How to Milk an Italian Sheep: Lessons in Pecorino

Someday I’ll learn the words so next time I can sing along. [Stirring the curds for some of the most amazing cheese ever!]

Domenico sings Italian love songs as he works. Loudly. Passionately. He began milking sheep about forty years ago. He’s from Sardinia (Italian island) , where his ancestors started milking sheep centuries ago. He is still using the same method: capture a sheep, hold it in place with your knees, bend forward to obtain clear view of udder, milk sheep, immediately make cheese with milk collected. Repeat in the afternoon.

Milking a sheep isn’t easy. One might imagine an udder as a giant balloon full of milk. Squeeze the spout (teat) and milk comes out, eh? If only it worked like that.

Hitching in Mafia Territory: Facciamo Autostop

What the Italians consider breakfast. This was our sustenance for our first day of Italian hitching.

Our flight from Germany landed us as far from mainland Italy as one can get without the need for a very, very long boat ride. While we’d hitched happily and successfully through the Czech Republic and Germany, online sources said Italians aren’t so keen on picking up strangers. Each article noted that the mafia should be of no concern to tourists, but I thought it uncanny that it bore mentioning each time. While my funny bone suspected writers on the subject were potentially full of baloney, we didn’t have the energy to take our chances. And so, a bus delivered us from Trapani to Palermo to Messina where we overnighted in an overpriced hovel and dined with the  Couchsurfing hosts mentioned in  the last post.

In the morning, however, we dredged up our courage and confidence.

Portrait of Sicily

Sicily not quite fully pictured. Trapani is on the far NW coast.

Imagine you meet a woman who is 250 years old. No lie — a walking, breathing, functioning, anomalous miracle. Think about what that would be like. Two hundred and fifty. She was alive during the war of 1812. Heck, she was born in the late 17th century. She may now have an iPhone, but she was 75 the year the telegraph was invented. Wouldn’t you be blown away? If yes, you can begin to understand how Sicily feels to me.

Sicily — Mediterranean Island being kicked by the boot that is Italy — is: like a gut punch that doesn’t hurt. Like a slap that doesn’t sting.

Framily Reunions in Deutschland

Punctuality: it’s in German blood. I would later learn the clock on the train platform I saw through the window is synched with every single other train platform clock in Germany. To the second. And the second hand is vigorous — none of this languid, gentle, metronome style progression like the school clocks of my youth. The German second hand lurches with precision between the previous moment and the next. At 8:34:59 p.m. I just happened to be looking at the clock, in anticipation of our 8:35 p.m. departure. Suddenly I felt like I was in a  Rube-Goldberg machine: the second hand slammed home, a referee’s whistle blew outside the windows, the train doors snapped closed with a bang. Then, smooth-as-butter, the train began to roll forward. Welcome. to. Germany.

How to Hitch Happily in Bohemia

Tommy and Linda have a male Italian greyhound — a type of dog that looks like a living Tim-Burton character from Nightmare Before Christmas. His name is Kesha. My man describes this breed as “miniature giraffes on crack.” We met Kesha after hitching to — Jihlava (yee-hlah-vah) — from Olomouc.

Culture Czech – why my veggies are free, etc.

Traveling to a new country invites an onslaught of new smells, sights, sounds with plenty of puzzled looks and hilarious moments. One can begin to feel the contrasts even before departure – at the airport!

Hitchhiking in Springtime Europe

The four Slovakian men blasted Polka and shared their gallon of red wine when we joined them in their blue work van on the way to Olomouc. They jovially shouted questions we couldn’t answer and comments we couldn’t understand. The mid-40’s driver, prominent nose and permanent grin, demanded we try Slovakian chocolate. Two twenty-somethings and the classic skinny-as-a-rail and moustachioed older man delighted in miming questions.

My new Slovakian friend, mug of wine, and Slovakian chocolate!

How did we end up a part of such a hilarious scene? Hitchhiking!

Why Buildings are White in Bangkok

A four-letter expletive certainly belongs in any sentence describing the heat during our three-week layover in Bangkok. More simply: the hottest bleeping April in 30 years. Over 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Over 40 degrees Celsius. Every. Single. Day.

Working Hard, Playing Harder: International Team Bali

Several “international incidents,” involving my Dutch, Australian, and Balinese friends, filled every spare minute of free time during my last three weeks in Bali.

In between reading descriptions for 500 Italian farms, searching through hours of airfare data for cheap Asia to Europe tickets, learning the science of web traffic, researching future job opportunities, furiously turning out blog entries, keeping in touch with loved ones, trying to solve the complicated Schengen puzzle, editing my little sister’s college essay drafts, and battling a misery-inducing internet connection… I got my tourist and social-butterfly groove on!

The Characters:

Stuff You Don’t Know When You’re an Alien

As I get to know Balinese culture, there are sights, smells, sounds, and customs that dig their heels into my memory. Like:

  • Balinese Broom: not the long-handled variety I am used to, but a collection of stiff bristles bound together with a string or tape. Requires lots of back-intensive labor to use. Unless you're a small child.

    School children can often be seen walking down the roads in the morning dressed in crisply pressed uniforms, a satchel on each back, and a… broom? Yes, a broom in each hand! Says the man I asked, “They take turn. They must clean.” If it’s the child’s chore day, they bring their hand-held broom to school! Imagine that on an American school supplies list!

  • 20,000 rupiah, roughly $2, will make a village child jump for joy. And it should be accepted respectfully by placing both hands together and palm up. (I witnessed my compound mom giving the money to some kids she knew when we went to visit their village’s healer.)