The Mafia have stolen our trousers!

As mentioned in the last blog, Calabria doesn't have a very good reputation. Several people have jokingly said to us "Watch out for the Mafia down there", and the Rough Guide frequently refers to the poverty and the power of the infamous 'Ndranghetta gangs. However our experiences have been very positive (except of course for the maniac drivers, but we don't think we can blame the poverty or Mafia for that!)

When we were looking for a campsite near Tropea we found one that the guide described as being "Situated on a peninsular renowned for its hospitality". This certainly was our experience there. In addition to the usual shopkeepers who spoke no English and therefore struggled bravely to understand our smattering of Italian and attempts to explain what we wanted by gestures, we also found lots of Italians who simply wanted to talk to us. At first, being typical suspicious Brits (and remembering our experiences in Havana), we wondered where their chat was leading – and what they wanted to sell us. Gradually we realised that they were just being friendly, and wanted to practise their English. When you're struggling with the language in shops, a fellow customer will often emerge from the queue to help out. Also we found that often shopkeepers would give us a discount so as to round the price down – we're not sure if this is because they don't like giving change, or because they feel sorry for us struggling to work out which coins to use.

One particularly lovely incident happened to us while we were visiting a town called Pizzo.
When we arrived we got over-excited to find a good free roadside parking place and walked off into town without really knowing where we were. As we climbed a steep cobbled street, an old man carrying a saucepan stopped us. He spoke in fairly careful Italian, so we were able to understand that he was asking us if we were foreigners, then he told us that the nearby church was giving away free chickpea pasta to celebrate San Giuseppe's day, and we'd be welcome to have some.  He lifted the lid of his pot to show us the steaming food.  It's amazing how much you can understand if someone speaks slowly, especially if free food is involved.

We felt a bit self conscious and at first just walked past the church where a group of young men were eating pasta from paper plates, people were pulling up in cars to have their pots filled up, and bread rolls were being dropped from the church terrace to waiting hands in the street.

After a walk up and down the street, we were spotted by one of the men serving food and he called and waved at us to come over and join in. We found a very tired team of chefs operating out of a small room below the church.  A couple of them spoke English and explained that it's a centuries old tradition which they remember from their childhoods and are happy to be able to continue.  It is unique to Pizzo and people come from miles around - they think they served three thousand helpings.  They were lovely men – delighted to pose for a photo, and very cheery and welcoming. One of them even came out to fuss Scooby.



The room behind them was crowded with empty pans the size of dustbins.  One of the men told us he works in a restaurant, left work yesterday at 11pm, cooked all night and served all morning.  He looked shattered.  Fortunately they had a new reinforcement for washing up.



We enjoyed a plate of simple but delicious pasta – pasta shells, chick peas in a tomato, onion and thyme sauce.  We were also given a glass of red wine each (we don't think everyone got that – we were on our own now with chefs) and a little card in honour of San Giuseppe (Joseph, husband of Mary.) 

At this point we had even started to disbelieve the stories we'd heard about how awful the Italian postal system is. Dad had received both his birthday present and card early, postcards were being delivered in reasonable time – all was rosy!

However ..... a few days later in Reggio di Calabria we got a nasty surprise. We had ordered several things to be delivered 'Ferma Posta' (Poste Restante) to the main post office; a Green Card which we need to drive in Croatia, a couple of guide / phrase books for Croatia, a new copy of Fattore Amico (like the French Passion scheme, this Italian version allows you to stay on farms, vineyards etc for the night – free) and two pairs of trousers from Craghoppers. Before leaving Britain we'd both discovered that Craghoppers' walking trousers (apparently "Britains favourite walking trousers" according to their publicity) suited us very well. However, Richard's have lost the elastic in the waist and now have to be held up by a belt to stop him looking like a hip-hop inspired teenager, and Stella's have ripped and are being held together by her very poor attempts at patching. We don't exactly look elegant and have not been able to find suitable replacements anywhere.

We were quite excited by the prospect of picking up our parcels, and heading off to Sicily with new trousers.  Richard went in to fetch them, leaving Stella and Scooby to wait outside, but after spending about ½ hour in the post office, he came out empty handed. The woman who he dealt with spoke no English & in rapid, complicated Italian asked him many questions about the packages, then looked through a small pile of letters but there was nothing for us at all. We were prepared for  there to be something that hadn't arrived, but it was a shock that nothing was there – the Green Card was posted from Britain over 2 weeks ago, the books and trousers posted at least 10 days ago and the Fattore Amico (which we intended to use in Sicily) was dispatched a week ago. All we can think was that either the post office had refused to accept them and they've been sent back or ........ the Mafia have stolen our trousers (and other stuff!).

We decided to go to Sicily anyway, and are now on a very nice camperpark at  Giardini Naxos, near to Taormina (a lovely hill top village between Mount Etna and the coast).



So far we can't really comment on Sicilian hospitality as we've only been here one night and we are once again surrounded by Germans. German holidaymakers tend to have a bad reputation in Britain (towels on the sunbeds etc).  Maybe this is undeserved, or maybe motorhomers are just a nicer bunch, but we have always found them to be cheerful, polite and friendly neighbours. The only problem being that it's hard to know what language you're supposed to be trying to speak.

Postscript:
Last night, unusually, we got reasonable TV reception and watched some of the Italian news.  We got a vague impression that someone was bombarding someone in Libia, and that bases in the UK and Germany were involved.  Interesting.  I remembered during the last bombardment of Libia, Italy didn't allow the USA to use their Italian bases because Italy was within retaliation distance.  I assumed they'd done the same again.  Understandable.

Today we took Scooby to the beach for a swim, and noticed a lot of helicopters passing by.  Noisy.  Annoying.  Some were yellow, some were khaki. This evening we got a message from Swansea asking if we'd been disturbed by military fly-pasts.   We logged on to the BBC to find out what we've been missing.  We're currently in Giardini Naxos.  According to our satnav we're 579 km from Tripoli, 771 km from Behghazi, 2097 km from Cardiff and 40km from the US airbase at Catania.

I reckon 40km should be enough.  G'night all!