A Footpath in Umbria: Learning, Loving & Laughing in Italy
A Footpath in Umbria: Learning, Loving & Laughing in Italy
A Footpath in Umbria: Learning, Loving & Laughing in Italy
Being a homebody, Nancy never would’ve spent a year in Italy had it not been for her husband’s wanderlust. The couple didn’t go there to buy or restore a house or to heal a trauma from the past. As ordinary boomers, they simply wanted to experience “The Dream” – to live in Italy. They settled down in traditional Umbria, just east of Tuscany. Constrained by a strict budget, their experience took on challenges as diverse as getting accustomed to the vagaries of Italian appliances to gathering their own wood. Transportation was by train, bus, bicycle or footpath. What neither of them knew when they began was how the adventure would challenge their habits, upbringing, and outlook on life. Most surprising of all was how the experience would challenge their relationship to each other. A Footpath in Umbria is a celebration of the joys and revelations to be found by changing venues, whether it’s living in another country or simply venturing cross town.
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One brave traveler,
I am not a brave traveler. My best trips are a book and me in my chair by the fireplace. Comfort is my byline. To visualize a trip to Italy for one year, to experience misunderstanding what an invitation for dinner might mean (chocolates?), to have no dryer for wet clothes in a damp time of year (No dryer??!!), to realize not all the world is as intent on a warm house or store during winter, and yes, as the author related, there is snow in Italy, I felt the chill and moved closer to my fire… Then, on a fine summer day, to fall and break an ankle on a deserted dirt road, unable to move, and try to get help, I couldn’t imagine the fear, but this author keeps her wits and describes the beauty of the trees, the kindness of the dogs, and the final rescue of beautiful ambulance rescuers. I was happy to stay in my chair.
l thought the most dramatic event was the accident, but there was the farewell dinner party put on by the author… Hilarious! Food that takes too long to prepare, someones else’s order sent to your party, dog fights, darkness, etc, all in an attempt to thank her Italian friends for their kindness. Oh my! This writer isn’t afraid to tell it like it is, all with love for the friends she made in Italy. A real page turner.
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|Under the Umbrian Sun?,
Heavenly!
Nancy Yuktonis Solak, a self-described “homebody,” visited Italy for the first time with her husband in the year they celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary. They fell in love with the country, the language, the culture and the Italian people. She tagged the experience “heavenly.”
They visited again and in spite of the “homebody” label and her penchant for the safe, the secure and the familiar, Solak ventured to her husband, Rich: “Wouldn’t it be fun to live here?”
Surprisingly, he nodded.
Soon after Rich retired, the Solaks moved to Umbria. They stayed for a year. Nancy kept a journal, which eventually blossomed into a travel memoir.
Be prepared: “A Footpath In Umbria, Learning, Loving and Laughing in Italy,” is not Frances Mayes’ “Under the Tuscan Sun.” Nor is it Peter Mayle’s “A Year in Provence” or Bill Bryson’s “Neither Here Nor There” or “Notes from a Small Island.”
Solak’s account of their year in Italy shares similarities with these best-selling memoirs. It involves somewhat naïve Americans who pull up their American roots and transplant themselves for extended periods of time into gorgeous European settings.
But the Solaks’ adventure in Umbria is different. They’re on a strict budget, for starters. Public transportation, walking and biking will be their sole modes of transport. Nancy also views the adventure as an opportunity to “shed the negative images of myself that belong to a past that no longer exists.”
She loves to walk, as does Bryson. She loves exploring new places and learning new languages and customs first-hand, by trial and error, as do Bryson, Mayes and Mayle. Sometimes this method is frustrating, sometimes hilarious.
As the year unfolds, Solak not only examines the footpaths, the language and the customs of “heaven,” but also the language (or lack thereof) and rituals of her marriage.
Solak explores day-to-day existence in her adopted country: the footpaths, the library, the post office, the cell phone store, the grocery store, holiday traditions, even the dentist and eventually and regretfully, the hospital.
Acts of kindness and generosity run rampant in Italy and many of these encounters result in lasting friendships and new opportunities. She relates etiquette blunders first-hand, – the unwritten rules of the two-cheeked kiss, for example; Sunday night suppers; and unfamiliar hand gestures. She figures out how to walk to town avoiding the “evil” highway, and learns to enjoy unplanned and unscheduled side trips.
“This is how retirement is,” she muses. “You run into something interesting and suddenly the plans you made that morning vaporize and you don’t care one whit if they change completely.”
Heavenly. Birds chirp more in Italy. Italian dogs are well-behaved and welcomed in stores and restaurants. Fields of sunflowers vibrate in the sunshine. Carousels appear, overnight, in piazzas. No colds. No flu.
Solak discovers what she suspected since the day they decided to spend a year in Umbria: “The people of Italy appear to live totally free from useless hand-wringing guilt, indulging in all manner of pleasures such as languorous meals, uplifting music, leathering their skin in the sunshine, drinking wine like it is water, and enjoying sex,” she writes.
“How outrageously celestial!”
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