INSPIRATION

Journey uphill. The road is short and the view is always beautiful with the valley of the river Tino on the left. I pass a small industrial zone and arrive in Ovodda early and rested, they were only a few miles.

It’s Saturday and the village is calm. I take the usual photos of this trip: the obligatory selfie, the entrance sign of the village with my sticker 377, and the photos of the town hall, now closed. I note a sign for motorists: ‘be careful, in this village children still play on the streets’. I had already read it in another village, I do not remember where. But this is all colorful.

I meet the Mayor Cristina. She offers me coffee and speaks to me a little about Ovodda, what I can see, although unfortunately I will not be able to watch the production of the famous bread, which is also my favorite, because the ovens are closed until Monday.

I’m happy with a walk in the historic centre, very nice, with many old buildings and the inevitable abandoned houses, even if here less than in other places, which however give a certain charm to these mountain villages, and here too many murals .

Cristina tells me about the economy of these places, still linked to agriculture and pastoralism, but with important production activities, for example the processing of granites.

She tells me that the color sign for motorists was made by the children themselves, and the importance of education in their schools.

When I leave her house, she proudly shows me a written sign on the street in front of her house with white paint from some citizen happy with her work: ‘TOP MAYOR’.

In the evening I go back with my genealogical research, I find out that the great-great-grandmother I found buried in Tonara a few days ago, had origins here. I find her branch, going back to the early 1600s, in an important volume on Ovodda’s genealogies by Raffaele Cau. I conclude the day in the shadow of my Baroque ancestors.

 

SOUND FRAGMENTS

Inspired by the sounds of the launeddas. Written at Giampiero Mattu’s house.

SARDINIAN SHORT STORIES

Giampiero, who will host me tonight, supplies the canteens of the schools in the district. He prepares a seafood dinner, the first culinary variation since I started this journey, and proudly shows me some paintings painted by local artists, some books written by ovoddesi, poems, ancient remedies, medicine, genealogies and more. It has a well-stocked library.

He tells me that he once kept food from supplies to schools: pizza. He had distributed the pizza slices to other villagers, and since then an old lady asks him all the time if he still has some pizza to give.

Respectful of my work, after dinner he leaves me in the kitchen to write until late. The next morning, he prepares a beautiful herbal tea with ​​fresh ginger and lemon.

Before I leave, he tells me that he will go out for a nice ride, since it’s a nice day. I ask him if he’s on a bicycle and he says no, that since he had crashed as a child at the end of the main road, he has not touched a bicycle ever again.