Village Life: When I Stop Wandering

In April 2008 Judy and Dave Kashoff temporarily shut down their lives in the Philadelphia suburbs of Bucks County and set off for travels around the world. Judy, 58, closed her accounting ledgers and turned off her potter’s wheel while Dave, 53, sold his dental practice. Rather than wait for the proverbial golden years, they rented out their house, dropped their cats off with Dave’s mother, kissed their two grown children good-bye, and set off for what they thought would be a year of travels by boat, by bike, by horse, by foot, by kayak and by golly let’s just do it! Now, three years later, while on a prolonged stay Australia, Judy imagines her “retirement” from the wandering life.

***

When I stop wandering, I want to settle down in a village in Southern Europe.

I want to spend summer evenings in the village square, where lovers kiss on benches and older couples walk hand in hand, where villagers drink wine and pontificate about politics in sidewalk cafes while their dogs lie quietly beneath their chairs before rising to greet canine friends—like the children who slip away from family dinners to careen around the fountain, splashing in it on hot days.

Perhaps I’ll settle in Spain, where families eat tapas while young people on motorbikes putt-putt around and around the plaza.

But then there is France, which is quieter yet still alive and faultless meals are prepared from fresh local ingredients.

Or Italy, perhaps, in a village with a piazza where impeccably dressed people linger over pizza they eat with a knife and fork, finishing their meal with a minuscule cup of espresso.

No matter where I settle down, most days I’ll cook a meal for my husband and myself. We’ll walk to the town center (yes, maybe it will be more than a village, an actual small town), where fresh produce is displayed on sidewalks before small family-owned shops. I will select meat carefully at the butchers and send Dave to the bakery for fresh bread.

It will be like the time I followed our Italian host and hostess as they prepared Sunday lunch: first to the fish store to choose clams, mussels and calamari, later to be served over al dente pasta, then to the cheese shop, then to the bakery. In each shop we were greeted warmly and offered tastes of flavorful cheese, sausage or sweets. Then to pick up wine from a local winemaker. Like our hosts then, I’ll bring a jug with me and, after tasting several wines, choose one and fill my jug with it from a large wooden keg.

I wonder if I have to choose my wine first in order to better choose my village? There is a village in Southern France where I purchased the most wonderful wine at the local cave for only a euro a liter.

On market days, rather than be a stranger to sellers I’ll be a regular customer, bantering with them about their red, yellow, orange and green peppers, inquiring about this week’s sausages, this season’s cheeses, discussing the day’s catch with a fishmonger, her fish fanned out on ice like a hand of playing cards, glistening with freshness. I’ll know how to pick the sweet local melons and the purple and green figs. A young woman selling cheese and wearing a low cut blouse will tempt my cheese-averse husband into a purchase as she leans into her refrigerated case to grab a goat cheese.

We could purchase a white house with brilliant blue shutters in Greece, where market stalls are filled with nuts, raisins and other dried fruits, where carcasses of sheep and goat hang neatly in a row, alongside rabbits skinned except for their fuzzy tails. We could choose between a half-dozen different kinds of olives; mounds of black and green—I would know them each by name, or at least Dave would since he loves eating olives almost as much as he enjoys shopping for cheese.

Perhaps we’ll live in Rovinj, Croatia, where every day is market day, and from morning ‘til dark, rows and rows of fresh fruit and vegetables provide color beside ancient stone buildings by the sea.

Would we miss France too much if we settled in Croatia? Would we find ourselves dreaming of the creamy cheeses, berries, truffles, herbs, and lavender in southern France? Or would we feel nostalgic for Spain, where market tables are covered with sacks of powdered herbs and spices of rich and exotic hues? Or for the tomatoes of Italy so sweet they could be candy?

How would I choose? If not by the wine or by the tomatoes then perhaps by the sound. In Italy people are effusive; they talk loudly and shout at each other then kiss on the cheeks. Would we become like that? In France, the language is lyrical and romantic, and people are patient with me when I haltingly and inadvertently destroy it. In Eastern Europe, folks are more reserved, but always respond cheerfully to a friendly greeting.

People who live in the villages I loved as we traveled through their land were warm and inviting. How would it be different if we lived there?

In the Italian countryside, an Egyptian immigrant opened his door to offer a warm bed to two strange travelers on a cold night. In Greece, we were offered food.

On the Greek Easter holiday, in the mountains of Crete, a man blocked our way… out of kindness, motioning us into his door, pantomiming an offer of beverage. We met the family. His mother, Maria, smiling, stood about three feet tall, dressed all in black with traditional headscarf and apron. As we took a seat, his brother brought in half a goat (“that can’t be for us,” we thought), and while he quartered it we were offered the Greek aperitif ouzo. Then food started to appear on the table while the meat roasted in the fireplace (“perhaps it is for us…”). Tomatoes, home grown olives, bread, Easter cakes, and beer. A delicious stew of lamb, artichokes and lemon, and finally, the grilled meat landed on our plates. All without a common language.

Later we watched the local holiday celebrations. At midnight there were bonfires and fireworks in the village square. But first the village priest walked through the village, stopping at each house. Every stop lengthened the procession. What a joy to live here and join the other villagers, ducking under a flower-covered canopy carried on the shoulders of four burly men. Their tradition would become our own.

Holidays seem more special in villages and small towns than in cities, just one more reason to aim small. And it need not be a holiday to be a festival. In France they celebrate truffles, garlic and bread. There are peach (pêche in French) festivals and fishing (pêche in French) festivals, and I would hopefully know which one someone is talking about if I were to settle in Provence. And of course, wine festivals. But there is no need for a festival to celebrate the wines of France; every evening meal is a “fête du vin”.

Beauty is celebrated in the Umbrian village of Spello, Italy. Might flowers grace my doorway here, where each year a prize is given to the house with the most attractive floral decoration? Would they give a prize to a foreigner? Or would I no longer be a foreigner? Every street is alive with color as each old stone house is dressed with pots and hanging planters overflowing with the glory of spring. On a feast day we’ll dance to traditional music and eat ours way down the cobbled yellow streets. We’ll start with an aperitif at the church at the very top of this hill-town, then, descending lovely square by lovely square, stop for antipasto, pasta, veal, desert and finally espresso.

During the First of May in Conversano in southern Italy, young and old stroll to the square where thousands of colored lights hide the facades of ancient buildings. The entire piazza lights up bright as day, including the gazebo in the center where a brass band plays. If we lived there, perhaps Dave would take up the saxophone again.

But most rural life is quiet, people provide their own entertainment, whether through sport or music or food or conversation. And that would suit me well, when I stop wandering.

But it is so hard to choose.

Passing through the varied landscapes and varied architecture of southern Europe is entertainment in itself. Medieval villages made of stone or plaster cling to mountainsides, huddle in valleys or stand high on mountains where church steeples crown the hillside, their silhouettes standing out against a sunset of red, pink or purple.

In France, we are thrilled by winding, narrow streets made of dark stone. The brilliant white plaster houses and orange roofs of Southern Spain take our breath away when lit by the sun. Flowers stand in pots before doorways and fill boxes below windows framed with wooden shutters that really work. In Slovenian Alpine villages flowers are everywhere, they even pour from barn windows. Woodpiles in Croatia are stacked in orderly perfection; we saw one stacked into the shape of a house.

When I settle down, I want my window to look out onto a village street. I want to walk through picturesque alleys to the bakery for a breakfast of bread still warm, or for a fresh local pastry to accompany an espresso. I want to hear music resonate against stone buildings. I want to open my shutters and smell the flowers. In a language that will become increasingly familiar to my tongue I will greet people and celebrate each holiday with them. My entertainment will be to sit by a cafe table in the square sharing a bottle of wine with my husband, perhaps friends and neighbors, a dog at my feet, someone else’s children splashing in the fountain, mine long grown.

And where might this café, this village square be? What country’s waters will flow from its fountain, with what language will I struggle? In what country will I find both mountains and seas, flowers lining quiet streets? Where will I find the creamiest cheeses, the finest wines, the most colorful markets? Where will I listen to a lyrical language offered with courteous finesse?

When I finally arrive, when my wandering is limited to a stroll to an evening’s repast, I suspect that I will say, “Bonsoir, Monsieur, une table pour deux, s’il vous plaît.”

Or perhaps I’ll say nothing—he’ll simply know who we are and why we’ve come.

Text © 2011, Judy Kashoff
Photos © Dave Kashoff

First published on France Revisited and Europe Revisited.

Other articles by Judy Kashoff include “Quakers in France: Finding Friends in Languedoc” and “The Natural Pleasures of WWOOFing in Europe.”