Pre-homecoming Stinchi Extravaganza

It's my second December in Bologna. And it's clear that I've become significantly weaker in a year away from the East Coast. I find myself complaining constantly about the cold here, and it's not even that cold - but it's damp. So damp, actually, that my clothes keep getting moldy in my drawers. And I keep having to attack these scary mold-like growths on the walls of my bedroom. All the bleach in the world won't make that gunk go away permanently. This place is seriously damp.



The cold has resulted in a few heating wars in my house, most notably last week. There have been small heating battles for a while now, in which Francesca and I turn on the heat via the thermostat, only to hear Massimo run down the stairs to immediately turn it off. This can go on for hours. Once Francesca turned the heat on four times in one hour. So Massimo is obsessive, but we already knew this. Anyway, his brilliant idea was to bypass the thermostat completely and go directly to the furnace, knowing that we wouldn't think to look at it. Indeed, Francesca and I spent a good 20 minutes fiddling with the thermostat trying to figure out why the house was freezing even though we had turned the heat up to 75 degrees. And then we checked the furnace, which is closed up in its little compartment, and saw that it had been turned off. We attached a post-it to the furnace switch, writing, "AREN'T YOU ASHAMED OF YOURSELF?", which Massimo duly received when he ran downstairs five minutes later to see why his radiator was warming up. I won't include the yelling part, but Francesca was very articulate.

Speaking of Francesca, I'm very sad that I'll be missing her graduation next Monday. She just finished her master's thesis and it should be quite a party. I've heard that these celebrations often include scenes in which the new graduate is stripped and pelted with anchovies and flour, while friends write (and read aloud) the best anecdotes about the person's days of drunken college debauchery. In front of his or her parents. It sounds amazing! (One thing that I've always liked about Bologna is that throughout the year people celebrate graduations, and you can always tell who the new graduate is by the laurel wreath and the drunken singing.)



I'll be home in 8 days. I can't wait to eat lots of things that I can't get good versions of here. Like pickles, mustard, turkey, cranberry juice, and non-pasta items. Kimchi! The photos above and below are good reflections of my excitement.



Regarding food, I had a very memorable restaurant experience on Monday. I went out with almost all my coworkers to celebrate two separate birthdays. You can see us singing, below.



Tiziano (whom you can see in this blog alternately peeing, wearing white face paint, and chasing horses off a highway, which does in no way indicate WHY we allowed him organize this event) chose a restaurant nicknamed The Lurido (which means something like "piggy"). The ambience was clear right off the bat, as the hostess/waitress/cook (she seemed to be doing everything) greeted us as "strange people" and reprimanded us for missing one of our party (Letizia showed up late). When I went to the bathroom, a strange man who had wandered in off the street came in and turned off the lights. He then reprimanded me for peeing with the lights on, until the waitress shooed him away. A dog ran wild through the restaurant while her owner enjoyed his pizza.

Her mood didn't improve as Letizia's absence continued. She informed us that, for being late, Letizia "wouldn't fuck anyone until at least the end of 2007". I swear, those were her exact words. The best part was that she said it to Letizia's face when she arrived a few minutes later. (Leti's response: "STILL?!?!") Overall it was a very enlightening experience.

With lots of wine. Notice Massimo's stature in comparison with the bottle size. Okay, I do have a wide angle lens, but still - the bottles were enormous.


One of the food highlights was "stinco di maiale", or pig shank. I can't decide if it sounds more ridiculous in Italian or English, but in Italian the plural is "stinchi", pronounced "stinky". Those shanks (which are technically shins?) were massive. You can see Tiziano and Massimo chewing on theirs, above. Letizia was actually the only person who managed to finish her stinco.
Here she is, eating.


And smiling triumphantly.


The above photo is a good reflection of the restaurant, as you can see the waiter commenting on us as he walks by.


Sara and Luisella. Another good reflection of the restaurant setting.

Anyway, after 4 liters of wine and a large quantity of meat, it was time to stop celebrating and go home.

Start Hibernation

It's chilly here. And not much is going on here, but I will sally forth with this new blog entry, as I don't want to leave my few-but-faithful readers out in the cold. So to speak.



The past few weeks have been totalllyyyy consumed by my attempts to navigate the bureaucracy that is the Italian immigration system. It looks like I'm going to be spending some more time here, so it's the season to re-start the process, which is a nightmare. My activities have taken place in three different spots:
The Questura, which is the police headquarters (Italy has a bunch of different types of police, but these are the ones who control immigration). This place is miserable. I'd call it worse names but I'm worried that some Questura spy will find this and refuse to let me stay in Italy, so I'm just going to say that this is a decidedly not-fun place. The Questura can take someone like me - basically smothered in privilege thanks to race and nationality - and make me feel confused, overwhelmed, disrespected, and anxious. Entering the building is like getting a zoomed-in view of real desperation - I may not feel it, but it's written all over the faces of everyone else in there, most of whom are in Italy because of dire economic or political circumstances.
Then there's the Prefettura (Prefecture), which is some kind of official governing body. They should technically have the expertise to answer lots of questions about immigration, and have all sorts of labyrinth-like hallways in which you can have the privilege of a 4 or 5 hour wait before even seeing an official. You go to the Prefettura if you need to figure out what you have to do at the Questura. They used to be connected (like, in the same building) but about a month ago the Questura was moved to a godforsaken spot, basically on an isolated dirt pathway, outside the city. Luckily for us, however, the Prefettura hasn't moved an inch.
The CGIL, or Italian General Confederation of Labor. This is one of Italy's three major unions - it's the Communist one. For various reasons, they have the most detailed, efficient immigrant support system (including free Italian classes). There is an extremely chaotic office that manages work queries for immigrants, including legal stuff, and this is about to become my new home: I have been advised to visit every day until the first week in December, because work quotas will be released without warning, and it's a first-come, first-serve situation. They already know me. The cool thing about this office, which makes me a little homesick, is the fact that the staff members come from all over the world - as they should, because they need to communicate with the workers who come through the door. It's one of the rare places here that employs a diverse staff - people from North Africa, Ethiopia, Eritrea, the Middle East, Asia, South America, Eastern Europe. Yay! (I may not be cheering for them once they start despising me for my constant presence.)



Aside from all of that stuff, which is really stressful, it's nice to know that I want to be here for a little while longer. Or a long while longer? Well, who knows. But when it came to make this decision, about a month ago, it dawned on me that I've been here for a year. And despite all the tough parts, it's been worth it - I really do feel as if I've created a life here, and I'm pretty proud of that. I'm not ready to give it up yet, either! So I'll be back at CGIL tomorrow. And the day after.



If you've actually made it through all of that nonsense, here's an anecdote from my day today. It's become a regular joke at work that I should just marry one of my coworkers to end all of this immigration-related stress. Of course, the big question is WHICH ONE I'd marry. Amid all this joking, Massimo (one of my favorites - hi, Massimo!) decided to give me a lesson about love and relationships. It's called, "La Legge del Cornuto Contento" - the law of the happy betrayed person. It is as follows: Everyone betrays sooner or later, regardless of any discussion of true love or whatnot. The secret is to make sure that your boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse never finds out - making him/her BETRAYED, yet HAPPY, at least in ignorance. And the final secret: deny, deny, deny, even if the evidence is in full view.
Keep in mind that this was related to me at a lunch table full of coworkers, male and female, ranging from about 25 to 60 years old - and everybody agreed. (Except the American, of course, Puritan Emma: "I don't know if it's always that way." Massimo: "It doesn't matter what you know or don't know. Your thoughts are irrelevant in this case. It's a law, and it's always true.")

Oh well. The cultural learning curve is long.

Audrey, Liza, Elizabeth, and more . . .

Another blog entry about a house party at Via Avesella . . .

The date for our much-anticipated Halloween party rolled around, and we were ready. This time around, Francesca (my new-ish roommate) and I decided that it was time to mutiny: we were going to invite whomever we wanted. (At our past party, Massimo assigned us a guest quota of 6 people.) So, we got all dressed up, invited our guests, and waited. As you can see above, Massimo bided his time by pretending to be a bat, or something.

One of the first to arrive was Elisa, the girlfriend of Stefano, who runs our favorite gelateria (now closed for the winter). She wasn't in costume, but Massimo called her Elizabeth (as in, the queen) for the entire night because of her hair. Her hair was pretty amazing - we'd never seen it before, because at work she always had it tied up and covered by a cap. Here you can see Massimo bowing to her.



I dressed up as Audrey Hepburn for the second time, which was sort of a lazy thing to do. But it was relatively easy to assemble, and Halloween is a pretty new holiday here, so I was happy to find something that I could pull off. I found out that cigarette holders are sold in regular tobacco stores all over the city. I wonder who's using them?

Here I am in full regalia.



My friend Irene usually looks taller than that, I think.

And here's my roommate Francesca, who was a prom-acid-witch of some sort, and her friend Itala, a cat. Itala is Peruvian and is currently an underwear designer in Bologna (she studied fashion in Milan). As you can imagine, this makes every man within 100 miles start drooling.



And below is my friend Natasha, who is blessed with almost the EXACT same genetic makeup as Rosa and me. She came as Liza Minelli. And my coworker Tiziano came as some kind of character from a Fellini film. I don't really know what he was.



By the time everyone had had a few glasses of wine, we all got to sing (this always seems to happen at my house). Chris, a Johns Hopkins student who owns the guitar in question, knew a full repertoire of grunge songs from the 1990s (incidentally, he came to the party dressed in a brown sweater with a leopard-print towel draped over his shoulders - we never really figured out what his costume was - but as you can see in this photo, the towel migrated around the party, spending most of its time with Massimo). When he was finished, we got started on Italian songs. We all sang all the songs, regardless of the words.



The party was a grand success until about 3 am, when Massimo finally took out a wet mop and started using it to shoo guests out of the house. He literally pushed peoples' feet with the mop. Then he got down on his knees and scraped stains off the walls with a teaspoon. (He's certifiably insane, I think.)



In other news, my choir had an amazing interactive concert last weekend, I went to a salsa club and drank an amazing mojito (with practically an entire mint plant inside it) while dancing to music that made me homesick, it snowed yesterday morning in Bologna, and my work life has become rather chaotic. Due to Italian drama and economic circumstances, it looks like the entire company is going to be restructured. Over the past three weeks I've lost my two support systems: Andrea and Letizia. (Andrea can be seen peeing below, in another blog entry. Letizia handled my visa and is a font of feminist advice.) I miss them.

I will try to ensure that my next blog entry is about something other than parties.

On the Chopstick Trail: London

I'm becoming a blog slacker! I'm disappointed in myself. It's been too long (despite the fact that I know exactly who my blog audience is, and how very few you are, I like to write something every week). Anyway, I can try to explain my absence by using London as an excuse: last week Rosa played hostess for 5 days and was an extraordinary London guide. While I gawked at the amazing shoes parading around, and ate Korean food at a constant rate (on 3 different occasions), she managed to ensure that I saw a great deal of British culture, too.

We saw a great play. We also saw some great museums, in particular this exhibit at the Tate Modern. We randomly happened upon a collection of gold pillboxes, among other things, at the Gilbert Collection. That was cool because museum-goers are provided with an enormous magnifying glass to inspect all of the microscopic decorations.

This is Rosa, using her glass to look over something-or-other.


Because Rosa has the good fortune to live in a neighborhood nicknamed "Little Beirut", off the Edgware stop, I was able to convince her to come to a hookah bar with me. Don't worry, Mom, it's not addictive. I don't think.


I made sure to enjoy as much non-Italian food as possible. That included a trip to Borough Market, which is basically an endless array of food samples. We indulged in many things that I cannot find in Bologna, such as cheese-y potatoes:


And pickle juice (there are pickles in there, but they're pretty much overwhelmed):


Rosa particularly loves the marinated garlic cloves, which really don't leave an aftertaste - they're a miracle:


But, if I'm really going to get into a food discussion, I should say that the Korean food really hit the spot. Particularly Asadal, which took three days to get into. (on Thursday night, a 2 hour wait!) However, we were given lots of love despite the fact that in my language confusion I accidentally responded to the waiter in Italian. (My English was at times painfully error-filled throughout this trip, which is depressing, considering that my Italian is not anywhere near perfect!) Our waiter seemed baffled by the fact that we knew how to order and eat our food - do British people not appreciate Korean food enough? I finally got into his good graces by ordering cinnamon punch, which is one of my all-time favorite beverages.


After laughing in disbelief, he brought not us only cinnamon punch, but two free Korean cookbooks! ("If you love Korean food so much," he said, "you should learn to make it.") I need to get started. If only Italian supermarkets sold things like soybean paste and Chinese cabbage.

Ice Cream Parties

It's cooling down here, but that's no reason to stop eating gelato. We have remained loyal fans of Stefino, our nearby gelateria with all-natural gelato, and our relationship with the shop grows all the time. A few weeks ago, we had a much-anticipated party at our house to mark the arrival of our new roommate, Francesca, and to celebrate the cooking skills of Massimo's parents. (Their skills are considerable.)

Massimo embarked on a month-long campaign to invite the employees of Stefino to our party. He called this his "feminine" technique. Instead of aggressively issuing one invite as a man would do, he reasoned, it would be better to invite the "Stefini" every day until they got the message, as a FEMALE would. It's so nice to live in such an emancipated household.

Well, regardless of Massimo's method, we were overjoyed to see the owner of Stefino (named Stefano, surprisingly) at our door on the night of the party, along with a various coworkers whom we've come to know over the past few months. (One is a Brazilian woman who's in training to become a pilates instructor - we're going to do an English-pilates exchange. I can't wait!) We also made a special lasagna delivery to Stefino for the girls who were working that night (including Stefano's girlfriend), and we were given a huge tub of gelato.

Stefano and Maurizio, the gelateria's male representatives, had this bright, oh-so-Italian idea: they wanted to be photographed with the gelato and all the women at the party. We obliged.

I am holding my favorite Stefino item, a chocolate granita with whipped cream. It actually came from our freezer, where it had been waiting to be consumed - the Stefino employees were much amused to see their product emerge from our freezer on command. Francesca is the auburn-haired girl to the left of my granita-arm. Stefano is the semi-balding brown-haired man all the way to the left, and Maurizio (also of Stefino) is the man with the orange classes.

Later that night, Massimo and his best friend from high school, Saverio, entertained us with guitar-playing. Saverio also whipped out a bazooka, which he played for us proudly.


Stefino employees entertained us by dancing.


And force-feeding gelato to party guests.

(That's my friend Arash, who's a John's Hopkins MA student. Maurizio, the Stefino employee who's abusing him, told us that he has been stopped on the street by irate Italians due to his glasses frames. Apparently an ancient Italian woman once grabbed his arm and said, "What the hell is wrong with your face?")

We are now planning for the next party. It will commemorate the end of the gelato season, and partygoers will be required to attend in costume. First prize: gelato.

Language, Vulgarity, and Some Questions

While I procrastinate about the newest blog entry (which requires me to upload various photos onto my computer) I've decided to do some thinking about language. Language and swear words, in particular. The past two months in Italy have taught me a lot about swearing, probably because I've been working full time with other young people. These young people also happen to be male, and therefore swear more often, which is something I'll get to in a minute. Also, since I figure that I know everyone who reads this thing, I can actually discuss this. It's interesting!

Over the past few weeks I've noticed that various vulgar phrases have somehow ended up in my Italian vocabulary. It's interesting, since I have (obviously) a better command of English, I think that I'm less susceptible to these influences when I'm surrounded by different types of English-speakers. In Italian, since most of what I say is learned through repetition, hearing something frequently is the best way to memorize it. This is how I've learned all of the normal verbs for general bathroom/bedroom behavior that in English are known to all.

The other thing is that a lot of these Italian expressions are tied to gender. Take, for example, the constant discussion of male genitalia. A person who annoys you is "breaking your balls". In fact, anyone or anything that gives you a hard time is "breaking" - or "on top of" - your balls. This statement varies in strength depending on the vocabulary used, because naturally there are many many different ways to say the same thing, and many different tones of voice can be used. In my opinion, nothing beats the commonly heard wish or promise - "I'll do it once so-and-so is out from between my balls". What imagery! This ranges greatly; I've heard it used to refer to girlfriends, which has some degree of sense. It made less sense when one of my choir-mates told me, "I'll start having fun once high school is out from between my balls". Oh well, the idea is clear.

I do wonder at the fact that these words, coming from the mouth of a female, are either jaw-droppingly vulgar (especially from the point of view of an Italian man) or just nonsense. How can you successfully curse someone out by referencing body parts that you don't have? And why is it that any sentence stronger than "devo fare la pipi" (in English this can literally be translated as baby-talk: "I have to go pee-pee") is not permissible for me to say outside the most intimate company?

I don't like the idea that women should be more classy than men by not swearing. And since when does swearing make or break someone's class, anyway?

Some Place Called Abruzzo

I spent last week traveling through a region of Italy called the Abruzzo. It's right in the middle of the country, closest to Rome (which is in the bordering region, Lazio).



I went with these people:


L to R: Tiziano, Andrea, Sara, Guido. They are not posing in this photo. Poor Guido was entrusted the main leadership of the journey, which is probably why he looks so devastated in this photo (though everyone else looks pretty desperate too). This trip would've been impossible for me without them. Though there were moments when they couldn't understand the locals' accents any better than I could.



This was a work trip. For reasons that are complicated and related to business and politics, we were assigned to do a research project on a certain part of the region known as the Valle Roveto. The idea was, we'd go there and come back with an idea of its feasibility as a tourist site. While isolated, the Abruzzo has been gaining fame as a tourist destination because if its amazing scenery (wildlife, basically), cuisine (lots of sheep's cheese and meat) and religious traditions. It's supposed to have a lot of unique stuff going on because of the isolation of the mountains, meaning that the Catholic church couldn't check up on the way everyone was behaving. This is great news for a region with poverty issues. However, the Valle Roveto has not gotten the memo about tourism. When we began our pre-trip research, I was assigned to call the tourist office in the regional capital, L'Aquila, to ask about options in the Valle.

After calling me back repeatedly, the director of the regional tourist office finally gave up. "Don't go," she said. "There's nothing there. It's pointless for tourists. No services, nothing. It's better if you just rent a car and drive through it."


(This is a photo from a day in which we spent hours looking for a place to eat.)

Obviously this was not an option, since we had to complete our project. But it was an ominous sign.



Perspectives did not improve upon our arrival. We reached Capistrello, our home base, and were quite depressed at the surroundings. Try to picture northern New Jersey, but transplanted into Italy. Sad! It quickly became clear that not much was going on in the Valle Roveto. We noted that in Capistrello the nightlife enfolded thusly: there were two bars, 10 feet apart and open on alternate nights. One was called "My Bar", the other was called "The First Bar" (jokes about His Bar and The Second Bar abounded). Activities included playing other regions' folk music for free on the semi-decrepit jukeboxes, card games, and arguments. By our second day, we knew the name of the local barfly: Monica. Heavy drinkers would have a ball, though. We bought fourteen drinks for $20. Plus potato chips. (To my mom: fourteen drinks for five people, three of whom are over 5'10", is not that much!)



The truth is that we saw a lot of gorgeous stuff during the week. But we had a lot more fun observing the locals, both humans and animals.



First off, all secondary roads (including the regional highways) were a hazard to drivers. The herd of cows walking uphill should've been a decent sign.




However, we were totally unprepared for the horses we came upon, grazing (??) in the middle of the road. Not to mention the villagers who were keeping horses in their garage.


(Tiziano running a horse off the road - a major road, may I add - so that we could go on.)

Other bizarre sightings included horses lying down asleep (also partially in the road!!), with absolutely no fear of cars. There was also the particularly eery sight of a field in which EVERY SINGLE COW was sitting or lying on the ground. Have you ever seen a cow rest its chin on the ground? Neither had we.



We took this to be a metaphor for the depression of the region. Even the cows can't be bothered to stand up.

This was taken even further when we drove through a town and saw a dog lying down in the middle of the central 4-way intersection. Our only possible conclusion was that he had been overcome by the lack of food and other facilities in the area, and he was aiming for a quick death under the wheels of a truck. Unfortunately, the place was so empty that there weren't even any big vehicles.

We enjoyed ourselves, though.



This wine bar will live in my mind forever because I was very embarrassed to find myself locked in the bathroom. The proprietor had me pass the key under the door so that he could save me. It only takes one glass of wine for me to lose my door-opening abilities.

I took lots of photos.



This photo confirms the stereotype of perpetually cool Italians.



Finally, we ate a lot.



We ate too much, actually. Too much meat in particular: Abruzzo is known for hunting. In five days I ate SEVEN different kinds of meat (beef, veal, lamb, chicken, wild boar, roe deer, and stag). Don't ever eat stag. But boar is good.