Our neighbors Assunta & Giancarlo took us to Brescia, a town 1.5 hours west of Lago di Garda, 0.5 hours south of Lago d’Iseo. Ted and I were here twice before, but those visits didn’t leave any remarkable impressions. It might be because we came here to drop off a car for repair, get a rental car, and come back to pick up our car again?!? That was a year ago and we just circled around car dealerships who are always in the least picturesque areas of town. Rental car companies are mostly located near train stations (also not very picturesque + lots of weird people), so all in all we got the “where-not-to-go” tour back then. Good that Assunta and Giancarlo “washed our heads” as we would say in German, kind of like “setting the picture straight” in English

Assunta had prepared a 3 page list of things she wanted to show us: piazzas, statues, churches, Roman amphitheater excavations, arcades, opera house, art galleries, etc etc etc. another day with almost 100 degrees and high humidity, we walked around for hours and she referred to historical events, dates, stories – of course everything in Italian! And I just learned numbers in my textbook, which is page 9 in the first chapter! But magic has it, we had great conversations and we learned so much about their lives…

Their daughter Fiorenza, who lives in Brescia as well (they showed us the apartment building on the way into town) lives on the second floor. She is married and has a 13 year old son. They have an aquarium with 3 fishes. They are on vacation somewhere on the Mediterranean right now.

Giancarlo’s father died when he was 6 years old. That’s why he had to go to boarding school in Boghliaco at Lago di Garda. He fell in love with the lake; that’s why he ended up in Muslone.

Both of them grew up in Brescia, the got married there 57 years ago (they even showed us the church) and raised their daughter there.

Assunta has macular degeneration and can’t see well. So the moment she got out of the car, she grabbed my hand and didn’t let go until we sat down for dinner. So sweet!

They are an adorable couple, both 82 years old, but (she said) their marriage only works because they don’t live together. She lives in Brescia (in the Oldtown) with culture and people around her. He lives in Muslone, where he has his wood shop and nobody bothers him. Once in a while they visit each other for a few days and when she misses the busy city life when staying in Muslone or he missed the peaceful tranquillity when staying in Brescia, they go back home.

Many more stories were exchanged and again, we had a great day with them. Ending with dinner at a good restaurant, live music hanging in the air, an open air movie at a plaza where every visitor wore headphones for the audio, we walked back to the car, leaving Assunto’s paradise, and Giancarlo brought us back to his paradise.