Party, Commie Style

It’s still August and the city hasn’t gone back to normal. Lots of stores are still shuttered closed, as their owners are still away on vacation, and there’s no line at the supermarket. For those of us who have seen the entire month pass here, it does seem a bit livelier. This week, the leftist coalition (Italy has a gazillion political parties, divided into two coalitions) is holding its festival just outside the city. It’s HUGE. Tents selling cars, furniture, plants, and regional food were filled by crowds of people. We entered a raffle – run by a tipsy, jolly Tuscan guy who looked like a young Santa Claus – to win 10 bottles of wine. No win, even though my roommate’s sister was randomly chosen from the crowd to do the drawing (this was indeed very random, since we didn’t even know that she was there).




These photos, though, are from the festival held by the Communist Party a few weeks ago. It was much smaller but equally happy. At times it’s hard for me to wrap my head around the idea of party-based festivals like these (especially the Communist one) because I can’t imagine this ever happening in the States. I do remember when the Democratic Convention was held in Boston, the city repaved a lot of roads in Jamaica Plain. But that’s not quite the same thing.

Even the place mats are festive.


Other than work and yoga, there are basically two edible things that I live for these days in this empty city. One is a chocolate granita with whipped cream. Granita is sort of like shaved ice, sort of like a slurpee. It usually comes in fruit flavors, but about 20 meters from my house, there’s an all-natural, all-made-on-the-premises gelateria that makes my flavor. Aside from the gelato (which comes in creative flavors like rum-cream-vanilla-bean), and the homemade whipped cream (which is free), the granita is killer. It’s made with dark chocolate and they add a little bit of orange peel and cinnamon, which sounds strange, but makes it amazing. And I adore one of their employees, a punk girl with a half-shaved head who won my affection by remembering what I get and always giving me extra whipped cream. Massimo, meanwhile, gets along better with the guy who makes the ice cream in the back of the shop - this is good for me, because it means we always get updates on what flavors are being made and what's being added.



The other recently-discovered passion of my life is the caffe estivo (summer coffee) - pictured above. It’s an espresso with chocolate syrup and cold whipped milk on top. The cold milk whippers look like old fashioned milkshake-making contraptions (with the big metal cup). I want one!

The August Exodus

Time for a break from Korea. I've been back in Bologna for three weeks, and have been trying to combine work and summertime. So far that's meant one day at the beach, another day at a pool in the hills, and lots of days spent staring at a computer. Oh well. The culture of summer here is somehow more frenzied than in the States. Because of obsessive beach visiting, everyone is extremely tan. Proof: not only is sunscreen exorbitantly expensive, but the SPF system is skewed. My SPF 20 is marked as "high protection", whereas SPF 6 is seen as "adequate". SPF 20 is not high, and any self-respecting recovering sun worshipper like myself knows that SPF 6 practically worthless. All this aside, I'm conscious of the fact that compared to everyone else, I'm white as a ghost.

I've started to look out for wrinkles, but somehow Italians aren't really more wrinkly than we are. How is that possible?

This is one of the most famous meeting spots in Bologna, at the Neptune Fountain. I loved it the first time a friend told me to meet her at the "culo di Nettuno" - Neptune's ass.


All the photos on this entry are from a photo assignment that I did for my boss - to be used for future photo assignments, I had to prove that I could take a picture. So I was asked to create a photo study of Bologna, in a way that would appeal to tourists (as this would ideally be my job). It went well, though it's still unclear (this being Italy) what photos I'll be taking in the future. It was great to get a chance to take photos of Bologna - it's something I haven't done enough, and it helped me see how gorgeous this city is.

This is San Luca, a church perched on the hills outside Bologna. It was originally a pilgrimage site, and you can walk here all the way from the center of the city - and be covered by a portico the whole time! There are 600+ arched porticoes on the way, some with little altars inside. It's beautiful - especially because it becomes a reference point as you enter and leave the city. At night, as you approach Bologna, you know you're getting close when you see the lights of San Luca glittering in the hills. It's visible from the train, the highways, you name it.


The portico walk:


There is some news, which is that I have two new roommates. The first is Massimo's new girlfriend, Paola. By "new" I mean that they got together a few months ago; he promptly asked her to move in. Their relationship is so, so much less dramatic than the Massimo-Lucia scene of a few months ago that I'm really enjoying my peaceful home. Paola's job is also super interesting (to me, at least): she's a lawyer and recently has been concentrating in immigration law. In Italy right now, being an immigration lawyer guarantees you a lot of work and almost no pay - Paola usually asks her clients to pay her around €100 for every job she takes (some may last for weeks or months). It's been really fascinating for me to be able to ask her questions about the legal process for immigrants in Italy - I've also translated some documents for her, which was both riveting and depressing - they were asylum applications for two Nigerian kids who had had some terrible experiences.

In September, a new roommate from Puglia will move in. Her name is Francesca. Thus the household will go back to its original state, with 4 inhabitants. It hasn't been that full since March.

August in Bologna is super empty, but it's been nice to see a different side of the city, and spend time with new friends. Since most of my close foreign friends are away on vacation, I'm getting an intensive dose of Italian culture. This has mainly been demonstrated through dramatics - for example, debating driving methods with Massimo after he declared that he "has never once braked while driving" due to his excellent stick shift skills. He still refuses to back down. Does he really think that he doesn't use his brakes? I don't want to get in a car with him ever again. Massimo also moped around the house telling me and Paola that his mother may have had a stroke. We felt terrible. Later it turns out that she swam 10 laps in the pool, for which she is too old/not fit enough, and had a moment of dizziness. That's all. His mother continues to do her laps.

One of my favorite new characters is Paola's coworker, Pau. She recently bought a new yellow Vespa - it's gorgeous. However, she's still lamenting the loss of her old Vespa, which she'd had for years. It was named Camilla. After a few gin and tonics, she told us this story of Camilla's demise:

Pau drove Camilla to a metal impactor (?? is that the right name??). It was in a basement, and Pau got upset when she smelled the moldy, stale air. She had to leave Camilla in a dark corner. As she left her, Pau got teary-eyed. The owner, trying to comfort her, told her not to worry - Camilla would be reborn. He said (as Pau quotes): "One day you'll open a can of tuna and hear it crying, 'Hello Pau, it's Camilla!'" Apparently this pushed the already-vulnerable Pau into a real emotional crisis and she started sobbing. The owner, who didn't understand why she was upset, repeated the tuna can line a few times. Pau left in tears - and almost cried while telling the story! But she looks at every tuna can differently now . . . I suppose it's possible that she'll see Camilla in another form, right?

Face Stuffing

Before I stop posting about Korea, I obviously have to create an entire food posting - I mean, I practically went to Korea for the food itself. That was the idea behind this entry. However, I started having problems when I began the photo editing process and realized that I had too many food photos for just one blog. Therefore, this is not complete. My Korean-Korean-food photos will never end. (Nor will my love for the food itself.) While double-checking spellings for this entry, I found this insane Wikipedia article. It is definitely more informative than this blog entry.

Living in Italy, I often feel as if I’m surrounded by the most obsessively food-loving culture in the world. I still think that’s true in many ways – Italians put a degree of passion into their food discussions that I can’t imagine anywhere else. However, food in Korea was unforgettable. While we were never subjected to lengthy conversations centered around food topics, we were fed dishes so good (and endless) that we often had to stagger away from the table. Going through my photos, I realized that there are two characteristics to Korean food that I really, really love. First, the concept of banchan, the many many little side dishes that arrive at your table in restaurants (and homes!) during a meal. They’re constantly refilled and infinitely varied. There are countless types of kimchi (which, as you should know, is a pickle marinated in red pepper, anchovy paste, garlic, ginger, and other yummy additions), including cabbage, cucumber, radish, bean sprout, sesame leaf, broccoli, and eggplant. Or you might have dried fish, fresh or fried vegetables, dry or wet seaweed, marinated black beans or peanuts, potato salad and/or acorn jelly. Because of banchan, the table always looks overloaded, as it’s covered with many little white dishes displaying their goodies. The photo below is a good example: the tray on the table is holding JUST my food. It was more than I could eat, obviously.


This is illustrated again in the following photo, which is a dinner we had after visiting the amazing Hainsa Temple. It was truly overwhelming.


The other characteristic of Korean food that I love is the do-it-yourself dining experience. In the US I’d had Korean barbecue before, and it’s great – little did I know that you can also make your own stews and fry your own rice and ramen (? I know) at your table. Here are some examples.

These are two photos from the craziest meal I had in Korea. This is a barbecue spot that Tony found on Jejudo. For roughly $10 dollars, we got free soda, unlimited side dishes (including an amazing potato salad that was so mayonnaise-y that it had arrived in the shape of an ice-cream scoop), endless meat, which was to be barbecued and wrapped in lettuce and sesame leaves, and duenjang chigae – and that was just the first course! After the meat and chigae had been cleared away, we were each expected to finish a massive bowl of cold buckwheat noodles with shredded cucumber. (That was impossible.) It was delicious. Of course, the after-effect of the barbecue is that we exited the restaurant smelling like we had turned into smoked meat. It’s absolutely worth it, though. See the barbecuing process below. And then there’s a close-up of the meat (it may not look so great in the photo, but it was very tasty).





Near the end of the trip, Jean’s younger cousin Minjung brought us, and her best friend, to a restaurant in Taegu that’s very popular with young people. The specialty is fried rice and ramen, and you do it at your table. This was some seriously spicy food, and very entertaining to watch. The adolescent male waiters keep tabs on all the tables simultaneously, adding the different components of the meal in stages.

Here’s the first stage.. The steam from the cooking meat was DEADLY, because of the spiciness of the sauce. You can see Minjung covering her face in the background.


And here she is (on the left) trying to escape from the vapors.


Now he’s adding the rice.


Time to eat!


This spider wasn’t for eating. Instead, she was being raised by the owner of a restaurant on Jejudo. That brown leaf-like thing caught in the web is a moth that had been delivered to her as we ate our meal a few feet away.



We happily watched the killing and mummifying process.


And this is the table set for lunch at Jean’s uncle’s house. While it was obviously terrific to eat out at a restaurant, I was always awestruck by the fact that it was possibly to create so many different dishes at home. At this meal, Jean’s aunt must have served us more than twenty different items that she had made herself.


It’s no surprise that sometimes all this good food made us a little crazy.

Spending Some Time With Bonsai Trees

Okay, it's time for a boring and repetitive blog entry about the bonsai garden we visited on Jejudo. Because it was fun. If you ever go there, you should definitely check it out. It's a huge park-like open area which takes more than an hour to walk through. Guests follow the pathway all the way to the end; you can't really wander around.





At the start of the pathway, the owner and founder of the garden posted various tips about looking at bonsai (or bunjae, in Korean) trees. For example, you're supposed to look from the roots up (NOT from the top down), you're not supposed to make quick judgements, and you should basically refrain from saying anything because it'll probably be disrespectful and stupid. He didn't actually write that last part, but that's how I felt after reading his guidelines. So we entered the garden feeling like we were in a sacred library (which we were, in a way). We actually started kneeling under the trees so that we could see their roots, and speaking in hushed tones, though we couldn't keep that up for very long.



It's nice to travel at an age when you're no longer concerned about appearing cool or nonchalant about anything. Of the many ways in which we embarrassed ourselves during the Korea trip, tadpole watching is a very minor example, but I still thought it was sweet. Also, it's a real mystery: how did all these tadpoles end up in the holes in the rocks around the garden? The pools of water in these holes are VERY small. There are going to be a lot of frogs in the Bunjae Artpia before long. Here we are, watching the tadpoles with the utmost attention and curiosity.



All along the way, the owner had posted various nuggets of wisdom regarding the trees and life in general. Later, we also learned that the creation of the garden had been really difficult, probably in part because the trees are super expensive and hard to cultivate. The owner's wife even posted her own statement about her desperation to get away from the garden in its early days.

These difficulties were metaphorically explained through descriptions of the trees. Many of them have grown around various metal supports that have to be implanted so that they can grow properly.


Anyway, now the garden is a super fancy place where lots of international delegations hold their meetings. Someone had recommended the garden to Jean and me during mid-May, saying that it had been her favorite part of Jejudo, and it ended up being one of our highlights too. (For the girls, at least.)



We were very disturbed by the carp, though.


You could buy little feeding packets for them and once you started dropping the food into the water, they went absolutely crazy. Audibly crazy, which was scary. This closer-up photo is to show what their mouths looked like.


So, for good reason, we were scared to cross the footbridge at the end of the visit.


The next blog entry will have a different subject, I promise.