Orosei: friendliness and hospitality in the province of Nuoro, Sardinia

In the Nuoro region I discovered some inner villages that I'd heard about that had peaked my interest. First we went to Orosei which was a delight.

We stayed at The Mannois B&B Hotel which was unique and extremely hospitable.An old stable had been renovated into a hotel that retained its charm
and style.

The Hotel Mannois B&B

 We also visited the XVI century San Sebastiano church that surprised us with a replica of the shroud of Turin.

 We then drove down into town and stopped in front of the church of San Antonio. 

 It was actually a convent with an open courtyard. Women were cleaning the church and about to close for the day but seeing I was a tourist, they allowed me to visit for a few minutes. The floors were still wet, so I took a quick peek at the frescoes on the walls and as soon as I was done, I thanked the ladies and left. My friend and I got into the car to continue our tour of Orosei only to discover that the car was completely dead. This had never happened to his trusty car in the past and so we both were sort of stunned that it should happen now. It was Saturday and generally mechanics don't work on Saturdays he said. What were we supposed to do? I figured since we had broken down in front of a church we may as well pray, which I did while he fiddled around with the electrical wires.

"Dear God, Please send us a mechanic asap. Thank you."

My prayers were answered when I decided it was time to be practical and call the only person we knew in Orosei, Emanuele, the friendly owner of The Mannois B&B Hotel. As soon as he found out about our car situation, he sent not one but two mechanics to save the day. Within 15 minutes they arrived, took a look, did a few tricks on the car and like magic, the car was working again. My friend and I wondered what we'd have to pay for an on-call mechanic on a Saturday and guessed the most would be fifty euros. While we were placing our bets, the mechanic was making a call to his boss. He soon hung up and said, "niente," which basically means, "freebee." I was stunned and very embarrassed and wanted to insist on paying at least something, but my Sardinian boyfriend reminded me that here things are done differently and not to offend the mechanic with my "Americanism" of insisting on something that is clearly out of my spectrum of understanding. So I backed off and said, "grazie" as humbly as possible.

 We decided to sit down and have an espresso before moving on to our next adventure. The caffe was next door to the church so we headed over, sat down at a table and ordered two espressos. While we were waiting for them to arrive, I looked up and saw a picture of Krishna and Radha on the wall. It sort of jumped out at me because here in the middle of traditional Sardinia, where paintings of Sardinia logically decorated the walls, was a religious Hindu image. I was feeling bold and curious and decided to ask the barrista where the picture came from. He had no clue. The other guys hanging around didn't seem to know either but they were very interested in knowing what it was about. So I began to explain who Krishna was and why his skin was blue. Who Radha was and why they were sitting together on a swing. My boyfriend looked at me with a "are you playing teacher now?" look and I looked back with, "it's been a strange morning anyway so why not keep going!" Our caffe friends were enthralled by the story and thanked "la professoressa."

We picked up where we had left off, got back in the car and headed towards Tortoli, our next destination. On our way we admired some phenomenal views of Orosei.

View of Orosei