Lost in Tuscany

It sounded simple. We’d hire a car in Florence and drive to the Tuscan countryside just a couple of hours away. Easy. We’d rent a satellite navigation system along with the car. With a cool-voiced computer to direct us around every corner we wouldn’t need the archaic technology of a map.

Life can be complicated in Italy. The two hour wait at the rental car place in Florence wasn’t exactly arduous. Everything here’s transformed to operetta. We sat back and listened while motorists shared details of their travel plans with highly emotional and talkative hire car people.

When we finally climbed into our hire car, he told me the news with so little emotion, I thought I’d misheard.

“What did you say?” I asked.

“They’ve run out of sat navs,” he said.”We’ll have to use a map.”

A MAP??!!

“How can they run out of sat navs?” I asked. It was one of those pointless questions people ask all the time in Italy.

I unfolded the map on my lap. The size of a tablecloth, it featured the entire designer boot of Italy. Florence was a  squiggle, Tuscany an afterthought of meandering lines.

There was no choice but to get on the motorway and hope for the best. The motorway is a hot blooded racetrack on which drivers relive fantasies of winning the Grand Prix. Trucks and buses consider themselves legitimate competitors. If you’re not two inches away from the car in front of you, you’re not playing the game.

“Was that the turnoff?” I gasped after 90 minutes or so (I was in a perpetual state of  gasping by now).

He didn’t think so. Deeper and deeper into Italy’s boot we delved. At this rate we’d be in Rome, possibly even Sicily before dark.

“I think we missed the turnoff,” he said 30 minutes later.

There was no choice but to stay calm and ramble over the hills and valleys of Tuscany (or what we hoped was Tuscany) and hope for the best. We stopped in an industrial wasteland, peered at the map and contemplated divorce.

“We should’ve bought a sat nav in London,” I said helpfully.

On we charged, past castles and  villages, fields of sunflowers blackened and bowed, waiting to be harvested.

“Let’s go there and ask directions,” I said, pointing at a medieval village on top of a hill.

We wound our way up narrow streets and parked the car. It wasn’t a touristy place done up for the cliched ideas of what foreigners think an Italian town should be. Most of the shops were closed or empty. A face stared down from a window and eyed us with suspicion.

We trudged up the slope to a simple cafe. A man with an oval face and kind eyes seemed exasperated when we spoke to him in English. He knew the place we were heading for, but “eess not ‘ere!” he said, thumping his fist on the counter.
Weary, we ordered cappuccinos and pastries and waited for the day to resolve itself. If we had to sleep in the car it would hardly be a tragedy.

The cafe owner called his wife from out the back and they engaged in a conversation that involved much gesticulating. They called a man, an English speaker, from down the street.

“They know the place you want to go,”the old man translated. “They live not far from there. They will take you if you get in your car and follow them.”

We watched, almost speechless with disbelief, as the couple collected their daughter from the back of the cafe, loaded their bags into their car and shut up shop. Smiling, they beckoned us to follow them.

As our cars inched nearly 10 kilometres in convoy through lanes, past churches and over narrow bridges we were watery eyed with gratitude to those huge hearted people. There’s no way we’d have found the B&B on our own.

Italy’s full of surprises. Sometimes when you have no choice and hope for the best it happens.

PS Andrea, Marta and Stefano of Bar Maro, Castiglion Fiorentino – if you ever read this. Thank you again. Your kindness is like sunshine.