During our travels of the ancient hill towns of Tuscany we today arrived in the village of San Pancreazi, or something like that. I’m pretty sure that’s Italian for San Pancreas, so I’m going with that. I knew something was different about this town when upon parking near the church, Dale got out of the car and an old woman wandered by muttering something about Americanos under her breath. I guess she saw he was wearing socks and put two and two together. She joined a group of her peers all of whom appeared to be around 110 years old. They talked loudly in an ancient Italian that sounded more Etruscan than the Italians in our village.

Anyway, Dale finally returned to the car after snapping photos of most of the village…about 3 shots. We told him about our warm welcome and turned down the road, but Dale spotted our new friends and wanted to stop for one last picture, so I stopped in the road. Suddenly he came running back to the car singing his oft repeated song; “Lets get the heck outta here!” Being used.to this by now, I waited until we had gained a little speed. Who knew a BMW can do 130kph in second? Did you know they can get back down to 10 for a hairpin turn in seven feet? Anyway, once he peeled his face off the windshield we asked what happened? Dale swears all he did was to take a photo of our new little group of friends, whereupon the old folks all jumped to their feet and started yelling and waving their arms.

Apparently as it often does in times of stress (see Scofflaw of Bologna) Dales command of second disc Rosetta Stone Italian left him, and he was unable to directly interpret the epithets hurled by the locals, but the body language was pretty clear. Thankfully none of the rocks hit the Beemer. Having now finished The Monster of Florence, a book in part about Amanda Knox’s insane prosecutor, I know that some of these hill folk are pretty superstitious, and think Dale was capturing their souls along with their images. I suggested we go back and explain that the Thief of Venezia was more interested in plastic bags than souls, but as usual the group shot me down like a one engined B17 over Dusseldorf.

Tuscany is a beautiful part of ITALY, and there is a new adventure in every village!