This heart of mine, was made to travel this world.

Although in some ways, coming back to England for Christmas & breaking up my traveling, was a required break, in other ways, it has made me feel unsettled.  Now when I think of returning to Italy, I get the same nervous feeling in my stomach, that I had before I left England, last July.  To some extent, it's like taking the plunge all over again.

In order to pull myself out of any self-doubt & encourage myself on, I decided to take a look back on my travels thus far, through the medium of photography.

Berlin

Chabanais

 

Guernsey

 

 

Amsterdam

 

Naples

 

Capri 

 

Enna

Ispica

Catania

Linguaglossa

Syracuse

Sciacca

Rome

Monterotondo

Rieti

Oh, it was a wonderful six months.

Y'know what, I think I am ready after all.

The nail in my dairy coffin.

Back in Sicily, when I was staying at a carob farm down in the south, they used to always have on offer, fresh ricotta & a ball of provola.  I've never been a big fan of ricotta, but the provola was delicious.  It came in a large pear shape, tied with string at the neck & would be hung up in the kitchen.  I used to sneak in & cut slices off it, to nibble away at greedily, when I thought no one was watching.  It's a kind of rubbery cheese, quite salty, but honestly, so delicious, especially when melted over aubergine in a Melanzane Parmigiana.  Yum!

Both cheeses were handmade, by a small dairy farm round the corner & one morning, my host arranged for us all to go to the farm to watch them make the cheese.  I was so excited, 'cause I love that kind of thing, seeing things first-hand.  We had to be there at 7am, which was a bit of a drag & along with my tired eyes, my stomach was pretty grumbly by the time we got there.

I watched as this old married couple stirred the milk in this huge bucket on the floor (which didn't seem too hygienic) & sieved out the forming ricotta.  Then, whilst waiting for that to drain over another bucket, they began to form the balls of provola, out of the more solidified curd, they had in boiling water.  It was quite something to see.  Secretly, I would have liked to have got my hands dirty & given it a try.  However, at this point in my travels, I could barely do more than order food in Italian & these dairy farmers were Sicilian.  They spoke in the local dialect & even some of the Italian speakers I was with, struggled to understand them.  So unfortunately, I didn't learn much in the way of cheese making technicalities.

Whilst they continued molding the cheese, the rest of us headed for a look around the farm.  The first thing I saw through the gates was an emaciated guard dog, who was keeping watch of eight crates, stacked in two rows & stuffed with live rabbits.  My gut churned at the sight.  Entering into the cow shed, I came across one pen filled with calves, all stumbling over to see me & lick my hand.  I wanted to steal them & take them back with me, they were such darlings.

Finally, I ended up in the milking room.  In my naive, young mind, I had always envisioned Italian dairy farms to be small & tucked away in the countryside.  Cows out in the field, chomping away on blades of bright green grass, strolling in to be milked by hand by some old Italian man, sat on a wooden stool, squirting milk into a tin bucket.  He'd have probably given them all names, like Margherita.

Well, in reality, things were far different & I was not just disappointed, but really quite saddened.  Six cows, three on each side of the room, concrete walls & floors, all hooked up to machines.  One cow, to my right, her leg restrained by string, kept pulling at her ties, showing her discomfort.  She looked at me, right in the eye & I had to stop myself from bursting into tears.  One of the workers was standing nearby, filling needles with unknown substances.  I had to get out. 

Heading back up to where they had now set up a table & chairs for us, I sat feeling sick.  The farm workers brought out fresh warm ricotta, homemade bread & of course, the Italian staple, red wine.  Who wouldn't have wine at breakfast!  I ate some bread but declined the cheese & tried to ignore everyone's glares.  How rude of me to come here & not eat the cheese!  But honestly, I couldn't bring myself to have one bite.

Leaving the farm, the final nail in my cheese coffin, came in the way of one of the farmers.  Expecting a visit from an inspector, he was attempting to get the cows from outside into one of the sheds.  Slowly but surely they trotted along, but he kept shouting at them & would hit them on their hinds with a spiked stick.  The last cow in was this poor creature with a limp.  Hobbling along, this guy wouldn't stop shouting at her & started hitting her.  That was it I thought, however delicious, I'm never eating this cheese again.

I never did eat anything from that farm again, but the entire incident had rattled me & reminded me of why I had originally chosen to be vegan, all those many, many years ago.  Whilst I had returned to being carnivorous some time ago, I could feel myself longing to return back to a cruelty free diet.  At this time though, I wasn't quite ready to commit.

However, during my time in the monastery, many months later, a part of my meditation's focus, was directed at my diet, for which, at this point, was nothing but gluttonous.  I tried to envisage myself as a vegan again.  No more gelato at my local bar.  No more giant bars of Swiss milk chocolate.  No more fresh mackerel from the harbour.  Could I really live without all of these delights?

Persevering past  my greed, I eventually saw a slimmer, happier, healthier me.  Eating fresh fruit from the market.  Mixing delicious avocado rich salads.  Making almond milk salted caramel ice cream.  Nibbling on chunks of rich dark chocolate.  I realised, I wouldn't really be giving anything up, so much as gaining a broader, more diverse diet & feeling & looking better in the process!

And so, since the day I landed on British soil, I have not so much as glanced at a piece of meat, taken a sniff at a bar of milk chocolate & successfully turned my nose up at buttercrust mince pies, over the holidays & I can honestly say, I haven't missed a thing.

All good things must come to an end.

It took me over five hours, two buses & more than €20 to get from Syracuse, to my next temporary abode.  Situated in the countryside of Sciacca, a small town, on the west coast of Sicily, two Sicilian brothers, Fabio & Alessandro & the latter's Polish girlfriend, Aga, live on a small family owned olive grove.

Each year, the olives are hand picked by the guys, with the help of a team of volunteers.  The majority of the olives are pressed into organic virgin olive oil, which they sell & some they save, to preserve to eat at home.

None of this is unusual in Italy, where most families living in the country have their own olive trees & make their own oil, usually just for family consumption.  However, the difference in Sciacca is, they've decided to do something a little special with their oil.

Having turned the ground floor of their three storey home into a laboratory, Alessandro has taken to using their own oil to make organic cosmetics.  Soap, body scrubs, lip balms, skin oil.  All natural, homemade, organic & deliciously scented with lemon & grapefruit, among other fruits.

Professionally packaged, they sell the products in some of the hotels & gift stores in town, but mainly online through their website saponi&saponi & abroad in Germany & Poland.  I was fortunate enough to get to test out all the products & I was really impressed, especially with the body scrub.

I spent three weeks with the guys in Sciacca & I can honestly say, it was one of the most enjoyable, fun packed time I'd had on my travels.  The guys at Sciacca were kind, caring, warmhearted, funny & generous people, who made me feel a part of their family.

Within the first weekend, we had indulged in würstel & sauerkraut at a German night, in aid of Oktoberfest, been sailing on a yacht during the regatta, been witness to the talents of the local salsa dancers & had a night in playing Hotel, the Italian version of Monopoly, whilst devouring pomegranate mojitos made by Mara, my German roommate.

The first week saw the consumption of a fair few more cocktails, which at €4 a glass, I couldn't really deny myself.  Then, after a day trip to Palermo & the purchase of a rather oversized & overpriced Italian grammar book, I began to finally do some real studying, with the, much appreciated, help of Aga, who, after two years in Sicily is now enviably fluent in Italian.

The second week saw more volunteers arrive & all of us go out to the fields to pick the olives.  After an unexpected storm, early on in the summer, the crop had been greatly affected & many of the trees were quite bare.  After two days under the Sicilian sun, all the olives were picked & we took them to the small local factory to be pressed.  I really enjoyed watching the whole process, from picking, to pressing, to the final product, of fresh olive oil.  The smell of freshly pressed olives is so unusually strong & the colour is a really dense green.  Nothing like it is in the supermarket.  If you would like to see the process for yourself, I have posted the photos here, on my food blog, Mangiamo!

On my last weekend in Sciacca, the guys held a BBQ, in order to celebrate the end of the harvest.  There were freshly caught mackerel, grilled on the BBQ & an abundance of dolce, which included a ginormous carrot cake, handmade by myself, with the help of my New Zealand friend Kate.  Turns out Italians quite like a moist carrot cake, especially when it's made with nearly a litre of freshly pressed extra virgin olive oil.

In my last week in Sciacca, I gave up any attempt at dieting & decided to indulge in the local gelato.  It's hard to deny that sugary delight.  The weather in Sicily was still hot & sunny, despite it being October.  We spent our afternoons battling the slugs in the organic vegetable garden, picking the surviving aubergines & bright red peppers.  I spent two days decorating the laboratory's office, painting it a beautiful shade of sea green.  I felt quite proud of myself once it was finished & the guys seemed to be happy with it too, as they awarded me with half a kilo of chocolate!  Nothing puts a smile on my face more than chocolate!

On my last night in Sciacca, we held an 'International Night' at the house.  Made up of three Sicilians, one Polka, one New Zealander, one Brit, two Italians & one Taiwanese, each of us made something typical of our nationality for the evening.  Aga made pierogi, polish dumplings, the Italians made a tuscan soup & the Taiwanese formed small parcels out of leaves from the palms in the garden, to steam rice.  I made chocolate muffins…I would like to defend myself, by saying that I was asked to make them.  Otherwise I would have chosen something more traditionally British, like my buttermilk scones.  Alessandro made pomegranate mojitos, using fruit picked from the garden, which I may have lost count of how many I indulged in & to be honest, the night soon became a blur, especially when we ended it with shisha.

The next day, we had a brunch made up of the previous evenings leftovers, said our goodbyes & then, with my new friend Kate, hopped on a bus for Rome.  Still wearing a T-shirt, with the sun beaming its heat, I was not looking forward to the cold & rain of the mainland. 

I had only really planned to stay in Sicily for a period of a month & by this time, I had been on the island for three!  I knew my time there was done, but, it was still sad to say goodbye.  As the bus rolled out of Sciacca, I looked out of the window & held back tears, I would miss this place & its inhabitants.

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I lost myself to the unknown.

After my time in Linguaglossa had been cut short, due to irreconcilable differences, I no longer had a firm plan of what to do next.  The Brits, had come to stay in Italy for just one month & already nearly three weeks had passed since they'd arrived.  They were in Italy for a break, before heading out on a year long travel exploration, around the world, starting in Vietnam.  As we all were seemingly without a fixed plan, the three of us hopped on the earliest bus to Catania.

Going back to Catania for the third time, felt odd.  I had seen too much of that town.  Once there, the three of us went off in search of thrift shops, stopped for coffee & then took refuge in the train station, equipped with a loaded panini.  We caught the train to Siracusa in the afternoon, after the Brits managed to secure us an apartment in Ortigia, through AirB&B.

I was going off-plan for the first time in this trip.  This both excited me & scared me a little.  I have to admit that I am one of the least organised people around, however, I don't do well at 'going with the flow'.  I like very much to know what I'm doing & I no longer knew anything at all.  I tried very much to just 'be'.  The Brits seemed to be very good at that & so, the three of us shacked up in our apartment & went out for pizza, when we couldn't figure out how to work the oven. 

The following day we swapped apartments, for a better one in the center of town, equipped with a TV that was language adjustable.  Once moved in, we spent our days sightseeing, snapping pictures, lazing around, stopping for beer & gelato, reading books & eating more pizzas.

My favorite thing though, was the morning food market in town.  Fruit, vegetables, formaggio, vino, pesce.  Everywhere you looked, there was something beaming out at you!  This was the best place to go for brunch.  Everyone wanted to give us a taster of what they had to offer.  Fresh ricotta, drowning in olive oil, seasoned with garlic & thyme & still warm.  Chunks of mozzarella.  Tiny plastic cups filled with red wine.  All shoved in your face, begging to be consumed & I did.  I had a piece of everything!

The three of us were coaxed into a family run deli, where they made the biggest, most delicious paninis, for a mere €2 each.  Inside, they were filled with mozzarella, olives, sun dried tomatoes, prosciutto, fresh tomatoes, grated salted ricotta & drizzled with olive oil.  To die for.  We bought some of their ricotta too, with the garlic & thyme, a snap at €4.  This is why I came to Italy, I thought!

Alas, this break from the plan had to come to an end.  The Brits wanted to explore Sicily more, before they headed off on their travels & although I would have happily stayed with them for the duration, I sensed they were ready to have some time alone together.  The three of us spent an entire day in a coffee shop, abusing the WIFI & after a few emails, I managed to find an olive grove that needed help & that I could go to straightaway.

The night before I left, we ate dinner together in the apartment, stayed up late talking & then finally said our goodbyes.  In the early hours of the following day, I got up, got dressed & crept out of the apartment & walked the twenty minutes down to the bus station.

I had really enjoyed my time with the Brits & I would miss them.  Both had grown up in the country, much like myself & later moved to London.  After leading the usual heavy London lifestyle, they had given it all up, careers, home, everything, to seek a new perspective.  A better way of life.

I felt, although we were different, in some of our opinions & our upbringing, that it was easy to open up to them.  To be searingly honest about myself.  I think, when you're traveling, especially for long periods of time, being in countries, whose languages are foreign to your own, it becomes very isolating.  It is not until, you meet someone that speaks your language, that you realise, how much you really need to be able to express yourself.  The amount that you learn about yourself over a period of time, is overwhelming & needs to be expressed, in order to be processed.  You need that outlet & you also need the outsider's perspective, so that you yourself can gain perspective on what you've learnt.

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