Best view on our way to work

Toni the pony greeting us on the way to work

View from the pool terrace

Big spider in one of the rooms we were cleaning

View on the way home after a dishwashing shift

Casa Bisetti

Casa Bisetti (view from our balcony)

Otto – Casa Bisetti cat who is always up for a lie in the sun

One side of our room on the day we left

Found this little guy in our room on the second night

Volunteers handprints on the kitchen wall

Chill cat

Matt tending the bar

Canadian Thanksgiving

The wood shed

Butter and chocolate melting together and an excited Matt

Sun 23 Aug – Mon 19 Oct 2015

We spent the last 8 weeks volunteering at Centro d’Ompio, located just above Lake Orta (near Lago Maggiore and Lake Como, in Northern Italy). ‘Centro’ is an international seminar center and hotel for conferences, training and workshops. We were lucky enough to be two of around 12 volunteers working over the last two months. We met some amazing people and made life long friends.

We arrived on a Sunday evening and crashed a birthday party for one of the workers but got to try some yummy birthday cake! It was a great way to meet everyone. We lived in the staff house, Casa Bisetti, with the other volunteers  in the village of Pratolungo and hiked the 15 minutes up a rather steep hill for work and meals. We had a cozy bedroom on the first floor with a low ceiling,  dark wooden floors, an old closed up fireplace and one of the windows was covered in ivy – very romantic. We did have to go on a bit of an adventure to the toilet or to have a shower, but it was a bit like camping and all good fun (when it was warm and sunny, not as much fun in the rain, cold and middle of the night).

When there were paying guests, several professional chefs cooked the most delicious vegetarian food (buffet style) and we discovered some yummy things like nutritional yeast, gomashio (toasted sesame seeds) and lapacho tea that we will incorporate into our diets when we settle down again someday.

We did a lot of different tasks during our stay and we even had a schedule – Natalie loved the organisation and structure of it all. Matt was usually assigned to handyman duties which included chopping wood, painting and moving things around. He even got to tend the bar when Barmichael was away for two nights. Natalie mostly did housekeeping that involved cleaning and making rooms for the guests. She also did a lot of kitchen shifts that involved prepping the many, many vegetables needed to feed between 30-60 people. She even prepared meals for the volunteers (when there were no guests) including breakfasts and a special Canadian Thanksgiving meal. We both did our share of washing dishes too! All in all we learned a lot of new skills and picked up a few tips about running guest accommodation and working in a professional kitchen.

Most evenings were spent hanging out with the other volunteers. There were two BBQs, a few jam sessions, many nights of playing cards, sharing stories and laughing a lot. More to follow on that and some of the day trips we had during our stay…