under the tuscan rainclouds

I now stand in the lengthy que for the Ufizzi gallery in Florence with potentially 4 hours to spare for me to update my blog.

A very nice woman named Rita picked me up from Trento with her car full of other hitch hiker girls, and I was thrilled when we were all invited to her home in Verona for pasta lunch. I ended up staying with Rita and her two children for 2 nights. She gave me  a private tour of Verona, took me out for Italian coffee and cake and gave me a lesson in chanting yoga on her lounge floor. This was very interesting. According to the anatomical books she showed me, when you chant the "ong" sound you send vibrations up into a little blob of brain located in the centre of your head. This blob of brain happens to control a number of bodily organs I think including the liver, heart and even the genitalia. No wonder yoga is so popular. I strutted the streets of Verona pretending I was Romeo as I gazed up at Juliet's balcony. After 2 nights I caught a train to Montelupo Capraia near Florence to meet my next Helpx hosts, a professional street clown named Lucca and his partner Suzana who paints. They have 2 energetic affectionate boys aged 7 and 10 who I am supposed to be imparting English to through interactive osmosis. They are not that interested to learn but their parents are good students. I have been helping Lucca to free his strangled dieing vine plant, repair his bicycles and revive his wooden stair case. They are a wonderful family who are trying to make their lives more sustainable and organic by growing their own vegetables and collaborating with neighbours for food, transport and child care. I have watched baby chickens hatch from Luccas incubator, seen Ricardos circus rehearsal, joined in with he children's circus lesson, bicycled through the Tuscan country side adorned with vineyards and terracotta villas and been part of a dinner party for Luccas birthday party where many dishes of lazana, meetballs and tirimasu were abundant as well as jovial company. They have beautiful and interesting friends and being a family of performers and artists naturally there was balloon swallowing and dirty joke telling around the table. An Italian proverb says  "non si vecchia a tavola"; in Italy, one does not grow old at the table.
Indeed the food and time move slowly with possibly intentional rebellion towards the American fast food culture.

I spent one day in Pisa and was not disapointed to witness the leaning tower glowing like a sleeping ghost. I could not resist but give it a kiss.

Unfortunately the Tuscan sun has not been frequently present but the rain clouds pinched themselves this morning allowing me dry travel to Florence 1 hours bicycle ride away.

After passing through the natural cycle of ascending antipipation then down the slope of deflating enthusiasm into the troff of boredom 3 times, I was finaly granted access into the popular Uffizi gallery 3 hours after ariving. I have now seen enough disfigured representaions of baby jesus for my lifetime but was captivated by the "Birth of Venus". My highlights of Florence were the climb up the Duomo church  dome for a great view of the city from the perspective of an ant on a boiled egg, the exhibition of machines made from Leodardo Davinici's drawings and the statues on steriods in the Main square.

Dollomites

I arrived in cortina to find it a lot colder than anticipated and many of the hikes shut due to snow. Never the less i found one which sent me trudging through a white out snow storm to what i expected to be a free rough muntain hut. It was instead a luxury-ish ski lodge and restaurant so i booked their cheapest room and enjoyed the now clear view of the sharp pink and white mountains from my table adorned with 2 plump bacon dumplings. The blizzard returned for my descent the next day and continued for my painfully cold hitch over the mountains to Ortesei the land of little wooden jesus's. Well they actually had many different sculptures all very intricate and delicately painted. My night was spent shivering at -5 degrees with my tent perched on a tree covered slope out of town. Today I hitched as quickly as possible down to the lower warmer environment through the town of Bolzano or something similar on what may be the most beautiful road i have seen. It streams through the green valley with vineyards and church towers backdropped with giant cliffs. I am spending the night in Trento with my tent tucked up next to the motorway ready for a speeding getaway to verona in the morning. See the yellow blob bellow.
 I think i have found a rather good spot tonight. The rapists must cross a polluted creek to reach me and the police need to cross a motorway and descend a wall. I am so looking forward to treating myself to a hostel and some good food in verona tomorrow as the last few days of cold,discomfort and shut supermarkets due to Easter have aged me 10 years.

inside the man lies the animal

Inside every man is a file. And inside this file lies the animal with the desire to wrestle. If the man does not want to wrestle,he is sick, he is pussy. Well this is what I am told anyway by my couch surfing host in venice who imposes that his guests wrestle for his hospitality. This is not as perverted or disturbed as it may sound. In fact I found it a very healthy experience and a great way to use couch surfing to greater potential. Perhaps I was lucky that my oponent for my 3 day stay was a docile 5 foot mexican with no desire whatsoever to wrestle. Consequently I spent my evenings unleashing my inner animal on his placid body which lay limp and lifeless beneath me,tangled in the limb locking formation which massimo had taught me. To be honest I was a terrible wrestler, probably alikened to the the convulsive twitching of a halfe squished spider as i tried to hook my oponents legs into an imobilized state. To improve your healthy perception of the event i should probably not go on to tell you about the old sock blind folds and the video camera which were both purely tools to aid our learning of this sofisticated art form.

When not wrestling on massimos living room floor we were loosing ourselves in the beautiful laberynth streets of venice and preparing/sharing meals with our host. Masimos job was in security and crimonology at the airport and  he loved to speak about the mentality of people from diferent countries and share his knowledge at having obseved 700 different couch surfers wrestle and stay in his home.
Masimo dropped me off in the direction of the dolomites and i hitched away from venice. One driver took me home for my first lumch within an italian home with an italian family. They were very loving and i left  well fed feeling like I already had found my Italian Mama. The night was spent in my tent on a grassy hillside below the dolomite mountains gently tapping the keys of my much loved new travel companio,the kindle which enabled me to write this blog in a remote location free of charge straight to the internet.

Henry the Homeless awakes from his Slumber

My traveling Alias

Henry the homeless was bored of his bench
Tired of the traffic and sick of the stench
Then one day in may when he'd had quite enough
A wonderful thought was caught in his tuft
Here he was homeless in the land of his birth
Yet no homes existed all over the earth
So he strapped up his trolley like a pack to his back
With all that he needed, well all that he had
He threw back his whiskers and smiled with his charm
Put up his thumb and pushed out his arm
A car soon pulled over and opened the door
Henry the Homeless was homeless no more
For when he climbed in Henry became
Henry the Homeless on holiday

"Bang". That's a completely out of context piece of onomatopoeia quoted from my 10 year year old sisters creative writing but possible to grab your attention. My pack is back on like a long lost nose and set for episode 2 of a Homeless mans Holiday. Next stop, Italy with a few interesting plans in the pipeline. Firstly I shall take to the arena in Venice to represent NZ in the world couch surfing wrestling championships. Well perhaps not as prestigious and Honourable as it sounds but a worthy experience for a complete novice. Stay tuned for the Gorey details.

Shasa AKA Henry T.Homeless