Day 5, Italy

It wasn't easy to pry Gramma out of Vienna today. Somehow, I guess we managed to have a pretty good time, because she was going around saying how she loved Vienna and wanted to spend more time there, and if she could re-plan the whole trip, she'd plan for more time in Vienna. And she was souvenir shopping right up until the minute the taxi came to take us to the airport. Souvenir shopping, by the way, is right there on my list along with sightseeing bus tours and guided group tours of museums. I can really do without it. But Gramma was, let's say, totally into it. So.
Everything went very smoothly at the Vienna airport. Gramma was actually worried that we got there "too early"-- but I say there's no such thing as "too early" when you're dealing with airports. We were able to check in right away, without waiting in line, they boarded us on the plane before anyone else, a short flight to Bergamo, and voila, we were in Italy.
We were greeted at the airport by Mauro and Marco. Marco brought us to Francesca's house in Casorzo, just in time for us to see the sun set over this AMAZING valley behind the house. Holy smokes it's beautiful here! Can't wait to see more of it all tomorrow. By the way, for those of you just tuning in, these people in Italy are all my grandmother's first and second cousins, children and grandchildren (and great grandchildren) of her mother's siblings.
It became apparent very quickly that I was the odd man out, what with my complete lack of Italian language skills. Gramma and Ines were chatting up a storm. Carlo was also here, Maria Rita made a short appearance, as did Ornella... (I'll have to check the spellings on all of these names tomorrow.) Anyway, conversation was a'flyin', and I was just listening as hard as I could, picking up words here and there-- mostly vocabulary that's similar to French (I've heard this was possible to do, but have never really had a chance to try until now.)... I think Gramma owes me a big explanation for why she's never bothered to teach me Italian. She really speaks it well! Or at least well enough to keep the conversation rolling.
Still, I'm not without my own bag of tricks. I whipped out the laptop and showed some photos and videos. I found myself really wishing I knew the Italian words that could explain why I was wearing red rubber boots with my wedding dress and standing on a pile of hay. Gramma wasn't all that forthcoming with the Italian translation of the exciting wedding story, but I think that's probably not one of her most cherished memories, so fair enough. After a while I noticed Ines, Carlo, and Gramma all talking about ancient family history, so I brought out the microphone and asked if it would be alright to record. Gramma kind of laughed uneasily until she realized I was serious about this, and somehow I was granted the "ok" from the group. They talked on and on in Italian AND the local dialect (so yeah, this should be fun to translate someday) all about Gramma's mother, and the time "Yetta" (short for Giulietta) came back to Italy with Gramma's younger sister. I may have to get more of the details from Gramma later. Pretty soon a big tin box of old family photos came out, and there were some real gems in there! I got to see some awesome photos of my great-great grandmother, Angelina Soffiantino (that's my mom's mom's mom's mom). And there were lots of childhood photos of the septa- and octogenarians sitting around the table with me (Ines, Carlo, and Francesca). One of the group photos showed my grandfather's brother, and I'm still not sure what his connection to the group was, but maybe I'll learn more tomorrow.
Without a doubt, I'll be speaking some Italian by tomorrow. It's actually really easy to pick up the words from Gramma, because she does speak rather slowly, and mixes up some of her Italian words with English when she's trying to get her point across.
Oh wait, but I haven't even mentioned the food yet. Ok, so tonight was really no big deal. They brought us home from the airport, a few people dropped in to say hello, but the big family get-together stuff really isn't happening until tomorrow. So tonight's dinner was like casual, nothing special. And yet somewhere around the third course, I lost track of how much I had eaten. First there was the three different kinds of prusciutto with about seven different kinds of bread and crackers all over the table. Then there was the tortellini soup (yum!) and then the pork with spinach and carrots, then the beef, then all that got cleared away and out came the cheese plate, and once we'd had enough cheese, Francesca brought out the baked apples for dessert (one of my dad's favorite desserts, if I'm not mistaken)... Oh, and then the chocolate and the coffee and the tea. And all throughout dinner I was sipping on the local wine. This is definitely going to be a weekend to go down in my own personal culinary history. I just feel a little guilty, though, because these aren't just MY relatives-- I really feel like the rest of my immediate family ought to be here. These folks are really fun to be around, even if you have no clue what they're talking about!