Living in San Giorgio di Pesaro

For the last few years the Pro-Loco of San Giorgio have been organising a Hallow’een festival. This year the event was very well publicised and more people than ever came to walk around the town and to walk through the “Tunnel of Fear”. One of the narrow streets in the old centre is divided transformed into a long tunnel with a number of frightening rooms e.g. room of the spider, room of the witch. More than  2,500 people walked through the tunnel  with adults paying 1 euro fifty for the privilege. So many people came to the event that the police had to control the number of people getting into the old centre as there was a fear that some of the streets, which have cellars underneath, could collapse under the weight.

One of the treats on offer were roasted chestnuts or castagna (hence the name on the poster). The organisers  had ordered 500 kilograms (1,100 lbs) of chestnuts and they had run out by early evening. I think the success of the event surprised the organisers and for next year they are already preparing something bigger and better.

Next time your in Italy and want to order something you have never had before then try a crodino and rabarbaro.

Last night we were out having a drink with a couple of friends and they ordered “Crodino and Rabarbaro”. Crodino is a non-alcoholic aperatif which we have had before but we had never come across it with rabarbaro. In fact we had never heard of a drink called rabarbaro. Rabarbaro is the italian for rhubarb but I have never seen it for sale in this area and I wondered if it had another meaning. Searching the internet today I discoverd that the drink is called Zucca. Although Zucca is actually the italian for pumpkin the drink was created in 1845 by Ettore Zucca. It has Rhubarb as a base ingredient and so its gets it common name Rabarbaro Zucca. It is combined with zest, cardamom seeds and other herbs. After 10 days the drink is bottled and it has, according to the adverts, a delicate and pleasant bittersweet taste and has a 16% proof.

At this time of the year the hedgerows around San Giorgio are filled with wild flowers (knon as weeds when they come into the garden). Buttercups, arum lillies, wild garlic, sainfoin etc. It makes walking down into the valley a pleasure and makes struggling up the other side a little easier.

 Yesterday we were asked what the phrase “powerful in the ass” means. As we had no idea what it meant we asked where the phrase came from. It is, it turns out, the name of a group from Piagge (next village to San Giorgio) and they will be playing at a festival in San Giorgio in early May.

Searched the internet to see if the phrase “powerful in the ass” had some new meaning that had passed us by and instead found that the group are on ”myspace” and it includes some of their music. They sound good.  Most of the tracks are in English and the English is very good - wish my Italian was as good. If you want to hear the tracks click here.

Duing the summer every town and village puts on festivals and events. In recent days we could have gone to festivals celebrating local winkles, local bread, local sausages or we could have gone to jazz concerts, one act comedies by local dramatic groups etc. We could even have gone to a re-enactment of Winston Churchill coming to the nearby town of Montemaggiore in 1943 to review the battle for Rimini. Instead we opted to go to Piagge (next village to San Giorgio) who put on a production of the rarely performed Donizetti one act opera “Rita”. As it was free entry we decided to treat our then guests Jeremy and Juliet to an evening out. We were joined for the evening by Pam and Michael, both keen opera fans.

The opera took place in the small piazza inside the walls of Piagge. The evening was like a step back in time when people in isolated villages would go to whatever was on offer. The stage was simple with some bed sheets as backdrop. Music was provided by a man on the piano and the opera has only 3 singing parts and so there was just about enough space on the stage. Unfortunately the singing was at best mediocre with the lady playing Rita even less than mediocre. Despite it all we all decided we enjoyed the evening but would not be rushing back for next year’s offering.

At Christmas in the UK I bought the book “Drought tolerant plants” by Lucy Summers. It is a paperback in the Greenfingers guides series. For each plant there is information about growing  conditions, pruning, propagating etc and personal comments from the author about the plants. We have used it the book a lot in looking out plants for the garden and has been well worth the £9.99.

Saturday was the “Festa dei Fiori” at Fano. Decided to go as we have to plant a new shrub border. We were not expecting too much and we were not disappointed. If you wanted to buy some herbs, cyclamens and cacti then this is the place to go. For shrubs and perenniels it was useless. There were only about 40 stalls and about 30 of them were selling herbs, cyclamens or cacti. The others were selling candles, spices etc.

Next week there is another Festival of Flowers at Pesaro which, we are assured, is bigger and better than Fano’s. However, it probably means there are even more stalls selling herbs, cyclamens and cacti.

A recent report on recycling in Italy showed that some small towns in the Marche were recycling a high percentage of their rubbish. San Giorgio was not one of them. So in the near future the current system of large public bins will be discontinued and the town will move to “house by house” collection. People will be expected to “sort” their rubbish into paper, glass, tin etc.

There is also a proposal to have Enel, the national electricity company, establish a solar panel plant near the town and have the energy fed into the national grid. In recent report in the Financial Times indicated that Italy may be the first country where production of electricity by solar power will be “cost equal” with gas power stations.

Despite the heat we  have been continuing with painting the outside of the house. It has meant trying to start work at 7.30 and finish by 11.00. The only bit left was the walls above the portico. Had been thinking of getting someone in to paint it as I wasn’t happy about working on the roof. However, encouraged by Silvio in my English class e.g. if you fall you roll down the roof and then its a short drop to the ground, we decided to give it a go and yesterday we finished.

For more than a week Italy has been suffering from a heat wave. A large anticyclone had come up from Africa which means temperatures in the low 30s, humidity and some sleepless nights. It’s the weather normally associated with August rather than May. The television is filled with advice on surviving the heat - keeping cool, eating fruit etc. In fact its the same advice given every year in August but provides another opportunity to show the footage of people dipping their feet in fountains and eating ice cream.