For Easter break I decided to fulfill a long-held dream: travel all the way down the boot of Italy to Puglia. It's a sun-bleached region surrounded by breathtakingly blue waters, former home to Greeks, Romans, Goths, Lombards, and Byzantines, with fields of olive groves and wild flowers, steeped in tradition and poverty and folk music, la pizzica e la tarantella, the dances of love and death. Of course I wanted to go. We spent 6 days and 7 nights, beginning our stay in Lecce, moving to the coast at Gallipoli, stopping in the countryside for a wonderful Easter lunch with sort-of distant cousins (you can find family anywhere, really), and returning to Lecce for Pasquetta, the day after Easter.
There's a lot to write about with Puglia, and I'm not sure I can do it justice. But I felt like I was having a great adventure there, that I was truly someplace different. The salty air, il sole che picchia, the colors of the countryside and of the people, seduced me, enchanted me, and I was very sorry to leave. So to indulge my nostalgia and to sort through some of the 400 digital pictures we took, I give you a few entries on this lovely and complicated region.
Later F. would tell me, "See what you would miss if it weren't for me?" and yes, I would have missed it entirely if he hadn't turned around on his bike and said, "Did you see that? Aveva una gallina!" So we stopped, backpedaled, and sure enough, a man was walking down Corso Garibaldi with a rooster on his shoulder.
The man was strolling down the street at dusk, in an old blue shirt and jeans, and the rooster was happily settled on his shoulder, beautifully dark colored and shiningly clean. It hardly fluttered a feather as they made their way down the street together. We watched as the man stopped by a cafè and started a conversation with the three people, two men and a woman, who sat outside. While they talked, the men amused but willing, passersby feigned disinterest, turning around to stare only after they were out of the man's sight. Of the conversation, we heard the man say something like, "Sorry to disturb you, but I can only stay outside of locales, sai, they're always kicking me out." And one of the men saying, "But it's not you, it's him!" Gesturing at the rooster, who adjusted his seat on the man's shoulder. "Well anyway, I'm armed. Like in the old west." And he pulled up his shirttails to reveal a bottle of beer in each of his pockets. They all laughed and he continued on his way, but not before praising the beauty of the woman they were with.
"Che dici, lo seguiamo?" said F. Perhaps following a man with two beers and a rooster is not the city response to strange occurrences, but of course I agreed. We walked with our bikes a little ways behind him. He crossed the street and we watched as he greeted every person he passed, singing "Bandiera Gialla," sometimes stopping to talk, another time making an obscene gesture at a signore who offended him. The rooster rode peacefully, every so often flapping its wings to regain its balance. It didn't make a sound. On our side of the street three little girls and their moms passed, and the one in front cried, "Cel'ha una gallina lassù quel signore! C'è una gallina!" That man has a chicken! But her friends didn't believe her and couldn't see as far. "Ma era un cane, dai." And we smiled because we knew the truth.
Finally we sped up and crossed the street, so that we would be in his path as he passed. I pretended to look at some flowers, watching him approach out of the corner of my eye. He stopped beside us, and from up close I could see he had a big bushy beard and sparkling eyes, a sweet face really but the kind that could turn frightening. He stood next to F and told him that he shouldn't be afraid of the chicken, non ti fa niente. And so F reached out a hand and stroked the rooster, who seemed to retract his head into his neck in contentment. A woman behind us was saying, "Che meraviglia, what a miracle, quel signore ha una gallina. Che bello." And he said, "No, pardon me, you know what the miracle is?" Smiling he pointed at me and the woman who worked at the flower stand and then swept his arm to include the women passing by on the street and said, "Sono loro la vera meraviglia, they're the real miracle. Le nostre compagne. Our companions." And excusing himself for the intrusion, he continued down the street.
I'm back in Milan after a Christmas vacation spent running around the southeast of the U.S. and then around central Italy...
F and I decided to go to Rome for the befana, Italy's way of celebrating the Epiphany, during which an old shriveled witch brings presents for the boys and girls. I wanted to get in a couple of adventures before returning to work, and I really wanted to catch some warm weather and sunshine.
We wandered the city for four days and three nights, and I have to say, Rome made us milanesi both envious. Okay, so the public transport is totally incasinato and maybe, yes, it's full of tourists, and of course, other Italians do say that SPQR stands for "Sono pazzi questi romani! These Romans are crazy!" But nonostante tutto questo, Rome is truly a beautiful city. Some examples of why we were jealous:
First, there were trees lining the streets, orange trees. With oranges. Then there was a library with many comfortable nooks to read and study and a courtyard filled with...more orange trees! Plus an exhibit on street culture and graffiti. The libreriacafè: Rome seems to enjoy stopping for a coffee and a book, unlike Milan, where when I asked my friend if there was a book bar like La Citè in Florence he said "Hmm, yes, I think there was, but it closed because no one wanted to sit around." The clouds. In Milan, a cloudy day is a drizzly, miserable commitment, you're in for the gray, long haul. In Rome, clouds were a morning affair, a pause in an afternoon of sunshine, and evening shower. And the shades of gray even varied. Trastevere, a wonderful neighborhood on the other side of the Tiber with winding streets and a beautiful central piazza. The food. We ate out at two different osterie where we slurped up delicious cacio e pepe and munched fried carciofi and gnocchi with wine and amari. Street musicians! A Dixieland jazz band in the middle of Villa Borghese! A trio of middle-aged Italians playing la tarantella in Piazza Spagna with tamburri and accordion just for the hell of it!
Speaking of musicians and food, our last night we ate out at a restaurant in Trastevere called l'Antico Moro. The food, as I mentioned, was delicious and inexpensive, the waiters were friendly in their hurry and made delightful expressions of exasperation and playfulness. The menu said "gnocchi freschi fatti in casa ogni giovedì" so it being giovedì I ordered gnocchi. The waitress's eyes widened theatrically and she asked me to wait a moment. She trotted to the kitchen where we could hear her yell into the door, "Ehi! It's Thursday, eh! Did you make them?" She returned, exhaling, "Yes, we have the gnocchi."
Later a huge group of people ranging from teenaged to retired marched in and sat at four tables in our part of the restaurant. I thought they might be a big Roman family eating out for the befana, but we eventually found out that they were veneti and that they had arrived at the trattoria in a big tour bus. Turns out, their tour agency had also hired a typical Roman folk singer (in realtà from Abruzzo) to serenade them alla romana, and we got to benefit.
This guy entered teasing and playing with the veneti, choosing various members of the group to pick on. He quickly allied himself with a long-faced vecchietto Marco, who enthusiastically sung along to every other line (and later saluted me with an "Adios!"). He would start loud and determined and then trail off as he forgot the words and then riprendere il filo when he remembered again. The folk singer sang "Quanto sei bella Roma" and "Roma, nun fa' la stupida stasera" and even some stornelli. For each chorus of the the vulgar, playful stornelli he serenaded specific people, choosing F and I as the two innamorati and then telling F to explain the dialect and double entendres to me later. We concluded with a big singalong of "Arrivederci Roma":
(Inter flag we found in the street waving proudly on my balcony. Bonus: Milan sun!) Y'all in America may or may not have been paying attention to the European Champions League, where the best soccer clubs in Europe compete for several months to become the campioni. Inter, one of Milan's two teams (and a little bit the Yankees of Italy), beat such teams as Chelsea and Barcelona to reach the finals against Bayern, Munich. And guess what... They won! For the first time in 38 years or something crazy like that. Not Real Madrid, not Manchester, but Inter! Want to see?
We went to the Piazza del Duomo to see the game on the big screen with the crazies. Here is a video of its last moments and when the crowd realizes that Intern has won. For the first minute, everyone has their hands in the air and says "OOOOOOO," and then the crowd erupts with joy, the sky with fireworks, the piazza with crazy.
It's a little Blair Witchy, but you get the idea.
And then for hours afterwards (including bonus shot of our bikes and me terrified about leaving them with the crazies):
So I guess you could call this my first European Football Experience. Pretty intense, and all the noise and smoke and flares made me think on some level that the Rapture/Word War III might be occurring. Do these kinds of things happen in the U.S.? I missed the images of the streets of New Orleans after the Super Bowl. Maybe I do not care enough about American sports.
In the end, all was well, the only casualty was the mudguard of F's bike.
A selection of chants heard that night:
Josè Mourihnoooo dadadadadada (ode to the coach sung to the tune of "I can't take my eyes of you")
Juventino pezzo di merda!
Siamo noi Siamo noi I campioni d'Europa siamo noi!
I've been a bit down on the posting, and this time I can't even blame it on the good weather: it's been raining for about ten days straight. And I can't blame it on nothing happening in at school. For example: A week ago, I was introducing Joyce to my 5th year class. We had just begun to read "Eveline" when a boy whipped around in his seat and vomited all over the floor. There were screams, half the class escaped to the window, the other half outside of the classroom. Lesson put on hold. The next day I was on the third floor and saw some of my 5th years in giro. They said, "Hi Rachel! We really like Joyce!" Sure.
And it's not that I've been bumming around the house: I went to Florence with F a week ago, which was lovely. We caught La Notte Bianca , where shops stay open into the early hours and there are concerts and hordes of night owls. Then on Saturday we took the train to Sesto Fiorentino to attend Primo Maggio at Istituto di Ernesto de Martino, the place where I interviewed Ivan della Mea and in general fell in love with folk music. Here is a video of one of the choruses at the festival singing "Stornelli d'Esilio," one of my favorite leftist songs. Chorus is like this: Nostra patria è il mondo intero e nostra legge è la libertà ed un pensiero ribelle in cor ci sta
Our homeland is the whole world Our law is liberty And a rebel thought is in our hearts.
More or less.
There's more, but I am a bum. So I will wait until I am not a bum/not sfasata from a 9-7 workday.
I've inherited an old Nikon camera, almost untouched and only in need of a little "re-foaming," and I figured that there was no better place to practice taking old timey pictures than Milan. I have no idea what I'm doing (though thanks to the instructions of my mother I have a vague idea how to use the light meter), but I like the feel of the camera and the noises it makes. In honor of the arrival of warm weather (finally), here are some of the experiments from my first round of film.
A few weeks ago, F lead me to the countryside outside of Piadena (aka middle of nowhere) to a festa di cultura at a country house. Meaning neverending amounts of wine, grana padano, polenta, gorgonzola, burger, and best of all leftist folk music. I felt my old joy for this stuff and even saw Suonatori Terra Terra, the first Italian folk band I ever saw playing la musica popolare. Pictured: F leading the way along the highway into the countryside, mandarino e vino, and the maestro of the gorgonzola. Here are some kids painting the walls outside of a centro sociale, one of the occupied buildings converted into a hangout space for young people (especially leftists). We saw a police car pass by without a backward glance. An elderly couple stopped to talk to the adolescents and compliment them on their work. "Almeno così i muri sono belli eh," said the elderly man. At least this way the walls are beautiful. Before spring break, I had an absolutely lovely Sunday in Milan where I woke up early (gasp) to go to the junk mercato senegalese near F's hood. After wandering around looking at appliances from the eighties and instruments and vintage place settings, we headed to Bosco in Città for greenery and a picnic... ...followed by a tour around Parco delle Cave and a sip from the fontana dei vechietti (Cue F's old lady voice "O sisi signora mia, ormai non ci sono più le mezze stagioni.")... ...and then a trip to the monthly Mercato dell'Antiquario sui Navigli, basically like the junk market only 10 times more expensive. I thought these typewriters were beautiful. It was a Good Day.
Finally, to close, a portrait of the bici on my terrace on a sunny day, the one that we keep meaning to fix up.
Once again I'm posting something about play rather than work, but I had to fix the bus driver in my memory and if I don't write something about him he'll slip away... This weekend we went to Champoluc in Val d'Aosta, X has a house there. I had to leave Saturday instead of Friday with F because I had work Saturday morning. Train, train, bus from Verres up the winding mountain roads to Champoluc. On the bus we were at first the only passengers, and we sat up near the driver (F said we were vechietti, I said that if you put me in the back of the bus on mountain roads I will puke). The driver was a small man with gray hair, bald on top, bulbous nose, toothy grin. He asked us if his cigarette, which he dangled out the window while waiting for other passengers, bothered us. I thought of my roommates and said absolutely not. When we set out, he drove to the train station to check for other passengers and to take us down a parking lot ramp (Come un luna park!) as if it were a rollercoaster. Not bad, eh? he asked. He was warm and wonderful. He asked F if he were milanese and they discussed the merits of city bus driving versus country bus driving. The autista concluded that even the higher pay could not tempt him to Milan. In Aosta the spese were low, the people were warm, life was tranquilla. Two tween girls got on and sat directly behind the bus driver. They were obviously familiar, they spoke to him like a good friend. He asked them how their studies were going, how were their families. One of the girls began telling him about her parents, who were divorced, and their children with their new companions. He said, Oh so you have lots of brothers and sisters. And she said, No, we're not really brothers and sisters truely. And he said, But they are still the children of your mama, your papà, è sangue lo stesso, blood is blood, che mondo, carissimo amico. Then he asked,Chi è quel ragazzo che sale ogni mattina? Anche ieri? È maleducato quello, non saluta mai, non dice niente. Ma saluta, ragazzo. Di dove sei che sei così maleducato? Ma cosa ti hanno insegnato tuoi genitori? He complained about a boy who takes the bus every day but never says hi, never says a word of greeting. Where is he from, that he never learned manners? At one little village he stopped the bus and noticed a girl getting off. He asked her, Can I ask you a favor? You know what it is? She said, Of course. He gave her a sack of groceries he had bought earlier in the day and told her to bring it to his wife (Sai dove abito, vero?). The girl stepped off the bus and the driver called out the window, Grazie! She replied over her shoulder, Niente! He turned to us and explained, Così mia moglie mi fa da mangiare, altrimenti mangiamo le patate e basta! (This way, my wife will make me something to eat, otherwise we would be eating potatoes and that's it!). As we climbed further into the mountains, the height of the snow beside the road growing, the light fading away, he sang along to the songs on the radio. More people got on and off the bus, never very many. At one point he stopped the bus to let off an elderly woman. He asked her, Give me a goodnight kiss! No, I will not. And why not? She replied, You know and I know that you have a wife at home. Yes, and you have a husband, who is watching us right now! And we turned to look out the window and sure enough, I saw a dark stooped figure in the warm orange window and the curtain fall as it was released. The old woman and the autista laughed, she made her careful way down to the curb. He turned to us, È un terrone come me! È tanto geloso, quello. (He's a redneck from the south like me, he's a jealous one alright!) He would turn to us now and again, smiling and saying a word or two. F asked me why I was being so quiet, and I told him it was because I had to remember everything, fix it all in my memory. We had to arrive, though, and I was a little sad when we did. I had that feeling that we were friends now and that we should know each other's names or kiss goodbye or share something that meant we were more than just customers of a service. I could have stayed on that bus for a long time, my head on a warm shoulder and my ears filled with singing and friendly words.
After my traveling plans for the weekend of Carnevale fell through, I decided to make the most of my weekend in Milan and take advantage of all the cool events in giro. I also had my camera with me for my adventures. My Saturday consisted of:
-bike ride into centro with F to see the children in their holiday costumes. We found a Trasforma Milano exhibition that turned junk into toys: (Duomo lookin' imposin')
-Then we swung over to the Samedi Gras Multirazziale, a march against racism in Milan. ("Dove tutti sono milanesi, tranne i razzisti"). We danced with our bikes to reggae, watched the destruction of Lega Nord political posters, and paused in a tunnel to sing and curse at the vice sindaco of Milan.
-After our daily dose of politics, we returned to my neighborhood, Isola, for the Milano Clown Festival. The Festival, which lasted over three days, included street performers, artists, and musicians from all over the world. The night before, I had watched the Brera Street Band perform al Frida. Saturday, we caught Le Rang du Frond al Teatro Sala Fontana. They were fun (I especially enjoyed the fishnet-wearing banjo player), but they were playing strange banjo glam punk for a crowd that was half under 10, and I think they were a little confused. Their attempts at Italian were adorable though (Per favore potere lower the volume perchè i bambini sono *puts hands over ears*).
We headed to Piazza Gioia for the clowncerto of Hibiscus Theater from Spain, grabbed a beer at Frida, and then returned to Gioia for the concerto finale. I never figured out the name of the band, but they were French and played gypsy music that everyone felt in their feet. The PIC Clowns mingled and danced too. At one point one of the singers began talking about a mystical experience (in French. All I know F translated for me). The accordion player began wiggling his fingers at the crowd, and we wiggled back. He climbed down from the stage, we kept wiggling our fingers. As he moved through the crowd, he caught my eye, cocked his eyebrow, grabbed my hands and pulled me to the stage. The singer began chattering in French, asking me my name (Rachel. Vashayl? Ra-chel. Mayshell? Rachele! Machall? Rachel! Ahh, Ray-shell!) Next thing I knew I had an accordion strapped to my back and the accordion player embracing me to play it. We spun around in circles while the crowd cheered and the band played along. Then as a finale, the entire band kissed me four times on the cheek, merci merci merci, bravissima. My head was spinning. F laughed at me and said he could tell I was confused about the kissing the entire band deal. And as we left to go dancing at Circo Bussa, strangers said, "Ciao Ray-shell!"
Then, on Sunday, we took a little trip to Cremona, the birthplace of Stradivarius. We wandered around, saw the Duomo, and visited a little flea market. I bought two records, Johnny Cash and Doc Watson, to play on my new (borrowed) giradischi. All in all, it was a good weekend.
For Easter break I decided to fulfill a long-held dream: travel all the way down the boot of Italy to Puglia. It's a sun-bleached region surrounded by breathtakingly blue waters, former home to Greeks, Romans, Goths, Lombards, and Byzantines, with fields of olive groves and wild flowers, steeped in tradition and poverty and folk music, la pizzica e la tarantella, the dances of love and death. Of course I wanted to go. We spent 6 days and 7 nights, beginning our stay in Lecce, moving to the coast at Gallipoli, stopping in the countryside for a wonderful Easter lunch with sort-of distant cousins (you can find family anywhere, really), and returning to Lecce for Pasquetta, the day after Easter.
