Things I Will Miss About Italy: The ever growing list

1. Neptune's bum (see above)

2. beautiful architecture everywhere, all the time

3. the babies of Scuola Elementare Zamboni Classe 3A

4. especially Andrea and Giorgia and Matteo and Viola

5. two Zara's on the same block

6. MIE CONQUILINE (Ade, Irine, Miriam)

7. absurd Italian pick up lines

8. Il Gelatauro's zucca e canella gelato (it's magical)

9. arriving to class 20 minutes late but still beating the professor

10. ridiculously cheap travel (flight to Malta: 22 euro)

11. the dish drying cupboard

12. eating food in the same country it was grown in

13. Rita Mattioli

14. no tipping

15. pisolino time

Zucchini Ribbon Risotto

Be warned. This risotto will lull you into the sweet disillusioned belief that you are actually God's gift to kitchens. Perhaps you really are, but several not-so-great pasta dishes and failed cake attempts since I made this last week have proven that I most certainly am not. The recipe (thanks to Giada) is just ridiculously fool-proof, delicious, and pretty cheap for us poor young broke folks. I found that it's best if you're quite liberal with the wine. Buon appetito!

Zucchini Ribbon Risotto

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 big cloves garlic, minced
1 cup arborio rice
1/2 to 1 cup white wine
2 1/2 cups vegetable stock
1/2 cup parmesan, grated
1/3 cup gorgonzola
2 zucchini, ribboned

In a large skillet (big frying pan, for those of us short on kitchen supplies), saute the onion and the garlic in the oil until transparent-ish. Add the rice, stirring to coat with the oil and toast for about 3 minutes. Add 1/2 cup of the wine and wait until completely absorbed into rice before adding the stock, 1/2 cup at a time, stirring (kind of constantly, kind of half distractedly) until completely absorbed before adding the next 1/2 cup. Continue until all of the stock is gone, adding a little more wine here and there when desired. When the rice is just tender, add the parm, gorgonzola, and zuccini ribbons. Gently mix into the risotto until the zuccini has cooked down and become just barely tender (about 3 or 4 minutes). Serve immediately with lots of pepper.

Sunday

I love Sundays. Something about them seems reassuringly traditional, familiar, ritualistic even. And, although church has kicked off many of my Sundays, I think the most important rituals are probably the ones that have nothing to do with putting on your Sunday best or cramming into uncomfortable pews. At home, Sundays mean long, drawn out after-church coffee dates with my family at the Bohemian Coffeehouse. With parents that now only call Maine home every other two weeks, a brother and sister-in-law who spend half their time at sea, an engineer/never-ending-thesis-writing/black belt sister, and a brother-in-law who works far too many hours a week, time together is a precious commodity. Sundays are our opportunity to relax, recap, and refill; our time to reclaim our common family-ness from the lives that often pull us in separate directions, all while laughing together over foamy double-mochas and chai lattes and french roasts. There's nothing better than hearing the same quasi-stale old family jokes every week with the best cup of coffee in town.

These days, or these Sundays, rather, I don't get to hear "remember that time when..." (my oldest relationships here are all of two months), don't get to say "no zoup for you!" with confidence that my audience will immediately pick up on exactly which Seinfeld episode I'm referencing (Friends was much more popular overseas), and don't get to sip my usual non-fat double-mocha latte (skim milk just isn't done here). I'd be lying more than Berlusconi himself if I said I didn't miss all that, but there's some charm in the Italian Sunday as well. I think my lovely and nearly too nice roommate Irine said it best during my first weekend in Bologna: "E' domenica. Mangiamo troppo." (It's Sunday. We eat a lot.)

And that we do. Generally, my Italian Sunday rituals begin with a sometimes early, sometimes late morning run (depending on the previous evening's festivities) in Giardini Margherita, a beautiful park about a ten minute walk from my apartment. It's the largest giardino in Bologna and always full of people: tiny old women in heels, men running in short shorts, old men selling flowers, ladies with their Louis Vuitton, little girls on pink Disney princess bikes, moms and dads with babies, grandparents with babies, babies with other babies. If I exit the park on the west side, I can run out of the central part of the city along narrower, windier roads that lead into the hillier outskirts, passing gated estates and perfectly manicured villas before looping back around into centro through Porta Santo Stefano. On the walk home the streets of Bologna are always full of the most amazing smells wafting from the balconies and shuttered windows above the sidewalk. As Irine said, Sundays in Bologna are all about food, preparing big, comforting meals with too many courses and multiple heads of garlic to share with the people you love.

Today was rainy and cold, so I gave up my run and decided instead to attempt to make torta di mele (apple cake) as perfectly tart and warm and sweet as Rita, my cooking instructor. I returned home from my quest for baking supplies just in time for a big early-afternoon pranzo of spaghetti with homemade pesto that my suite-mate Ade's mother makes and jars at their small family farm in Sicily. Five of us, a Sicilian, a Sardegnian, a Brazilian, an Isrealian, and an American, two of my roommates and two of their friends, sat and ate, talked, and laughed for nearly two hours over our shared Sunday meal. A kind of make-shift family, brought together to share good food and (broken, for me) conversation on a chilly October day. The cake wasn't quite Rita-worthy, but delicious and warm all the same. The company wasn't technically family, and my post-lunch coffee was a single shot of espresso instead of my usual post-church 20-ouncer, but I'd say the new traditions are a pretty good substitute for the real deal.

The people make the place.

What is a place without it's people? I don't mean people to look at and pass through it, but people that belong to it. Take Maine, for example, since I know it well. The place itself is certainly beautiful - the jagged coast, the pines and spruces, the multicolored lobster pots dotting Casco bay, Katahdin's knife edge and the lakes further inland. Anyone can appreciate raw beauty. But what would Maine be without the gennerations of people that belong to it? The smiles that light up the vendor's faces as you pass each stall at the Saturday morning farmer's market, the lobstermen that rise at 3 a.m. to be on the water by 4, the little old couple that don bright orange hats each morning and wave at each car that passes while picking up trash from the side of the road, the Tetreault's of The Veggie Corner in Harpswell, the wooden boat builders, the SeaBags designers, the gourmet chefs. These are the people that bring Maine to life, that give it that homey and rustic and hard-working feel that is so easy to fall in love with. Without them, the 207 would be nothing more than a lonely collection of pretty wilderness.

What got me thinking of all this place and people business was this weekend's trip to the amazingly gorgeous, effortlessly chic, yet ever faster sinking Venice. The whole idea of basing oneself on only semi-solid mud with large poles stuck in it for support seems to just be bad for future stability, but I'm an English major and therefore am not in a position to judge anyone else's life plans. Besides, Venice has been around for centuries and I've only made it a couple of decades, so she's already one upped me. And, really, it's a beautiful and incredibly unique place. The winding canals, gondolas (the gondola men actually do wear stripey shirts and those silly hats), the most ornate churches I've ever seen. It all feels quite unreal, as though you've suddenly stepped into the Venetian park at Disney World and after lunch you'll move on to the African Safari.

Late Saturday afternoon on my way back to the boat to Venice Santa Lucia Station, I stopped at a little old man's table of paintings to scrutinize his art, which, for me, consists of asking myself which pretty picture would go best with my bedspread. While politely trying to convince him that I should pay 15 euros less for a nice oil on canvas number, I started to ask him a little about himself: how long he had been painting, where he was from, etc. etc. Turns out he's a native of Venice, but moved off island about thirty years ago. Just like everyone else, he said. The houses are old and perpetually flooded, transportation is expensive and frustrating, and the tiny "streets" (sidewalks, really) are constantly full of tourists. There are literally no native Venitians living in Venice anymore. All the restaurant owners, artists, and gondola drivers commute by train from the mainland every day to avoid the high costs and hassles that now come with living on the island. It is now only a vacation destination or the location of a second or third home for the super-wealthy. Essentially, a beautiful place that people pass through and gawk at but nobody really belongs to.

After paying for the painting (alas, the little stickler refused taking more than 5 euros off) and boarding the boat, I couldn't help but keep thinking about the fantastic yet also very strange and surreal feeling of walking the streets of Venice. It seems to me that it's impossible for a place to really have a feel, a personality, without generations of residents to personify it. Without people that belong to it, a city lacks that special something that enables one to fall in love with it. You don't fall in love with pretty sights. You fall in love with the feel of a place, a feeling that's nonexistant without people to bring it to life.

Like most of my blabbering thus far, I don't have much (if any) of a point to all this other than relaying my latest disconnected thoughts. It makes me kind of sad to think of poor Venice, sinking away and abandoned by all of her native inhabitants, now only full of clueless foreigners that mosey about in a daze, open mouthed with cameras around their necks, before hopping on a plane and returning home to the places which they belong to. This also makes me miss dearly all of the wonderful people that make the little piece of Maine coast to which I belong so very lovable. When I return home in late December, I hope to fully appreciate all of the glorious tiny things about Maine that I never really knew that I loved until I went somewhere new and found them missing.

My apologies, good sirs.

I suppose I should have said this earlier, but I really am quite sorry for the delayed happening of this blog. I promised many a loved ones at home a frequent account of life in Italy, and now here I am just about halfway through my time here (!) and really haven't told you much of anything. Well, points off for Jenny. I won't promise (since I did that before and it obviously didn't do any good), but I do intend to keep you better informed about my thoughts of all this adventuring from here on out, and hope we can continue without any hard feelings.

The Wonders of the Italian Wardrobe: Speedos

Never in my life have I seen so many men in such tiny little triangles of neon lyrcra than when I spent August in Southern Italy.

Over the course of the three weeks spent "studying" in Lecce, we went to nine different beaches scattered across the coast of Puglia. Nine beaches, some on the Ionic and some on the Adriatic; some pristine and beautiful, some with more cigarette butts than sand. All had one thing in common: dongs. Dongs everywhere you look, only somewhat concealed behind very shiny and very tight speedos. And this wasn't just the latest trend of swimwear for the brave of heart -- this was everyone, every Italian boy and man between the ages of five and nintety-five, scrawny or fat, married or single, hairy or waxed. If you had boy parts, you donned one of these babies with pride.

At first, this made these otherwise gorgeous trips to the Mediterranean uncomfortable at best. 95% of my time was spent attempting to avert my sheltered little eyes, the other 5% spent failing at aversion and pretending to be suddenly very interested in my chipping nail polish after the confrontational "we both know you just blatently looked at my penis" eye contact. It's not even that you want to look, it's just that there's really no avoiding it. In fact, and I concluded this after the fourth or fifth beach excursion, the Italians actually want you to want to look. Why on earth else would you wear a 12 square-inch piece of bright yellow spandex to cover your privates? Not to be discreet, that's for sure. Perhaps the men donning the more basic black, navy, and browns deserve some respect for their attempted modesty, but the bright yellows, greens, reds, and purples are there to be seen. The way I see it, it's almost more insulting not to look. Just like Gaga would be nothing without her bewildered public, Italian men in speedos would be nothing without their seaside admirers. Or, rather, horrified foreigners.

Ca degg degg?

It's a Sunday evening, September the 26th to be exact, and here I sit in the akwardly square and dingy seat number 126 on InterCityNotte Train 781 from Milano to Bologna. The wheels just started moving as we pull away from the smoke-filled Milano-Centrale. The stale smell of old cigarettes is so strong here I'm not even sure if it qualifies as second-hand anymore. I can practically feel the tobacco settling into the crevaces of my lungs, and although I've never smoked a cigarette myself, I'd venture to guess that it doesn't get a whole lot more first-hand than this.

It quickly becomes evident that glamorous and terrificly retro-chic train ride this is not. InterCityNotte 781, you are no Darjeeling Limited and you are certainly no Hogwarts Express. (NOTE: I have recently started re-reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which I found a British version of in my program's office. Therefore, my deepest appologies for the HP references that will inevitably pop up in posts for the next couple of weeks). We are downright careening across the tracks, squeaking and bumping our way southward past the big grey apartment complexes in the outskirts of Milan. I suppose that in a general sense "we" could refer to all the passengers of ICN 781's nine shabby cars, but more specifically I'm speaking of the six of us sharing the tiny, smelly compartment containing seats 121-126, one of whom just ripped a big one. I'm quite sure it wasn't me, so that leaves one of the others in 121-125. Perhaps it was the woman next to me who is really loving her crossword, or the larger woman sitting opposite of me whose black leather pointed-toe boot is unneccessarily taking up all of our shared footrest.

Am I complaining too much? Yes, of course I am, and I really don't mean to seem ungrateful although I suppose we all are about something. Mostly, the periodic sessions of bitch-and-moaning helps any given situation because it is so surreal that I am even occupying this uncomfortable seat number 126 in the first place. I mean, I am on the night train from MILAN to BOLOGNA. In ITALY - where I LIVE. Is anyone else as perplexed by this as I am?

To put to good use the only Wolofese phrase I will probably ever know (kindly taught to me by the lovely Hannah D., hailing from Senegal), "ca degg degg" (translation for my non-Senegalese readers: 'are you for real')?! Well NO, frankly, I am most certainly not "ca degg degg" because it does not feel the slightest bit real that this beautiful opportunity to live and move and breathe (however stale the air may be) in ITALY for nearly half a year has actually materialized. And I'm not really sure it ever will feel real, either. This life is but a dream. One day, perhaps, I'll wake up snug in my bed at Colby in the icy Waterville, Maine and realize it really did happen, the section of my life called Italy, and fondly remember what once filled my days: gelatos galore, perfection in the form of cappuccinos, walks to class by a naked Neptune standing 5 meters high in marble. It's all just too glorious to comprehend.

But, if anything, it will be the little difficulties and annoyances of Italy that remind me that this is, in fact, real life. Like if Uma Thurman had a lazy eye or something. The discustingly thick air, the common lack of a concept of personal space, having to wait until 9pm for dinner, this rickety Train 781, the incredibly large fresh blister on my big toe from my beautiful new chocolate brown Italian leather loafers. The loafers are the surreal and the wonderful and the amazement that is Italy; the ugly blister is poor Uma's eye. Then again, she's still Uma Thurman. I suppose I can put up with a few blisters if they mean that I'm the proud owner of lovely new Italian loafers, bought in my very own Italian city, in my very new Italian life.

It seems we are now very nearly careening out of control and I half expect the flimsy wall to detach itself from ol' 781, but none of the other five sleeping members of compartment 121-126 seem to be concerned. Brakes wail as the train slows to a crawl, where it stays at a painfully slow pace for ten miunutes before gaining speed again to bump across the tracks once again. The train repeats this speeding-slowing-speeding pattern a few more times before settling with a tired sigh to stop at one of the three remaining stations between me and Bologna-Centrale, where I will leave InterCityNotte 781 forever and stumble into a taxi that will whisk me away to my apartment building where I will drag myself up the three flights of stairs and fall into my bed, where I will awake tomorrow morning and open my large, double window to the honks and curses of the blustling, tree-lined Viale Filopanti, and, while groggily pouring some water over the plant on the sill and looking across the expanse of terra-cotta shingled roofs, ask myself: Italia, are you for real?