Cibo ~ o, lezione di cucina ~

So seeing as I've been here for ten weeks now, eating nothing but
Italian food, usually homemade, I feel pretty safe publishing my
analysis of Italian Italian food (to be more precise, Roman Italian
food, since food varies by region as well) as compared to ameican
Italian food. This isn't to say that American Italian food is BAD,
just that it's definitely different. And I'll probably never be able
to eat at the olive garden again (except the breadsticks. Those are
killer.)

1) number one is number one because it's the most noticeable and most
important difference: simplicity. Yes, there's a lot of food. Yes,
there are a lot of courses. But none of it is that hard to make.
Minestrone? Boil mixed veggies for a half hour in broth, add pasta and
beans, give it another few minutes, serve with Parmesan. Spaghetti a
cacio e pepe? Cook spaghetti, add grated cheese (pecorino duro,
Parmesan, etc), oil, black pepper, mix and serve. I asked Anna for
the quantities of ingredients in her pesto recipe, and she said "oh, I
just do it all by eye." none of the precise measurements an long
ingredient lists I'm used to.

2) lean cuisine. Ever wonder why you see lot of fat Americans at the
olive garden and none (except american tourists) in Italy? Dishes here
aren't smothered with cheese and butter and rich, cheesy, buttery
sauces: they're cooked in olive oil. Under the sink, Anna keeps a 1.5L
bottle of olive oil, which she refills from a 5L tin can when
necessary. That's how often we use olive oil- little half-liter
bottles have no use in Italian kitchen. Salad dressing? Olive oil and
vinegar (either balsamic or white wine). Nothing rich and creamy- no
ranch, French, or thousand island.

3) the mediterranean diet doesn't manifest itself over the course of a
meal, but over the corse of a week or two or ten, absolutely. Fish at
least twice a week, eggs once or twice a week (yes, fried eggs for
secondo at dinner, usually with mozzerella on top. But, naturally,
fried in olive oil.) surprisingly little poultry, but plenty of red
meets (beef, veal, pork, prosciutto, etc.) At every dinner, a primo
and secondo and at least one contorno. This usually manifests itself
as a plate of pasta that would suffice as dinner in the States,
secondo as already described, salad or steamed veggies, cheese and
fruit.

*~recipes~*

As I already alluded, so far I've had a couple cooking lessons, and
Anna wants to show me a couple more things before I leave... Most
notably how to make pasta sauce, since an Italian would never consider
buying jarred sauce. Martina did a cooking lesson with us, during
which we made spaghetti alla carbonara, cacio e pepe, and saltimbocca
alla romana. Anna has also showed me how she makes minestrone,
zucchini and eggplant (two different dishes but prepared the exact
same way). Recipes are as follows:

Carbonara:
Cook bacon. (we used pancetta... Same thing. ) don't really have a
precise amount... Whatever seems appropriate. Once bacon is cooked,
mix 2 eggs with 100 grams of grated cheese (pecorino, Parmesan, etc)
and some fresh grated black pepper. Cook spaghetti- the 2 eggs/100
grams of sauce will suffice for about 2 pounds of spaghetti. Drain
spaghetti, pour sauce over, add cooked bacon, mix it all, enjoy!

Saltimbocca alla romana-

These are really easy to make. Quantities totally flexible. Take a
chicken breast. Cut it in half hamburger style, so you have really
thin chicken fillets. Cut them into pieces roughly the size of a tea
saucer. Flour the chicken fillets, and sprinkle with a bit of salt.
Lay a piece of prosciutto crudo on top, and a sage leaf, and fold in
half to make a filled chicken breast. Stick it with a toothpick. Pan
fry in olive oil, serve hot.

Minestrone:

When Anna made it, she used a mix of vegetables from the market. Ours
was mostly various leafy vegetables- spinach, lettuce, etc, but also
with cauliflower, carrot... Doesn't really matter, as long as they're
cut/torn into really small (soup-sized) pieces. Toss into a big pot of
water with a pinch of salt and some bullion cubes- for our minestrone
for three, it was two bullion cubes in maybe 6 quarts of water....
Bring to a boil, simmer for a half hour, add pasta and/or beans/
lentils/etc and simmer another 8-10 minutes (as required by the pasta)
and serve.

Getting the gyst of these recipies though? Very approximate, very
simple. The idea behind it is that if you're using good ingredients,
you don't have to heavily doctor them with the cooking- simply cook
them up and serve!! This should make good Italian cooking easier and
more enjoyable for all!!

That's all for now... A preso!

Baci,
B

Treni

As I'm now officially in the last week of the program, (I cannot
believe it really is December already), I thought I'd reflect a bit on
my train voyages: vacation (which I won't spend too much time on since
I already wrote about it), Florence (yes, Jill, I did make it!),
Siena, and, believe it or not, ice skating.

Vacation was, well, a vacation. I can't think of anyone who would
complain about taking a week off from doing any sort of work to go
tour Italy. Got to take high speed trains around a lot of Northern
Italy, and see some cities that have almost nothing in common with
Rome. Keeping in mind that I haven't even "covered" half of this
country, I daresay Italy has almost as much variability as the U.S.,
crammed into the area of one US state. From Roma, full of ancient
ruins, tourists, and churches; to Venezia, crisscrossed by the canals
that everyone knows about and even more full of tourists, but also
with cobblestone back alleys that reveal a very different, tranquil,
untouristy side of the city; to Torino, home of Fiat, the 2096 winter
Olympics, and a hazelnutty chocolatey substance known as Gianduio, and
the first capital of unified Italy; to Milano, international city of
fashion, commercial and industrial capital of modern Italy, and a city
that quite frankly couldn't be bothered to give a damn about tourists
because it has more important things to worry about. This gave me a
remarkable perspective on my life in Rome- a lot of the things that
drive me nuts are unique to Rome, and I didn't experience them at all
in other parts of the country. You really can't stereotype all of
Italy- every region and city must be judged for it's own merits (and
shortcomings).

Next train trip after vacation was Florence. We really didn't leave
enough time for me to feel like I really got to know the city, but we
did get to do the big 3- duomo, Uffizi, and Accademia. While some of
the other students were climbing the tower at the duomo, I opted for a
back alley stroll and second half of breakfast (wasn't ready for much
when I left the house at 6:15 am, so had to get a supplemental coffee
and pastry at a Florentine bar.) on the way to finding breakfast, I
saw signs for dante's house, so I went to go see where 1200s Italy's
greatest poet lived. I'm not even going to describe the museums, since
it took all day to see both the Uffizi and Accademia, and I'm guessing
you don't want to spend an entire day reading about something that
really just has to be seen in person.

The day after Florence my family arrived, so I got to spend lots of
quality time with them in Rome, and play hookie on Wednesday to go to
Siena. This was definitely worth the playing catch-up when I got back-
the city (town? It was either the smallest city or the biggest town
i've been to) is gorgeous, it has an incredible duomo (Mom was right
on this one- worth the walkthrough), we had a fantastic trattoria
lunch (Luke and I got purple risotto! Gotta try making that. Chianti
and pecorino) and, of course, got to hang out with the Dosses all day.
It had all the charm of the medieval hill towns I visited in Umbria
(Assisi, Orvieto, Gubbio) with the added bonus of being big enough to
walk around all day and not get bored.

Final train trip was this past Sunday, with one of our hired Italian
friends (Martina, who will also come up in my "food" post soon), to go
ice skating. A half hour in train from Rome, past the Castelli Romani
(literally "Roman Castles" but practically just suburbs) in the town
of Marino, is a skating rink. It's not something most Romans do very
often, and you could tell. There was more walking-on-skates going on
than actual skating. That said, it was a blast, and it definitely made
me nostalgic for the good, cold, New England winter.

That's about the extent of my train voyages... It's pretty much my
only way of getting outside the city, so the extent if my knowledge of
extraroman Italy is pretty much limited to places reachable by train.
That's one reason I'm so glad that European trains are so much more
extensive than American trains- it's allowed me to move around as
often as I can make a big enough hole in my homework schedule! Train
trips have definitely been a major factor in getting to know aspects
of Italy other than urban Rome, which has in turn made me understand
the city itself better.

Baci, e a presto!

-Brian

Guida Turistica

OK so this is going to be posted the same day as my last post, but I wanted to do this before the fam gets here, and as busy as I’ve been with other stuff lately, I thought I should do it now before I put it off any more. This is going to be a random collection of things that I think you should know, that may or may not be in Rick Steves.

There are two kinds of police here: Carabinieri, and Polizia Municipale. Basially, the Carabinieri were formed because the Polizia weren’t very effective. So, Carabinieri are kind of a cross between a soldier and a police officer. In a nutshell, they’re police officers that wear bulletproof vests and carry automatic weapons. I, personally, am terrified of the Carabinieri, even though you can jaywalk right in front of them and they don’t care. Basically, you can do anything you want in this country short of stealing, murdering, or picnicking on the lawn of Piazza Venezia. Both the Carabinieri and Polizia are there to look good and keep things from getting too out of hand.

I alluded to this with my jaywalking comment, but I want to clarify: In this city, the concept of crosswalks and traffic lanes doesn’t really exist. There are painted crosswalks… most drivers and pedestrians ignore them. Either cross when there’s a break in traffic, or walk right out into the middle of traffic and make a driver stop. If you’re uncomfortable doing that, cross right behind a Roman. They’ll stop the traffic for you, because they have NO fear of the insane drivers here. Also on this topic: cars are one thing. Motorini (Vespas, motorcycles, and things of that nature) are downright suicidal. They drive insanely fast, weaving through traffic, frequently on the wrong side of the road into oncoming traffic… anytime you’re in or near the street, keep a very very attentive eye out for these.

Buses are incredibly confusing, slow, usually full of people, and generally a pain. That said, they’re also how I get EVERYwhere around the center. With some 800 lines, there’s probably a bus going where you want to go. If you can plan a bit ahead of time, use http://atac.roma.it to find out the most efficient bus (or buses) to get from point A to point B. This also will tell you how frequently the buses come, which is nice because some are every 20 minutes, so you may have to wait a while to catch one, while others come as frequently as every 3 minutes.

Bathrooms in the city: A lot of public ones you have to pay for. Peeing at Stazione Termini costs €0.80. At most bars, an espresso costs €0.80. Therefore, if you have to pee, go to a bar, buy a caffè (which will be an espresso) and use their bathroom. I’ve actually found some really nice bars this way, to which I have later returned to sit and really enjoy the coffee and the atmosphere.

Related notes: Everything costs more at a table. If you’re eating breakfast out, I would recommend taking it at the bar, rather than sitting down. It costs significantly less (usually about half as much), and there’s something really Italian about standing at the bar for 5 minutes to eat a cornetto (Italian word for croissant) and drink a cappuccino or espresso. The only reason I’ll sit is if I’m going to be sitting there for at least an hour, either with someone to talk to, a book, or just to people watch and rest my legs. Otherwise, I’ll just drink at the bar and go.
Gelato: I know mom loves Giolitti, and I have to say that it was really good. (I haven’t been back in a while… gotta make another trip to refresh my memory.) However, we have found another place that (I think) makes better gelato, although I have yet to find it in any tourist guide or my book of the best Gelaterie d’Italia. Gelateria al Teatro is on the Via dei Coronari, which is a very cute little street that runs from behind Piazza Navona to the Tiber river, a bit touristy but not at all obnoxious about it. This gelateria is tucked into a corner, and has a ridiculous selection of flavors that’s constantly changing depending on what they can get for fresh ingredients. As the apples have gotten better, for instance, they introduced mela canella, which could BE a piece of apple pie. Their millefoglie actually has pieces of millefoglie cake in it. And they have (if I remember correctly) 6 different flavors of chocolate. The one thing they can’t match Giolitti on is their panna (whipped cream), but I’m willing to sacrifice that. I also have to try one other place that’s a bit farther away (past the Olympic stadium) in Ponte Milvio, and if that’s worth the trek I’ll add it to this list. ☺

Vacanze

OK, so this is much overdue. Apologies. Catching up with everything I missed on vacation took a while. Here’s an account of what I did on vacation, and everything else I can think of.

My vacation, for all practical purposes, started on Monday. Dana and I took a train to Venice, from Roma Termini, on a cold and rainy day. That day didn’t change as we went farther north. This made for seeing a very different side of Venice. It was still beautiful, but in a different way from what I expected. We were both on the same page with regards to our philosophy on Venice- we wanted to see it, experience it, and move on. Don’t get me wrong, it’s very charming- it’s also, unfortunately, the most touristy city in the world, and we were kind of looking to see some non-touristy Italy. Got a lot of good pictures, mental and digital, and I’m happy to say that I went to Venice before it sunk. However, 4 hours was enough to do this and continue on to Torino (Turin). We spent the night in Torino, and then on Tuesday walked around and saw the city. It was definitely charming, and we had a lovely day to do it. We walked a lot, and ate a lot- especially chocolate. Torino (and its region) are famous for Gianduio, which is a type of hazelnut chocolate substance. Sometimes it’s a spread, like pre-industrial nutella. Sometimes it’s formed into chocolates. Sometimes it’s put into a drink. We consumed it all three ways, and probably more. ☺ They also make marroni del piemonte: roasted, glazed chestnuts. They’re incredible. Also notable was the Olympic village from 2006: they use the Olympic stadium now for soccer games, so we couldn’t go inside, but it’s still pretty cool to see it from the outside. We did, however, get to go in the ice stadium. Whenever I get around to putting pics up on facebook, I’ve got to tag Chloe in one of those, seeing as she was there watching the games three years ago. (Almost four years now… whoa.) What was so cool about that to me is that you can actually skate in the Olympic stadium. However, we were a little short on time before our train to Milan, and it was overrun with little girls, so we elected to skip it.

As alluded, our next stop was Milan. For those of you who are on facebook, you may already know that I positively fell in love with it. It’s got all the beauty of the Italian language (in fact, a nicer dialect if you ask me), without the things that have been driving me nuts about Rome. It’s physically smaller, so for the same half-hour / 40 minute commute I have here in Rome, Davide (our TA from Italian 2, who was at Dartmouth for the year last year, but who lives in the town of Boviso, outside of Milan) has a house in a small town rather than a loud, busy city. The culture is, logically enough, a more civilized, northern European version of what you find in Rome. Drivers will actually stop for you in a crosswalk; if someone gets mad at you, they won’t confront you by yelling “damn your dead ancestors”; and, perhaps most importantly for me, it felt clean. The duomo of Milan is the 4th largest church in Europe, and is positively gorgeous. Very different from anything I’ve seen so far anywhere else, in that it has strikingly gothic architecture. Contrary to its name, it does not actually have a dome. Instead, hundreds of spires and hundreds of statues decorate the outside of the church. For the first time, I got the sense that the church was actually reaching up towards heaven. We also got to go see Leonardo’s The Last Supper, which I will never forget despite not being allowed to take pictures. (One girl actually did take a picture on her iPhone, and the docent walked up, and told her if she didn’t delete the pictures on the spot he’d call the police. Then he went through all her pictures to make sure they’d been deleted.) The Last Supper is very heavily controlled, so we got to enter, stare in wonder for 15 minutes, and then were ushered out. I definitely highly recommend it to anyone who happens to be in the area. Obviously, we did a bit of shopping in Milan, because it’s kind of a requirement. We walked down the Via di Monte Napoleone, which is the really high-fashion, super expensive street, but left empty handed out of not wanted to take out a mortgage to buy a shirt. Most of our actual “looking for things to buy” shopping was in the area of the duomo, on Via Vittorio Emanuele. (I think every city in Italy has a Via or Corso Vittorio Emanuele…) From Milan, we did a day trip to Como, to see the lake. It was beautiful, but in the same way that Venice was: kind of left me wanting to return in the summer when it’s hot, sunny, gorgeous, and I want to actually be in a boat on the water. Oh well.

That’s about it for the vacation… only a few days, and didn’t linger in any one place very long, but I was really glad to see another side of Italy, and to find a city that still feels like a pure Italian city, barely touched by tourism (Torino) and one that I would be happy to live in (Milan), not to mention one that may have been destroyed by tourism, but that I’ve wanted to see for years (Venice). It gave me a lot of perspective, with which I can now see Rome from a different point of view.

TaTa for now,

-Brian


Appunti:
Flavio (have I introduced him? The 14 month old grandson of my host parents) learned to walk by himself this week. Two weeks ago he was walking, as long as he was holding onto someone or something for support. Now he’s running around the house following me.

My family gets here in a week and a day. I’m very excited.

Chrissy and I met another American runner today! We were at the track this morning and saw a girl running in a Lafayette shirt… turns out she’s doing the same kind of thing we are, and has been struggling with training because she feels very out of place at the track, since she doesn’t speak much (if any) Italian. Chrissy may have just picked up a training partner… alas, I’m still doing all my intervals by myself.

Dartmouth bought us friends. Literally, Courtney is paying two Italian students to hang out with us from time to time. Weird. But they’re really nice, so we’ve decided we’re OK with the fact that we have mercenary Italian friends. Hopefully we’ll get to see a different side of hanging out than we’ve found so far… starting with an aperitivo on Saturday.

La Frutta

OK this is going to be a short one, because it’s midterms (yay!) and I have to be writing a half dozen different papers and stronzo right now. Anyways, I was reflecting on dinner tonight and thought I’d share this.

First of all, tonight at dinner we actually had a pretty significant discussion, apart from the usual dinner table talk about things I’ve done in Italy, and things I want to do, and things Anna and Claudio have done, and all of our life stories… Of course, it started that way… Anna asked what we had done in school today, which included a 2-hour lecture covering all of Italian history from 1944 to today. For those of you who have not attempted such a summary of 60 years in two hours, it’s not really possible. Anyways, I included my editorial comment that I found it all very interesting because it was so different from American history of the same time period. Claudio asked why it was different, and we ended up discussing two of (what seem to me to be) the three most important reasons: communism, Catholicism, and combat…ism. In a nutshell, Italy had the proportionally largest communist party in Europe, and in the US “communism” was practically a swear. Combat, because world war two took place IN Italy, while (for the most part) American territory was left alone.

What we spent the most time on, however, was the influence of the church. Obviously, the catholic church has a huge influence in Rome, and in all of Italy. Much moreso than in the US. Until 1870, all of Rome (and really, a much larger region around it) was actually the Papal state. Imagine a hulked-out version of the Vatican. In 1870, when Italy was united, the pope locked himself up in St. Peter’s and didn’t come out for 50 years (obviously there were a few pope changes during that time), and didn’t emerge from the Vatican until 1920-something to sign a pact with Mussolini.

Obviously this really does interest me because I keep digressing. The point of this was that Anna said that she was a “believer, but not a practicer”. Claudio immediately jumped in, saying that such a thing was not possible. There followed a 10 minute discussion (that I’m not going to try to transcribe here) of what exactly it means to be a “believer”, and whether it’s possible to be religious without following what the church says. Italians have a habit of making it very hard to get a word in edgewise when they get fired up, so I ended up just listening for a while, before mentioning that in the Protestant tradition (at least, as far as I’ve been exposed) it is much more acceptable to be a believer without doing everything the church says. Rather, I have always appreciated leaving church without feeling like I have to “do this or go to hell”. Italy, however, is catholic by culture, and as Claudio so succinctly put it, “If the church tells you to walk left, you walk left!”. There is no difference between “believers” and practicing Catholics – if you are a “believer”, than you will do exactly what the church says. (Sorry for my repetition of “believer”… the Italian word is “credente”, which literally translates as such, and my English is too rusty to think of any synonyms right now.) For me, it was another illuminating cultural difference, and it made me even gladder to not be catholic.

Anticlimactic ending: the title of this post comes from the fact that this discussion took place at the end of dinner, so we were eating fruit. It was another thing I wanted to note. Every significant meal (weekend lunches at home, usually of 4 courses, and dinners) ends with fruit. If we have something sweet (sweet apple bread last week…) it comes before the fruit. Italians, however, never eat apples the way we usually do in the states: rather, they’re always cut and peeled. Usually when we’re done with dinner, the three of us sit at the table cutting apples and peeling clementines and passing around the pieces. These are the little things that I’m going to miss when I come back home… I feel like cutting up fruit by myself won’t quite be the same. Maybe I’ll try to spread the tradition a bit…

Back to my important writing. This didn’t end up being that short. Oh well.

Here’s to midterms!

Baci,
B

Scambi culturali

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I could have chosen a lot of titles for this one, but I thought this was the most important. Ecco un racconto of our weekend in Umbria… (It’s a long one)

We left Thursday morning, and for the first time since being in Rome, I grabbed a jacket because it was chilly. I won’t go as far as “cold”, but there was definitely a nip in the air. A welcome change from So-Hot-I’m-Always-Sweaty, and about time, given that Thursday was the 15^th of October! Thursday, we went to Orvieto before our final destination at an agriturismo (bed-and-breakfast, Italian style) in the Umbrian countryside. It was a gorgeous day to be in a small medieval town, and we did a couple typical touristy things before just walking around the town, with no idea where we were or where we were going. First stop was the duomo: the most important church in the town. Then we went to a museum of art from Orvieto and the surrounding towns, some of which had been rescued from a nearby necropolis, some of which used to be in the duomo… etc. Across the street was an archaeological museum… we still haven’t decided why some of the artifacts ended up in this museum: there were pots that definitely looked Greek, but were in this Italian museum. Boh. After lunch, we just walked around the town. The views were gorgeous; Orvieto, like any medieval town, was built on a mountain, so you can see the countryside for miles around.

The agriturismo: we got there, it was pretty cold out, everyone had to pee, and we had to wait a while to actually get inside where it was warm and go to our rooms. When we finally got in, however, it was warm, cozy, and very rural-Italy feeling. Go figure. We went downstairs for dinner very shortly after arriving, got a brief speech from our host about the history of the area and why there was such an emphasis on certain grains and legumes, and then we ate. And ate. And ate and ate and ate. And drank wine. And ate some more, and then drank coffee. Everyone went to bed with a food baby; some people with food twins.

Turns out our host at the agriturismo was the same “Professore Franco” who was showing us around the area on Friday. I’m going to stop talking about how beautiful the views of the countryside were; it’s safe to assume that I could throw that in at any given point in the rest of this post. Our first stop was at a cheese factory, where we had no connections and no appointment. We just kind of walked in and talked our way into a tour, explanation of the cheesemaking process, and then a tasting of “mixed pecorino”, pecorino with pepperoncini (pepperoncini, here, are more like hot red chili peppers than the vinegary green peppers you get in a salad at the olive garden), and also pecorino with tartufi (truffles- that was my second choice for a title for this post). From there, we went to the town of Cessi, where we walked around a farm, got to hold twin lambs that were about 3 hours old (see also: pictures soon to be on facebook, I’m sure), saw a lamb that was about 2 minutes old find its feet and start walking around, find it’s mother and get licked clean, and met a giant teddy bear of a dog named Brian. We then got shown to the church in Cessi by am 82 year old priest, who explained all the frescoes in the church and played an organ from 1650 which was specially designed for processionals: it’s one of three remaining in the world. I have a video which is going up on youtube probably right after I post this. After lunch, we returned to the farm for lunch (apparently the woman who showed us around the farm was also feeding us) and ate wayyy too much food. Think, Italian-caliber dinner (twice the food of an American dinner), for lunch. As we were trying to leave, Pina (the woman who cooked and showed us around) grabbed Chrissy, Alix, and me (and maybe Bri? I don’t remember.) and instead of letting us return to the bus, took us to the henhouse and insisted on taking pictures of us holding a chicken and a TINY black lab puppy at the same time. I realized that I’m pretty used to holding chickens thanks to growing up around them at Non and Pop’s, but for most people, holding a chicken is a weird experience. Finally, we went to the small medieval mountain town of Visso, which was many people’s (myself included) favorite place we visited this weekend, for no concrete reason in particular other than the atmosphere. My opinion may have been slightly influenced by the hot chocolate I had after roaming the city for a little while (think brownie batter consistency, dark chocolate instead of milk chocolate, and hot).

Saturday, we went to Gubbio, and it was raining, and we walked through where they were filming a movie and it started snowing. Turns out that was fake snow that some guy was standing in a corner blowing over the piazza for the film, but it gives you an idea of the weather. Most of the time we were there was spent inside, either checking out the little shops or sitting in a bar drinking coffee and eating pastries. Not a day to be outside. It was definitely a cute little town, but not the best time to visit. (also, we were there during the siesta when most shops are closed, so we didn’t get to go in a lot of places.) When we returned, we stayed inside for long enough to warm up, then went out with another old Italian man, this time with two dogs, and looked for truffles. The dogs found about 8 truffles, which we promptly took from them in exchange for doggy treats. Seems like a good deal to me. We brought them back and gave them to the woman who was cooking dinner at the agriturismo, and so as part of dinner, we had a polenta with fresh truffles. Probably the best thing I ate while we were there.

Saturday night- the story for which this entry is named. After dinner, Bri, Julia, and I were sitting at the table, with an almost-full bottle of wine in front of us. None of us really wanted more wine, but we felt like it was a waste to just leave it, so we turned to the table next to us (actually three tables pushed together, with about 20 Italians seated around them) and offered them the wine. Their response was to ask where we were from and then insist that we push our table over to theirs and sit and drink and chat with them. Sooooo we kinda sorta gave into the peer pressure, and made friends with the Italians. Everyone was from within 20km, and they had come just for dinner, and it was basically just a group of friends, and friends of friends, and friends of friends of friends. Easily some of the friendliest people I have encountered here in Italy. They thought it would be fun to teach us an Italian drinking game, except they left out the part about the drinking, saying that we played with bicchieri vuoti (empty glasses), which was technically true. It was kind of like a game we used to play in middle school music class, passing cups around a circle to a song and a clapping rhythm. The difference was that here when you mess up, they pour wine into your glass and make you drink. (oh by the way, most of these people we were socializing with were married or engaged, and in their 30s. There were also small kids running around). That was the kind of real interaction I had been hoping for since coming here, although it definitely involved more wine than I imagined. They certainly seemed to be enjoying it, and were full of questions about life in the states, and what we thought of Italy, and what we had done here so far. It was a great way to practice the language, since the accent was a little different from the Roman accent, which forced me to really pay attention to what they were saying to understand it all. Most importantly though, it was just a lot of fun to meet a group of super friendly Italians who wanted nothing more than for us to join them at dinner and drink wine. That’s something you’ll never get by just studying a language in school.

OK congratulations for making it this far. I’d write about Sunday as well, but there’s not a WHOLE lot to say- we stopped in Assisi on our way home, which was another gorgeous little mountain town, but a bit overrun with tourists, and therefore not quite as endearing as I found Visso and Gubbio. As much as I love being in Rome, it was definitely a bit of a rude shock to return to the noise and the crowds and the traffic, after such a relaxing weekend in a beautiful setting. It was a taste of a very different part of Italia, and makes me very curious for what I’ll get on our weeklong vacation when we travel around northern Italy….

Baci!

-Brian

Culture

A quick recount of culture differences (or lack thereof) between Italy and the States:

* When we arrived, our first day of class, there were posters all over the classroom about living in a city, using public transport, how to see all of Italy, and "Living with Italians". Things I remember about it that have struck me:
-"Always keep two hands above the table." Apparently putting your hands in your lap looks like you're hiding something. Apparently both my Italian 'parents' are hiding a lot, because they always eat with their hands in their laps.
-"Keep your elbows off the table, same as you would at home". Apparently things really are more laid back here, because again, this is pretty commonplace.
-"Limit yourself to one shower a day". This one's actually true. Electricity here is super expensive, so hot water for showers adds up. As do leaving on ANY lights. at any given time, there is as little light in the house as possible, while still keeping us from walking into things.

Other things I was told, more or less from the posters:
*Italian time: people here are, in fact, very relaxed. No one is ever in a hurry for anything. Supposedly, being 5 minutes late is very commonplace because of this. However, classes here never start more than 10 seconds late, and usually a minute or two early. no fair.

*Personal Bubble: Yes, it's smaller here. Yes, it's a little off-putting at times. When it's 80 degrees out (yes, it's that hot right now) people sweat. And when someone is sweating at 4:00 in the afternoon and close talking, you KNOW that they're sweating. I'm slowly getting used to it though....

That's about all I remember for now. But, one more fun story: Yesterday, as I was going to get on the tram I take home from school, I saw two *Italians* pushing the "doors open" buttons and looking totally perplexed as to why the doors wouldn't open. And then the train pulled away from where it had been sitting. I was able to inform them that the stop was actually 100 meters ahead, and that this particular train had been turning around. Made me feel like I actually knew the city a bit... I was pretty pumped.

Off to get lunch, and then buy soccer tickets, and then run, and then head over to Via del Corso-ish...

ciao for now!

-Brian