Sunday, 30 Oct 2016, Famiglia Friolo Davide

We have been home teaching the Friolo family for about the past six months. Davide is a counselor in the bishopric. They have three children, a daughter, Allison, going on a mission, a 10 year old son, Michael, and an 8 year old, Ashley (she asked me to sing a special number for her recent baptism). Davide is a native Italian, from down south, and she is from Equador. They speak both Spanish and Italian at home. Her parents have been living with them for several years.  Davide is an air conditioning technician, who works for the high priest group leader (Giuseppe Angiulli), who used to be the bishop.  Davide installed the new air conditioner in our apartment this summer. We go to their apartment, in San Giuliano Milanese, monthly and invited them to our apartment for dinner, having had a great time together.  (I have previously written about them and their ambitious plans.)  Their plans have been that as soon as their daughter gets her mission call they are moving to Los Angeles, California. They wanted to get the two younger kids in school (a little late now.)  The mission call finally came on Thursday, but Allison waited to open the envelope until after the block of church meetings today. The entire ward stayed, actually some young adults from other wards came too.
 
Allison stood at the pulpit, opened the call and read it out loud for the first time. It was, as you can imagine, an emotional experience, but she wanted to share this with the entire ward.  She was called to the France Lyon Mission.  She will report to the MTC in Spain, mid January, leaving from LA, (maybe they will change it to the Provo MTC) before going to France.

Everyone congratulated and had their pictures taken with Allison, including us. Anyway, the entire family, including her, are moving to Los Angeles, California, next Monday. There is a ward going-away party for the family on Friday evening.  Her mother's parents are moving back to Equador tomorrow (interesting, they are active and endowed) and her father's parents came to church today from Bari, in southern Italy, (they are not members) but will travel with them to the temple in Switzerland, where she will receive her endowment on Thursday. The entire family bore their testimonies in church today. This is a significant time in the life of this faithful Italian pioneer family. I couldn't help but think a little bit about how it may have been in the late 1800s when European pioneers migrated to Zion, saying adeù to the "old country" for ever.

(I am also a little anxious for little Michael, who is so sweet, for a 10 year old boy.  They will be attending a Spanish speaking ward in Los Angeles and he will probably be lumped in with the Mexican kids at school. I hope he doesn't get in with bad kids/gangs. I can even hear them teasing him about his Italian name, which sounds like "bean" in Spanish, and his Italian accent, yet fluent Spanish.  I just hope he learns English fast and well.)

This week we also celebrated a couple of birthdays for office anziani.
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For last Sunday (made on Sat.) Myrna made Cafe Riò sweet pork, etc., for Anziano Alexis Barragon, from West Valley (close to Kristin), and on Friday she made it again (at his request) for Anziano Noah Anderson, who is from Washington state. Both turned 20 this week.  Above is a pix of Anziano Anderson (right) with the cake Myrna made, with his comp. Anziano Scoggin (left).  One of our previous office missionaries, now a zone leader in Como, along with a missionary in his zone, apparently ate poorly cooked chicken and got a good case of nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. Myrna has been nursing them, over the phone, for the past few days, including, as I type this. Myrna just said "bananas are a good choice..."

 Yes, they are.  Have a banana!

Ciao for now
      

29 Oct 2016,  Villa Reale di Monza

Today, our P-day, we decided to give the Royal Villa in Monza another try.  We went during the summer, but they were having a rock concert and the entire city was jammed with people, we learned after we went to Bergamo instead.  This time, we got there within 35 minutes of leaving Opera, so this place isn't really very far; it is northeast of Milano.  A few weeks ago we went to Torino, when Jan, Ginger and Brian were here, and saw the royal palace there, but we had known there was this one closer.  So we had two to compare.  In some ways the one in Monza is better, but they are both very impressive.  Also, both were "trashed" after the royal family (Savoy) left, and both are still in the process of ongoing restoration, actually within the last 30 or so years. So neither of these would have been available for me to see on my first mission to Italy.

There is a long, broad avenue leading to the palace in Monza, which is actually within a very large city park.  This is what the palace looks like from the distance, as you are approaching it.  It was a palace of the Savoy family, who were related to the Hapsburgs, from Austria, who actually visited this palace many times and had a lot of influence on it.

This is the left side of the palace, as we approached it, walking.  The right side is a mirror duplicate.  You can see that it basically has three stories.  We toured the second and third today, and want to go back to tour the first floor another day.

Another view of the side wing.  See the "clock" above, actually it is a sundial, and it was accurate according to the "normal" clock on the other wing, which was in the same location on that wing.

Close up, with telephoto, of the sundial, showing it was about 10:30 am when we got there.

We bought our tickets, €10 each for persons over 65, and headed up the staircase.  It was a very impressive entrance, all in white marble. (No elevator when this place was built, but now there is one, for the handicapped.)

Looking down the staircase to the first floor (I am sure there is a basement, where the servants lived)  They said this palace had over 700 rooms in all the wings.

Looking out the window on the second floor toward the entrance.

On this wing of the palace, we went from room to room, which were not furnished with period furniture, etc, although at least, the floors and walls have been restored.  They were having a display of fairly modern photography, from someone I had never head of (probably famous), Cartier-Bresson.  All were black and white prints taken in the early 1900s, ending about the time I was born.  I wasn't very impressed with the prints, although they were interesting, but I was super impressed with the quality of the restoration of the rooms in this wing. (Fred, who restores old buildings, would certainly be impressed.)

Door leading to another room.

This room was a powder room for visitors, including a bath tub behind one of the paneled walls.

This palace was plumbed with hot and cold water during the 1700s.  This is the throne, but not for King Umberto.  His was in his private powder room.

Details of the walls and ceilings have mostly (a few haven't) all been painstakenly restored.

As were the inlaid hardwood floors.  We saw videos of how they restored the floors and walls, one piece at a time.

We saw room after room, all with lots of photographs The explanations were in Italian and English.

This photograph is of processing Jews for the concentration camp.

Nearly all of the rooms had fireplaces.

The picture of a king (don't know who) above this door has obviously not been restored, as it is cracked and not very bright. Perhaps they will restore it in the future.

In one room they had videos from the Second World War, including this one of medics treating a wounded soldier.  I thought of my Dad when I saw this, as this is what he did in Italy during the war.

Some of the rooms had paintings on the walls, which have probably not been restored, given they are pretty dark.

These look like the same picture as above, but weren't.  The rooms were decorated symetrically, with similar decorations on each side,  however, the fireplace is under this one, but not the other.

Another room with red silk on the walls. I don't know if this was original silk or replacement, but it was done with the "logo" of the royal family, which was repeated elsewhere within the palace.

The eagle with a crown on its head.

Detail in the floor, including the crown above a U, which is for Umberto.

Another room with yellow walls.

Detail of painting on ceiling. This has been restored.

Same room showing walls and doors to another room.

Next room was darker.  Every room has windows to the outside, but most of them were shuttered, so there wasn't much natural light. I suppose they don't want the sun to bleach out the colors.

Showing the windows, which overlook the large grass field behind the palace.

All of the restored wooden floors were amazing, and they even let us walk on them.

Middle of the ceiling, another painting of a classical scene.  There were no religious scenes on this floor of the palace, all were secular, many dealing with romance or Roman gods, etc.

This room was on the end of the wing of the palace, and the door to the left led to the hallway.

A window was open and we could look outside.

Restored ceiling of that room.

Hallway down the middle of the wing, also restored.

Another room had a 37 minute video (in Italian) to watch about the grounds and some of the history of the palace, including the restoration.

It was about at this point we realized that we had seen this wing without the special eyeglasses and headsets that came with the price of the tour.  We saw some people wearing them but thought you paid extra and didn't realize they had narration also in English.  When you put the glasses on, they showed pictures, in the glasses, of before and after restoration, and also of the people, from old paintings, and events that happened there in that very room.  It told you when to go from one room to another and what to look it.  It made it a lot more interesting, so we went through this wing of the palace (not the one with the photographic exhibition), again and we learned a lot more. Pretty high tech, I thought.

The end of the hallway, where the staircase was, showing one of the large fairly modern light fixtures. They put electricity in this palace in the late 1800s, it was quite advanced for its time.

The special eye glasses told us to watch for the FERT, which we hadn't noticed before, which was some kind of secret code that King Umberto liked to put on everything.

More large FERT lights, these things were at least 6 feet high and each had a crown at the top.

Looking out the "French" doors which could be opened to a balcony, where the king could go and address his subjects, who would stand in the courtyard below.

Then, our ticket took us to the third floor, which looked somewhat unfinished (from restoration), and had a fairly large display of fairly modern (from the 1900s) objects.

An un-restored door frame on the third floor.

This leather couch in the shape of a baseball glove, from about the 1980s.  The date on the floor was made with light from above.

An interesting couch in red.  Maybe Marilyn Monroe, or an Italian counterpart (like Sofia Loren, who was actually a grand daughter of Benito Mussolini--Google it if you don't believe me) lounged on it.

A modernistic lamp, although certainly not a menorah.

A salt and pepper, oil and vinegar set. Only Italians would appreciate the oil and vinegar.  Again, I have never had any kind of creamy "white" salad dressing in Italy, only oil and vinegar.

Spookforks, or are they sporks?

So we went out to see the royal rose garden.  At the end of October there were actually still a few, but not many, roses in bloom.

These are a few pink roses, but lots of rose hips. I guess it is just the variety, but I have never seen so many rose hips. One could pick them for tea, which I am sure they already thought of, because Italians drink rose hip tea.

Another view from the rose garden.

A red yellow, looked orange, rose.  You can also see they they have been pruned for winter, but they left a few flowers, I guess for the tourists and bees.

Flowers other than roses, with bees on them.

This was an ad for another exhibit.  She is one of the Hapsburgs, from Austria, who lived in this palace when she wasn't hanging out out in Austria, which isn't very far north east.

The back of the palace, showing a restaurant, which must be quite nice in the warm summer time.  There were two Italian waiters out smoking today (too many Italians still smoke), the restaurant inside will be open later today.

Turn around from where the waiters are smoking and you see this lawn that goes on for a long way behind the palace.  Italians aren't too much into well mowed lawns, so this is probably a marvel to many.

It was a fairly long walk down the side of the palace toward the parking lot, which was beautiful, for a parking lot, where we parked our car (€5 for three hours).  The trees are losing their leaves, and there are some yellow and even a few red leaves.

We saw this wedding party, probably having had their pictures taken on the grass behind the palace.

I saw this sign, posted on that wall you can see above, behind the wedding party.  It says:  70th anniversary of the liberation from nazifascism. In memory of those who opposed the nazifasciasts, who were tortured and executed in this place, the seat of the National Republican Guard during the occupation by the nazifascists." The City of Monza, 25 April 2015, just last year.

So today was a nice P day, and the weather was great.  We want to go back to see the first floor, which consists of a 45 minute guided tour, for which you need to either have reservations or wait for the next tour to start. (You may remember the picture of me with the mime in Bergamo.  He said he is from Monza and when I asked him what was good to see in Monza, he recommended this palace.  We saw where the raceway is, but didn't go there. We would have checked out the duomo of Monza, but it was during mid day and most churches are locked up at that time, and we didn't want to wait, so we went to our shopping mall to buy stuff to make for lunch on Monday, when we are feeding the missionaries and a departing couple, Anziano and Sorella Rose--he used to do what I do.)

Ciao for now.