Learning as I go: old books and deodorant

We have left Matera and headed to Calabria for the final leg of our trip. Before we left Matera, though, we took at quick trip down into the massive cistern that sits on Matera’s main square. It dates from the 1500s and was forgotten over time. It was completely abandoned by 1920 and then not rediscovered until 1991. I love cisterns and was just thrilled to get down there so you need to have a quick look:

We set off for our next hotel stop – the large town of Cosenza, population 67,000. En route, I made a couple of incredible travel discoveries.

We stopped in the small village of Rossano to see a codex, which is going to blow your mind in a minute. But, in addition to the incredible historical riches, I was served these potatoes at lunch, accompanied by the clementines below:

And I was so happy during this lunch – the food, the charming restaurant, my lunch buddies…I was listening to the hum of a few different conversations, when I heard the husband across from me offer his wife a coffee stir stick when she had no coffee – and she promptly put the stir stick away – like a travel memento I didn’t understand. Since it was clearly none of my business, I followed up with a few questions, attorney style, and it turns out that one of my tour friends makes her own fantastic deodorant! I had her share the recipe (coconut oil, arrowroot powder and baking soda) and now, when I get home, I will be both an ice cream maker and a deodorant maker and so you people who like to sample my output better hope I am wearing my glasses while I’m “cooking”!

But back to the codex. A codex is a an ancient manuscript in book form. Our Road Scholar guide, Luca, gave us a ton of information on the bus ride over and so I knew I was seeing a book, but, as you know, many of the finer details of things are lost on me. First I got distracted because you enter the village of Rossano via this groovy pedestrian tunnel right out of the 70s:

And then…poof…you’ve time warped yourself back into old Rossano, which is quiet and devoid of tourists

Over the main street, village women hang their crocheted blankets to create a shady stroll:

And then you end up in the Codex Museum. Knowing I was seeing a book, I was taken with this one and really impressed that it was 500 years old:

And then I was escorted to the actual codex. It’s 1500 years old and it’s in incredible shape…printed onto calf skin parchment that is dyed purple. It contains the whole gospel of Matthew and most of the gospel of Mark…386 pages. It was discovered in the church in Rossano in 1846. You can only see one page – the museum displays a single page for 3 months and then flips to the next page to preserve the document.

Here’s someone else’s picture – look at those rich colors!

They were more cavalier with some of their other stuff. Here’s my last offering of the day: I caught Ron, about to drop his hand onto this thing, gold and silver, 500 years old and just sitting there unprotected: