One Year Later

We said we wouldn’t go more than a year without returning to Sardegna and we almost did it. We bought our tickets one year to the day, though we didn’t actually go back until a couple months later. It is strange to return as a tourist to a place where you once lived - things feel both familiar and foreign at the same time and, in a country where the language and culture are different, this is even more true. It is like seeing an old friend whom you haven’t seen for a long time: at first, you do a series of double-takes to assure yourself that what you are seeing is real, and things are a little slow to start. But, quickly enough everything is familiar again and the present picks up where the past left off. So it was with our visit to Sardegna – a little awkward at first until we shimmied our way into our old skins and the inert synapses reawoke and found their paths once again.

After a flight to Paris and then to Rome, we completed the last leg of our journey, flying over the sparkling Mediterranean to Sardegna. On our approach into Olbia, I noticed several aquaculture pens in the harbor, and the wheels in my head began to spin, already scheming ways to return under the guise of work, as aquaculture policy is one of my current projects. We arrived at the Olbia airport in the late afternoon and emerged into the moist, warm Sardegnan air, feeling our mussels and skin instantly relax. We sat at the airport bar and sipped our first Ichnusa and ate typical Italian panini of dry bread and meat. American panini, with delightful spreads, fresh greens and grilled bread, are one of those rare non-authentic versions that are better, in my opinion, than the real thing. Soon after lunch, we zipped off in our rented Fiat down the twisty road to Palau past familiar places and crazy drivers who pass you when you don’t think there could possibly be space or time for it to happen. Yet another sign that Italians know how to enjoy life – everything is a sort of game and there is always fun to be had, even if it means risking your life! We went straight to our landlord’s house in Palau, perched high above the town with a gorgeous vista on a perfectly sunny day, and were greeted warmly by Piera and her son, Chicco, who took us down to the apartment they’d arranged for us. It was right across the road from Faraglione, our old haunt, and had a little terrazzo above the gardens which provided a view out toward La Maddalena and the ferry gliding back and forth in between. Most importantly, the apartment, called l’Airone, which means “the heron,” was within easy ambling distance from our old favorite beach, where we immediately headed after dropping off our things. I cannot describe the magic of submerging myself in that water, (although, to be honest, it was pretty “fresca”).

We finally peeled ourselves off the beach and cleaned up a bit before heading up the hill to greet the whole Cannas family, members of which were arriving for Giovanna’s wedding. We managed small fragments of conversation, our words not yet flowing easily from lack of practice and the effects of being awake for over 24 hours, and then excused ourselves to get dinner in town before heading home for a much anticipated long, horizontal doze. On our walk into town along the waterfront path, which was finally finished after over a year of construction, we looked up to see a full moon rising over Santo Stefano. It was truly a “can you believe this?” kind of moment. At dinner, at La Uva Fragola (the strawberry grape, which really means Concord grape), we had wonderful cozze (mussels) and pizza and a little glass pitcher of vino della casa before strolling through the quiet streets of town. While it was Saturday night, tourist season had not yet begun (even the gelateria had closed up shop at 8pm).

And then, we had the sleep of dreams. This was followed by a morning only poorly imitated by Disney movies with dappled sunlight sparkling on the water, sweet scents of dewy mirto, rosemary, jasmine and honeysuckle from the gardens and sounds of birds and butterflies twittering along the terrace. Was it wrong that, on day one, I already was figuring out how to come back? There is a peacefulness in Sardegna that I haven’t been able to replicate back in Maine. I imagine that part of it has less to do with the place than with the lifestyle we had while living there as an expat where I couldn’t fully understand or participate in the complicated interworkings of the culture and society. But, there definitely is a way of life here where people appreciate a slower pace, even compared to Maine, the state whose motto is “the way life should be”. I’m hoping to export some of this sap-slow sweetness.

Sometime mid morning, around 930 or 10 when the shops first open for the day, we headed in to town to do some shopping and were amazed at how readily the shops’ proprietors recognized and greeted us. Those who had been less than ebulliently friendly while we lived there, lit up when we walked in, and asked us all about life in the US, often challenging our capacity to explain things in our rusty Italian. Later in the day, we headed out to Cala Trana on Punta Sardegna, one of our favorite places in the world, reached only by foot along a 30 minute walking path or by boat, and spent the afternoon there before returning to get cleaned up for Giovanna’s wedding. The walk there reminded me of just how much trash there is on the beaches there and of my scheme to return as a part of Ocean Conservancy's International Coastal Cleanup. The guests gathered at the Cannas’s house for a pre-wedding reception and then headed down to the church (as it is the only church in Palau, it is truly “the church”). The guests gathered outside the church to await the arrival of the bride and groom, as did just about everyone else in town, some even peering out the windows of the adjacent bars. The ceremony was foreign in more than one way in that it was a full Catholic mass complete with communion and it was done in Italian. I was able to pick up bits and pieces including the Lord’s prayer, but mostly we followed the crowd in sitting down and standing up throughout. One of the neatest parts was the music - traditional Sardinian songs sung by a small musical group of adults and children, which always sounds a little like lowing farm animals, but is characteristic nonetheless of the wild countryside of the island. The only disappointing thing about the whole experience is that we didn’t bring our camera, so we have no visual record to share, although we’re hoping to get copies of some photos from the Cannas family and will add them in, if we do.

After the ceremony, the guests, 300 or so in all, paraded by car to the Ristorante Parco degli Ulivi, where we were welcomed onto a poolside terrace overlooking hills masked in fading evening light and offered a stunning array of apertivi and antipasti, all elegantly displayed, including a prosciutto tree (a tinfoil-covered tree with pieces of prosciutto draped over the branches). Then, the true feasting began. We were seated at a table of a group of family friends from Milan, most of which spoke a bit of English. Andrea was quite thoughtful in doing this and made sure to check up on us several times throughout the night to make sure we were enjoying ourselves. Having learned a bit from Dan and Ily’s wedding in Sicily, we recognized that the menu we were given did not indicate choices for each courses, but instead listed everything that we were going to be served – 9 courses in all. Small bites of everything is the only way to survive if you want to try it all, and you do. Somehow, 3am rolled around and we had managed to make friends with the folks at our table, including a photographer from Dorgali who went out to his car to get a copy of his fantastic book, which he signed and gave to us.

The next day, we recovered. We slept until noon and had nothing but a cappuccino until dinner that night. In the afternoon, we went for a hike out to a beautiful beach tucked in the rocks, through fields of cows, sheep, and ostrich (not your typical Sardegnan farm animal). Right at the beach there was a little villa along an inviting path, and we briefly considered becoming squatters and taking it over. It was a bit breezy, as is the norm there, but we couldn’t resist a quick plunge in the Med before starting the return hike. That night, we met a group of friends at Oasi, a favorite restaurant we used to bike to when we lived here. It was a wonderful reunion with friends still living in Sardegna, including a new baby who had everyone smiling all night, and those visiting from Naples. It was like so many gatherings we had frequently while living here, the types of which we have greatly missed since leaving.

While walking through town one evening, we ran into Chicco, Andrea and Piera’s son, who had invited us to “pranziamo insieme,” or eat lunch together, at his family’s house the next day. Lunch is a tradition in Italian houses that is difficult to explain. Every day, the entire family (parents, children, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends) gather together mid-day for a lengthy lunch of home made fare. It is not a big event, just a simple gathering with good food where sometimes the conversation is minimal, but nonetheless it lasts for a couple of hours, after which everyone riposes for the afternoon before going back to work in the early evening. For the lunch we were invited to, Piera put together a platter of antipasti (local meats, cheeses, and bread) accompanied by piquant sundried tomato spread to start, followed by home-made crepes filled with spring vegetables - asparagus and artichokes, and finally a delicious apple tart. With our meal, we drank the last bottle of the season’s wine that Chicco had made. Before leaving, we attempted to entice Giovanna and Giovanni to come to Maine on their honeymoon trip to the US. From there, we headed into town to meet Augusto, a local trekking guide, who we hope will be a key ingredient in our evolving concept for a Sardegnan tour business and tossed around ideas for American groups of adventurous tourists. Our visit was short, as we had been invited by Liliana and Pippo to go on an evening horseback ride on Capo d’Orso, where they manage a stable and take groups for rides. We had an unbelievably beautiful evening, the horses plowing through the thick macchia, which released its spicy scents, and then taking a break to cool themselves off by kicking up the water onto themselves and their riders.

When we set out to go to Sardegna, we had in mind to go to Tiscali, a sinkhole up in the mountains outside of Dorgali where people from a nearby village built a hidden retreat during the Roman invasions thousands of years ago. We called up Giovanni, who runs the Agriturismo Didone in Dorgali, with his wife Katy to see if he could direct us to the trailhead for Tiscali and if we could stay at Didone, where we’d stayed a couple of times before. Giovanni met us outside a bar in Dorgali and upon greeting us, exclaimed that he could see me from far away because I was “lucida bianca,” shining white – the consequence of a long winter in Maine). When we met, I offered my condolescences after hearing from him over the phone that his cousin’s mother had died, the reason why, he had explained, he couldn’t accompany us on the hike. He gave me a puzzled look and explained that he was sorry that his horse had broken its foot and he needed to tend to it; I quickly realized I’d made an awkward translational error during our garbled phone conversation that morning and we all had a good laugh. The hike to Tiscali was beautiful – filled with wildflowers along the way and very few other hikers. After two hours of hiking, we reached the village, which is tucked inside a collapsed cave high up in the mountains. The ruins of the houses are still visible, built along the inside of the cavern walls.

After many miles of hiking on a hot day, we were in need of a dip in the Med. We found our way to Cala Cartoe, a beach nearby the agriturismo which was not quite as nearby to the parking area as we had thought. To reach it, required a 20 minute walk from the car, but it was worth the extra mile or two for the wild, wind-swept vista, the site of the movie “Swept Away”. It was wind-swept, indeed, such that our swim was quite brief and quite refreshing! Back at Agriturismo Didone, Katy showed us the new rooms they’d constructed since we’d last visited and pointed out the area by the main house where Giovanni planned to construct a pool and a “Salon di Relax,” basically a lounge area for weary tourists. “Relax” actually translates to “relaxation,” but it still sounds funny. We had talked with Giovanni about our idea to bring Americans over to explore Sardegna and stay in agriturismos like his and he was definitely interested – another partner in our scheme. On our walk up to dinner, we were greeted by a little black pup, who looked suspiciously like Manny, who had visited the agriturismo with us just a year ago . . . For dinner that night, we enjoyed a hearty feast of tomato soup and various piglet parts including heart, liver and ear, which Giovanni described with great enthusiasm by pointing to his own anatomy, and home-made sausages. We braved a little taste of each of the piglet parts, having tried the stomach and intestines during our last visit to Didone, and thought we were worthy of a spotlight on Andrew Zimmern’s “Bizarre Foods” (or, perhaps we could serve as local guides for him). For desert, we had Sardegnan seadas, fried pastries filled with the home made ricotta we have enjoyed every time we’ve stayed at Didone, which were covered in honey, and we washed them down with Giovanni’s Mirto. Knowing that he is a font of local recipes, I asked if he had ever made Mirto bianco before, which is made from the leaves rather than the berries of the plant. I asked because we were down to our last bottle of Mirto back in Maine and the berries, which ripen in the winter, were long finished, but there were plenty of new leaves. He told me how to make it and, in a couple of months, I’ll see how worthwhile my illegal transport of a bag of mirto leaves into the US was.

The next morning, we awoke to the sound of clanging sheep bells and looked out the window to see soft morning colors over the mountains as well as a sheep curled up right under the wheel of our little Fiat parked outside our room. I wish we had thought to record the sounds of the sheeps’ bells, as they are quite evocative of the Sardegnan countryside, and it would be fun to hear them again back in Maine. After breakfast, Giovanni took us for a hike up into the mountains to see some of the homes of the pastori, the mountain shepherds. The houses are simple stone circles, much like the bronze-age nuraghe found in the region, with juniper branches arranged in a teepee-like structure on top. The shepherds keep their goats in stone stables nearby and they stay in these ovili with the kids (capretti) just after they’re born. We were truly in the wilds up there and were only able to visit these remote farms, usually off limits to tourists, as the shepherds are quite territorial, because they are friends of Giovanni. The views from there of Cala Gonone and the Valle de la Luna, where we had hiked last year, were spectacular. Sometime midday, after a parting beer in Dorgali with Giovanni, who seemed to know everyone in town, all of whom passed through the bar to say hello, we headed back north to Palau.

One morning, while out walking near our old house, I had come across Pietro, the caretaker for our building. We got to be good friends with Pietro over the time we lived at Faraglione, as we were the only year-round residents - he was always full of good tales about Sardegnan history and culture. When I saw him this time, he made me promise to come by his house one afternoon to visit with him and his wife, Lucia, who had taught me how to make Aciuleddi, Sardegnan Christmas cookies fried in honey, last year before leaving. And so, on our way to La Maddalena for dinner with friends, we went by Pietro and Lucia’s house for a visit and left with a bottle of home made Mirto. Pietro had given me his mother’s recipe for Mirto when he saw me picking berries in front of our house our last winter there. After our visit, we boarded the ferry to La Madd, feeling strangely familiar standing on the top deck drinking Ichnusa as we looked out at Santo Stefano, and on towards the town of La Maddalena. Once there, we took a quick stroll through the piazza to see what had changed in the last year. The most impressive was the Hotel Exelsior, the big waterfront hotel, which was formerly quite rundown and now had been completely renovated in preparation for the G8, which was scheduled to take place there this summer. Unfortunately, the conference has now been relocated to L’Aquila, the site of the recent earthquake, which has greatly disappointed the locals who have spent enormous amounts of time and money in preparing their little island for the big event. The political reasons for the move are apparently quite complicated; but, nonetheless, the La Maddalenini were very much looking forward to a chance in the spotlight with the departure of the Americans and a void left in their economy. After a brief look around town, we headed to a fantastic dinner at Jen and Herve’s, featuring fresh fish, which Herve caught and cooked on the grill. It reminded us of the many gatherings we’d had in their garden with good friends for various birthdays and holidays.

That brings us, sadly, to our last day. All week, we looked forward to the Friday market in Palau, a weekly ritual when we lived there. Mostly, this was because our precious supply of the best sundried tomatoes in the world, which came from there, had finally run out after carefully rationing them out through the last year. So, we resupplied on sundried tomatoes as well as purchasing other goodies both there and in town to bring back for friends and family. We finally had to stop shopping when we realized the limited capacity of our suitcases. In the afternoon, we packed a picnic and went for one last trip to Cala Trana.It was an amazing day - unexpectedly warm and bright, given the forecast. It wasn’t until we were returned and were within fifty feet of the car that the first raindrop fell. This was perfect timing, as we needed to clean up and pack our things that afternoon, always a sad task at the end of a vacation, so at least there wasn’t sunny gorgeous weather taunting us outside. In fact, the rain set in in the evening and wasn’t predicted to let up for the next few days, so we had really lucked out. We said our goodbyes to the Cannas family, doing our best to express our gratitude to them and inviting them once again to visit us in Maine - describing emotion in a foreign language is always quite a challenge. We had our last night’s dinner at the pizzeria at Camping Acupulco, right next to our old apartment, through which I walked every morning with Manny on our way to the beach. We were joined by Massimo, our friend from the La Maddalena Park, and Paola, a fellow marine biologist who I befriended in Palau. Massimo had helped to organize a beach cleanup last September on Caprera as a part of Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup (another part of my secret mission to return more frequently to Sardegna via my job). I am hoping to get Paola on board as well, as she has connections to the environmental office in Palau. Maybe I’ll have to return next September to help organize it.

Verrrrry early the next morning, we were off in our little Fiat to the Olbia airport, flying out as the sun came up over the Mediterranean. Sometimes it is good to leave a place a bit bleary-eyed, so that you are too tired to feel sad about leaving. Now, the challenge is to try to encapsulate the experience through stories and pictures to draw upon until we can return there again, maybe for vacation or perhaps through one of our many conservation or tourist-oriented schemes. Sardegna, Fall 2010 anyone? One week. Testers wanted. Details to come . . .