I’m finally revisiting the characters from The River City Chronicles nine years after their original timeline. I’ll be running the series weekly here on my blog, and then will release it in book form at the end of the run. Hope you enjoy catching up with all your faves and all their new secrets!
Today, Gio sets out to explore Italy’s foodie scene, and reunite with some old relatives…
< Read Chapter 35
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Chapter Thirty-Six
Trains & Race Car Drivers
Note: The dialogue in this chapter is in Italian, but for my English readers, most of it is being presented in English.
Evening was setting in by the time Gio reached his destination after almost twenty-four hours in transit.
He’d said goodbye to Carmelina and Daniele at Termini Station in Rome—they were off to Ostia, a seaside village just southeast of Rome. In fact, they could have gotten a cab directly there from the airport since the two were practically next door to each other. But he hadn’t had the heart to tell them after they’d already gotten their train tickets. Besides, it was nice to have the company.
He’d been to Ostia Antica, the ancient city next door, once with his mother a decade and a half earlier. The ruins there were far more interesting than Pompei, at least for a child. You could climb all over them and no one cared.
Gio’s own train to Bologna was delayed—in ritardo, or “in a state of lateness”—by about an hour. Italians were never actually late, in his experience. They were just in that state of lateness, which was surely someone else’s fault.
So he’d wolfed down a couple slices of awful tourist pizza from a pizzeria across from Termini Station, practicing his Italian with the employees. He was still pretty good, but he’d gotten lazy back home.
“Americano, eh?” the cashier had teased him.
He laughed good-naturedly. “No, Italiano. Ma vivo ancora in America.”
“You talks like American.” The man grinned as he handed over the bag, apparently proud of his own English.
“So do you.”
The man’s grin widened. “Grazie mille.”
Once his train departed, Gio managed a couple hours sleep on the ride to Bologna, missing Orvietto, Arezzo, Florence and all the assorted hill towns along the way.
Another hour should have seen him in Forlimpopoli, just a few miles from Aunt Valentina’s house in Bertinoro. Instead he’d gotten stuck in Bologna in the midst of a sciopero—a rail strike—that mysteriously lasted just seven hours.
He took a walk through the city’s centro to stretch his legs, looking for familiar sights. He’d grown up in Bologna with his mother Luna, until Diego had come to whisk him away to America when she died when he was seventeen.
Much of it was just as he’d remembered. Hey, if it worked in 1450, why would you tear it down now to build something new?
And yet, there were people and pigs everywhere.
Not actual pigs, but depictions of them. Mortadella this and mortadella that—somehow the boring Bologna meat had gone from being a local staple to a cultural icon. And the tourists—OMG all the tourists—jostling through the streets like a plague of locusts, eating everything in their path.
There was even—and this made him throw up a little in his mouth—a place selling deep-fried tortellini in a paper cone. “A local specialty.”
Gio turned away in disgust. Tourism was ruining his beloved hometown.
Now, as its brakes squealed, the train glided into the quiet, unassuming Forlimpopoli Station—a two-story rectangular building that was white on the bottom and sported bricks on top, but not in a fancy way. It wore its history in a way that was unassuming, functional, and welcome to Gio’s tired eyes.
No tourists here. He grabbed his suitcase and got off the train, stepping down into the late afternoon sunlight, touching his stomach to make sure his wallet and passport were still safely strapped there, under his shirt. He pulled out his cell phone and texted his aunt.
Just arrived at Forlimpopoli. Are you here?
“Are you Gio?”
He spun around to face a teenager—no, a young man—with dark curly hair and an easy, lopsided Italian smile. “Yes… and you are?”
“Dante. Your cousin!” The man wrapped his arms around Gio and lifted him a couple inches off the ground. “Benvenuto, cugino!”
Gio struggled to breathe after Dante finally set him down. “How did you know it was me?” he managed finally. “Where’s Zia Valentina?”
“She sent me, because she had to make dinner and you are in ritardo. And I knew it was you because you look American.”
Gio frowned. How did he look American? It was the second time he’d been accused of Americanness since he’d arrived. Everyone dressed pretty much the same these days. And I am Italian, dammit. “What’s she making?”
“Your babbo’s favorite. Passatelli.”
“Oooh.” Gio’s mouth watered.
Dante put his arm around Gio’s shoulder. “Come on, cugino. The car’s over here.” They walked away from the tracks, and Gio looked around at the town that surrounded the station. This part of Forlimpopoli didn’t have much Italian charm, being mostly new recent residential construction. Which in Italy meant it was only a couple hundred years old instead of five-hundred or a thousand.
He was a couple months too early for the Festa Artusiana—the famous local food festival would have been perfect for his research.
Dante guided him to a mint-green Fiat, parked half a block down the street. “Just throw your stuff in the back.”
He tossed his bag into the tiny back seat. “Nice car. Yours?” Gio settled into the passenger side.
“Magari. It’s the family car. Mamma finally upgraded a couple years back when the old one died.” He grinned. “Hold on!” He peeled out onto the street and spun around the circle in front of the train station like a race car driver, sending them shooting up Via Roma.
Gio held on for dear life.
“Nice, huh? She has a lot of vroom for a little car.”
“Yeah. Just… great.” He closed his eyes, only opening them when the car slowed down as they entered Forlimpopoli’s historic center. They zipped past an imposing brick edifice with wide arches and squat towers, looking more like a fortress than a— “What’s that?”
“City hall.” Dante gunned the engine and the car dodged through the central plaza, lined with two- and three-story brick buildings and several towers.
Bet they have amazing views.
Soon they were out of town, heading east up into the hills on Via Dante Aleghieri. Gio wondered if his cousin was named for the famous Italian writer. “Did you want to be a race car driver when you grow up?”
“What?” The little engine was doing its best to roar, but even its feeble growls were enough to make conversation difficult.
“Never mind.” They passed through a tiny village named Ospedaletto—little hospital?—and then veered south.
The awful pizza he’d wolfed down in Rome threatened to make a reappearance, but thankfully they soon turned off onto a smaller road called Via Badia and Dante slowed way down.
His cousin displayed those white teeth again. “Just like Foyt, huh?”
Gio frowned. “What?”
“A.J. Foyt. Famous American race car driver. What, are you American or not?” Dante frowned.
The last time he’d seen Dante, the boy had been stumbling around in the grass outside Gio’s mother’s funeral. Now he was this man beast. Gio didn’t have the heart to tell him that sports were not a big thing in the Bianco-Bellei household, his own love of soccer notwithstanding. “Yeah. Just like him.”
Dante laughed and nodded. “Forza!” He pulled the compact Fiat into a spot along the street, between a dark gray Maserati and a silver Alfa Romeo. “We’re here!”
Gio stared at the semi-familiar street. He’d spent the better part of a week there, after his mother had died. With my Dad. Sometimes he missed his mother so much it felt like his ribs were squeezing all the breath out of him.
He’d stay with Zia Valentina couple nights, and then set out on his grand adventure. Starting with a visit to Luna’s grave.
He slipped out of the car, grabbed his bag, and took in a lungful of the fresh Italian countryside air. Then he followed Dante up the street to the golden glow coming from the windows of Valentina’s flat, drawn by the smell of good, simple Italian cooking.
It’s good to be home.
Thanks to Ilaria Maria Sala and her article on Bologna in the NY Times for the assist in descriptions of the Italian city for this chapter:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/09/opinion/italy-tourists-bologna-mortadella.html
< Read Chapter 35
Like what you read? if you haven’t tried it yet, check out book one, The River City Chronicles, here.