The Italian countryside smelled warm and leafy.
Occasionally something new would waft through.
“It smells just a little like a horse barn,” said one Saint abroad.
“Or a brewery,” said another.
“Or a cross between the two,” said the first. We all agreed it was a pleasant scent. We were at a small vineyard/olive farm outside Bardolino, and the beverages were flowing to wash down various olives, cheeses, and bruscetta. The owners (a family, of course) and their staff couldn’t have been more obliging, and the surrounding view of fertile hills more congenial.
We had started the sunny day with an exploration of Sirmione, the small village on the four-mile peninsula jutting into Lake Garda. Imagine Park Point with palm trees. At its end were opera diva Maria Callas’ home instead of the air strip and beach house, and gently nodding cypress trees instead of soccer and volleyball fields. The Saints’ first full day in Italy was a time of getting to know one another and, as always happens, the forming of sub-groups defined by age, gender, relationship to the College, age, seating happenstance, cat lover/dog lover and the like.
Some of us are veterans of several Saints alumni trips; others are first-tiers. Ages range from the 60s to the 20s – and one elementary school student who’s thankful for the Scooby Doo videos on her hand-held player.
Between gelato and the first tastes of genuinely Italian pizza (about as good as genuinely American), the group admired enormous boughs of brilliantly fuschia bougainvillea draping the sides of buildings. A stop in a church whose origins date to the ninth century provided a moment of reflection. The simple Romanesque architecture and slight whiff of – what? at once, a sense of timelessness and of certain mortality – made us all the more grateful to reenter the world of color and life and – and – more food!
As alumni relations executive director remarked to the slightly sunburned group that evening at a festive reception: “We’re off to a great start!”
Applause ensued. And more food.
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