I decided today to organize my travel emails so that this blog I started might serve a useful purpose, namely to help me remember what the heck I've been doing for the past few years. So if you feel like rooting around in my memory bank, feel free.
Also, if anyone has the first travel email I ever wrote, circa July 2002--the one about getting stuck on the toilet in Japan--please please send it my way. This will never be complete without it.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Italy: Ahem
I mumble.
I have always been vaguely annoyed when people don´t understand me when I´m mumbling, but I would like to take this opportunity to bow before everyone who has ever been subjected to my mumbling and beg forgiveness. For Kate, when she is tired, when she is hot--and we spend most of our time hot and tired--mumbles. And it is sublimely annoying (this is not something I remember about her. Either my memory is going, or my hearing is).
Luckily I, too, am annoying.
My most annoying quality on this trip, or at least what I hope is my most annoying quality, comes each evening when the sun lowers its fierce head and people begin to greet each other with ´buonasera´ instead of the daytime ´buongiorno´. Shortly after being forced to say ´buonasera´for the first time, this Louis Prima song pops into my head, and no matter how resolved I am to keep my mouth shut, it always leaks out when I´m not paying attention. Now, this might be kind of funny and even charming the first time. But we were in Italy for 13 days. I doesn´t help that I only know about 10 words that I sing over and over. Over and over. Poor Kate.
Fortunately, as well as rediscovering each other´s irritating qualities, Kate and I are remembering how hard we can laugh together, especially when the going gets rough.
Speaking of which.
Kate and I left our Gentleman´s Farm. We decided, incidentally, that WWOOF (Willing Workers on Organic Farms, the organization that led us to the farm) should in many cases be renamed Willing Workers for the Landed Gentry. Especially because I would much prefer saying I was WWFTLGing than WWOOFing (arf). We spent many of our Organic work hours varnishing Claudio´s doors and window frames and getting loopy on the fumes. So much time that we have converted ´varnish´ into a curse word. But hey, Claudio was a helluva cook, so that made it worth it. Also we got to harvest a lot of lavender, which was sickeningly picturesque.
Anyway, we returned to Rome and immediately went on a quest for gelato and pizza, following new recommendations from Claudio and Michelle. By just after midnight we were well sated and ready to take on the Notte di Caravaggio tour of churches. In honor of the 400th anniversary of the lamentable death of Caravaggio, (not his real name) Roma was having a great celebration wherein all the churches housing his work were kept open all night and there were historians around to explain the brilliance of the various masterpieces and a free bus was provided between the churches. This is further evidence of sane people choosing to be nocturnal when possible in Rome in July. The line for the first church was crushingly long,...
...and when we finally got in we couldn´t focus long enough to try to understand the Italian historians. Thoroughly exhausted, we threw in the towel and got a cab (such decadence!) back to our lodging.
Now there were three layers of security in the apartment building where we were staying. The first layer was not so secure, since the lock wasn´t latched and we just pushed through the door. The second layer was the one that stymied us. At 1 AM time does strange things for those of us who prefer going to sleep at 10. We fought that lock for what seemed like days. First Kate, then me, then Kate, then me. The marble steps were cool and inviting, and we were all but resolved to sleep there for the night, when we decided to make one last ditch effort. Having lost most ability for verbal communication, I took up the key, shoved it back in the lock for the 2000th time, and turned. As usual, it made an encouraging sound that seemed to communicate that the bolt had moved. But the door, as usual, remained unfazed. "Push and pull," I instructed Kate, and with a wild look in her eye, Kate complied. She threw herself at the doorknob, then drew it back with all her farmer might. Again and again she did this, and we started laughing maniacally. All the while I put pressure on the key, first one way, then the other, till finally, and this was truly a miraculous moment because both of us had lost hope at this point, the key turned! A moment of epiphany! Caravaggio´s light touched us!
And Kate, still carrying the momentum of push-and-pull, fell into the apartment. The key I was still holding dragged me behind her, and we tumbled in, landing in a heap in the entryway. Helpless giggles ensued. Push and Pull. Put your back into it. It´s good advice.
I have always been vaguely annoyed when people don´t understand me when I´m mumbling, but I would like to take this opportunity to bow before everyone who has ever been subjected to my mumbling and beg forgiveness. For Kate, when she is tired, when she is hot--and we spend most of our time hot and tired--mumbles. And it is sublimely annoying (this is not something I remember about her. Either my memory is going, or my hearing is).
Luckily I, too, am annoying.
My most annoying quality on this trip, or at least what I hope is my most annoying quality, comes each evening when the sun lowers its fierce head and people begin to greet each other with ´buonasera´ instead of the daytime ´buongiorno´. Shortly after being forced to say ´buonasera´for the first time, this Louis Prima song pops into my head, and no matter how resolved I am to keep my mouth shut, it always leaks out when I´m not paying attention. Now, this might be kind of funny and even charming the first time. But we were in Italy for 13 days. I doesn´t help that I only know about 10 words that I sing over and over. Over and over. Poor Kate.
Fortunately, as well as rediscovering each other´s irritating qualities, Kate and I are remembering how hard we can laugh together, especially when the going gets rough.
Speaking of which.
Kate and I left our Gentleman´s Farm. We decided, incidentally, that WWOOF (Willing Workers on Organic Farms, the organization that led us to the farm) should in many cases be renamed Willing Workers for the Landed Gentry. Especially because I would much prefer saying I was WWFTLGing than WWOOFing (arf). We spent many of our Organic work hours varnishing Claudio´s doors and window frames and getting loopy on the fumes. So much time that we have converted ´varnish´ into a curse word. But hey, Claudio was a helluva cook, so that made it worth it. Also we got to harvest a lot of lavender, which was sickeningly picturesque.
Anyway, we returned to Rome and immediately went on a quest for gelato and pizza, following new recommendations from Claudio and Michelle. By just after midnight we were well sated and ready to take on the Notte di Caravaggio tour of churches. In honor of the 400th anniversary of the lamentable death of Caravaggio, (not his real name) Roma was having a great celebration wherein all the churches housing his work were kept open all night and there were historians around to explain the brilliance of the various masterpieces and a free bus was provided between the churches. This is further evidence of sane people choosing to be nocturnal when possible in Rome in July. The line for the first church was crushingly long,...
...and when we finally got in we couldn´t focus long enough to try to understand the Italian historians. Thoroughly exhausted, we threw in the towel and got a cab (such decadence!) back to our lodging.
Now there were three layers of security in the apartment building where we were staying. The first layer was not so secure, since the lock wasn´t latched and we just pushed through the door. The second layer was the one that stymied us. At 1 AM time does strange things for those of us who prefer going to sleep at 10. We fought that lock for what seemed like days. First Kate, then me, then Kate, then me. The marble steps were cool and inviting, and we were all but resolved to sleep there for the night, when we decided to make one last ditch effort. Having lost most ability for verbal communication, I took up the key, shoved it back in the lock for the 2000th time, and turned. As usual, it made an encouraging sound that seemed to communicate that the bolt had moved. But the door, as usual, remained unfazed. "Push and pull," I instructed Kate, and with a wild look in her eye, Kate complied. She threw herself at the doorknob, then drew it back with all her farmer might. Again and again she did this, and we started laughing maniacally. All the while I put pressure on the key, first one way, then the other, till finally, and this was truly a miraculous moment because both of us had lost hope at this point, the key turned! A moment of epiphany! Caravaggio´s light touched us!
(This is what the light was like at that tender moment when the key turned.)
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Italy: Forgive me...
...for I am in Italy and I am going to tell you about a meal.
We arrived in Rome without a guidebook, but with a list as long as your arm of recommendations from friends who have explored Rome enough to find the hidden treasures every food-and-culture obsessed traveler seeks. Go to La Lucia and eat the coniglio caccitora (thank you Stephanie). Stay in a monastery, they're cheap, clean, and oh the nuns! (thank you Evan). Pizzarium, west of the Vatican, has the best pizza in the world (thank you Max's mom). The problem with our tome of juicy insider knowledge was that we tried to do everything on each person's list,eat every dish at each food establishment, and all under the brutal Roman sun when any sensible being with any say in the matter must have been curled up in a siesta from 11 AM to 5 PM. What I mean to say is that we over-Romed. And now, from a hillside just outside of Rome, I have a moment to share with you. It is from Stephanie's carefully crafted list of delights, and it involved inhumane amounts of hearty Roman peasant food.
The Romana who served us did not beat about the bush. Smoker's voice and teeth to match, stringy hair and sparkling eyes, she smacked both palms on our plastic sidewalk table--had their been a sidewalk--and leaned forward, offering us our only choice of the evening: "Bianco o rosso?!" I am not being coy in withholding the name of the restaurant; we just couldn't find any marker that announced it. It is pressed into the side of a hill in Trastevere, at the foot of the Janiculum stairs, at the end of Vicolo del Cedro. That is enough if you ever want to find it.
We chose rosso, and soon the table wine and pitcher of good Roman tap water plunked down onto the green-and-white plastic table cloth. Almost immediately the first wave of food was upon us--bruschetta with thick chunks of tomatoes, languid, savory beans dissolving into their savory sauce, spicy mashed potatoes that were a startling fiery orange. We were still smiling when the pasta bowl arrived--simple parmigiano and pepper. But when the next two bowls of pasta arrived, panic nestled into my stomach somewhere between the bread and the pasta and the potatoes. The only solution was more rosso.
Pasta Anguish
More Rosso
When the segundi presented themselves, one squid one chicken, we were practically lashing ourselves in penitence. We could not eat it all. The squid was nothing to write home about (ahaha), but the chicken tasted so much like chicken it was almost indecent. With the arrival of dessert came the arrival of even more diners. More tables drawn onto the street, more family, friends, regulars. It felt very much like we were crashing a neighborhood party. With the anise biscuits, limoncello, and grappa, and months of catching up to do, Kate and I barely made it back to the convent by curfew.
Limoncello. Grappa. Anise Biscuits.
Meh. SquidI could go on like this. I could describe every topping on the finest pizza I've ever had (so far). I could tell you about watching the fruit crates roll into the gelateria and the gelato and sorbetto roll out (fragoline di bosco! how you torture me!), but it is already feeling a bit too nostalgic. We have moved on, relocated to a 'farm' outside the city, which is really the vegetable patch of an old gentleman called Claudio who was the director of a local TV channel until Berlusconi bought it up. He is 72 and works in the garden with his pacemaker despite the protestations of his fluttery American wife. We work alongside Filip and Anna, the sweetest Swedish couple you can ever imagine. We call Claudio 'Cloudy,' which with his shock of white hair and limited range of hearing, is the perfectest term of endearment. It is hot. The meals are long, and the siesta is longer. Life is good.
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