Bolca: Well, this is Italy!

In 1998 I moved to Germany to live with a family for year. During the first month I was living with them, they took me with on their annual vacation to Italy--the Lake Garda area. I recall my host father going hiking and coming back with a shell fossil. So fast forward 25 years (I actually cannot believe it has been that long!) and we're going to be staying within a half hour of Lake Garda. So I look to see if there is anything having to do with fossils around Negrar. I stumble on Bolca and its museum of fossils, a little over an hour from Il Castello. Many stunningly well preserved fish and palms dating from 50 million years ago come from that site. It has been in the same family for many hundreds of years, and in fact the same family maintains the museum and the fossil site to this day. Certainly you can see many wonderful Bolca specimens in Padua, but I wanted to check out Bolca because there you can try you hand at cracking rocks and also entering the cave from which the specimens were found. Way back in February I filled out an internet form and in my halting Italian asked if we could visit the site on April 11. Massimo Cerato said yes! Vi Aspettiamo! (we wait for you!)
So we make the 70 minute drive up up up to the town of Bolca. At the last few miles we're following a small car going pretty slow around the last few hairpin turns. It turns into the parking lot in front of us. We are the only two cars in the lot. The two guys in the other car have photography equipment--they seem to me there to make images of specimens.
So we are, arriving at the museum on Thursday April 11th right around 2:30pm just like that email from early February. And when we walk up to the ticket counter ask about going to the fossil site they look at us like we're crazy. It is only open on Saturday and Sunday! No one is waiting for us! My Italian is poor but I do mention that I have an email from the museum. At this point one of the photographers comes over and since he speaks better English than my Italian he helps communicate. He sees the email, confirms what it says, goes over to others, who I presume are members of the family, and shows them the email. Now everyone is talking rapidly and what I can hear over and over again is the name Massimo. Massimo was the one who had emailed us...and of course he was not around today. (of note, Massimo does have the last name of the family) Anyway, they clearly feel bad about what has happened and offer to let us see the museum free of charge. The photographer shrugs his shoulders and says "Well, this is Italy!" as a way of explanation. But the chapter isn't over. The family is still chatting and two new dudes appear and the photographer helps interpret that they will take us to the cave after all! So they take us to the site, show us how to hit the rocks to open them up (they make it look easy) and we spend some time trying to find fossils (we're really bad at it) before they take us to the excavation site. They give Annika some semi precious stones, give us some fossil leaves and shark teeth and really made us feel welcome. So I suppose, this is also Italy. We met such kindness.
Not sure Massimo will meet kindness tonight. haha.Read more