The Country Mice

And hello you lovely German Alps!

Late this past Friday afternoon three of our foursome settled into a trans-Pacific airline seat and prepared hearts and bellies for three weeks of la dolce vita in beautiful rural Italia.

A three-week music program awaits the two bambinis where they will (oh joy! say they) have to  get to practice their stringed instruments for about, oh, four hours a day, an addition to pedagogy courses, Italian lessons, music lessons, twice daily concerts in and around the little village where we’ll stay, and, to be fair, well lured with ample quantities of pizza, gnocchi, and gelato.

But first we had to get there.

A few hours in Frankfurt, a few hours in Bologne, successfully navigating our way to the stazione, finding the proper platform, boarding the first train going in the correct direction (always nervous-making),  disembarking at the appropriate train switch — in this case, Parma. Beautiful little Parma, late at night, pretty vacant Parma, what-do-we-do-if-we’ve-missed-the-last-train Parma.

There was, of course, one final train consisting of about four cars, and we boarded, in the dark, trusting instinct.

Where was your guide book, you ask? Of course we had a guide book. We’re experienced travellers. Sheesh.

But some towns are just too tiny to make it to guide books or maps in general. Back in the homeland we’d looked many times at the little town of Casalmaggiore but hilariously, it took so many magnifications to actually have it show up on the on-line maps, one was never quite certain where it was.

So it was an educated guess: Bologne is south of Milan, Parma is north of Bologne, Casalmaggiore is east of Parma. Got it.

And if I may add one element to your imagined picture of us traipsing around airports and train stations: We had our luggage, six weeks (there’s more trip to come) and two temperate zones of clothing and footwear, pages (ie pounds) of sheet music, two music stands, a violin and, that most delightful of portable instruments, the cello.

This will not be your usual European backpack vacation.

And so we arrived, late in the evening, with the sun setting on the River Po. The air was warm and sweet with roses.

The delightful proprietress of our B&B pointed our weary but suddenly famished selves toward the local pizzeria where we learned what Saturday night pizza is supposed to taste like.

Smiles all ’round.

This music stuff might be worth something after all.