Cose Che Vedo Solo in Italia - Things I only See in Italy

I promised a friend in Boston I would take loads of photos while I was in Italy. In my last two trips, I took a few, when I remembered. If you look closely at them, you'll get an idea of the things that I miss back in the US.

Fresh food in small stores:

Fresh nuts with shell are hard to find in the US

Cheap lunches with fixed price menu:

Gelato with taste of fruit (not butter):

Something I can eat quickly and enjoy - no chewy bread, no raw onions, no spicy pickles - heaven!

Fast-food I enjoy everywhere, even at the train station:

Slow pace in the city:

Chatting with the neighbor

I'll be back soon

We don't have WI-FI - Talk with eachother!!

Taking a long break for lunch, while all businesses are closed

Eating is one of the four purposes of life... what are the other three, nobody has understood that yet. Chinese say

Feasts to revoke history, food rituals and traditions:

My old work place, good food and musica popolare

The Arrival of the King Vittorio Amedeo II

Flags Exercise for the "Palio di Asti"

La Festa del Cioccolato a Torino - Chocolate Feast in Turin 

La Sagra dell'Uva a Torino - Grape Feast in Turin

La Sagra del Peperone in Carmagnola - Pepper Sagra in Carmagnola

As a matter of fact, every little thing I miss from home is always strictly connected with food. Also, with beauty and with elegance, a topic I introduced in an older posting. More on this soon.

The Grass Is Always Greener On the Other Side of the Ocean - L'erba e' sempre piu' Verde Dall'Altra Parte dell'Oceano

Visiting Italy one month per year and living on the other side of the ocean for the rest of the year is odd, fun and quite challenging. You feel a bit like Babar, the elephant in one of Tronk’s stories. He goes to the city, learns things such as how to wear a hat and how to eat with fork and knife but continues to miss his native country and the values he shares with his people. Then he goes to visit them in the jungle and he cannot help telling them how to dress and eat. It’s like being on a seesaw. You are going up and down, depending on the country where you are and on the person who is sitting on the opposite side.

“You were in Italy? Oh my God!” ”Do you go back often?” “Once a year”. “Lucky you!” "Oh yes, I am", I often say, while I am thinking, at the back of my mind, that one month of Italy (Europe) per year for me is not very much. Then I think of all the people who could not/cannot afford to go home and then I feel incredibly lucky. For one entire month I have the privilege to find all the fresh food I can possibly dream of at the farmers' market. I can stop wondering if there are onions or garlic in my salad causing me severe bloating and whether the olive oil on my table is better suited to running my car. I can talk to friends and experts with a wider outlook and more willing to help address small but serious health issues. I can try medicines whose flavor is familiar and reassuring, I can hug people without feeling guilty. I can chat with the Head of Gastroenterology about the latest music festival in town, without worrying that I am wasting his time. I can relax and order another gelato, without feeling guilty - the Italian doctor says I should eat a bit of everything! - and without looking pregnant. For one month I can relax and recharge, until the forbidden word comes up in a conversation. Ooops, here it is again: America!

In Italy, if you say you live in America, no matter who you say it to, you know what is coming. You’ll be questioned about your life like a star in town and you won’t be able to escape from being further questioned. All the attention will be on you and you won’t be able to change the subject. Unlike the Americans who briefly say they love Italy and then move onto something else, the Italians want to know more. “Vivi in America? Davvero?” (Do you live in the US? But really?) “Come ti invidio! E’ sempre stato il mio sogno andare a vivere in America! Si vive meglio la’?” (I envy you! Going to America has always been my dream! Is life better there?) I often hear this question when I am in Italy and I really don’t know what to say. Think about it, beside the word “male” (bad) that I often hear in Italy… don’t you think it is hard to convey the complexity of your life in your own country? Right, for me it is the same, with the added complexity that I lived my life in three different countries, that I don’t live in Boston but in the burbs, like most Americans, that Boston is not America and that America is not New York - certainly not Manhattan. See what it looks like on Google maps? Like this.

Wellesley, MA

“So you don’t live in Boston?” asked the mom who was sitting next to me on a bench one tepid afternoon in Turin. “Most Americans don’t live in the centre of Boston but in the suburbs, with one or two hours commute to work every day; where there are only houses, usually bad pizza places and fast-food chains.” She looked at me surprised. Whether I liked it or not, I did it again, I carefully prepared the ground to talk about my least favorite thing in America: food. Oops. Like other times, I couldn’t help adding useful details to increase that surprise. “Do people really eat in their car?” “Yep, they eat whatever and whenever” - I was doing it again! I was talking about food, the one thing Italians are so sensitive to and which drives all of their decisions. I was about to destroy her American dream.

Filled with guilt, I talked about my life in America and the things I love most there: the lake I can walk to, the rabbits that return to our yard at Easter time, the geese who are waiting for their turn to cross the street, the cute white van of the postman with the mirror at the back, the coffee shop that roasts the coffee, then the beaches and the cute little villages by the sea, with the stores open all summer. I explained to her that villages are positioned in the middle of nothing, and with only a main street and a little downtown that go through them… that is America. She was finally looking at me enchanted.

Make way to ducklings

Most Italians are obsessed with America but not with the America I know. As soon as I land in Milan, I see this obsession, which looks a bit like infatuation; I see stars and stripes printed all over on t-shirts, sweatshirts, backpacks, scarves.

Tronk's hairdresser in Turin and her American dream

I see either vans, nike or chuck taylors on people of all ages, fake American clothes with obscure writings in bad English, and with names of cities and teams that don’t even exist. Not to mention the clothes designed for doing specific jobs in America, and worn by people who only think of themselves as cool... and the baseball caps worn backwards. In Italy, it isn’t just high-school students. I even saw one of Tronk’s teachers in Turin with one. 

This ridiculous imitation of America in Italy has now, sadly, extended to food. When did they start talking about food in Italy instead of making it? The Expo in Milan, which turned out to be just an expensive celebration of different forms of junk food, is not the only place where I experienced this.

Warning: if you go to Expo 2015, a taste of junk food will cost you 10 euros

I saw many stores exhibiting/selling special healthy bread or pasta and junk food listed on the board. Also, donuts and muffins that looked like they were dipped in paint. A store manager at Eataly, as soon as she saw Tronk, tried to persuade me to try hamburger with fries. In America they eat this way! Come here, I'll show you... If you don’t pay attention, there are now restaurants in Italy that serve food reheated in the microwave. There are also “slow fast-food” restaurants - the name sounds like a joke, I know - and the star of Starbucks, with its burned coffee, has made its appearance in Milan. When did all this start in Italy?

Welcome to Milan!

Subway too?

How many Italian parents are still going home to cook lunch for their children? Do they still know how to do it?

One evening I took Tronk to my favourite buffet restaurant, Brek. I used to go there for lunch on saturdays with my parents to celebrate a good mark in latin or greek. They used to serve all types of food (pasta, meat, fish, vegetables), all cooked from scratch in front of us. That night I saw the restaurant door open but only two counters with the light. The others were completely dark. I was wondering whether the restaurant was open. It turned out it was open but the food was not quite what I expected. To my horror, on the left, I saw a fridge filled with prepackaged food. On the right, they were serving hamburgers, hot-dogs and fries. I was in a state of shock. Was that the same restaurant where I ate as a teen? Manning the hot dog station, I saw a woman who used to work there when I was a teen. She thought she knew me. After hearing me complaining, she said: “ You are right. Brek is no longer the same. People are no longer the same. The new generations ask for this type of food, my son included. What can we do? I don’t like it. I am quitting.” I was confused, disappointed. While I was leaving the restaurant, I saw a kids menu filled with junk, just like the ones we see every day in America. I saw similar kids menus in other restaurants and parents asking for them. In my country?? How could this be possible?

Baby drink?

Red Pizza?

With all the delicious lunch options available in Italy, you go for sugary bombs? 

What changes will our children see in Italy one day? I often wonder about this. It would be nice if this obsession of the stars and stripes brought the best of America to Italy; the ideas of social equity, responsibility, commitment, respect, hard work and justice are all needed in my country. But these things are not in our genes. Instead, we are importing the superficial America; the easy things that ultimately become problems, if they are not already. But why?

Juno's Feast in Arlington MA - La Festa di Juno ad Arlington MA

Nobody celebrates Carnival here in the US, so when January hits us, I know there will be no holidays, no fun, it sucks until Easter. But, every year, the monotony of this boring time of the year is suddenly broken. New England covers itself in white and Arlington transforms into a fairytailish village. Nice but COLD.

This month I knew the snow was about to come.  

"Actually, there will be more than a few snowflakes", said John on Monday with an alarmed voice, knowing the way I feel about being stuck at home in winter. Then the sinister prediction: we'll get 35 to 40 inches (1 metre of snow, like my parents and I used to get on the mountains in Pragelato)! As in every other alarming situation of which people have no control, panic sets in, together with its usual rituals: text messages with the subject "powerful blizzard coming" from the town, travelling bans, overly dramatic videos from New York, super worried messages from family and friends. And by the way, why did they call the blizzard Juno, like the daughter of my friends in England? Will this Juno, the bad Juno, really strike here or will New York be hit first? 

Well, in the end, bad Juno chose Boston and decided to strike us (and surrounding New England), leaving some 4.5 million people, mostly professionals, in fear of losing power, and grappling with as much as three feet of snow and coastal flooding.  It is not the first time that I find myself going through this: the feeling of being stuck for indeterminate time at home while waiting for something good or bad to happen. No doubt the Boston bombers warnings were far more serious, yet I was caught by such similar, familiar anguish while I was looking outside the window, hoping to still be able to see the world and its inhabitants, safe, the day after. 

The following morning Tronk and I saw this. 

Then the New England snow blower parade started.

 Temperature outside: -10 Celsius!

Everyone outside, joining the snowblowing cause. Many of them in light North Face fleeces.

So I went outside in my street with Tronk. My intention was not to join the parade but to watch it, just like an Italian tourist would do. I was wrapped in my ridiculosly long North Face mummy coat, north pole hat, gloves and scarf. Tronk was so happy to finally be outside after two days buried in the house. My plan was to go for a short walk on the bike path, as we've done many times in the past after a snow storm. 

We discovered, with horror, that there was no longer a bike path!

Mass Avenue, the liveliest street of Arlington, was dead.

I was only able to stay outside for ten minutes, not more, before my hands started pulsating. At some point, my cheeks were burning. And I had to tell Tronk to follow me, as I ran home in search of relief. Tronk wasn't so happy to return home. He wanted to continue his exciting exploration of the neighborhood instead. "Come home!", I screamed as I ran. 

They must have thought I was crazy. Everyone was outside, either dedicated to the cause of removing snow or having fun with sport activities. 

Back in the house, I had an overdose of Italian hot chocolate and wrapped up in my electric blanket in the hope of feeling my body parts again. Meanwhile, Tronk had a blast plowing snow together with John and our neighbor. William, who doesn't owe snow pants, even went snowshoeing in the back yard with another neighbor.

Tronk said later that he did more work than Joe - who is from Buffalo, the snowiest big city in the US.

Many hours later, we went to bed. Still snowing.

This morning, the snowblower parade restarted. And everyone (expect me) joined the traditional New England winter ritual - finding one's car under the snow to drive to work.

So, now everyone is back at work or at least this is the intention in the mind of every Bostonian."Why should I not go to work? It is nice outside!" John, for instance, who was not able to start the car, went to catch a bus to go to work. And my little Bostonian went outside to play with Max and Ben in the nearby yard but the piled up snow prevented him from reaching the destination. Poor guy.