After our holiday in Rome we headed to a little town called Montefiascone. It's located in the countryside, about 100 km North from Rome. We stayed there for a month or so, and worked in the garden as well as in the kitchen helping with a catering business. The family, who we worked for, was very warm and welcoming. We are super grateful for all that they taught us and will never forget them and the whole experience. They also had four lovely dogs: two little ones who liked to cuddle a lot, called Otto and Tana, and two big dogs named Nonu and Pepper. They surely stole our hearts. We got to know amazing people, got new friends and learned so much about Italian culture, cuisine and life in the countryside.
I chose these photos as the first pics of this post, because that's what it mainly looked like in there, and we didn't have more attractive ones in our phones/camera.
Our job consisted of gardening and cooking, and we worked for more or less 25 hours/week. Gardening was super fun job, because we got to work on our own and enjoy the sunny weather at the same time. We got to harvest grapes and other fruits like apples and figs. We also picked raspberries and strawberries and did some weeding around the garden. One task was to pile some firewoods for them to use in the winter. The work was simple and just enough physically demanding for us. We are not afraid of getting our hands dirty or muscles sore, but we didn't have to work like slaves either. Very enjoyable all in all!
That's me working hard with the grapes.
It was super funny when at first we were so afraid of all those little lizards, frogs and other bugs. We kept flinching every time we saw and yelled "Watch out the gecko!" or something, to warn the other. But as the time went on, we got used to them and they didn't bother us anymore. The dogs were also a big help because they wanted to stay outside with us all the time and chase the lizards.
All the grapes we picked were for used for wine and grape juice.
The lady (our host) had a catering business, so we also got to cook with her as a part of our job. She was a very good cook and taught us many recipes for traditional Italian dishes. Now, thanks to her, we can start our own Italian restaurant if we want to, since my girlfriend (who is a chef) wrote all of the recipes down! It turned out that I'm not so talented in the kitchen (I for example ruined one pie by flipping it in the oven), so my tasks weren't too challenging while Jonna got some more responsibility there. She memorized some recipes and cooked them by herself, meanwhile I polished some apples… LOL!!! It was nice anyways, although I didn't feel myself very important at that moment.
One day we spent the entire day making Sicilian tomato sauce (with their Sicilian friends). I was also taking part in this process as an equal. xD We washed and chopped and boiled tons of tomatoes, and as the end result we had something like 200 (500ml) bottles of sauce. That's helluva lot I think! But it's their tradition to cook it every year for the winter, and it has to be done at the end of the summer, when the tomatoes are best. So if you think that all that sauce was divided between two families and it should last for one winter, it's not that much.
One of the best experiences was to cook and cater in an Italian wedding. The atmosphere was amazing, all the people were so warm and the day was full of love, sweat (us in the kitchen) and tears of happiness. We were blown away by the fact that Italians eat like horses in wedding! They finished every singe dish 'till the last drop in nano seconds. And we really had tons of food: billion different antipastis, salad, bread, pasta, meat, potatoes, risotto, strudels, Sicilian aubergine cakes andandand, which we started to prepare like a week in advance. On top of eating, they also drank gallons of wine. I can't understand how they were still standing and even dancing until the small hours after all that feasting.
We also had quite a lot of freetime during our stay, so we had the opportunity to travel to other cities and little towns. I will post about these trips later.
These pictures are from the backyard of the house where we lived. The views were amazing and we got to relax by the pool in our free time, during the lunch breaks and in the evenings.
But let's get back to Montefiascone. As I probably already said, it's a small, old and adorable village in the country-side. It's mostly inhabited by old people now, since there's basically nothing (jobs, leisure time activities or entertainment) in there. Most of the shops have closed their doors permanently in the old part of the city/ the main street and there aren't too many bars/cafes/restaurants etc in other parts of the town either. It's cozy and beautiful place nevertheless, and the Lake Bolsena with all the black volcanic sand is stunning. If I lived in Montefiascone, I would probably have to have a farm or some other business of my own, to earn a living and keep myself busy and entertained. Otherwise I would get bored quite soon. Unless I was super rich and could just travel around to other cities nearby and spoil myself with long lunches and uncountable amounts of glasses of wine.
We had a damn delicious pasta lunch (tasted better than what it looks) by the lake enjoying these gorgeous views. If you look closely, you can see our hosts waving in one pic.
If you need a lot of activities and fuss around you, this might not be the best destination for your travel. But if you for example are recovering from burn out or some other sort of mental breakdown, and desperately want and need to stay in quiet surroundings in the middle of nowhere country-side, go for it! And if you get bored, there's always the option to take a train to some lively city like Rome or Florence.
I want to end this "travel report" by noting, that we have so many wonderful memories from our time there! As our first experience of working abroad, it couldn't have gone better. Grazie mille!
