At the age of 89, Oma was probably healthier than me, but it was deffinately her last trip to Europe. Though, last year she went to Peru and climbed up Machu Picchu, crediting her Alpine mountain heritage.
Oma and I had many adventures and misadventures that trip, which amuse my friends for days when I share the stories. There are quite a few after traveling for almost two months through Italy and Germany with an 89 year old, nearly deaf, stubborn Oma without an itinerary.
After spending a week in Oma's birthplace: Meran, Italy, Oma and I travelled to the tiny Alpine village of Teisten, where her family moved when she was very young. I was excited to see the house her father had built and the castle on the next hill which I had heard so much about from Oma. I stepped out of the taxi in the driveway of Oma's house where her only two remaining spinster sisters live. Pia, now 80 and Miranda, now 79 have lived in that house their entire lives. They have never left Südtirol and only Pia has ever had a job, she is the bread winner. Miranda does the cooking,cleaning, gardening and wood chopping.
When I stepped out I was greeted heartily by both of Oma's sisters and a wall of chatter I could not understand. This was the first time I had expirienced this. In Meran I understood everything, my four years of high school German sprang back to life in an instant. This, whatever, they were speaking puzzeled me. I asked the cab driver if they were speaking German and he erupted with laughter. He explained that they were speaking in dialect. We stayed in Teisten for almost a month so I became very acustomed to their dialect but in that first hour I didn't understand a word.
Oma stood and chatted with her sisters while I looked around not able to understand what was being said. Eager to see the castle behind the house, I started marching to the back. Pia quickly came running after me and stopped me. She spoke very dramitcaly about a giant mountain Eagle, spreading her arms wide. Oma had told me at least a dozen times at that point about how giant, black mountain eales used to eat their chickens. Pia didn't want me to go back there because the eagle had already eaten several village children and she was afraid it might take me too. Immeadiately, I thought of an old Popeye cartoon I watched as a kid: "Popeye meets Sinbad the Sailor." Sinbad(Bluto) had a giant bird that he used to do his ill biding.
I stood there in disbelief with an eyebrow cocked trying to formulate the words in German for "I'm not scared of a giant eagle. I can fight it off." Luckily, before I opened my mouth and made a fool out of myself, Oma was at my side listening to Pia. I looked down at Oma as if to say "is she for real?!" and Oma said to me "isn't that great! they have a....a..... (she stumbled for the english word) peacock.
A PEACOCK?! I thought to myself... how the hell do two old ladies who hardly leave their tiny village have a pet peacock?!
Seeing that I didn't understand, Oma translated the story: they claim that it just showed up in the woods on the backside of their house as a young pult. They named it Hansi and hand raised it, but it is very shy because they think several village kids had tortured it. They didn't want me to go to the back of the house because I might scare it away and it might never come back. BOY, was I wrong!
I did go all around the house and climbed all over those hills and I never did get a good look at Hansi. Just a quick snap shot of him running away when he saw me. But the day that Oma and I hiked up the hills surronding Teisten, we heard his screach like caw ringing through the valley.
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