Arezzo

Today we visited another lovely Tuscan town: Arezzo. About an hour by train from Florence it is one of those 3rd tier places that never show up on the schedules of the busy Europe-in-seven-day tourists which basically means there are none. The Germans do of course come and so do the Swiss, Austrians and a selection of Scandinavians - they all have ample vacation time. It was Jutta's last day - she is heading back to Basel tomorrow - and so another little Tuscan outing seemed like a good idea. Arezzo is a cute little town: city wall, Duomo, a selection of additional churces some with real candles (at only 30 cents a real deal), a couple of towers and a fortezza - regretable without canons. We had the good fortune, or not, to get there on the day of the big antique market. Trust me I like nothing better then perusing a good antique market though I probably would not have bought anything (we had 80 kg of luggage last time we checked and that was before all the stuff that is still in Vienna and the few teensy little things I bought here and all the Swiss chocolate I intend to buy while in Konstanz), or at least nothing much. But, and that is a big but, a capital letter BUT, an antique market with Max is a nightmare, utter horror. Try an explain to a almost 4 year old that he can't touch the glass lamps, old ceramics and super-frail little wood figurines when everybody else is touching them, garbing them, passing them back and forth, ... not happening! So we just tried to keep our heads down, point out sturdy and unbreakable things to him and marched on not looking left ot right - or only glancing furtive looks concealed by sun glasses at the goods. I have to say, what I saw did not blow me away, anyway. I have made this total transformation in the last 20 years from collector-pack-rat-I-love-everything-old to just give me clean and modern design and then I might put one old piece in, if fancy strikes me. So the old wooden doors at 550 Euro per pop didn't tempt me that much, independently of the transportation issues. There were, however, a few things I could have possibly envisioned in our house in Sunnyvale, but, oh well, another price one has to pay for having an (sometimes) adorable, energetic little rascal around. Other than the Duomo with the many candles the highlight of the rascal's day was sitting on a vintage tractor pretending to drive it around and shooting - I didn't ask at what to spare myself another lecture about the unacceptablity of shooting or even play-shooting at people, animals (other than pigeons) and historic buildings. A minor crisis occured when he was supposed to say "thank you" to the nice guy who let him sit on his precious vintage tractor but that eventually got resolved to everybody's satisfaction as well and the guy was so pleased that Max showed up and shook his hand that he offered homemade "biscotti". Max would never say "no" to such an offer and - honestly - not would I.

Unfortunately, these day trips are always half-day trips with us as Max needs to have his nap at the latest by around 3 pm - else all hell breaks loose. So we took off again after a slice of pizza and got back to Florence just before he totally crashed (and us as well). Jutta took a detour through the city and visited a few more leather markets - what's a girl to do that just recently moved and had to leave behind a substantial part of her purse collection?

Later Max and I went to "our park", called Savanarol after one of those right-wing medivial religious nutcases who had books burned and pictures ripped off the walls for indecet content (like some bare exposed breast). We have been there many a time by now chasing pigeons, kicking the half-limp ball around Max found behind the bushes and - you guessed it - shooting something ot the other. In the park is a little stand where they sell chips and ice cream but mainly booze, a truly dazzling selection of drinks from Mojito to Bloody Mary and with the weather getting nice and warm I have to say that the negative effects are starting to show. It used to be - like three weeks ago - a nice clean park, dominated by a huge statute of a stern looking Savanarola waving a cross. Now it has become a trash pile of a little park with beer bottles, trampled on plastic cups, little plastic steer-thingys, chips bags, cigarette butts etc. all over the ground, grass, and benches. Savanarola still looks stern but that obviously doesn't keep anybody from throwing trash around. Don't get me wrong, I like the idea that nobody takes a cross-waving right wing nutcase seriously but I had hoped that - at least in Europe -people have grown up to comprehend that throwing trash on the ground and littlering like there is no tomorrow has gone out of style, seriously out of style, about 25 years ago. Naive me. So Max and I chased some pigeons through the beer bottles and shoot some canon-balls into the trash strewn hedges.

Back home Jutta and I decided to line up the new purchases for a better look at our proud possesions and for all of you who cherish the view of new Italian-design leather goods here is a teaser:

Maybe we should open a store!