A town full of food and music: Cremona retreats highlights
Experiencing connection and community in a small town in Northern Italy
“ The trouble with Cremona is that there’s nothing here. Nothing!”
I’ve lost count of all the times I’ve heard cremonesi say that. At the beginning of September, I hosted my second immersion retreat in Cremona and even during those very packed days, I’d overhear locals from nearby tables voice out their complaint.
In today’s post, I’ll share the highlights of what was an amazing one-person retreat in the unassuming, low-key town of Cremona.
My language and culture retreats are aimed at Italian learners eager to immerse in day-to-day language but also the culture of the town.
During five days, we roam the streets together, spend more than ten hours a day chatting and meeting people who share their incredible stories with us.
The All About Italian Retreats are created to experience authentic, secret Italy while living life at a slower, more mindful pace.
We learn by doing what the locals do.
That’s what makes a small, provincial but stunningly beautiful town like Cremona perfect for this.
I’m originally from southern Italy and it took me a few years to understand the town’s pulse and driving force.
It’s very probable that being an outsider helps me see the town more fully than a local would, just like having moved away from my hometown, Gaeta, helped me understand it fully, miss it and host retreats there.
Here are some retreat highlights.
Stasia, had already been on my Gaeta Retreat in 2022. She’s multilingual and has so many interests.
The benefit of joining a one-person retreat is that you get my undivided attention as a language coach and I can customize the event.
Drawing class in a beautiful piazza
We had a watercolor and sketching class in piazza Duomo with Francesca Follini who’s an artist, cartoon strip illustrator and teaches urban sketching at la Scuola del Fumetto, here in Cremona.
I shared my idea with her and she was very excited to host a class for us in one of the most beautiful piazze of Italy. I love to host art therapy classes during my retreats. They are an opportunity to create your very own souvenir of the town but they also are an invaluable experience that helps connect the artistic side of the brain to the language side while relaxing.
It’s also interesting to notice how so many language mindset issues are very similar to what comes up while drawing. The fear of making mistakes, perfectionism and our incapacity to live in the moment.
By drawing, we learn that most quintessential Italian skill, that is, we learn to look around us more carefully and to be present.
During our class, we lost touch of time and all that we knew was the joy of experiencing Piazza Duomo from a different perspective and we also got to know Francesca better.
Quick disclaimer. I’m not at all artistic, that’s not really what these classes are about. They're about experiencing the town and the language differently and relaxing.
After our two-hour class, we looked up ( time had FLOWN) and we felt like we’d known Francesca for a lifetime.
A Donkey haven.
When my partner ( hi Guido!) found out I had scheduled a visit to Isla de Burro he thought I was crazy.
But, firstly, you can’t understand Cremona, the town, without exploring and getting to know the countryside and the people that live on the outskirts of town.
In fact, I’d go a bit further. You can’t understand northern Italy, Lombardia specifically, without taking time to explore life in the country that has shaped the values and culture.
And that’s a wonderful thing to know because it can help you in your explorations of Italy.
Isla de Burro is a donkey sanctuary that offers pet therapy activities. It has a fascinating story and the haven is right behind a beautiful country church. The staff is made up of very young people and Chiara (in the video below) introduced us to all the animals.
I didn’t know all the things she shared with us about donkeys and why they make perfect pet therapy companions. We learned fast enough while we were scrubbing them and engaging in other activities with them.
As Stasia said, we usually see animals from afar. But being surrounded by them, touching and scrubbing them, that was something that warmed our heart and was very emotional.
As people, we’re not meant to live so distant from nature and with its elements.
We don’t realize it until we’re in touch with nature, that we have this need to be connected and that our distance is unnatural and in a way, damaging to our spirit.
And that has everything to do with learning Italian because this is a language that teaches you to get in touch with yourself in a busy world.
The hours spent with the donkeys, hearing their stories, what they do and are capable of, helped heal some of that wound that our daily distance from nature engenders.
They’re strong and forgiving creatures with a deep sense of loyalty and friendship.
I think we all learned a few life lessons during our visit. Chiara and the rest of the staff, chatted with us and shared all the information at normal speed Italian so Stasia, aside with reconnecting with nature also got an incredible exposure to a very different ( and fast) kind of Italian.
My big regret is that I didn’t take any pictures but it’s really
hard to grab your phone and even think about photographs when you’re surrounded by donkeys vying for your attention and cuddles! :)
Exploring the middle ages with my friend Claudia.
Cremona and the nearby towns are packed with history and legends from the Middle Ages. I know very little about it, so I recruited a pro, my friend Claudia who walked us through the fortifications of Pizzighettone and told us all the legends. I knew about the legend of the dragon Tarantasio, that was said to haunt all of this area but she explored other stories about him. There’s even one of his ribs in the church of San Bassano.
The fascinating part of the dragon story is that it explains why Val Padana is so foggy but also he is present in lots of symbols from Northern Italy. Many famous Lombardia companies have taken on the dragon symbol in their company logos. I’m talking about football team Inter, Mediaset tv channels and gas provider Eni.
Having a friend like Claudia bring these historic events to life with a sense of humor but also a love for all all things related to the middle ages was an incredible treat. When people do things with passion, it has another taste.
We had such a great time that we even decided to have an amazing lunch there at a trattoria along the river where I completed the meal with a scarpetta that I then blogged about here. . .
Violin Stories.
My favorite moment was our visit to Philippe Devanneaux, a violin maker, liutaio, right next to piazza Duomo. He left Paris many years ago and relocated here driven by his passion for violins. Cremona is the capital of violin-making.
I find it simply fascinating that in an era of AI and undeniable progress in technology, craftsmanship still can’t be beaten by machines. If you want a good, timeless violin, it HAS to be handmade and Philippe is the right person to make you understand why.
When he talks, he makes you fall in love with the whole process. Until this day, it’s still a mystery how Stradivarius made such time-defying violins. It’s comforting to know that there are still areas in life where industrialization is useless.
A good violin, says Philippe, is like a person, it has a personality. The more time passes, it develops a memory of all its previous players.
Musicians build a relationship with their violins and each one tells a story of wood, sound and craftsmanship.
His passion is contagious and makes me hopeful for the future and that all will not be run by machines. The human element is priceless. Why do we keep forgetting it?
It was a very moving hour with him. He told us how people who visit him can get quite emotional because the act of hearing his words and the violins playing, awakens something ancestral, our inner need for music and beauty in our hearts.
Conclusion
This is the end of the highlights but it was a struggle to keep this post short.
After years of hosting retreats in southern Italy, I welcomed this new challenge and sharing my adoptive town to learners, made me appreciate just how special it is. Not only, it helped me realize how connected I am to it. But that’s material for a whole other post.
If spending some time in Italy with locals while enriching your Italian and slowing your pace of life down, speaks to you, I am setting the dates for my 2025 retreats and they’ll be out shortly.
You can join my 2025 Retreats waiting list here below and I’ll be in touch.
I’m looking forward to welcoming you in Cremona in 2025.
