Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Sicily 2012

Last summer I made a trip to a small town called Tre Fontane which is situated on the southern coast of Sicily. My uncle's family is from there and a big part of them lives there. My parents, my sister, my uncle and his family had already left for Sicily a week prior when a friend of my family, his son and I flew to Palermo. We left a rainy and cold Switzerland behind and arrived in sunny, hot Italy. What a nice change! Of we were to Tre Fontane. The town isn't anything special to be honest but for me it was more about the people there than the place itself. We had been to Sicily twice when I was younger but it had been almost 15 years since I had last been there.
We had a house a bit outside of the town. Nothing but olive trees surrounding it. We stayed there for another week and luckily I like my family cause let me tell you, there wasn't much space. The house was kinda small and we had three little children with us which didn't make it any easier. We spent most of our mornings and late-afternoons down by the beach in the cold water. The evenings were spent with my uncle's family. 30 people all at one table, sharing great food and talking to each other either in German or Italian. On of my uncle's aunts just kept talking to me in Italian, well actually in their local dialect which doesn't make it any easier for me to understand a single word, especially when you consider that I never had Italian in school. My knowledge of French and Spanish was luckily enough to understand some of what she was saying. And even though there was the language barrier I enjoyed these evenings. I really got a glimpse of the Italian family life. Which is noisy but ever so lovely.
Like I said we spent most of the days in Tre Fontane but one day my parents, a friend of my sister and I decided to drive to Selinunte where you can visit some ruins of what used to be a Greek city called Selinus. I loved it! I am a bit of a history geek so I really enjoyed walking around those ruins, climbing some temples and just soak in the atmosphere.







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