Days 59+60: The Macrolibrarsi Fest, right outside our door
We have breakfast in the camper and straight afterwards walk the few steps to the entrance of the fair. The Macrolibrarsi Fest fills two halls with around three hundred and fifty stands: books, natural cosmetics, showcooking, yoga, talks from morning till night. Musicians and stilt walkers move through the aisles.
How oil is made from rosemary
At the Remedia stand we arrive exactly in time for the demonstration of how essential rosemary oil is distilled: a copper still with a glass flask above it, beside it a wicker basket full of fresh rosemary sprigs. It is striking how much rosemary is needed for a few millilitres of oil — a whole basket. A very likeable member of staff shows how the essential oil comes about, explains every step and demonstrates how the oil separates above the distillate. He also talks about other products, for instance about using the distilled rosemary water, and about the process with other plants and herbs. Away from the demonstration too the stand is very interesting and staff who are friendly throughout explain all the different products to us, their properties and what they are used for.
The games area
One of our reference points with the children. There are several handmade pinball machines, all of wood, along with a fishing game and a marble run like a labyrinth. In one game each child pulls a rope of their own and together they steer a ring with a ball in it across a board full of holes. Lavinia and Valentino are astonishingly good at it and are hard to move on. The games come from Laboratorio Marcone and from iogiocovunque, a ludobus.
Madre Terra
Madre Terra is an alternative kindergarten from Bertinoro and has decorated its stand beautifully and with a great deal of warmth. The children are allowed to make things there and press seeds, pebbles and cones into clay discs, which we take with us afterwards. Only none of it is properly dried or joined and before long the works of art crumble and make a tremendous mess in the camper.
A few stands further on there is an alternative music project. A sound machine made of tubes, a guitar built from a skateboard and many more crazy things. During the performance the musician strikes the various tubes with flip-flops and produces a sound that comes out electronic. At the stand next door, at Caffè Pazzini, we pick up an organic, hand-roasted coffee that is advertised especially loudly and has a consistently very long queue in front of it. The coffee is good, but not the best I have drunk — nothing beats Sorrento 😉
The man with the eagle
To our surprise we meet a man outside in front of the entrance who is standing there with an eagle. He lives in the woods of the region, he says, and simply came here and planted himself in front of the entrance. The sight of the majestic animal is impressive and commands respect. In the end he gives each of the children a down feather from the eagle, which Lavinia and Valentino glue into their travel journal that same day.
Two days at a fair with a five-year-old and a three-year-old
Sounds exhausting? It goes better than you would think, because there is something for the children to discover everywhere. There is even a music workshop of their own for children, which we join in with, and the song that comes out of it lodges itself so firmly that we hum it for the rest of the journey: Ciao a tutti, ciao a voi, benvenuti qui con noi. And whenever we start to get tired, we go to the camper, eat something and rest, or take a turn so that the children can sleep in the trailer. Without the camper right outside the door we would never have seen so much of the fair, nor experienced it so calmly.
