life in an italian village Archives - Page 10 of 11

life in an italian village Archives - Page 10 of 11 - Itch.world

A three-minute escape to Italy.

Tuscany, travel, medieval village, Italy, festivals, celebrations, customs, cooking, recipes, living in Italy, moving to Italy, visiting, visit, restaurants, language

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October 7, 2018 In Lingua, Live By Nancy

Con Calma

One of my favorite Italian expressions is “con calma,” or “calmly.” I hear it used several times every day.

The phrase is very different from “calm down” in English, which, to me, has this slightly judgmental, and even a bit condescending quality, that hints that you are overreacting. The effect is to make me feel less calm. By a lot.

A perfect example of “con calma” was a morning when I was at a cafe near the beach on a small island. There was a big crowd of hungry people waiting for their morning coffee and pastries, and only one woman working—her two co-workers hadn’t come into work that day. The waiting crowd kept telling her “con calma.” With calm. Meaning we get it, you are doing the best you can, it will all work out, breathe.

There’s a local restaurant that we love that serves squares of pizza from big sheets and little else. There’s the wife who serves and works the register, and the husband who cooks in the back. The two could win the Olympic gold in pairs for “con calma.” It’s always a comforting and calm experience eating there, even on Wednesday lunch during the school year.

Wednesday is the long day at the town’s public schools, so the kids don’t get out in time to go home for lunch. The elementary school has a hot lunch provided, complete with three courses, china plates, and actual flatware. Served by volunteer grandparents at long tables. But there’s no school lunch available for the middle school students, and people seem to fear that they might go hungry, or have to eat something cold, in which case the world might end. So parents have organized this thing where a couple of them go to this restaurant with all the kids’ requests for pizza—all custom made and assembled into labeled bags—which the volunteer parents then deliver back to the school a couple of hundred yards away.

The restaurant comes to a standstill for other patrons, who all stand around waiting for about 45 minutes while the staff of two completely focus on each order for the kids. “Paolo gets one slice of salami pizza and one hot dog pizza, a bag of chips, and a Fanta.” Times about 30. It’s town “con calma” in action for all concerned—the relaxed and understanding patrons, the husband and wife team, and the parents who make it all possible. No one is flustered or annoyed. After all, in Italy, everything stops to make sure that kids eat well.

I can’t think of an equivalent phrase in the U.S.—maybe because being calm, an acceptance that others are human, that situations come up, and, as a result, things might not move as quickly as we’d like—aren’t things we particularly value or want to accept.

As I go through my day and am stressed about little things I frequently tell myself “con calma” and it reminds me to save the stress for things that really deserve it.

September 13, 2018 In Roam By Nancy

Was ‘The English Patient’ born here?

One of my all-time favorite books is Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient. So I was thrilled to hear that the book was just awarded the Golden Man Booker Prize, recognizing it as the best work of fiction awarded the Man Booker Prize in the last 50 years.

I knew that the Italian part of the book was set largely in these parts. A major scene in the book takes place in front of the Piero Della Francesca frescoes in the Basilica of St. Francis in Arezzo—and throughout there are mentions of Monterchi, Anghiari, and other area villages.

This region is rich in war history, in large part because the front was stalled for months around here during the Italian campaign that lasted from 1943 to 1945. Locals still tell stories about the resistance, close escapes, tragedies, and recent finds of land mines and bullets.

There’s a rumor that this plaque—which stands next to one of my favorite restaurants in Monterchi—was one of Ondaatje’s inspirations for the book, inspiration that resulted in the incredible character, Kip.

The plaque commemorates three war deaths of The Central India Horse 4th Division—two men with Sikh names and one with an English name. Ditto Ram and St. John Graham Young both received the George Cross—the second highest decoration possible in England—for helping other soldiers out of a minefield they’d all stumbled into on a nearby farm. This assistance occurred after both had stepped directly on land mines and before they died minutes later. Almost 50,000 Sikh troops (mostly men between ages 19 and 22) fought in Italy.

Every year, the plaque is freshly decorated with a wreath of paper red poppies, a British tradition to honor those who fought, and died, in war.

September 12, 2018 In Live By Nancy

Small world

A couple of my friends have asked me what daily life is like in a small village. It’s a little like this:

I enter the butcher shop. It’s market day, so it’s very crowded. There are two butchers, brothers. The taller one is holding court on the raised platform behind the glass shrine of meat. They are both in their 50s and always seem to be in a great mood … always. Friends of mine who visited were amazed to see one brother telling jokes over his shoulder while whacking a huge hunk of beef down to size with a foot-long cleaver.

This tendency might explain the missing part of one finger.

Today, he pauses between customers to cut a sample of porchetta (a delicious Tuscan thing—a roasted whole pig stuffed with herbs) and has the crowd pass it to a specific customer, a woman in her 50s who is with her daughter and is seated near the door. The daughter says loudly enough for everyone to hear: “He spoils you.” The butcher says: “I was in love with her when we were in preschool.”

At this point, another patron, a grandmother who is just tall enough to see over the meat part of the shrine but not over the top of the glass, adds: “No you weren’t. You were in love with Clementina.”

September 6, 2018 In Lingua, Live By Nancy

Furbo: clever like a fox. And my son.

Italians have this great word, “furbo.” It means sly, clever, fox-like, and is one of Tuscany’s most prized character attributes. A guy who is furbo won’t be able to get a permit for a pool but will join the community fire watch and offer to put in a reservoir in case a fire breaks out. And then build it in the shape of a swimming pool. That happens to be in his yard. (And we’ve met him. And he’s told us, in detail.)

I wasn’t expecting to use this vocabulary word when I was doing one of my most dreaded tasks as an Italian mother—parent-teacher conferences. There’s no schedule, just a block of time when all the teachers sit at desks in the classrooms and the parents stand in line in the hall and wait their turn.

If a waiting parent is particularly organized they will post a list so other parents can note the order in which they arrived. But mostly, you run from one classroom to another trying to hold your place in multiple lines while attempting to chat in Italian. (Another great word is “chiacchierare,” for chatting or gossip.)

And then you have to go in and talk to the teachers. One by one. And no one speaks English—not even the English teacher.

My sessions never take long. The average parent’s turn with a teacher is about 15 minutes. For me, it’s one. Every parent wants to be next in line after me.

When I went to Sebastian’s first conference at his new school, the basics were conveyed quickly, and were consistent with what previous year’s teachers have told me. “He’s smart. Doesn’t work had enough. Too much energy. But lovely.” This last round, however, he got two “furbo” ratings and one “Furbissimo.” (Italian adds this useful suffix “-issimo” to mean an extreme level of something.)

I was crushed. My little boy furbissimo? On the way home I called John, in shock, to share the upsetting news. He couldn’t have been more delighted. Our son was really becoming Italian.

September 1, 2018 In Live By Nancy

Spectacular spettacolo

Every August, in the Tuscan village of Anghiari, magic happens. For 10 nights in a row, a local square becomes the stage for a freshly-written play, part of a 23-year-old series called Tovaglia a Quadri. I love it because it is a highly improbable thing—that a village takes the time every year to create a fearless, sharp, witty, and poignant reflection of what it means to be a member of a small Italian village, in today’s world. Written by, acted in, and attended by locals.

Each year, the new production is a full-length musical, staged in a tiny square in town. The buildings around the square are used as sets, with actors popping in and out of windows and doors. In the middle of the square are long tables, covered with checkered tablecloths, where the nightly audience is served a three-course dinner. A new play is written every year—often mere weeks before—ensuring that the topics are current. The name Tovaglia a Quadri means tablecloth (tovaglia), with squares (quadri), but the word quadri also refers to a stage.

This year’s play was Ci Amazzon, which is a play on words of “ci amazzono”—”they are killing us”. It takes place a hundred years in the future after Amazon has won the latest world war, leaving a dystopian landscape of a village in which even the grandmothers are happy to have all their needs met online so that they don’t have to leave the house and talk with each other. It explores the tension of getting exactly what you want versus having fewer choices but a more engaged community.

Prior topics have included Anghiarixit—a referendum to gain independence from Tuscany —because, after all, what has Florence really ever done for Anghiari since 1441, when the Florentines bested the Milanese in The Battle of Anghiari, a crucial battle of the Renaissance? Another year the play provided a scathing and hilarious look at immigration with the villagers all eager to emigrate to Australia to start new lives and businesses, while being terrified of a black teenager who was found on the banks of the Tiber river. The villagers thought he was an African immigrant who fell off a boat in the Mediterranean and washed hundreds of miles upstream in the river. He turned out to be from the next village and had fallen into the river after a night of partying with friends. Another was about a World War II concentration camp located nearby.

The play has been happening every year for 23 years, and is the creation of co-authors Paolo Pennacchini and Andrea Merendelli. Andrea directs. The first few years were experimental, trying things like improvisational comedy. They wrote their first real plot in 1997, and the play featured a character talking about his memories. Paolo told me that in 2010 they decided to shift from looking at the past to try “to explain the things happening around us.” And the current hard-hitting format was born.

The town wildly embraces this annual tradition. There are 130 seats for each of the 10 shows and tickets sell out almost immediately. I went to buy mine the morning the tickets were available, arrived 15 minutes after the office opened, and found myself 66th in line. The entire process took hours!

I’ve noticed that many of the local businesses now sport “Ci Amazzon” stickers in their windows, taking the idea of the latest play into a lasting, physical reminder.

I can’t wait to see what they conjure up next year.

August 24, 2018 In About, Live By Nancy

Mostly out of control, nearly all the time

I’ve always been a bit of a control freak, thinking that if I can get the most in-depth information, take my vitamin D3, get the “best” teachers for my kids, walk 10,000 steps a day, and have just the right black cashmere sweater, that I may be able to slightly control life’s path. So stupid really, but inescapable for me.

Moving to a small village that seems to operate in its own dimension and century, navigating another culture, getting along in a language I barely speak, all these things have not only blown away any illusions I had of control, but have made me realize that I can function quite well in life having basically no idea what is going on around me most of the time. And that, in some ways, is a tremendous relief. Because I have to trust those around me to an astounding degree. Maybe it’s part of what has drawn me to stay.

The way we ended up choosing our village set the tone for this shift. When we decided to have a one-year family adventure, we didn’t do a grand tour of villages to check out the schools, talk to locals about expat life, and look at possible housing choices. Quite to the contrary, initially we were set on a major European city with a well-connected airport and lots going on culturally. Partially to reassure ourselves (and we thought better justify to our clients) that our year abroad would be “worth it”.

But the kids kept asking for more of an adventure (as did our hearts), so we decided to find a choice that was as different from our lives in Berkeley as possible. And it turned out true adventure for us was a small village, in Italy, a country that we had never been particularly romanced by, but had citizenship in through John’s grandparents.

We scoured the internet for year-long vacation rentals and found it—a beautifully restored apartment in a mostly unrestored convent from the 1600s in a small Tuscan village. And we decided, sight unseen, about the village, and place to live. And moved. And let everything fall into place. Which it did beyond what any amount of careful planning could have yielded.

It was one of the first times I found myself surfing the wave rather than thinking about how to surf the wave. And one of the oddest things of our new life was that, leading up the one-year mark, when we had to find another place to live, we never had a family discussion about whether to stay or go—all of us were coming into ourselves in such profound ways that it never even came up to go back to our old life.

And it keeps unfolding—this not being well-informed or on top of anything, but feeling like that’s the right thing. And that is at the heart of Itch, the spirit of adventure, leaps of faith, amazement, struggle, failure, and joy.

August 22, 2018 In Live By Gianna Delle Valle

The morning coffee

In this section I’m pleased to introduce Gianna Della Valle: an Italian who has lived abroad for more than 20 years. She has made a study of how to bring elements of the Italian way of life into her adopted, frenetic homeland.

The morning coffee is a ritual that celebrates the bravery, self-discipline, and sacrifice you are making to get out of bed and face the world—all of your own free will. You could have stayed in, slept a bit longer, or entertained other thoughts with your partner. But no. You got up, washed, dressed, and went out. It is a very delicate moment—you need to be celebrated and supported in the day’s first bow to your duties.

That’s why coffee shops were invented in Italy. The “barman” is performing the highest-level duty to society. Like a midwife, he facilitates your daily entry into the world. He understands that your private space should not be disturbed with silly things like asking what you want, and, abomination, asking for your name. The barman knows you intimately and can detect your innermost state. He will scrutinize your face and decide whether to ask you “il solito?” (the usual?) if he feels you are approachable, or simply get on with it and serve your favorite combination coffee and pastry if you’re seeming too delicate for questions that morning. The world has an order that needs to be respected. For that moment, you are at the center of that world and that order.

The barman then will engage you tactfully in a conversation that is meant to be uplifting and get you out of the natural grumpiness your situation warrants (you just got out of bed, remember).

Then the smell hits. And the burst of caffeine. Your energy level spikes. You are ready for your day. Mission accomplished.

Sorry mass coffee chains, you simply do not get it. I don’t want you asking my name. I don’t want paper cups. I don’t want to have to stand in line.

But that’s ok. I am not at the center of the world. I am just a cog in the system. It rains and I got here after a long commute. Another shit day.

August 4, 2018 In Best Of, Live By Nancy

Rooster ring tone

There’s the most fantastic rooster who wakes me up every morning. So ready for the stew pot, partial cock-of-alzheimer’s, partial been-out-too-late drinking. Indescribable call. So I decided not to try, but to go one better.

One Sunday morning around 5am I decided to track him down. Armed with a mic and recorder I drove down to two different chicken coops in nearby fields and stealthy, like the fog, sneaked around until I heard my mystery rooster.

He is now properly recorded, and turned into a ring tone because I wanted it, which means that at least one of you probably does too. And no roosters were harmed in the making of this post.

August 2, 2018 In Live By Nancy

Big cheese

Growing up in the United States, I somehow missed out on learning that there is an Italian sport that involves rolling cheeses. My first clue that my sporting education might not be complete is a photo on the wall of one my favorite workers’ lunch restaurants. In it, the chef is holding a large wheel of cheese. He’s poised to throw it, much as if he were about to roll a bowling ball.

My next brush with cheese rolling happened as I was driving down a Tuscan backroad on the way to the grocery store. I noticed a group of men—including the chef— standing together, looking very serious, all well-armed with large cheeses. I’d like to say that I instantly pulled over to find out more, but wasn’t brave enough—they were having such a good time among friends that it like intruding, and I’m not yet confident enough about my Italian.

The third time I spotted a cheese in play, it was a solitary man, practicing his cheese roll, and I wasn’t going to let this opportunity pass. I was with my fluent daughter, and she owed me one because I had just picked her up at the horse stable, so “we” found out when the next competition was happening and asked if we could come and film.

As is appropriate with cheese rolling, my search came full-circle when I interviewed the chef—whose picture hangs in the restaurant—about the basics of the sport. I was surprised that he has only been participating in this sport for three years—so for those of you who think “It is too late for me to learn to roll a cheese” there is hope yet.

Each team of two has a large, flat, hard cheese between them (could be pecorino, asiago, or parmigiano; but all the teams have to use the same kind.) They attach a leather strap around the cheese, which creates a sort of handle, that enables them to launch the cheese, rolling it down the road. The team who cheese goes the farthest with a predetermined number of throws wins.

Cheese rolling is an all-day sport. The day we came out to watch, they had been out rolling cheeses since 8 in the morning and would be doing so until about 7:30 in the evening, covering around 9 kilometers on foot.

Cheese rolling dates from Etruscan times (the local tribes living here pre-Roman times, whom Tuscany was named after). It’s even included in the Federation of Italian Traditional Games and Sports (figest.it), an organization that holds competitions and publishes the rules for about 15 ancient games like, tug of war, cross bow shooting, darts, and very obscure games like morra, which dates to the ancient Egyptians. (For a lovely little blast of morra: https://www.facebook.com/MorraMarche/videos/978697128831911/)

In cheese rolling there are five different weight classes—cheeses ranging from 1.5 kilograms (a little over three pounds) to 25 kilograms (55 pounds). Hurling a 55 pound cheese down the road takes serious training and muscle!

My favorite part is that the rules specify what to do if your cheese breaks during competition. First feed the spectators cheese, then you can replace the cheese and carry on.

Our chef friend says they always serve the cheese after it has had its moment of competition and that it is particularly delicious. The rules dictate that, after the competition, the winner provides everyone else with glasses of wine. But victory is sweet after all, because the victor gets to keep the cheese of the defeated.

July 10, 2018 In About, Best Of By Nancy

So I find myself…

…sitting in a house that’s somewhere between 400 and 800 years old in a Tuscan village thinking about what to do if I meet a wild boar again while taking a walk, business development for the company I run, what one more year in an Italian high school will mean for my teenage son, and what to have for dinner—all at the same time.

We are almost six years into the adventure of responding to a deep, unrelenting urge to change our lives, an itch, if you will, that inspired our move to Italy—enrolling the kids in the local school (where they started off not speaking any Italian), working with clients all over the world from our homebase in this Italian village, and finding our way in a new life.

Friends, understandably, ask questions. “Do the kids feel more Italian or American, and which parts of their attitudes come from which culture?” “What do the locals think of you?” “What do you actually do all day—don’t you get bored? ” “Where can we go in Venice to escape the crowds and see real neighborhoods?” “Where should we get dinner in Florence?”

So lately I’ve discovered a different kind of itch—a desire to answer these questions and more. Hence the birth of Itch, my notes about food discoveries, language insights, surprising cultural moments, and ideas for adventures in Italy, shared as we live them, weekly.

I invite you to come along for the journey and share with like-minded friends.