The man invited us for lunch. When I asked to wash my hands, the woman of the house changed the towel as a sign of hospitality. The man drank some shots of vodka to our health and to the world’s peace.
Their daughter, a nice, tall and thin girl with olive-coloured skin, prepared a great welcoming coffee.

There is something we have to say: Altripiani has to thank women, for everything, always.
They are the persons that make you feel at home even if you are far away from your family and loved ones.
The man is the one who establishes the first conversation, who filters the stranger, the wayfarer from his house, he is the one who protects his family, his intimacy.
Therefore, it is not always easy to enter in a “private property”, sometimes the questionings last ten-twenty minutes under the rain or a burning sun, the inspection takes place under a torch light, they ask you where do you come from and where are you going to, and in other occasions they have some particularly aggressive guard dogs!
But then, when everything calms down, and you’ve been invited to come in by that approval sign, when you cross the threshold and have been greeted in the home, it is she, the woman, who takes care of you as she has always known you.

Of course, there are always exceptions. But along the Altripiani lines, this is the tendency we most encountered.
Big women with beautiful faces, small women with dark eyebrows, women with big black eyes and a funny coloured skirt. Women without teeth, but with a huge smile. Shy women, but great cooks, trim women and women with moustache. Women who cares about the house and women who look after the flock. Countrywomen, city dweller, graduated or married.

We are amazed by the skirts of these women, they are voluminous and colourful, painted with recycled fabrics. When you see them walking with their skirts the eye is completely captured. The eye is curious to see them along the untarmacked roads, with dirt and dust constantly there.
In Romania we saw women with prosperous breasts and round faces and some others with a lightweight body and a thin ankle, all of them wearing white blouses with big sleeves and flowered skirts.

Wide skirts with lots of wrinkles the ones we encountered during the Orthodox Easter along the Carpathians. Skirts that become charming with the wind, a sort of fascination that seems to be lacking in the modern elegance.

Women are funny, some of them gives you special recipes, some others walk so quickly that it’s easy to think they’d be able to blow to your head with the same indifference they can glance at you curiously.

We often had the impression that women are helpful households under the man’s control, but then you realise they have a straight backbone and hard knuckles and don’t look like someone who’s inclined to be dominated easily, not at all!

In Altripiani itineraries we travel lots of poor routes, where we thought the family unit was captained by the man, but it’s not like that actually. It is beautiful to see the sex division and the pride of the woman, who can appear shy and powerless at a first sight, but who’s actually the bedrock of the family.

I really like the proud instinct that pushes a woman to discern from her background so thanks again to all the women who, for some hours or some days, have been like sweet mothers to us.