A Little Mystery

I said when we were starting out on our Italian adventure that our plan was to do pretty much nothing and while it has been difficult at times to stick to this regimen, we have actually adhered to it quite well. Oh sometimes I fall off the wagon and actually do something productive. I mean, the laundry isn’t going to get up and wash itself, but for the most part I have kept my ambitions to almost zero.


The result of this approach has been that I see many strange things and I have time to ponder them. For example, this window box balloon/plant arrangement was on display in early September when we arrived. We pass it every day on our way to the bus stop. At the beginning of our stay I thought that its owner was the recipient of some kind of balloon- floral bouquet which s/he was nice enough to share with passersby. Of course the balloons, as they tend to do, started losing air. We figured, well that’s the end of that. Yet the day after we witnessed the balloons valiantly gasping for their last remaining thimbleful of air, they were replaced with new balloons. So, now I’m really mystified because it is obviously an intentional and possibly permanent display. The new balloons were blue and red. Perhaps this was some kind of good luck arrangement in anticipation of a baby ? I Googled all kinds of things: balloons, windows, fertility, baby, obsessive tourist with too much time on her hands. Niente. Nothing. You can see from the photo that the balloons have been switched again. They have probably been arranged twice a week since we've been here.

Around week four the plot thickened. I saw a man leaving the building who was very distinctive looking. He had wavy dark hair, way too long to be in style. It was reminiscent of Chico Marx. He wore brightly colored clothes, often red, and his bicycle was two-toned, also bright colors. He looked, in other words, like an off-duty clown. Now, it must be said that I am not at all certain that he is the owner of the apartment and balloon window box, but wouldn’t it be funny if it turned out he was a clown and his whole apartment was furnished in clown style ? I’m picturing a bouquet in the center of the table, all made of balloons to go with the one in the window. I imagine him sweeping the floor at night, causing a spotlight to get smaller and smaller. Maybe the shoes in his closet are all really really huge. I know that if and when I get my explanation (I’ll ask my Italian teacher if I can’t find out from my neighbors) it won’t be nearly as exciting as my little idea. So maybe I shouldn’t find out anything. The reality would only burst my…balloon.

On the Beaten Path to Pisa

We went to Pisa yesterday. I was overwhelmed by the scale. The massive scale of kiosks where one could by these miniature sculptures of buildings along with refrigerator magnets and calendars. Please be sure to notice the fine detail of windows and columns on the sculpture above. After parking the car and walking down a crowded street we came upon a piazza surrounded by immaculately kept green grass. And you know what ? It turns out that Pisa has full-size versions of these very same miniature buildings !

That's really a smart-alecky way to start a blog post I know. The buildings are quite lovely and I can only feel sorry for the cathedral which is absolutely stunning but has to share space with one of the most famous structures in the world. I think I'll start printing tee-shirts with its image. The caption will read: "We Saw the Leaning Tower of Pisa and As Long As We Were Here We Saw This."

Bill spent a lot of time trying to get a convincing photo of Boris holding up the leaning tower. Not only does he seem to be supporting it, he looks so huge that he's supporting it in mid-air. That isn't an illusion. All that pasta and pizza really is making him bigger.

As if the photo wasn't corny enough, after lunch I couldn't resist saying,

"Hey ! We're having Pizza in Pisa !" Now that's comedy !

Oh--one last thing. I have been having trouble getting the "Comment" option to show up at the bottom of my blog. It vanished completely from the last post. For this one I have it back but it is WAY down at the bottom, so if you want to comment you'll need to scroll down. It seems like strange things happen to the layout whenever I include photos.

The Pleasures and Perils of Food

I woke up this morning –late late morning it must be said—to the aroma of onions and tomatoes. Saturday must be ragu day for somebody. Well, it just confirms what every cook and wine geek says--that the sense of smell is as important as the sense of taste. (Hmm. I’m employing a lot of dashes in my writing today. It just makes me feel so breezy and carefree when I do that, like somebody who wears a lot of silk scarves). Back to my point about the sense of taste. The other afternoon I took a cooking class in which we made gnocchi, small potato dumplings. Let me tell you that gnocchi is A LOT of work. The biggest bang for one’s buck was putting a couple of little leaves of basil on top of the layered gnocchi/tomato sauce/mozarella. That millisecond of work made the whole kitchen smell like a summer garden.

Cooking classes seem to be a growing trend in Italy. Week-long courses are readily available and some are tied in with agroturismo in which you live in somebody’s home in a rural setting. For me, the afternoon class was really enough to give me a taste (if you’ll pardon the pun) of Italian cooking basics. We met at the language school, Madrelingua, (which I am enjoying and would recommend, so I've linked it) and the six of us that comprised the class took a ten -minute walk to the home of our chef-teacher. She was a young woman, obviously enthusiastic and well-organized. She managed to coordinate the tasks so that we ended up with gnocchi, polpette (meatballs) and tiramisu. Unfortunately she was one of those fast talkers who was extremely hard to understand. (She was speaking Italian after all). It’s a good thing that a cooking class is mostly demonstration or I think we would have all been totally mystified.

The most interesting aspect of the class for me was checking out the gadgets she used which were dedicated to very specific tasks. To puree the tomatoes she had something called a passapomodoro (which would be translated I think into "tomato pureeifier"). It looks like a salad spinner with a crank that pushes the juice and pulp through mesh, leaving the seeds and skin. The other item resembled one of those hand-held cheese graters, the ones that look like a garlic press except that the holes were large. This is actually a potato press. You put pieces of cooked potato in the storage area and squeeze the handles. The potatoes get extruded through the holes and this is how you get them ready to be mixed with eggs, flour and parmesan for the gnocchi batter. Now I understand why the one we have back at the apartment didn’t work so well with parmesan cheese. Generally I’m very much opposed to having gadgets around the house that only do one thing. They take up a lot of space that we don’t have. However, I can definitely see the advantages of both of these. I was very interested to note that the CD’s and books in our teacher’s house were mostly devoted to punk musicians. I like imagining her making gnocchi for Sunday dinner to a Sex Pistols soundtrack.

When it comes to food, every tourist, traveller or expat is thrust into a situation which requires diplomacy or (for the brave or foolhardy) honesty. I’ll always remember meeting the daughter of my landlady when I was studying in London. Her name was Pam. She was about five years older than me but seemed like she was about forty-five. After hearing that I was from the United States she said, “I don’t like your bread.” Well, how would you feel to be blamed for the processed bread of an entire country ? This was 1978 after all, well before artisanal bakeries starting popping up all over the States. I have to say that my relationship with Pam was never very good. I don’t think I could ever quite get past being unjustly linked to Wonderbread.

It was quite a different story the other day, in terms of food diplomacy. We were talking with an Italian friend who lives in our neighborhood and she told us about a wonderful butcher a few blocks from our house, a very traditional place and well-regarded. Oh, and they sell horsemeat exclusively. I want to bring this to your attention so that if you come to Italy and see a store called Equine Macelleria you will know that it is indeed a horse butcher. Equine isn’t a family name. Our friend was quite enthusiastic about the product. It is easy to prepare, strong-flavored but tasty. And all of a sudden I am hearing my husband say in a bright, enthusiastic voice, “We’ll have to try it !” At least I think it was him. In real life he is not this keen to try things like horsemeat. He can be quite fixed in his views and he’s not afraid to take unpopular stances. (He has been known to say that Ella Fitzgerald lacked gravitas. I mean who on earth criticizes Ella Fitzgerald ?) But as I said, residing in another country can bring out the diplomat in a person.

Am I perhaps being closed-minded ? Should there be more horsemeat in our country instead of less? Kentucky’s economic base could be greatly expanded. I’m picturing KENTUCKY RACEHORSE JERKY: They thrilled you on the track. Enjoy them as a snack ! Oh gosh, did I really write that ? Please forgive me, especially my horseback riding friends, but I’ve been having trouble sleeping so my mind has been wandering and not into very profound territory as you can see.

It occurs to me that I did not mention that the friend who waxed poetically about the horsemeat had invited us to dinner this weekend. Wouldn’t it be something if she served horsemeat due to Bill’s keen show of interest ? We discussed this later on and he referenced Anthony Bourdin’s travel/cooking show in which he eats scary food. I reminded Bill that Anthony Bourdin gets a zillion dollars to eat bunny ears or whatever. All we have is this blog.

Drinking in the Atmosphere

I have already come up with three ways to make everybody hate me when we return to the states from Bologna:

1. While in conversation, stop in the middle of a sentence and say, "Now how does one say that in English ?"
2. Say, with great authority, "Of course it's impossible to get a good cappuccino in the States. It really isn't a question of foaming the milk, the issue is one of creaminess."
3. Take foreign words like cappuccino that are in common usage in every 7-11 and McDonald's and italicize them.

Oh I'm sure I'll have lots more annoying quirks to bring home to everybody It's become kind of a parlor game with Bill and me. Nevertheless, the second point about the cappuccino does have a certain amount of merit. While I am actually quite content with the cappuccini I get stateside, I did gain some insight about the careful balance of coffee and milk from Three Monkeys Online, a blog with interesting articles generated from all over Europe. Read the article on cappuccino for greater detail. I actually do think they're right about the texture. It's different here, with more cream and less of that spongy looking foam we get back home.

But that's really such a trivial matter and you know, living abroad without much to do forces one to really focus on What's Important In Life. For instance, right now I am very much preoccupied with the extreme variations in caffe macchiato throughout Bologna. Basically, this drink is espresso with steamed milk on top, and it's a good drink for somebody like me who thinks those little cups of espresso look awfully skimpy. And yet I have gone to a couple places where my macchiato has--shocking--NO MILK AT ALL. Some have a teeny amount floating on top like an oil slick. It's really hard to know what to expect. It's a little like ordering a Coke and sometimes getting a Sprite, sometimes getting a root beer.

Yesterday morning while on my way to Italian lesson Number 3 I passed a bar (caffe to us) that was quite crowded with people standing around the counter. If you see a bar where the counter is crowded, it's a local place. If you see a bar where the tables are crowded (which means customers are paying twice as much money for a coffee as they would at the bar), it's a tourist place. At least that seems true in the morning. Possibly after work anybody and everybody finds those scenic tables irresistable. So, ever the savvy sipper, I stopped in for a coffee. The woman next to me had a beautiful drink in a diminutive cup, an espresso topped with a cloud of creamy milk. I asked her what it was, and she told me it was a macchiato. I told her of my confusion about this elusive drink and she confirmed what I had guessed. It just depends on the style of the barrista.

Of course one can't spend one's day going from caffeinated drink to caffeinated drink. What an empty existence that would be ! An alcoholic drink now and then is just the ticket. My favorite so far is the Spritzer. Assuredly not the 1970's white wine and club soda beverage, but a mix of prosecco (a bubbly white wine, very popular in Northern Italy) and Campari or Aperol, two very bitter concoctions that are always served in mixtures with other things. This is one of those syntheses where the whole is so much more than the sum of its parts and will definitely become part of the repertoire at Casa Impasta.

Ferrara on Two Wheels

Today we went to the nearby city of Ferrara, just a half hour by train from Bologna. We had planned to go to Ravenna to see the mosaics, but yesterday I met with my Italian tutor and it happened that we were reading an article about Ferrara . The article discussed the fact that there are 2.7 bicycles per inhabitant and that 87 percent of the population use bikes as a mode of transportation. The reason for these astounding statistics is that the historical area of Ferrara became a pedestrian zone after World War II, decades before other cities even considered it. I was intrigued and since Boris has become such a bike nut here I thought that this would be a treat and would make the viewing of museums and palazzi go down easier. So Ravenna was postponed and Ferrara was our new destination.

Leaving the train station we found a bike rental shop right away, one of several in the city. For about ten dollars per person we each rented bikes with locks included. They were fitted out with those mousetrap rack things in the back and mine even had an adorable basket. Getting into the historical part of town went pretty smoothly. There are separate bike paths set well away from the roads. Once within the city gates the situation changed a bit. On the bright side we were able to cover a lot of ground and it was enjoyable being part of the passing parade. The downside was the chaos of the traffic in the narrow multi-use streets. Bikes mingled with pedestrians, each pretty much ignoring the other. I know that when I’m walking on the bike/walking path at home I hear these perky alerts every few minutes: “ On your right !” as a bike passes me at blazing speed. There is none of that communication here, but for the most part everyone seems to coexist. Being used to it must be a tremendous help. The trickiest part is that the pedestrian streets aren’t totally without cars. Taxis and service vehicles are allowed and at one point a whole street became clogged because a garbage truck was making its rounds. The street was so narrow that unless we wanted to tag along with the truck all morning we had to practically flatten ourselves against the walls of the flanking buildings in order to pass.

The vehicles at least stick to conventional traffic rules. The bike-riders on the other hand are operating by their own inner compasses. They aren’t rude intentionally, but if somebody wants to cross your lane to buy an espresso they’re just going to go ahead and do it. Intersections were the absolute worst. The biker who has the right of way is the one who believes he has it.

We attempted to follow the bike path that is supposed to be on top of the city wall but I’m afraid we made a hash of that and somehow lost the wall. Or the wall stopped. It’s really hard to say which. We did however manage to find the ugliest square block in the city with derelict graffiti-covered warehouses. Yep. We’re definitely the people you want to team up with on The Amazing Race.

All in all I would say that I enjoyed Ferrara except for the bike experience. Ironic isn’t it ? The very thing that enticed us to go there was the thing I liked the least. It has very few tourists and the people were very friendly. If the tourist sites are few, the singular atmosphere makes up for it. With so few cars and so many people pedaling along, its as though everybody in Ferrara is part of a very quiet procession. As the day became more cloudy the atmosphere became more dreamlike. At times I felt as though I was inside a painting or a stage-set in which everything has less weight than ordinary things. This sensation of lightness, of freedom, reached its zenith for me at the moment I returned the bike.

Bologna on a Sunday

I saw this hanging in a Palazzo we visited yesterday..

Clearly it is a Renaissance Disco Ball.

Looking for something a little unusual in a Bed & Breakfast ? Do you find the typical B & B too short for your liking ? Look no further ! This tower has a couple rooms for rent. It's right in the middle of Bologna and if you get lost on the winding city streets you can probably spot it looming over the other buildings. Just don't get it confused with the other towers nearby. In the closeup the windows above the entry show where the rooms are.

The sign on the door says that an upper room is available for wedding receptions. No mention of an elevator however.

Walking and Talking

I have come to the conclusion that I am a really out-of-shape. Yesterday we spent several hours walking around, having a look at the museum of Medieval History. It wasn't a particularly demanding sight-seeing day as those things go, but by the time we got home every muscle in my legs ached. This I don’t understand. Bologna is flat and surely my years of living in central Virginia with its hilly if not mountainous terrain would have given me the requisite physique for this trip. I’m beginning to think that the aches and pains are due to walking on stone. Bill, on the other hand, thinks it’s because when I speak Italian to people I get on my tiptoes, putting undue stress on my calves. And he may be right. Why I do this is anybody’s guess, but it does take every bit of my attention to carry on a conversation in Italian and I probably tense up. So, in order to improve my conversational skills and hopefully get off my tiptoes I am going to take a few individual lessons at a local language school. Hmmm... taking a language course to improve my physical fitness. That has to be a pretty unusual strategy.

I stopped by the school yesterday and took a test to determine my level. It was Upper Intermediate, which was disappointing to me. Surely all those years of practicing and studying should give me a higher rating, but sadly, I’m not a detail-oriented person when it comes to language. I can never remember when to use in, a, or da. I am a busy person and I just don't have time for a lot of prepositions. At any rate, I’m glad that when I answered the self-evaluation question (before getting my test results) I selected the response “I have a good knowledge of Italian” instead of “I have such an amazing fluency in Italian that it borders on the poetic.” That really would have been embarassing.

Awkward segueway coming up here. Speaking of conversation, which I sort of was a moment ago, when we left our apartment yesterday afternoon to go to the park, we passed a group of four women in a courtyard just down the street. They were sitting on benches in animated conversation. When we returned home two hours later they were still there, still animated. It is amazing to me how central conversation is to Italians of every age. By way of comparison, think about the times you might have taken your child to the park. (If you live in Charlottesville Pen Park is a good example—large enough to have a decent sized sampling of people.) Think about how many of the parents are on cell phones while their kids are playing (including you or me). A lot right ? Maybe half the parents there ? That hardly ever happens here in the Bologna parks. The large one a few blocks from our apartment is packed with kids and parents after school. While the kids are playing,the parents are talking. Certain areas of the park seem to be reserved for the seniors. These are the areas with several benches grouped together. Every afternoon we find groups of them in animated conversation. I am interested in the fact that it is always men and women together. They are generally dressed very well, the women in dresses and the men in “grown up” slacks. It is very rare that you would see a man in his seventies in jeans. And cell phones ? Hardly a one.

This after-school park ritual has been a wonderful opportunity for us. Boris has met kids that he can ride bikes and play soccer with, and Bill and I have gotten to know some of the parents. When you start to speak to the residents it is almost like a curtain is drawn back and you see parts of Bologna that you miss in the guide books and tourist areas. So, now we know where to buy the best lasagna. We learned what the schools are like. We have commiserated about how boys hate to do homework. We found out that the reason the playground is roped off was that a child died last year falling off a deteriorating swing. Now the city has to check every single bold and chain on every piece of equipment. Which will apparently take months.

With my newly acquired information about where to get the best lasagna, I headed over to the local pasticceria yesterday. The price for a small container was shocking. So shocking that I can’t even bring myself to write down the price in this blog. But I paid up and brought home the precious container. When I told Bill what I paid he asked why I bought it. Well, that was the first thing he said after he recovered from fainting. I answered, “Because I didn’t want to disappoint you !” Boris nodded his head fervently. He had been looking forward to the lasagna all day. So, it has come to a pretty pass. A layered pasta dish has become central to our lives. We think about it all day and we’re willing to pay whatever it costs. I kind of get the whole drug addict thing now.