Kait's Adventures: Calabria

I left Newark, NJ June 7, arrived in Rome the morning of June 8th. That night we left by car for vacation in Calabria and Sicily.

Originally our vacation was not going to start until after the 10th, but scheduling vacation and shifts seems to be a technology that has not yet arrived to Italy. Daniele's vacation ended up being scheduled to start before I even got back to Italy, never mind the few days I wanted to adjust back to the time-zone. So the same day I flew in we took a little nap in the evening and set off around 1 AM driving south for Calabria.

We arrived in the morning at our first stop, Rose. A very small town in Calabria, easy to reach from the highway or city of Cosenza. There is nothing of interest there and I would not have wanted to visit except this is where my great-grand parents were born. The town is kind of sparse and spread out. The center had the obligatory church, post office, and city hall. The church was a new church built next to the remains of the old. These remains were not much to look at and where the only “old” (in a Roman/Italian way) thing around to see. There were prayer posters and street signs bearing my family names. There were not too many people out and about at 9/10 AM.

(New church next to old church's ruins in Rose, Calabria)

(Chiappetta was my great-grandmother's name, it's everywhere in Rose)

We went to the city hall, which had a shocking amount of people working in it but no one who wanted to acknowledge us. Eventually a man named De Marco brought us in to where they had a cabinet full or giant hand written books. Each book for a year or range of years, with entries for each person born in the town. A note is added on the side when they marry or die. We went through dozens of these books looking for my relatives. We found my Great Grandfather, Lorenzo, easily, but I knew about him. I wanted to find someone still living, even if more distantly related. We found Lorenzo's younger brother Michelle who had returned to Italy (having not taken well to the US). He had died in 1975 in the neighboring town of Contrada Pizzillara. These were easy to find because I knew the year they were born.

(View of outskirts of Rose, Calabria. That group of houses in the center is Contrada Pizzillara, where my great-grandfather was born )

I wanted to find their younger sister Chiara, who I thought may have a daughter my parent's age. Unfortunately I did not know the year she was born, just that she was younger. We are talking about 100 years ago, facts get lost, for example half of my family insists Michelle was the oldest. De Marco was patent enough to look through lots of year's worth of books in search of Chiara. It took especially long because she was born June 3, 1910 in Carbondale, VA, but filed at the end of the 1925 book when her father, Francesco, returned to Rose to add her to the record. In 1925 their first son, Lorenzo was born 27 years earlier; I was getting rather pessimistic by the time we reached these books that my ancestors would have children so far apart. It has a whole story about her (written in Italian) including that her god parents were Tomaso Nicastero and Vittoria Catti. We then looked for Chiara's daughter, but she was not to be found. Most likely they moved to a neighboring town so the birth record was not recorded in Rose or we are really, really off on her age. I may try Contrada Pizzillara.

(The tombs of Rose were like a city within the city)

We were only in Rose for maybe two hours. After the town hall we walked around the tombs looking for relatives, and there were plenty, but that is only entertaining for so long. I thought I would want days there, but Daniele was right to make it a short stop. There just wasn't anything else to do. Our next stop was Tropea, on the coast.

(Beach of Tropea)

Tropea was my favorite place we stopped at in Calabria. The beach was beautiful and the old center was, too. If my ancestors had been from here, they may not have immigrated to the United States. Our hotel had a really nice view of the center, which is on a cliff. We stayed here the night of the 9th.

(View of Tropea center from our Hotel)

The next day we went to Capo Vatocano, a beach near Tropea, and stayed there a little while until it started to rain. Then headed to Scilla. Scilla was a decent sized town with *no one* there. It was nice there but hard to find a place to eat. Lastly we took the ferry from San Giovanni to Messina, where my adventures in Calabria ended and Sicilia began.