Chianti Region and Roma, prima volta!

Friday, September 26 – Culture of Food in Italy class field trip:

My food class made its way over to the beautiful Chianti region, where the famous wine originated. I thought of my dad often during this trip, because I could feel how exhilarating this area would be to him as I looked out the window of the bus to see rows and rows of vineyards combing the tumbling hills, the neat rows contradicting the scattered, absent-minded groupings of fields they grow in. It looks as if a toddler had been given the task of creating these hills, and then, left unsupervised, had taken a giant hair pick and scratched it wherever his three-year-old fancy struck. There were the ever-abounding thinner, darker green rows which are the grape vines, and then the lighter, thicker rows that were the color of mint-blue – these were the olive trees. Almost all of the grapes had been harvested already, except for one variety of red grapes (San Giovanese, possibly?), but the olive trees are still weighed down by their harvest, as they don’t get picked until the end of October. My professor kept telling us that if the ancient people who had first lived here could see their land today, they wouldn’t recognize it at all, because in their day, there had been many diverse crops covering the area, but now specialized farming has taken over, and it’s only grapes and olives that you will see driving around the Chianti region, and much of Italy in general.

Spatterings of villages cling to the hills, villages so old that the buildings seem to grow out of the land themselves. They cling to the hills like barnacles stubbornly cling to an aged, jagged rock on the shore. One of these villages was the azienda that we went to for the first leg of our field trip. The azienda was named La Fucina di Poggio Antico, or “The Forge of Ancient Hill,” the name echoing the antiquity of the surround terrain. This azienda was all organic, and the community that worked the land was connected by one thing: they all had been “called” there by God. Lucio, our guide, told us that he had had stomach cancer some 30 years ago, and after he survived, and it went in remission, he felt called by God to give back to the earth, and so he came to this community’s azienda and has been there ever since. They were also all vegetarians, and the animals they had, (cows, goats, cavallini, or “little horses”, i.e. ponies, chickens) were all used for their by-products and manure for the natural fertilization that is necessary for organic practices. I have a picture here of some of their cows – they had all different breeds of cows, because they didn’t believe that one breed was better than the other, just like not one race of people is better than another. They also believed that animals, because they were so much stronger, absorbed all our negative energy through their horns. Ahem. So, it was a bit bizarre, but even though my philosophies didn’t exactly coincide with the community’s, I was still able to appreciate the tranquility of the respectful relationship these people had with their animals and the earth. We got to taste various types of cheese, both from goat milk and cow milk, and some of their apple and grape juice that they made there on the farm. I also bought a jar of pear preserves from this special type of enormous pears that they grow on the farm, which I hope to enjoy when my family comes! :)

After leaving the azienda, we made our way to Strada in Chianti, a little town where we ate a delicious meal at Ristorante Palledina. Our meal included the famous Florentine steak, probably the most raw and most delicious steak I have ever had the pleasure to eat, and the region’s characteristic meat, chicken, more specifically, rooster. The rooster was cooked with all the parts of the body (instead of just the meat as we would do at home), and it was in one of the most flavorful sauces to accompany pasta ever! I feel as though I keep saying “it was the best meal ever” but these dinners really do keep topping the next, each new flavor becoming my new obsession, trying to pick its elements apart to discover the secret to Italian cooking . . . mmmm, how I love food!

Saturday, September 27 – Roma con i miei amici!

My usual posse of Lauren, Carly, and Angie and I decided to take a last minute day-trip to Rome, as Lauren had to go for a class, and we wanted to see some of the sights so we wouldn’t have to cram them all into the one night, two days that we will be there in November. We ended up seeing the Vatican museums, including the Sistine Chapel, saw the exterior of the Basilica (the line was so long that we would’ve missed our bus if we had gone inside), and the Piazza del Popolo, or the Pope’s Piazza. The Vatican museums had an overwhelming amount of paintings – by the end of the Sistine Chapel I couldn’t really take anything else in – visual overload! I did, however, get an illegal picture of the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel – shhh! I got the famous Creation of Adam painting in it, too! I was taken aback by Raphael’s famous painting of all the philosophers – I had studied that in my Intro to Visual Art class freshman year of college, and couldn’t believe I was seeing it!

Despite all the wonderful history and breath-taking art that covers all of Roma, I’m content with my decision to study abroad in Perugia instead. Perugia is so much cleaner! And it’s also not tourist-driven, and it has a more intimate feel, being a much smaller city.

The bus ride back from Rome was where I felt most inspired, however. I know all this art is fabulous, but essentially, all art derives from nature, from people, from other art. My writing follows this as well, and is inspired more by landscapes and nature than city skylines, despite my love of the city. I think this must just be a product of where I grew up, and where I feel most at home. It’s an amazing thing to get a feeling of homesickness, or rather, not even homesickness, but a feeling of love for a home in a place that’s oceans away from your actual home. I watched these home-love-inducing scenes pass my window as the light darkened, and night snuck stealthily across the land. The mountains by Roma are deeply beautiful – they are always a dark, fuzzy blue, like time has taken a sponge and scrubbed away the vibrant, jagged points of youth, and patiently smoothed over the round tops, and covered it instead with a wise blue that echoes across the distance. Their calm beauty reverberates in a comforting way. Their dark blue just waits for night to come when again they can blend in with the sky and go to sleep on the quiet earth.

My first day at the Torre Colombaia Agriturismo in rural Umbria was a rainy one that challenged me to find good in something that doesn’t look too promising at first glance. The visual stimulation of the surrounding terrain of romping, playful hills hugging the horizon, and wise, age-old gardens spreading their motherly arms over the land was lost among greedy layers of unrelenting fog and the constantly sulky drops of rain. However, instead of clinging to expired expectations and allowing my disappointment to join the fog and rain in dampening my weekend, I looked for the good amidst my soggy clothes and cold feet: like a blind person who adjusts for their lack of sight by heightening another sense, I let my sense of taste guide my rainy day at the agriturismo, with a seven-course meal that included some of the most flavorful lamb I have ever had (and believe me, I've had my share of excellent lamb growing up on a sheep farm!).

The sun decided to come out the second day, and my Creative Writing class that I was taking the field trip with, was able to walk around the land. I did an amazing amount of introspection this day - the following is basically my journal entry from the day:

The first crisp gusts of fall snuck up on me today. It was a beautiful fall morning to be in the Italian compagna (countryside); it was one of those mornings that awakens and stirs parts of you that you have repressed, or just not expected to surface on this particular day, this certain morning. I don’t know what exactly is it about fall that moves me so – there’s just something in the sound of dry, fallen leaves scratching against a gravel road, something about the subtlety of sunlight. The shyness of autumn sunlight – I could write a paper on it! It’s not as abrasively, purely white as spring light, or as lazy and steamy as summer sunlight; rather it’s a darker, golden tint, and its beauty quietly creeps up on you. If summer sunlight was custom made for beach scenes with garishly colored beach umbrellas, then autumn sunlight was created with country-living and the harvest in mind. It is the sunlight of memories, the golden warmth conjuring up images of past autumns; for me, the first fall image that seeped into my mind as I walked through the agriturismo grounds was pressing cider with apples from our old apple tree on the side of the road. Suddenly, unexpectedly, I was crying, overcome with an overwhelming sadness as I missed my grandpa Lyle with such an acute pang, it was as if he had just passed away yesterday. I didn’t expect this memory to trigger up such a forceful reaction; I guess it was because the last time I made apple cider, Grandpa Lyle was there, with Grandma, Don and Mary Lou, my parents, David and his girlfriend, Jen - it was such a perfect fall day to remember Grandpa with, and one of my last weekends with him, as it was a few weeks before he passed away. I miss him terribly today, and I keep thinking of a thousand things I’d like to tell him, about Italy, about Todd, about my life. So I guess I’m writing in memory of him today, and in warming memory of that perfect fall day.

My time at the argriturismo reminded me of the beauty of the land that my family roots are so deeply buried in. Being in Perugia, caught up in the rush and whoosh, the excitement of city life, all the while learning a new language, making new friends, and just trying to keep up, it’s easy to forget, or lose touch with nature, and the cycle of seasons. But this weekend, I was gently reminded: the beauty of fall in Italy’s countryside has enveloped me fully – it reminds me of home, and I wish I could just spread my arms and let myself sink into the soil beneath me, so I can absorb the quiet, wise patience of the generous Terra Madre, or Mother Earth. I lose myself in the panoramic views of fields of sunflowers, once bright and happy now bow their darkened heads, ready for winter’s slumber. There are the once neat but now overflowing rows of grape vines in the midst of being harvested, and the healthy heaviness of the olive trees patiently waiting for their turn in the harvest season that remind me of the necessity of death in order for life to keep on in the grandest of cycles.

Even the houses here seem to echo my wish to blend into the earth – they are all made with earthy materials of stone or brick, covered in sturdy clay roofs. Agriturismos themselves are an attempt to pay homage to the gracious earth – they are government subsidized farms that save old, historic buildings and ages-old farms that are re-equipped to use solar power, organic farming and gardening methods, and always fresh, locally grown produce and meat for their hearty seven-course meals! There is no better place in Italy to be able to appreciate the first signs of fall, and the harvest that autumn is all about. Here amongst this calm beauty, my tensed neck muscles release, and I stand still as I let my weight sink into the earth, patiently waiting for the sound of falling leaves that whisper softly, fall is here.

Word of the day: soppresso. It means “cancelled,” and in the case of an-all-too-frequent Italian sciopero dei treni, or “train strike,” this also means that a headache is coming on! Italian laborers go on strike ALL THE TIME, and this weekend there happened to be a train strike for any trains going in/out of/through Firenze from 9 pm on Friday to 9 pm Saturday. My friends Lauren, Carly, Angie and I were planning on going to Pisa and Cinque Terra, so we made sure we left before the strike on Friday to get safely to Pisa, and then figured we’d be fine going to Cinque Terra the next day since it’s not a train that goes through Firenze. We had a hostel for 2 nights in Pisa, and were just planning taking a train to Cinque Terra Saturday morning and coming back Saturday night. Friday night, we got to the hostel, which was very clean and nice – we had our own room with two double beds and our own private bathroom. The only thing was that the hostel was on a really tiny back street that had a bunch of abandoned apartment buildings with broken windows and smelled like a variation of pee/poo/vomit. But thankfully the hostel itself was very clean, had lots of locked doors, and was next to a little piazza on the other side of the building, so there were always people there! That night we grabbed some pizza and went to the Leaning Tower of Pisa while it was getting dark – it was actually pretty neat to see the Tower all lit up in the dark, but the cathedral, cemetery, and the tower itself were all closed.

Saturday morning the excitement began: we got to the train station really early, and EVERY SINGLE train, except for ONE was soppresso! We didn’t realize that either they expanded the strike to almost all the trains, or that almost every train going through Pisa also went through Firenze at some point. There weren’t any buses to Cinque Terra, and the one train still going to Cinque Terra we didn’t want to take it as we didn’t know if we’d get a guaranteed train back to Pisa, so alas, no Cinque Terra for us! We had to stand in a tediously long line to get a refund for our tickets - but just to prove how tiny the world really is, while we were waiting in line, we started talking to the people behind us, and two of them happened to be nurses from Saint Paul! Small world, indeed!

So instead of Cinque Terra, we walked down the main pedestrian street in Pisa and browsed through the artists’ and clothing vendors. We then went back to the Leaning Tower, and saw the cathedral there, and took stereotypical touristy photos - the cathedral is gorgeous and FULL of paintings depicting different biblical stories. Finally, after not eating lunch, we were getting quite hungry, so we ate gnocchi at a little, cheap restaurant by the Tower, got the best gelato I think I’ve had so far, and went home properly stuffed! It ended up being a relaxing weekend, and we got to see more of the Tower, along with it being a cheaper weekend than if we had had to buy train tickets to/from and around Cinque Terra. It also was cloudy and a bit rainy, so the beaches wouldn’t have been too comfortable.

The other good thing about this weekend was that it got me out of Perugia long enough to where I was relieved in coming home – although fun, Pisa is a much dirtier and sketchier city in some parts. It was also full of tourist venues, which is fine, but made me appreciate the lack of such things in Perguia! So taking the train back to Perugia yesterday felt more like going home, which is good – it means I’m finally settling in!

Otherwise, classes have been going really well – the only one I haven’t had yet is Drawing, which I will have Tuesday. They all seem really interesting, if not maybe a little bit more difficult than I had thought! That’s ok with me – I’m always up for a challenge! :) My Culture of Food in Italy class is going to have a lot of history involved in it, along with a class trip where we go to a traditional Tuscan restaurant and have a huge, multi-course meal. We also have a wine tasting day, a bread tasting day, and finally, but not least, an olive oil tasting day! We don’t actually do any cooking – it’s all about the effect culture has on food and vice versa, with an emphasis on Italy and its food! My Italian class is with the same professoressa that I had for my week of Intensive Italian, which is great, because I love her! :) My Creative Writing: Italy of the Imagination class is going to be the easiest class, I think. I was really excited about it, because that’s what I would have liked to major in if the U of M had an undergraduate program in Creative Writing, but I think the teacher is pretty laid back and is going to grade easily, possibly because there seem to be a lot of people in the class who think that the class is just an easy A. This frustrates me, of course, because it’s not EASY to write well, and I’d rather have a teacher who pushed us, but oh well. Maybe she’ll turn out to be a harder grader than I thought! And either way, that doesn’t mean I have to take it easy! :)

So there you are – caught up on everything! Hope all my friends in school are having a great semester back home – I’m starting to miss the U of M – I love the campus feel it has. Here we only have two buildings (only 150-200 students in the school), and the two buildings are in completely different areas of the city center, so there’s no campus feel. Having only 200 students max in the school also make me pine for the huge student population of the U of M campus which makes for endless new friend possibilities, and you don’t have the drama that comes with smaller college communities. Oh well – it’s still a good school, and I’ve got a great little group of friends with Lauren, Carly, and Angie, so I’m satisfied! :) Everyone else, hope you’re having a great fall, and EMAIL ME!! Keep me updated – I miss you all!

Hello everyone! Phew! Since a lot has happened since my last post, so I’m going to split this up into two separate posts; the first one is my scary story, the second one, about a trip I took to rural Umbria. Bear with me while I catch you up!

I can’t go any further until I tell you about my night before my first day of intensive Italian classes. My roommates and I went out for gelato and a walk at about 9 pm and then Natalie and I came back around 10 pm and went straight to bed. The other two stayed out with other friends and didn’t get back until midnight or so, but went promptly to bed after getting back. All of a sudden, we were all awoken by someone pounding at our door, and a man’s voice yelling at us in Italian! Naturally, we all are confused and drowsy, but also scared out of our wits, as then this Italian man tries to open our door! Thank god we have approximately five locks on our door, all of which we lock at night, but still! We weren’t about to open the door, and we don’t have a peephole, so we yelled through the door to see what he wanted. Apparently it was just our neighbor, informing us that we had locked the main door to the building from the inside earlier today and had locked someone out. Of course they blame it on the stupid American girls, and even though chances are, it was us, as the doors here are modeled after medieval times and, as I said before, have about five locks each, even though you only have a key for one . . . but even if it WAS us, the man didn’t have to scare the bejeezus out of us in the middle of the night!

So, finally, he left, and we went to bed, shaken, a little freaked out, but tired. About an hour later, I wake up to a BLOOD-CURDLING scream like someone is being murdered, and immediately my next panicked thought is about the British Study Abroad student who was murdered in her apartment in Perugia last year, for which her American roommate, the roommate’s Italian boyfriend, and a drug-dealer are STILL all in jail, waiting for the trial that actually starts this week. SOOOOO, after I check to make sure I haven’t wet myself in fright, I get up and it turns out it was one of my roommates who was having a nightmare about someone attacking her in her bed. So. Relieved it wasn’t one of my roommates going psycho and murdering someone, but successfully freaked out nonetheless, I attempted to go back to bed, but didn’t actually get to sleep until somewhere around three or four in the morning.

Of course I started class the next day, so I had to get up at eight. Class was fine – it will be a challenge to pack all the Italian in, but I’m excited for it, and am in the perfect place to practice using it! We had class from 9 until 12:00, when we had break for lunch, and I just bought yogurt next door at a convenience store before going back to class from 1:30 to 3:00. During that last hour and half of class, my vision started to get blotchy for some reason, then I started sweating inexplicably, and then a skull-splitting headache came on. Finally, a wave of nausea hit me full force – I had to excuse myself once from class to, well, you know. It was all I could do to not spew the rest of my lunch all over my classmates for the remaining 30 minutes, and I practically ran home to finish the job. It was awful. But no worries, after that, I took an ibuprofen, took a three-hour nap, and woke up feeling fine. Must’ve been the yogurt, I’m guessing, or the lack of the sleep, or the fact that my nerves were fried from the night before!

So that did not make for the best first days in Perugia, but since my mental and physical health have GREATLY improved! J

So the pictures accompanying this post are from a trip to rural Umbria, the province that Perugia is the capitol of. It was a big group of us who came here through Arcadia University in the U.S. Anyways, we went to a big azienda, or a big farm where they grow EVERYTHING! It was about 130 acres total, including rented land, and they grew olives, grape vines, hay, faglioni (a legume), horses, and pigs. The pigs they have are black with a white stripe down their front end – apparently they are a common breed here, and have to be raised in the open air, not a barn like in the U.S. Here, as you can see in the pictures, they put them in the vineyards and olive-tree fields because they are cleaners who eat all the weeds and such, and also because they fertilize the land. The owner just clapped his hands and a bunch came running for the food he threw them that you can see them all huddling around in one picture. We also saw a three-month-old colt named Gibri, (I think) which translates into desert wind. Another mare somehow got her scent on him, so his own mother wouldn’t claim him. The owner of the azienda feeds him from a bottle, and plays with him, since he says the colt thinks he is his mother. He even played calico (soccer) with the owner!

After taking a tour of the grounds, we went into the kitchen with all the Italian women of the town who taught us how to make some sort of flatbread – torta di testa, which is the name of the pan that it is cooked on. The dough just consisted of flour, salt, yeast, olive oil, and water, and after kneading it, you rolled it out and baked it on the stove-top on this pan. You can cut it open after it’s done and put cheese, tomatoes, olive oil, or anything you want in it. Then, my favorite part, they showed us how to make homemade pasta! The picture I have here is of one of the girls from our group cutting it after it had been rolled out and then rolled up. You have to let it dry out for half-an-hour or so before you can use it. If anyone has any interest, I’ll show you when I come home!

After all of this, we had a four course lunch with all locally grown and cooked food, consisting of more of the pigs we saw today, tomatoes grown in their gardens, along with the pasta and flat bread that we helped to make! They also had local wine for us to drink that they had made there. It was a red wine, pretty sweet, and relatively strong – reminded me a lot of port. It was a wonderful lunch – I completely understand why they only use the freshest and local ingredients in their food here – it all tasted so fresh and full of flavor! But after eating all four courses, and getting extremely tired, I also have a new understanding as to why they have la pausa here, which is basically an enforced siesta, when all the stores in Perugia and some other areas close from 1 to 4 in the afternoon.

This Wednesday we start our regular classes, and this weekend I am going to Napoli with a few of my friends, so until then, hope you all have a wonderful week, I miss you all, and I hope I didn’t bore you too much with all my stories! :) Ciao!

Hello all! FINALLY got my wireless connection figured out here in Peruga! I am now connected to the world! :)

Whew! It's been a whirlwind of a few days! The first few days in a new place are always extremely overwhelming - you have the ecstatic highs of emotion, like when I saw the beautiful hilly terrain of Umbria, the province that Perugia is in, or my first successful purchasing of a latte macchiato Italiano style! But then you also have those darn lows, where you're feeling a bit vulnerable, say perhaps because you went to purchase your groceries, and didn't realize that you had to weigh your fruit and get a price sticker before purchasing, and therefore making a bunch of impatient and annoyed local Italians wait while dumb little me has to go do so. Oops! I could practically hear them thinking, "La americana stupida!" Oh well. It'll just take a little time for me to grasp my surroundings, and fit in enough to the point where at least I don't annoy the locals! :)

My flight was fine - long, being 8 hours, but uneventful. I even got some sleep! :) Then we took a bus from the Rome airport to Perugia, which was about a 3 hour ride, which I slept most of - jet lag for the win! We stayed at a hotel at the bottom of the hill that Perugia is built on, had a welcome dinner, etc. Yesterday morning, we were driving to our apartments, had a few hours to settle in, etc. My apartment is very nice - there are four of us girls in the apartment, with two bedrooms with two beds in each. Our landlady speaks only Italian, as many of the residents here, which is a welcome challenge for me, and part of the reason I chose Perugia, as opposed to Roma or Firenze, where English is widely spoken.

My roommates and I went to our first Italian bar last night - don't worry, I didn't get anything! We just went to see what the local night life was all about, and to socialize with the other Umbra students (the school I'm going to). It was fun, but I was tired, and not exactly in a rambunctious night-life mood, so one of my roommates and I left after about 45 minutes.

I start my week of Intensive Italian Language course tomorrow. Next Wednesday, the 10th, is when we start our actual classes. I am in The Culture of Food in Italy course, a Drawing course, and a Creative Writing course, in addition to my Advanced Italian Conversation and Composition course that I start tomorrow.

Well, I'm going to sign off for now - will write more at a later date.