Anghiari si racconta

I was born in Germany in 1966, in Werne, Westfalia, and I grew up and went to school, in Hagen, near Dortmunt, Westfalia. I went to an artistic lyceum.

It was really by chance that I came to Anghiari. When I was 17, my two best girlfriends and I decided to go on holiday in Tuscany. My friend had found an ad in a magazine on Anghiari – a German guy was renting rooms and camping spots, and we booked. And he said: ‘But you must have a car’. One of us had a Deux Chevaux and our parents said: ‘No, it is not possible to go on such a long trip with a Deux Chevaux, you will never get there…’. And we went on this trip, and arrived up at La Scheggia after 24 hours, a terribly long trip. One of my friends and I both said: ‘We’ll have a rest and then leave, there is nothing here!’, but my other friend said: ‘Oh my god, how beautiful!’

And so we arrived in Anghiari. We travelled around the area, we came back; we went to the seaside, then we came back to Anghiari, because it was much better here than at the beach. It was Ferragosto (the midsummer holiday), a nightmare! We came back here and we really liked it … Piero della Francesca, the places, the food, the people, the hospitality. … we made friends. We were three young German girls on holiday, and here in the ’8os, there were no tourists, and everybody said: ‘Wow, the three German girls!’. They were all very kind, they invited us for dinner, everybody, it really was an unusual sight. And we spoke very little Italian – buongiorno, fame, come va, grazie, prego, these things, basic Italian.

And we came back the following year, and then I met Gianni…. At first I didn’t like him, and then we went on holiday together, by chance, with other friends – we went to Sardinia, and there our story began, in ’85. So, we met here and then in Sardinia I got to know him better. I was enrolled at university, and I said: ‘The end of summer, the end of love’, and he said: ‘Ah, if you think like that, it is the end.’ ‘How is it possible, I am in Germany, you are in Italy?’. He came to visit me, a number of times, and then I said to my mother: ‘Mum, I will give it a try for a year, let’s see’. It was 1986, it became a really long year.

My mother wasn’t happy at first. You see, I am the youngest of three, I was born 10 years after my sister, I am the baby of the family, and she said: ‘So far, never’. Two weeks later, she came. For the first time she took a train alone, she had never been abroad, she came to see how I was, where I lived. She went back home crying, because I was so far away. We began with a small house in the historical centre. I don’t know if you have ever seen inside of one of these houses – in ’86, there was no central heating in the old houses, there was a wooden stove, dark, I didn’t have a washing machine … it was fantastic, for us it was our love nest. For my mum… she went back home and said: ‘My god, it is worse than 50 years ago’, but the only thing she asked me was: ‘Are you happy?’ And then she was relaxed about it.

At the beginning we worked with Gianni’s family, in a bar in the main piazza. For a year and a half we worked there, and then the two of us decided to do something together and we took over La Pineta which we had for three years, and then this restaurant came up for sale. It was on the 1st of January ’91 that we opened it.

Previously, it had belonged to Alighiero. When we bought it we felt bad about removing the name – he had been here for 30 years (and the walls were still owned by him), so we left it as Alighiero. Every month he came here to pick up the money – it was his pension – he came and said: ‘Beautiful, you have done a good job’, because we had changed it…he was very happy. But, he never came for dinner. We invited him, but…old fashioned mentality, they don’t go out a lot. He died last year, aged 85.

At the beginning, people said: ‘A German lady in the kitchen, no, it is not possible!’. Then, with my tenacity, I said: ‘Now I will show you!’. I have always loved cooking, it has always been my passion … at home, with my mum – mum made everything, jam, cakes, bread, biscuits, and it was always a joy to be in the kitchen with her. The change in cuisine wasn’t difficult because the ingredients are excellent here and when you have good ingredients …. So, slowly: ‘But she makes her own pasta, and it is good…’. They had preconceptions, but they changed their minds. Then we had so many compliments, from guides, and people who left comments: ‘Look, they are good, they work hard’, because we always tried to do things a little bit differently.

And they appreciated it, and they came! And now we have some families who always come for birthdays, for Easter… special occasions. Because, do you know what? When people go out to eat, they go to another town. So, people from Sansepolcro come here, I have many people who come from Ravenna, Città di Castello, Arezzo, while from Anghiari, they go to Sansepolcro, Arezzo. And many who come here are foreigners who have a house here.

There are really many foreigners who live in Anghiari now or who have a house here and come on holiday. They are not that type of tourist who travels on organized trips; it is a tourist like you – people who are interested in the culture, who like to get to know people …

The roots are so deep here – there is no risk of tourism changing this. And the foreigners are all trying to fit into the Italian way of life, so they don’t want to be foreigners, they want to learn Italian, they want to learn how to make pasta. I do cooking classes, in the summer, teaching Italian food … People who come here are very different from, for example, those who go to San Gimignano or Rimini. (In English in interview.)

People who come here stay for a while… it is slow tourism, just like slow food. And because there aren’t a lot of tourist sites, you can sit on a bench in the piazza, chat with an old guy who goes past. And there aren’t many shops, unlike in Arezzo where you can go shopping, so, you eat an ice cream and enjoy the atmosphere.

Quiet people, they come here, they take life…perhaps they are looking for a place where they can go slowly, without much traffic – there are three traffic lights here. If you go to Florence, Rome, people are in a rush all the time. And if you come to a village like this, even if you take the car and go to, say, Monterchi, it is a nice drive – there are places you can enjoy, long walks… I have walked from here to La Verna.

It can get busy in summer, for example, when the London Sinfonia are here – they’ve been coming for 15 years, and they give concerts in the small piazzas, and for a week there are lots of people, but I like that kind of crowd.

There have been changes since the ’80s – globalisation has arrived here too! In the past, all grandparents had a piece of land with salad, vegetables, and on Sundays the family ate roast chicken, grandma’s turkey. All very genuine, and then in the early ’90s the first supermarket opened in Sansepolcro, and now people buy ready-made meals. Before, you had to go to the butcher to get the meat, to the fruit seller to get the fruit, to the grocer to get bread, and you needed time to go shopping. And the butcher would ask: ‘How is your father-in-law? How is our sister-in-law?…’. All with a very slow rhythm. Now, people are in a hurry. And kids eat fast food, chips, supermarket sweets; before they ate a slice of bread with oil and tomato. But, perhaps for a little while Anghiari will remain different. There is a lot of agriculture here, people live on it, and they have to go with the climate, the changing seasons, and so there are still rhythms that one must follow….

What I particularly like in Anghiari is the charm of the old, which is still present in daily life even today. Here you have the sensation of being in a fairy tale, old, ancient things, like this restaurant, they have … stones speak, there is history everywhere, stones speak. And look, this arch here outside, once there was a big gate, now you can drive through, it is narrow… old things still give you a lovely feeling of past times …. I don’t know how to explain it … you are living in history. In Germany, in my city everything was bombed, so if you have an old tower, it is like, uh! this is an old tower, whereas here it is all old …

I was born in Germany and I feel German. I remember once, I hadn’t been home for three years, and when I saw the name of my town, I said: ‘home’. But then, where you feel bene, where you have your beloved, it is home, and now my family is here, my home is here. When I’m going to Germany I always say: ‘I’m going home’, and then when I am home, I say to my mum: ‘I’m going home’. I have two homes.

You want to go far away and you want to be close; now, luckily there are these planes that take you closer and closer. I go to Germany once a month now to see my mum (my father has died). So, on Tuesday, I’m going, for three days – we are closed on Tuesday, and I come back on Saturday morning. I can do it this way because I take the plane from Perugia at 8 in the morning and at 3 in the afternoon I am home, easy. It’s 20€ return!

I grew up in a city, I am used to… I want to do a macramé course, and in a city you could find it, but if I had to choose, I would stay in a village. Here, I open the door, I go for long walks, I bike, I run… . It is a special place, because we have the plain, the mountains, the rivers, we are close to the lakes, the seaside is an hour and a half away, it is in the middle of everything, and then there’s the art. And I believe, at the end of the day, we all know that this lifestyle is better for our spiritual sense… . I think it is for this that people come here, because they realize that it is good for them. Take a big breath and relax…. Why should you be in a rush here?

We always have holidays in winter, in February, because there isn’t much work then, for three weeks. There was a time when we travelled a lot, far away – Thailand, Cuba Jamaica, America, but now we are getting old…

It is a great joy to stay home, in front of the fire, to really live in our house, because I live in the restaurant. At home the fridge is always empty, because I eat here, so, for me, a holiday is to stay home, to enjoy my kitchen, and garden, even in winter. It is an old house, here in Anghiari, that we have redone – a big job. Here is where we live (drawing a map), here I have a wood oven that works perfectly, and these plants here, the garden, the lavender, were planted by my mother.

I often used to visit a friend at her parents’ home, and from there I could see an old abandoned house with these two gorgeous trees. I thought: ‘Whose house is that? I can’t understand why nobody is living in it’, I fell in love with it. Then one day Gianni came and said: ‘You know what? I bought a house’, and it was it!

We’ve lived in this house since 2008. In the very beginning we lived here in the historical centre, then on the steep road, and then we lived for 20 years close to Castello di Sorci, out in the country…. So, this house is quite recent, but I feel like I have been here for ever, planting, digging. I took historical roses from where I lived before, old pink roses, I took some roots and planted them and I have five huge bushes of these fantastic smelling flowers. I do rose jelly with the petals, and I will give you a jar; there are two left from last year, and you will have one.

We do live here, in the restaurant – it is not our job, we really do live here. Most of the day I am here, not at home, this is definitely home. And people who come in, of course they are customers and I make money from them, but, I hope, and many people do tell me so, I hope that they feel at home. They shouldn’t feel as if they are in a restaurant, they should feel at home, comfortable. Our aim is to see people coming back, it is the biggest compliment for us. It is so nice, people say: ‘We took the vegetable terrine’, two years ago!

Our aim is really to share our passion – for example, nobody tells me to pick rose petals, make jelly out of them … I do it for love, just as my mother did. And it costs so little to give you a cookie, a glass of wine …. That is what we are really looking for, to make people happy.