Jack & Jo's European Adventure: Sitizano, or bust

Our soul purpose for visiting the Calabria Region, was for Jo to visit the little mountain village her father and his siblings were born and bred in, Sitizano, about 3 kilometers from the village of Cosoleto and around 45 kilometers from our accommodation at Scilla. To get to Sitizano we were to hire a car to cover the journey, little did I know at the time of planning this, that Italians drive on the wrong side of the road, this was going to be an experience.

Hiring a car in Scilla turned out to be an impossibility, we did not have any better luck in Villa San Giovanni, nor Reggio Calabria, so we booked a car from the Calabria airport, which looked reasonably close on the map, we first took a train to get there, found out along the way the train did not go that far, so we would need to take a bus to complete the 2 hour journey.

Having signed the rental contract and been informed the car was brand new, only doing it's fifth journey, we climbed in and made the necessary adjustments, pulled out and narrowly missed side swiping an Audi 5, Jo not impressed.

We stopped aound the corner, reset the GPS so it read in English, with an Irish guy "Sean" telling us where to go, does it get any better?

Then we hit the freeway with very long tunnels and major road works for mile after mile, Jo started yelling "TOO CLOSE, TOO CLOSE" as I ran a bit wide to her side, over a safety barrier and whacked a few guide thingy's along the way. The little Fiat on it's fifth outing gained a few red marks down the side and on the front bumper, I would loose two nights sleep over this, spend half a day driving around Calabria trying to find car polish, ever tried explaining to an Italian what you wanted when you need car polish, impossible. Finally found out they call it "machina brilliant" didn't help, still could not find it anywhere, two days later when we returned the car, the guy asked "Did you full it up", "Yes" I said, ""Sign here" he said and that was it, loss of 2 nights sleep for that!

The day out to Sitezano though was truly one of the highlights of our trip, the family were so excited for us coming to visit, when we were in Praiano Jo had the help of a lovely Italian lady Rossana to make the phone call to work out where we would meet et cetera, we expected it to take 10 to 15 minutes, wrong, three hours of to-ing and throwing we had a plan where and when to meet, Rossana was thrilled to bits and said she would phone the family after we had been, just to check how everything went, she did not charge for the calls or her time, she was just happy Jo had asked for her helpa.

We met in Costello in a little piazza, we were waiting in the street taking photos when a little car pulled up with three people in it, the driver, a young guy, wound down the window and called out "Australeeeee_a", to announce the family where here!

We were led back down the road and into Sitizano, shown where to park and as we walked back toward the house the family started coming to greet us, then the neighbours and I think a few from a few villages over, we had no chance of remembering names. We were quickly given beers to drink, asked if we were hungry, we said "No", with that one of the cousins took off to another house and came back half an hour later with a big bowl of pasta and some tomato salata and bread of course. We were sat at the table and had plates full of food passed to us, the cousin disappeared and came back a little later with a huge plate of crumbed chicken, have I mentioned yet the food was to die for? Then we must have looked thirsty because Antonio's home made wine came out, it was bloody good too. There was no end to the food coming out, olives, cheese, breads, salami's, fruit, it went on and on, still they seemed disappointed we were not eating enough!

After lunch we went out on the porch to see a beautiful view of a valley lined with olive trees as far as we could see, there were hills or mountains in the distance and the most refreshing breeze, it was lovely. We took photos of the family together and a computer was brought out so we could see things on Facebook, they were impressed with the photos in my Dinner with Jack album, the only one I could bring up.

Later we were asked to take a walk around town, so Jo could see where her Dad had lived and played, it started out OK, mainly down hill visiting various points along the way, the family's church, some special piazza's, the local watering hole, in some guys shed, family friends that once inside their homes wanted to feed and water us some more, they were very sad when we resisted temptation. On returning to the family home we found the street to have been transformed into a party place, there were people everywhere to see us off, many begged us to stay to have dinner and to sleep the night, they we so welcoming and so happy to have us in their home and their village, which they are so proud of, it was a wonderful experience.