The majority of the American women here in Vicenza have relocated due to their husband's career. Our husbands all have the same schedule so when one leaves for training, all leave for training. It makes for an interesting environment. During the month of March, our husbands were in Germany and we had limited contact with them. The best (and only way in my opinion) to deal with this is to fill up the time with as many fun and interesting activities as possible. And for those that know me, I'm the queen of planning activities. In the past this has resulted in double bookings, if not triple bookings!
Since the country of Italy is new for all of us the sky is the limit on what we can choose to do on any given weekend. The first stop for us was a wine tasting at a winery called Villa Sceriman in the Veneto region. Veneto is one of the foremost wine producing regions in Italy, both for quality and quantity. In 1885, Veneto created the very first Italian school for vine growing. The province of Padova is where we were headed this day. There were 8 ladies venturing out on this beautiful, sunny afternoon for the 40 minute drive to the winery. Some of us were brand new to Italy and only knew 1 person within the group and others had been in the country for 6 months. It's always a gamble throwing people unknown to each other into a group but I tend to go with "the more the merrier" philosophy.
The drive to Villa Sceriman would normally be uneventful, or so one would think. However, springtime in Italy brought about a new activity that we hadn't yet been exposed to. Group cyclists. I'm not talking about a group of 10-15 cyclists biking single-file down a well-traveled road as I'm accustomed to in Minnesota. I'm talking about 50 cyclists taking up the entire lane and plus some of the other lane. I really had no idea what to do with this situation. The roads curve, there are on-coming cars, there are towns ahead. The cyclists do not like it when you DON'T pass them and get off their tail. I was being motioned to pass. One cyclist came up beside my car and pounded on the side of it. I finally pulled the trigger and passed since I really didn't feel like I had a choice. I figured that surely any on-coming car would see the situation for what it was and wait for me to pass. I assumed incorrectly. Just as I was about to get around all 50 cyclists, a car approached and chose not to slow down. The driver honked at me and flashed it's lights and I narrowly missed the oncoming car and the cyclists to my right. I was literally shaking after this episode and prayed during the rest of the trip that we wouldn't encounter anymore cyclists. Thankfully, God answered my prayer and we arrived at the winery without anymore incidents. Whew!
The winery was founded in 1740 by the Sceriman family which is of Armenian decent, but lived in Venice at the time. They grow 25 acres of wine. They produce 250,000 bottles of red, white and prosecco annually. 60% of their wine is exported while the rest is sold internally. Along with a generous sampling of wine, we also tried some local Asiago cheese, prosciutto and salami. Delicious! I think we would've made our husbands proud had they seen the cart-fuls of bottles we brought out of that place. Proud.....or scared!
The best part of the day was that all of the girls got to know one another better and some met for the first time. Everyone enjoyed themselves so much that we all went to dinner after our tasting to La Vecchia Fattoria in Torri di Quartesolo, a suburb of Vicenza. We enjoyed some great food, more wine and fun conversation. There's nothing like moving across the ocean, leaving jobs, friends and family AND having our husbands away to bond a group of women. The more I experience here the more I realize that this life I'm living is not just about Italy. It's also about relationships, independence, adversity, perseverance and finding one's inner strength. All good things!
On an unrelated note, I have worked with a non-profit organization called Surge for Water in the past. The organization was started in Minneapolis by two women that lived in my condo building. Surge's mission is to provide innovative and sustainable solutions to bring clean and safe water to under developed countries that don't have access to this fundamental need. What makes this organization stand out to me is that 100% of all donations will go towards the water project. That is the commitment they have made to their donors. During the time that I was out with the ladies at the winery, Surge was gearing up for Youth Summit in Chicago and a "Get Surged" campaign was a part of this. All of us "Surgers" were taking pictures of friends, strangers, our families and pets with a Surge business card. So while we were out at the winery I took advantage of the situation and took some "Get Surged" photos.
