I noticed an interesting glitch in my brain when I visited the Azores earlier this year, and also during a recent trip Greece. It seems that because I have been spending so much time traveling to Spanish-speaking countries in the last 10 years, I automatically just start speaking Spanish almost as soon as I step off the plane in any non-English speaking country. “Excuse me” almost instantly becomes “con permiso” and “sorry”, “lo siento” and “help me”, “ayudame“. That’s all well and good in Central America and, well, Spain, but it’s weird that my brain makes my mouth say words in Spanish even if I see the Greek alphabet!
And something extraordinary happened in Italy last week. I spent the flight to Milan re-learning pleasantries, common phrases and numbers and a bunch of other fun things in Italian (kudos to the Emirates personal entertainment system!) so I could hit the ground running with “parla inglese?“, “grazie mille“, scusi“, “aiutami“, “dov’è il bagno, per favore” and “abbondanza” to augment my very advanced food vocabulary “focaccia“, “carciofi“, “coniglio“, and all those phonetic Brooklyn bastardizations from my childhood like “basta fazool” “gabbadeels” and “ba fungool“. But now this brain glitch seems to have mutated into something I might want to trademark (watch out Esperanto!) It just mixes up Spanish and English, and then adds the beautiful Italian pronunciation and BANG, Spanitanglish! Sometimes I change “por” to “per” but only if my brain lets me. I try to throw in some Italian words like “biglietti” but only after “Quisiera comprar un“. I quickly learned how to say “Para llevar” in Italian, but inconsistently and honestly it really didn’t matter. 9 out of 10 people in all 5 towns that were subjected to this new language spoke English—you think that would stop me from trying. Nope. Years ago, when I was in Greece and practiced and rehearsed gyro preferences for my colleagues so I could order in Greek from the gyro guy—one with onions, two without, two with yogurt, one without, two with cucumbers, one without. I remember slowly reciting the order while the gyro guy leaned on his elbow, perfectly poised to cut me off sometime after my mangled attempt at “Dýo gýro chorís kremmýdia” with a bored “Just tell me what you want in English”.
Efforts to try and communicate in Italian in these towns do not go unnoticed and I do believe are genuinely appreciated. Even Spanitanglish if that’s all you can muster!
I arrived in Manarola on December 26th, in the evening. It’s the fourth Cinque Terre village starting from the direction I was coming from, which I’m going to guess is northwest. Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore. I did want to visit the villages in order, but gave up that weird OCD plan (mostly because I found a beautiful apartment on Airbnb in Manarola). It was a long travel day and I was excited to get to my apartment and stroll around the fourth village at night. As we pulled into Monterosso, the first village, the train filled up quickly with obvious tourists. What? I was already anxious because I forgot to validate my ticket in that platform machine thing at Sestri Levante and I was hoping the conductor wouldn’t come by before my stop and yell at me or fine me. And now this? I purposely visited in the off-season, but I guess Christmas is pretty on-season, everywhere. Then another swarm of tourists shoved on at Corniglia, the third town, and I have to admit, I was a bit scared. It was already dark, where the hell were they going? Am I going to have to wait on lines? How am I going to find Giovanni at the train station? I was hoping they were all going to La Spezia, but I totally forgot about a pretty popular attraction in Manarola…Mario Andreoli’s magnificent presepe. Ahhhh, ovviamente! This life-size nativity is built on vineyard terraces above the town and is composed of more than 300 light sculptures that Mario started with just one cross almost 60 years ago. Every year since 1961 he added more figures and every year on December 8th, the nativity comes to life for the Christmas season with a big inaugural celebration! Mario is close to 90 now and doesn’t create the sculptures anymore. There’s plenty of info on the web about this unique annual installation, this is a cute one https://www.italianways.com/the-manarola-nativity-and-marios-lights/ and Mario has a facebook page too https://www.facebook.com/presepemanarola/! I was hoping to catch a glimpse of him around the village, maybe next year!
My Airbnb host, Giovanni, miraculously found me and Stanley in the herd and led us up the hill to his apartment. Manarola is a small place, there’s pretty much one street and few lanes that wind up and then over to other villages. The apartment was right past the church square (yes, the bells rang multiple times a day) and the view from the terrace was incredible! Unobstructed frontal view of the presepe at night and during the day, an amazing view of the town and the sea.
Giovanni carried my work bag, which actually weighs more than my life bag, and gave me a quick rundown of this season in Manarola, pointing out shops and walking paths that would be open. After getting settled in and taking a million pictures of the presepe from my new terrace, went out for a quick stroll and bite to eat at Da Aristide, 1 of about 3 restaurants open in the village this time of year. Had to work the next day, but had a bunch of hours to explore Manarola in the daylight!
Thanks for reading, more Manarola and Corniglia domani!
