous aggression. We do not automatically slam on the brakes if someone approaches us at speed on our side of the road (well, not always!) We are not perturbed by the horns honked at us (we now know that if anyone has to wait at an intersection for more than seven seconds they will start honking – even if it is a steady line of oncoming traffic that is preventing us from inching out into the bumper-to-bumper stream). We are now confident to pull into gaps that we would not have dared to a week ago. And perhaps that was the problem. Four vehicles were approaching the same intersection. Although moving the most cautiously, I had right of way. What I lacked in speed I made up for in size and so I took on the three smaller cars. Two were chicken and backed off. The third didn’t stop until he had administered a side-on jolt. He could have waited two seconds for me to clear the intersection, but that is too prolonged a wait for an impatient Italian – far more satisfying it would seem to make personal contact and throw your arms up in mock despair. We suspect he is not the first to take this approach. When we counted cars with dings or scrapes or scratches or falling-out-headlights or missing bumpers, it turned out there were fewer vehicles to count if we were numbered the intact ones. At least we are still in one piece! Looking forward to Christmas.
rayres