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Why visit Italy? To search for wild asparagus of course
In despair, as my plans for a ten day road trip to Italy, Summer 2010, fell apart, I reached out to the Twitterverse, pleading for guidance. I wanted this, my first trip, to be memorable yet I simply couldn't make my plans fit into those of the Italian B&B owners I was trying to stay with.
One of the people who took pity on me, offering understanding and practical guidance was Terry Bhola, a Trinidadian-American now living in Umbria, central Italy. I later learned that Umbria is in the heart of Italy's boot.
Even though I didn't make it to Italy last year, Terry and I have stayed in touch, every silver lining and all that. I regularly read his blog, as I am fascinated, and a little jealous, of people who make a new life for themselves in other countries.
Eight years ago Terry swapped the hustle of Brooklyn NY for the chilled out and sometimes frustrating Italian countryside. Fortunately, he didn't jump aboard the 'La Dulce Vita' express alone, as he is joined by his Italian wife.
Since 'meeting' Terry online, I have learned about his immersion Terry into Umbrian and Italian life, the copious wine drinking wine, the sumptuous food and the bountiful flora. But it was the search for a home that gripped me the most, and oh what a search.
A few months ago Terry turned his experiences into a book, his first, charmingly called Searching for Wild Asparagus in Umbria. A life of snowstorms, recurring water problems and encounters with territorial creatures, not to talk of coping with being a tall, bald black man in rural italy.
But Terry has few if any regrets regarding his move, as nothing seems to phase him for long, as you will read in the excerpt, from Searching for Wild Asparagus in Umbria, below; Here Terry describes the quest for the perfect home in the Umbrian hills.
" ... I reunited with my wife, but decided not mention anything about my new room issues. A half hour bus ride later, we were back down at the main train station.
St. Enea, where the apartment for sale was, a few miles outside of Perugia, and since we didn’t have a car, the apartment owner himself had offered to pick us up and drive us there to see it.
After a few minutes’ wait, a man in his sixties showed up, and after a quick espresso with us, we got in his car and drove off.
The apartment was on the second floor and nicely tucked away in St. Enea’s small historic center, and when we arrived, we had a chance to look around before we eventually went inside.
We were told earlier that if we bought a home in a town’s historic center, we were basically buying a piece of history, mainly because of the house’s rustic, exterior stone-walled façade. Italian law forbids owners from making changes to the outside walls, so some of them are centuries old, but the inside walls can be altered however one pleases.
Big Fireplace in the Kitchen
This apartment actually had three bedrooms and two baths, and it was evident that interior work was still being done. There were tiles for the bathroom and kitchen, doors, and miscellaneous fixtures to be changed scattered about, but what wasn’t going to be changed (and rightfully so) was the big fireplace in the kitchen. It was a good-sized kitchen to begin with, but it would’ve been merely a kitchen if it hadn’t had that fireplace with the two built-in wooden benches, one on each side.
I already had romantic visions of my wife sitting on one bench, wearing her baby blue pullover with that long, colorful, Beebop & Wally (NYC) skirt that I adored, and me on the other side, waiting for our pot of peppermint tea (with the usual dash of ginger) to brew and my homemade scones to cool down, while a nice fire kept us warm.
I imagined all this while my wife asked questions of the seller. In the end, everything looked promising, and the price was around our budgeted amount. But if we were to go ahead with it, we would have to call in my father-in-law to have him talk down the price. He was a genius at that.
By the time noon came, we saw everything we needed to see and said everything that needed to be said, so the owner took us back to Perugia. He was nice enough to drop us off at a halfway point between the main station and the historical center, so we held hands and slowly paced our way to the top. Once up there, we found a café in Piazza Matteotti and made it our pit stop.In Brooklyn, we had used our favorite little café spots to plan, argue, make-up and vent, but mostly to relax, and this was the first time since leaving New York City that we had done the café-thing as a couple, and it felt romantically stimulating—especially since there was a potential new home involved."
You can read more from Terry's book by travelling to travel blog - Gonomad.com
Searching for Wild Asparagus in Umbria has won the Summer 2011 North American Bookdealers Exchange (NABE) Pinnacle Book Achievement award in the Travel Memoir category.
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I am determined to make it to Italy this year, and will be reading Terry's book for inspiration. Hopefully I can wangle an interview out of Terry, to guide not only aspiring travellers to Italy but also aspiring (wanna-be) writers, like me.
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About the Author: Although a native of Trinidad and Tobago, Terry H. Bhola has never been able to settle in one place for too long. This has made him a resident of both Washington D.C. and New York City, where his thriving career in the publishing industry took place. Terry H. Bhola currently lives in Italy with his wife.
For more information about Terry and his debut book, travel to http://www.terrybhola.com. You can also find him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Tbhola.
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