The First Constitution

It's strange that my brain is still on a school year calendar, even though I've been in Italy, and working, since 2006. Now that we're on the border between spring and summer, I feel like all the hard work should be winding down, and it's time for vacation. Is it ever possible to stop thinking like a student?

Bologna is already hot and humid. Now that it's warm after the sun goes down, at nighttime the streets are flooded with students. In the area of the university, people even sit down along the sidewalks (and sometimes in the street) to drink and talk. It's really nice, unless you need to get around them, and then it becomes an obstacle course.

Something happened at choir practice a couple weeks ago, one of those events that makes me think, "this could only happen in Italy". I also have the "this could only happen in the US" reaction, like when I see the selection of salad dressing in the supermarket, but I think you'll get the idea when I describe this anecdote.

Next weekend my choir will perform in Florence, at the Palazzo Vecchio, in the most important room (the Salone dei Cinquecento). Because the event commemorates the creation of the Italian republic, the concert will be accompanied by a reading of the Italian Constitution. My conductor described to us his efforts to pair certain songs with particular passages: for example, after the passage about womens' rights, we'll sing a lamentation (really a lullaby) of the pain of being a woman without choices.

After providing us with a few examples, my conductor admitted, "It's really difficult, because most songs are about love, and there's not much about love in the Constitution."

In the silence that followed, one of the tenors responded, "But love is the first constitution."

We applauded, my conductor bowed. The next day I bumped into Elio, the tenor, on the street. He didn't even remember what he'd said.

Superheroes

This is a much belated post that I've been meaning to write for weeks now: in April, I went to Modena with some friends/coworkers to eat a traditional Modenese dinner as chosen by Massimo, a beloved ex-coworker. There was also Letizia, who was an adored work companion, Tiziano, and Massimo's girlfriend, Katia.

The food is pictured above. It centers around gnocco and tigelle, the bread - gnocco is like fried dough (but it's savory, not sweet), and tigelle are like little English muffins. They come to the table piping hot, and you put in prosciutto and other meats, with soft cheeses like squacquerone (try saying that 10 times fast). That cheese is actually from the other half of this region (Romagna), and I have no idea how it ended up in a meal that's traditionally Emiliano. Suffice to say that these longstanding rival areas will just have to admit that they eat the same food.

One of the highlights was lardo, pictured below. It's a mixture of lard, bacon, rosemary and garlic (I hope I got that right, Massimo must correct me if I'm wrong). You put it on the hot bread and then sprinkle on parmesan cheese, and make a little sandwich out of it. I have to say that it did not appeal to me much at first, but it's sooooooo good and sort of addictive that you can't stop eating once you start.



Anyway, this fat-saturated meal is accompanied by cut up raw vegetables, which you dip into a bowl of balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Incidentally, balsamic comes from Modena. It's so, so good. And somehow the acid-y vegetables cut the fat of the bread/lard variations, so that you can go on forever. (My parents may or may not be proud to know that I was the last standing at the table, eating-wise. Not just because I'm slow, but because I ate everything in sight!)

The post-dinner activity was one of the more bizarre experiences I've ever had in Italy. Katia works in an action figure importing company, and she took us to visit her office. This is an insane place. There are action figures of every type, all over the place, including some very gory ones with blood tubes that you can use to make vivid injury scenes. The mechanically animated figures, some of which are monsters, are light activated. Katia explained that it could be a bit scary to work in a place where monster figures randomly start talking when you turn the lights on. Indeed, it was incredibly creepy.



Tiziano enjoyed the blood and gore. (Typically!)



Massimo enjoyed the laser swords. (This is what the company owner's office looks like. And the entire place was like this. There were toys on every available surface. Literally. Can you imagine having light sabers and 3-D Godfather posters and Simpsons action figures in your office? For business purposes??)



All in all, we had an enriching experience. Gastronomically and culturally.



Postscript: At the end of the evening I was forced to harass this poor statue, which was completely dusty and forgotten at the beginning of the stairwell. Massimo and Tiziano, in particular, were hoping for obscene gestures. This is my original reaction - uncontrollable laughter and inability to carry out their requests. (I eventually succeeded, though. Please contact me for those photos!)

Baking Red Velvet Cake and Other Pastimes

I write this blog entry in a haze of jet lag: I just got back from a 10 day trip home, which was wonderful in every way, and I will spend the next few days trying to recover. (Why is jet lag worse every time I travel?)



The trip was great. I am also proud to say that I managed to visit Vermont and Connecticut along with Massachusetts, which almost makes me feel like a world traveler (though I spent most of the travel time sleeping). I saw my wonderfully talented sister perform (twice) in a crazy and entertaining play - The Increased Difficulty of Concentration by Vàclav Havel - including a mistreated fish and a robot.

My mother and I made another famous red velvet cake. It looks scary in the early stages.



But it's amazing when finished.



Thanks to generous friends and family, I ate my fill of raw fish and all the wonderful things that I can't get in Bologna.



Raw fish and raw egg together: super protein. No salmonella.



Vermont was super beautiful. It was cold enough to wear a jacket in the house, but everything was turning green and it was nice to see spring arriving.



The landscape was somehow more wild than usual. And there were lots of animal noises, though luckily I didn't get too scared at night when I heard them from my bedroom. Without Rosa there to protect me, it could've gotten a bit hairy.



Other exciting adventures included buying my first powder-based makeup, being reunited with pickles, and trying to make a dent in the debris of my bedroom in Cambridge (which is a high-school time capsule).

My friend Natasha became a doctor, or more specifically, a PharmD, and I saw 99 people take pharmacy's version of the Hippocratic Oath. I didn't even know that such a thing existed, but Natasha's wealth of pharmacy knowledge has helped me realize that she can be my on-call doctor. We got her a cake to celebrate, since she turned 24 the day before she graduated.



Wish-making is very stressful. But spending time with close friends is not.



And we're trying to become more normal as we age.



It's always bittersweet to go back and forth between homes. There's always something on one end that you can't have on the other. If only there were a highway that connected Bologna and Cambridge. The trip would be that much easier, and maybe I could even get my family to come back and forth with me.