The sun rose from the sea over Vasto into the cloudless sky as though the resounding bells from the ancient churches had woken it from its slumber. Kersti opened the French doors and marveled at the view. I kept my eyes closed, I think, as much to hold onto the dream I was having, as to keep out the blinding light. The high pitched clang that came from the steeple of Chiesa di San Giuseppe on the town square called the devout to mass. Our house shook as the great bass bells of the nearby cathedral of Santa Maria Maggiore, chimed in as if in competition for the souls of the faithful. As they quieted, only the more discreet ringing from the other, lesser chapels and churches could be discerned in the distance. Our downstairs neighbor opened his door and called to his dog Chico, “vieni qui”. I heard the reluctant creaking of weathered wood and rusty hinges as the old woman across the alley pushed open her shutters to let in the morning air. He greeted her with a hearty “buongiorno” that reverberated from the ancient stuccoed walls and cobble stone lanes. I was still in that indistinct realm between sleep and waking and wondered if I hadn’t been here before. Was it the gravitational pull from the gnarled roots of my family tree playing with my memory, or was it my Italian ancestors calling to me after all these years?

A circle had closed. My father’s family fled from the poverty of Southern Italy with a dream of finding a better life in America. Kersti and I returned to Italy a hundred years later following a different dream. Travel had always been important for us. It's been a form of gymnastics for our spirits helping us see the world from new perspectives and teaching us to savor small moments of beauty and gestures of friendship where ever we find them. I had been a Peace Corps volunteer in India. Kersti and I had motorcycled across the Sahara and Africa. We lived in a tent in the desert, on the savannah and in the jungle, lived on a kibbutz at the foot Mt. Hermon. I had trekked solo in the Himalayas from Kathmandu to the Tibetan border. I had hitch–hiked across Europe. We had lived for a time in the U.S. We had raised three children. We didn´t need to travel around the world anymore. We had done that. We weren’t interested in seeking the answers to the great existential questions and we had lived through the hippie era so we had no need for New Age eccentricities. What we saw around us was that when most people grew older they gradually downsized their lives. It wasn’t only their joints that became inflexible, but also their way of looking at the future. Dreams they once had were still visible but seemed unreachable, as though they were protected by a thick wall of glass.

Swedish winters are like a long tunnel that you enter in November and exit in March. We were in the middle. The wind was howling and whipping up the new snow in small drifts on the window ledges. It was weather that was better suited for polar bears and sled dogs than for humans, and the forecast was for more of the same. Summer seemed like an eternity away. I turned off the TV remembering a Springsteen song “57 channels and nothing on”. I said to Kersti, “I’m waiting for the program that will change our lives”. Not long after, we saw “A Place in the Sun” a TV series about northern European couples search for a second home abroad. It gave us an idea and we became curious. We attended a seminar for prospective foreign property buyers and poured over the internet. The choice of where to look was easy. We vacationed several times a year in Italy. Over the years, we had explored Tuscany and the Mediterranean coast from Cinque Terra to Sicily and from Puglia up to Marche on the Adriatic and had always appreciated the Italian charm and success in preserving their small scale life. They seemed able to maintain that delicate and incongruous balance between the ancient and the modern, the secular and the religious. Italy was a country where the well-worn and the grand coexisted and complimented each other. The seeds of a hurried, impersonal society seemed to grow more slowly there, and the sun and sea would make the northern winters more bearable.  

When summer came, we packed, flew to Rome, picked up our rental car and started our search for a house that suited our dream and our purse. We weren’t in a hurry and found the hunt exhilarating: not knowing what the catch would be added to the excitement. We decided to search for a property that was within a reasonable driving distance from Rome with good bus or rail connections. If all roads didn’t actually lead to Rome these days, all airlines had flights there. We rented a house high on the cliffs in a village in Calabria with a spectacular view of the sea, and where you could easily lose your way in the confusion of alleys and stairs that twisted and turned in every direction. We used the town as a base to explore the region. We set up a list of requirements as a guide, the primary ones being that to be of interest the house must be within walking distance of the sea in a town or village with genuine character and not just a summer resort. We made a budget which we quickly abandoned. We talked to real estate agents, looked at adds in the agency windows and walked through small towns and urban neighborhoods looking for “for sale” signs. We learned the necessary phrases in Italian, had a dictionary and phrase book at hand, played charades, used gestures and Google translate. We drove through the Apennines past villages clinging tenuously to the mountain sides. The houses perched precariously on one another seemed ageless, as though suspended in time, their ochre facades gracefully aged by the sun and the wind. We stopped often and discussed each one, weighed their pros and cons and followed our map and our whims.

The traffic moved typically fast and at times could be intense. The lanes were narrow but full of a life that flowed slowly in contrast to the pace on the winding roads. After years of driving in Italy we realized that what at first seemed like anarchy on the roadways was mitigated by a form of tolerance and courtesy, “beep here I come.” Everyone knew that the rules of the road were negotiable. Road signs were more like suggestions, and obeying them was arbitrary. We crossed the Apennines and continued our journey north through Molise without any fixed plans. Like so many times before, we would take a route and see where it led. We followed the coastal highway SS16, with the Adriatic on one side, and mountains that looked like they sprung directly from the blue canopy above us on the other. Wispy clouds were suspended over the highest peaks and blended with the pockets of snow that were left from the previous winter.   The sea faded into the horizon, disturbed only by the occasional sail. As we drove along the Abruzzo coast we saw what we thought were intricate wooden sculptures that extended out into the sea from the beach. Later, we discovered that they were a kind of fishing pier called trabocco with an elaborate system of blocks and tackles used to drop and haul nets. They allowed fishing even when the Mistral blew and it was too dangerous to go out in small boats. They weren't used anymore but are preserved as part of the region's cultural heritage. We drove on. The day was perfect and the fact that we still hadn’t come any nearer our dream didn’t matter. We were enjoying ourselves, and after a few hours, decided that we were ready for a good lunch and would stop in the next town. We saw the old city of Vasto through the car window high on the hillside, a shimmering oasis in the noonday heat.

Sometimes it’s the insignificant decisions that influence our lives more than the monumental ones; the flapping of a sparrows wings that change the course of the winds, so to speak. We stopped and parked on a public lot overlooking the sea. Kersti, wondering if it was okay to park there and using her basic Italian, struck up a conversation with the meter maid. “Unbelievable” I joked and said to her, “If the parking guards are this friendly in Vasto how nice are the other people?” We ate a good lunch, and in high spirits set out to explore the old town. We wandered through a medieval labyrinth of alleys and arches that were too narrow for cars to pass through.  In places you could stretch out your arms and touch the opposite walls, and those tangle of paths and lanes were the only places where you lost sight of the sea. We followed the cobblestones and eventually came out to the Via Adriatica with its ancient walls, Roman ruins and a panoramic view that took our breath away.  We crossed the piazza and past the garden and courtyard of the Palazzo d’Avalos and came to Via San Gaetanello and the Casa Giardini. There was a sign beside the door.

Vendesi, Apartamento, Secondo piano (For Sale, Apartment, Second Floor )

The apartment was in a renovated eighteenth century house and overlooked the garden of the palace and museum Palazzo D’Avalos and the sea and long stretch of beach below. It was undoubtedly the best location that we had seen. It was in walking distance of the beach and along with medieval atmosphere, had lots of cozy restaurants and small shops nearby. We said, “It’s perfect”. 

We continued our search up the coast to Pescara. We drove past vineyards and olive groves, with the Adriatic always in sight, stopping, looking, asking and letting the days slowly unfold until we returned to Sweden. When we got back, we spent the rest of the summer and part of that fall scouring the internet again, but the feeling was growing that the apartment overlooking the beach and garden that we had seen earlier might be the one that was meant for us.

The weather was chillier when we returned but still much warmer than in Sweden.  The trees had begun losing their leaves and their branches  seemed to shiver in the autumn wind.  We had come back to explore more of the coast and take a serious look at the apartment that kept popping up in our thoughts.  We stayed at a small, pleasant hostel in Vasto’s old town. A stone’s throw away, were the ruins of Roman baths and villas. If I listened I could hear the whisperings of earlier ages and felt life’s pulse as it might have been in the past, and instead of seeing crumbling masonry I saw history. The smell of espresso and the smoke from burning olive wood drifted through our open windows, as the residents of the old town lit their stoves and hearths to brew their morning coffee and chase away the chill. In the evenings the smell of the salt air blended with the same pungent but fragrant scent of the smoke from the ovens in the nearby restaurants. As the autumn darkness fell, swallows that would soon be migrating south nimbly chased insects in the twilight, and the lights from fishing boats and distant islands of Tremiti mixed with the glow of the first stars, created the illusion of a glittering pearl necklace on the horizon. 

We took a last look at the surrounding regions in order to get better picture of the property market and reassure ourselves that we were making the right choice. We agreed that Casa Giardini and Vasto were the best house and town that we had seen. We had renovated two old houses from the cellar to the attic, and several apartments to boot, so we knew how much work went into its restoration. The Casa Giardini not only had all the genuine charm we were looking for, was in an idyllic setting, had a magnificent view and was in easy walking distance of a great beach. It was also professionally and tastefully restored.  It was at the top end of our budget, but we had done our research and knew that this was the right choice.  This house was perfect. If we didn’t buy it, we weren’t really serious; we were just window shopping. An old friend joked and said, that when he was speaking a language other than his mother tongue, he felt as though the words that he spit out were breaking his teeth. I knew how he felt. We had meeting with the realtor Nicola, an affable man who listened patiently as we struggled with the little Italian we knew.  He took us to the house. We put the key in the lock, climbed the steep staircase and looked out over the vine covered roof tops and church spires, the garden and sea below, and felt that what we were looking at was our dream in reality. The view was the same as the one we saw on all the postcards and in the tourist brochures. Perhaps our search was coming to an end.

We met with the owners Giancarlo and Nunzia together with Nicola the realtor and their friend Luigi who translated. Giancarlo was a friendly man, tall and lean, a business man, poet, songwriter and former athlete with that classical Roman profile you might see carved on renaissance marble busts. Nunzia, a well-respected business woman, was stylish and elegant, with kind eyes and a quick smile. We chatted a while and quickly agreed on the price and terms of the sale. We told them that we thought that they had done a wonderful job on the restoration, and sensed that they were pleased to sell to someone who appreciated their work and taste. Luigi explained the details of the transaction as Nicola related them.  The ball had begun rolling and we felt comfortable with our choice and instinctively liked Giancarlo and Nunzia. They helped us with the innumerable small details that were involved in the purchase and we became good friends. We returned several times during the course of the winter and spring, and went through the legal formalities of the transaction with them. The apartment was ours.

I had heard the expression, “in Italy you don´t eat to live you live to eat.” Love and respect for food was a thread that was woven throughout the culture. As we spent more time in Vasto, we met many new people and made new friends. We discovered that the true Italian soul resided around the table. One typical evening we were going to eat with our friends Pino and Lucia, along with Giancarlo and Nunzia, and some others. Giancarlo was going to cook vongole. Pino dove for them that morning and looked completely in his element sinewy and tanned, swimming out through the waves with flippered feet, mask and snorkel. After three hours of diving he had dug up ten pounds of tasty clams no bigger than a large coin.

If you said to a Vastesi that your favorite dish was “spaghetti alle vongole” their eyes shone and a smile came to their lips. It was almost as if the thought brought back memories of days on the beach, of salt air and harmonious dinners with family and friends. It was magical fare, wonderful in its simplicity and echoes of the sea, but Brodetto a hearty fish stew is the real culinary pride of Vasto and Abruzzo. It’s a delicacy with several different kinds of fish, octopus, squid, shrimp, langoustine and clams cooked in a tomato broth and served bubbling hot in a clay bowl.

Our friend’s kitchen wasn't big and didn’t need to be equipped with a lot of gadgets to make great meals.  I heard Kersti, Cristina and Nunzia chatting on the veranda. I watched Giancarlo and Lucia. while they cooked. I asked questions as they sautéed, chopped, seasoned, sipped wine and laughed. To them cooking was an art rather than a chore, and for me this was not only cooking school, I saw their instruction as an expression of friendship. They spoke at length about what consistency the breadcrumbs should be when you made “cacio e ovo” and later Nunzia showed us the best saffron to use when you made “Risotto Milanese”. A taxi driver had already warned me about the evils of over cooking pasta and I felt as though it might be against the law or at least a venial sin and that a lot of personal shortcomings could be forgiven if you made a good tomato sauce. Everybody had a good laugh when Nunzia asked me if I remembered any of the Italian meals that my mother made and I said in dialect, ”pasta faggioli".

Lucia and Giancarlo continued to prepare dinner. I drank chilled Prosecco and ate some of the fresh vongole.  They had a mild taste and a smooth, succulent texture that reminded me of the sea that they had come from. As I ate them one after the other and slurped in the delicate juice, my mind drifted back to my childhood on our beach on Long Island Sound, gathering shell fish at low tide with my father. I remembered wading through the shallow water and digging my toes into the sand and mud feeling for clams, or looking for the little spurt that shot up where the water had receded, signaling that there was a longneck buried a few inches below. We sorted them after size, clams for stuffing, grilling, steaming and eating on the half shell. We took the choicest cherry stones, opened them and ate them directly.

As the different courses and wines came out we talked about food and politics and food again: politics were complicated, food simple. The atmosphere around the table was old fashioned and warm. Someone brought along a guitar. Giancarlo played and sung some of his own compositions. The others joined in. He passed the guitar to me and I played Dylan. There was music and laughter and it was understood by everyone that you couldn’t cook or eat properly if you were angry, stressed or upset. Food seemed to be the cement that held families and friends together and it was important to know where it came from. Bread and pastries and fresh pasta in all its different shapes and forms came from the corner bakery. We drank wine from local vineyards. We ate vegetables grown on the hillsides and the olive oil that was a staple ingredient in so many dishes came from Giancarlo’s groves or the twisted and knotted trees on the farms that surrounded the town. The butcher made his own sausages and the fishermen unloaded the  night's catch at the markets before the first light.

Often what you regret most in life are the things that you could have done but didn’t do. Kersti and I lived a full life, but at the same time felt that there was still room for the inspiration and spice of something new. It is often so, that while searching for one thing, you stumble across another. We went looking for a house. In the end, we found not only a house. We found a different life style and new friends who shared their rich culture with us.