Evelyn Dawid - photo by Nigel A JAMES
Travelling
is all about the meeting of surprises, some big and some small, and
the box which traveller Evelyn Dawid discovered whilst visiting
the castle of Taso in South Tirol proved to be more of an
astonishment than anything else! It was no ordinary box. It was big
and it was down in the cellar!
And,
it was down below ground because it was there that the servants were
quartered. And this enormous great box was made just for them. For
it was there in this vastness of wood that they slept! Not just one
or two or three or four, but more than thirty - and all at the very
same time. Of course, it all sounds very cosy and nice, but, in
reality it must have been awful.
And
it was bad because of the unimaginable. At the end of each day, with
everyone packed safely inside, the lid was let down and wasn't opened
till morning! What about the air, and how did they suffer the smells
and the sounds? And, what if they had to get up in the night?
Unanswerable questions! But one thing is clear, upstairs it was life
as was normal! The duke and his family enjoyed nothing but the best
of the best of normal aristocratic everyday luxury life. Beds and no
boxes for them!
But,
why the box for the servants? Could it have been to stop them from
escaping? Or, was the duke afraid of being murdered in his sleep?
Or, was he simply a very nice generous man. After all, what could
have been better than a nice cosy warm box on a cold winter's night
in a freezing cold unheated cellar?
We
will never find out! But, one thing is clear. The more travelling
we do, the more we encounter! And, I wonder what Evelyn Dawid will
bring back from her next far-away journey. Something of interest,
I'm sure!
P.S. South Tirol has a history! It used to be part of Austria, but is now part of Italy. Castel Taso is the Italian name for the Austrian name Burg Reifenstein. Both are correct.
