Life in the Slow Lane

There are no souvenir shops in Pescina. There's no English spoken, not even at the hotel. There are two hotels but they’re old and small and while air conditioning wasn’t invented when they were built, they’ve never had the impetus to add it in spite of Summer temperatures in the high 30’s. As a percentage of the gross domestic product for this city, tourism ranks very low.

But here we are. If we wanted to see real Italy, we’re in the right place. Not the canals of Venice or the art of Florence or even the history of Rome, but Real Italy where only Italian is spoken and the rythym of the day is unchanged for millenia. We'll see that other stuff later.

Pescina (pronounced pesh E nah) sits on the edge of what was once a large lake, purposely drained to provide fertile agricultural fields. There’s the sugar beet factory down the road that employs a few hundred and farms that employ more and, interestingly enough, a floor polisher manufacturer that displays its wares in a showroom on the main street. But if you want to buy one get there before one o’clock because like every other business in town it closes then until four thirty to allow everyone to go home to their families and enjoy the big meal of the day.

And a big meal is best followed by a siesta so if you’re tapping your toe outside the grocery, public washroom or government office, rest assured that they’ll be with you as soon as they’re finished resting. After a year of rushing from one attraction to another on a schedule that Fedex would be proud of, life has come to a crashing stop in Pescina...and it feels good.

My brother-in-law is from Pescina and seems to be related by blood or marriage to everyone we pass on the street. “Bonaseri!” if it’s an evening stroll or “Bonjourno!” if we haven’t had that big meal yet. “Ciao!” is used both for hello and goodbye and kissing both cheeks is de rigeur for both greeting and leaving. Everything else is communicated by hand signals.

We came to Pescina by way of Pescara, a teemimg metropolis on Italy’s Adriatic coast and we came to Pescara by way of a superfast ferry from the island of Hvar in Croatia. We were aware of the afternoon shutdown in Croatia but were assured by a shopkeeper that it was because everyone was on the beach so there was no point in being open, no-one was shopping. Not so in Pescara. A popular spot for Italians but rarely visited by North Americans, they follow the same traditions we are experiencing in Pescina and sampled in Croatia. But here the beach emptied at noon as everyone headed to their hotel for ‘the meal’ and hibernation. They locked the washroom and shut the snack bar as they went so hunger and bodily functions for foreigners were left unattended. Travel’s all about discovery.

We’re slowly settling into the Italian way of being. I’m typing as She sleeps off the noon feast, courtesy of another of Lui’s relatives. When it’s cool enough we’ll head out again for the stroll and too much wine on someone’s terrace. But what we won’t be doing is buying souvenirs, because there aren’t any.