Nonstop Art Parade

I'm coming to think of our new favorite phrase, a scandal of beauty as a collective noun, just like a murder of crows, parliament of owls, or a bloat of hippopotamuses. It's a vast collective noun. These Italian people are fanatics about aesthetics and pageantry. This past weekend we practically overdosed on art. We're back in Lucca now after a pleasant time in Athens getting to catch up with a few of our friends there. And we've passed another milestone in the bureaucratic processes!

Athena

It was a bit miraculous that we managed to squeeze in visits with a few busy Greek friends before heading back to Italy. We enjoyed a couple meals with our friends Kleopatra and Yorgos. At the second meal, the day before we flew back to Italy, they insisted on paying. Whenever we eat out with our Greek friends, Sam and I get tickled by the ordering process. We love the zeal with which they interrogate the server and carefully deliberate over the combination of shared dishes to order. Sam told Kleopatra to order their favorite dishes and not to worry about them having meat, because there'd certainly be enough non-meaty things for her to eat. But I'm not sure Kleopatra fully remembered the part about Sam not eating meat, so after the food came, Kleopatra looked in physical pain because Sam wasn't eating all the dishes. It took half the meal to calm her down and then after the meal they took us to a cafe and Yorgos brought a couple rounds of loukoumades. Hospitality is serious business in Greece! And I should add that we had stayed in their guest room back in October before flying over to Italy. In the rush to leave back then, I left pajama pants there. Kleopatra ironed my pajamas and brought them to the restaurant!

We also got to see our friend the chef who we met in Chania. He seemed to have arranged a work trip to Athens specifically so he could see us. He's also endearingly aggressive in his hospitality and we knew he'd try to stuff our luggage with his olive oil and olives. We warned him in advance that we couldn't bring much extra back to Italy. Despite this, we ended up with a bottle of his fresh pressed oil (Sam says it's the best she's ever had) and large jars of cured green and black olives, which he said was, at best, a 5 days supply, which is how much time we had left in Athens. The green olives are a special type that get individually gently hammered to crack them open to absorb their lemony brine. The green olives he brought had been hammered by our pal Laura's son, Davis, who went and worked in amongst the olives in the fall after we went to Hydra with them. Cool!

Pietrasanta

Back in Italy, we spent much time last week filling out forms and getting things printed out for the next step in the residence permit process here in Lucca. On the weekend, though, we decided to head to a town an hour train ride away, named Pietrasanta, to check it out. It's known for having lots of sculptures on display around town and a bunch of works by the artist Botero (including a couple great pieces you can see below). But we didn't realize until we arrived that it was their Saint's Day. Hundreds of food stands (more porchetta stands than I could even count) and vendors selling everything from olive wood cutting boards to vacuum cleaners covered half of the town. They also had an area set up to show off lovely farm animals like horses, cows, and sheep, but also an owl (but not a parliament of such). As we walked around we also heard what, from a distance, sounded like gospel music. And we thought, wow, there's an American gospel choir singing in this little Italian town! As we drew closer to the music, we started to wonder if it was an American choir... and when we finally found where they were singing, we realized that it was a choir of Italians singing gospel. They clearly love American gospel music and sang in English, but with their vowel-loving-ah Italian-ah accents-ah.

Parading in Lucca

On Sunday, we read that there would be some Carnevale festivities happening on the Lucca walls path. The nearby coastal town of Viareggio is famous for its Carnevale, which started this weekend. This year, some of the Viareggio masqueraders would come here to parade. Many of the costumes or floats dealt with important social themes like climate change, championing peace, the growing divide between rich and poor, but then others seemed more in the artsy dress-up category, as you'll see in the photos below. The work that the parade participants put into designing and coordinating outfits, creating fantastical creatures, and choreographing marches must be...scandalous.

Going Postal

And then on Monday, we took our bursting residence permit envelopes to the post office--yes the post office, which in Italy, is sort of like a town hall and utility bill paying office--to conduct the next step in the permitting process. We bravely opted to do this on our own, unlike in Greece, where we hired a lawyer to run the whole show in-country. We're studying Italian these days but it'll be a long time before we can answer a meaningful bureaucratic question. But despite this, we somehow had enough words to get this part completed. We now have appointments scheduled for the next step which is usually in one or two months from the postal visit, but won't be until the end of May for us. We have to be here for that visit--i.e., you cannot change the appointment date. But progress is being made. Now, we can enjoy a juncture without paperwork (or so we hope)!