The problem with field production work is that the hours keep you humming at an almost unreal and totally consuming pace - the kind of pace that allows for about an hour of emailing per day that needs to get split among the entire crew. It’s not particularly the most conducive environment for a road weary blogger such as myself. So I’m going to try and continue pushing forward even though I’ve greatly fallen behind - if for no other reason then there’s simply too much wonderfully glorious stuff to post about. To try and keep some semblance of order, I’ve decided to postdate the following entries, so bare with me as I catch up…
Today we finally arrived in Italy. I cannot adequately describe how much I have been looking forward to this leg of the journey. Few places on earth that hold such a tangible and magnetic power over me. Perhaps more appropriately, the power to draw me in. The speedfreak fertile Modena landscape is the richest emotional environment I’ve ever witnessed with my own eyes and it speaks to my soul in a way that doesn’t happen anywhere else.
In another life I swear that I must have been Italian - or at least I’d like to believe that. Because this place radiates with such unique power and so much pride that it simply brings out every gearhead quality. Apparently I’m not the only one - Ferrari, Lamborgini, Maserati, Ducati, and Pagani were founded here and speed is in the blood as they say.
But that’s not all - Northern Italy also expounds so much culture that it’s rather overwhelming at times. It’s the kind of place that forces you to stand in a town square and imagine what it must have been like to live there hundreds and hundreds of years ago. The place as a whole has such a romantically picturesque vista from which to relive and recreate history that it’s hard not to feel like you’ve been here before, even when you haven’t been. And as you stroll around it’s easy to feel like you’re actually walking across the same cobblestones, which gave rise to our very modern world.
But modern world or not - the qualities that surround you and lend themselves to imagining yourself in the past exist here in spades. It’s a strange blend of the past and the present to say the least. The very characteristics that I would hate in just about any other city are romantic here. They are passionate. They feel ‘real’. So while I’d rather have a high efficiency air conditioner, loads of ice and plumbing that works, some how when I’m standing on the doorstep of the modern world it’s easy to let those things go for the sake of purity. The image that resides in your mind would only be corrupted if those things existed, but thankfully they do not. Instead what you get when you arrive is a rich cultural text from which to wildly ride through.
The last time I visited this region, I spent the entire time hold up in a rather bad American attempt at a foreign hotel. This time I was determined to do things differently and thanks to an impassionate recommendation by the President of the Lamborghini Club of America, we ended up staying a tiny town named Rubiera, which sits 9 km southwest of the city of Modena.
There are times that making a sight unseen decision on someone else’s personal recommendation doesn’t work out - this however is not one of those times. Rubiera is an absolutely charmingly delightful unfiltered place to set up shop for the next ten days. It’s also close enough to make travel easy, but far enough away from the ‘big’ cities to allow you to drift in and out of the ‘here and the now’ timescape. There’s something incredibly special about a feature like that - it’s not exactly the kind of thing that gets listed on hotel brochures, but when you allow yourself to be seduced by it, it’s a wonderful traveling partner. The kind of think that we all probably wish we could experience more often. I certainly do…
More to come later on the same station…
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