Campiglia Marittima

As I think I have already mentioned to you, the past two weeks have been quite heavy for me with loads of school work and a social or work engagement every evening, so, when Pat invited me to Campiglia Marittima for the weekend I immediately said “yes”.

My friendship with Pat goes back many, many moons to when she was still married to Giorgio, the architect, and living in Rome. Since their separation she has moved to Cambridge, England, where she has continued her practice and built a name for herself in the field. Pat is an incredibly gifted psychologist and I treasure our friendship and moments together.

She called recently and said “why don’t you come up for the last weekend in Sept. since I’ll be returning to England soon and who knows when we will see each other again. Plus we can take our last plunge in the Mediterranean together! She has made me promise, however, that I will come visit her sometime this year for a long weekend. I jumped on the idea of Campiglia and said that I would be there even if it snowed!

I left directly after school on Friday and arrived at Campiglia around eight that evening. Campiglia Marittima is an interesting medieval town about five minutes from the sea and a two and a half hour train ride north west of Rome. This area is in the heart of “Etruscan Country” and is laced with Etruscan tombs and other ruins, many of which we visited on my last trip there. Popolonia, the only city the Etruscans ever built on the coast is about a 15 minute drive from her home. In the 1200’s a medieval village was built upon it’s ruins.

Pat met me at the train station saying "hey, you're on vacation" and we drove off to her house and supped on delightful Tuscan goodies – dried tomatoes stuffed with fennel, various types of prosciutto (cured ham), wild boar sausages, local olives, cheeses and breads all washed down with a beautiful red wine from Montepulchiano! Pat even made a pasta with fresh baby asparagus.

We talked until about two that morning. I think that the only time we weren’t talking was when we were sleeping. When Pat and I get together it seems like there is never enough time to “get it all out” and both of us knowing that there was no way to hit upon everything we jumped from topic to topic, conversation to conversation like two “speed freaks”. A conversational marathon!

Saturday was absolutely glorious and we spent the entire day at the beach soaking up the last rays of the September sun and swimming in the beautiful Mediterranean while we talked, talked and talked some more. We broke the day around two by walking to a nearby restaurant on the beach for lunch. Pat had a delicious plate of baby clams and spaghetti and I, spaghetti with a red lobster sauce. Yum, yum. We didn’t want to over indulge for we knew that we would be going to Davide’s restaurant later that evening.

The sun was beginning to set as we slowly drove home, had a glass of Tuscan red, showered and took a short nap to be ready for the “evening on the town”! We were both relatively exhausted from our day at the beach and non-stop chatter and easily could have stayed home but we decided to go to Davide’s.

Davide has an incredible gourmet restaurant in the middle of medieval Campiglia where one can find the most unbelievable of creative, seasonal dishes. It is also a fascinating restaurant for he only does antipasti, first plates and desserts.

We slowly walked back home through the narrow and twisting streets, walking higher and higher until we were once again back home. It really seemed like “home sweet home” for we were both exhausted from an incredibly rich day. Our quilted beds were extremely inviting. We slept like infants that night or at least until about three in the morning… then it all began!

I was the first to awake. Needing to make a bathroom visit and awaking in a not too familiar room I searched for the switch on the lamp next to my bed. I found it but the light wouldn’t turn on. A burned out bulb, I thought. I searched for the light on the other side of my bed and it too was out. Now, I thought in my state of semi-consciousness, this was a little suspicious.

My need to arrive at the bathroom became more urgent so blindly I made my way in it’s direction feeling every wall and object on my way. I knew I was close when I felt the cold porcelain bide’. Eureka! I had found the bathroom and in the nick of time!

The sounds made by my night rambling obviously awoke Pat who quickly made the same discovery which I had – that the electricity had gone off. She scrambled to the electric box but to no avail. There was no electricity. Nothing new, however, for occasionally of late the electricity is regularly shut off for a couple of hours during the night to save on electricity. She fuddled for a candle and lite it almost giving herself

first degree burns. We looked outside and there was no light to be seen anywhere so we decided that, yes, it was an electrical black-out and there was absolutely nothing to be done. We returned to bed.

I was the first to awake at nine. I knew it was nine because the clock was staring at me and at that moment the electricity returned. I prepared coffee and took it on to the terrace to contemplate the day's agenda and look at the beautiful mountains surrounding me. Pat joined me shortly thereafter and neither of us were feeling our greatests so we decided to put off going to the chocolate festival at Popolonia and just putter around the house and take a walk into the village before my departure at 12:53. So far, alls well. The electricity had returned

and we had decided the morning's agenda and all seemed well with the world. Little did we know what was in store for us.

We drove to the station around 12:15 and it seemed strange for there were very few people around. Entering the station we ran into a semi-crazed Dutch woman who kept saying "no electricity, no train". Pat and I looked at each other in befudlement trying to figure out what was going on. We soon discovered.

We shortly learned from the station attendant that all of Italy was without electricity and trains were neither coming nor going anywhere! No one knew what was going on. A thread of shock ran through my body. Pat looked at me and said "don't worry, if need be I'll drive you to Rome". Her offer was very kind but I said "no, let's just wait for awhile and see what happens". Thank God I didn't accept her offer for just a short while ago I learned from a friend that she was on the high way going from Rimini to Rome and it was an absolute nightmare.

Shortly thereafter the station attendant announced that a train was on it's way from Turin and should be arriving in approximately 20 minutes bound for Rome. I said "see, everything seems in place and I will be leaving at the time that I was suppose to". The train finally pulled in and it really looked like a ghost train. There were very few people aboard and those on the train were wearing very strange expressions. My train ride back to Rome really deserves to be a short story all by itself. I will not go into it now for I am still coming out of the shock of the experience. Let me just say that a train ride that should have taken about two and a half hours at the most took me about eight hours! It was an incredible learning experience!

I happily left Campiglia knowing that this train was going to take me back to Roma, caput mundi! The first stop after Campiglia was Grossetto about twenty minutes away. The train was making "no moves for departure" and we began to get a little nervous. An announcement came over the loud speaker system saying that we would be leaving in about 15 minutes as they had not gotten the ok from Rome yet to leave. That 15 minutes turned into three hours. The first of many station delays. The most unnerving of all was the lack of information. No one still knew what was going on. People began calling friends and relatives on their cell phones and we learned that Rome was completely blocked and nothing was coming in or out nor was it expected to until about six that evening. We began to wonder if Rome was even still there! A comradery took place amongst the passangers that was a beautiful experience. We all shared what little we knew or had.......informations from cell calls, bottles of water, cookies, sandwiches. I really felt like I was in WW2 waiting for the bombs to be dropped. Would Rome survive?

Vertually crawling from one station to another with many stops in between we finally began to get closer to Rome which was under an incredible rain storm. In fact, the whole area was absolutely drenched. We passed flooded field upon field. We passed one village near Civitavechia that was half submerged. The water came up to the windows on the cars parked on the streets! We couldn't believe our eyes.

We finally made it into Roma Termini. I think that we were the first train in that day. I heard this morning on the news that trains

from Southern Italy still had not arrived! Am sure that you can only imagine the scene at the station when we arrived. Throngs of people were shouting and screaming, who had undoubtedly been waiting for hours and hours, and some were even throwing things. Anger. Lots of anger. I think that the Minister of Public Security should be publicly castrated!

But I made it. I made it back home! I took a roll of photos this weekend and if anything interesting comes out I will definately send them along to you.