labor issues

I found this interesting - from the NY Times this morning

Third Union Is Leaving A.F.L.-C.I.O.

Any of my friends in the movement have any thoughts? I'm completely disconnected these days.

random heat-induced observations/delusions

It's been a quiet week, my friends are mostly out of town and I'm in isolation writing fellowship proposals. I'm really happy I didn't plan to be here all of August - things really have closed up in the past weeks.

Over lunch near the (air conditioned!!!) library: I was lured into an alleyway bar by a sign advertising la vera piadina romagnola – I’ve been eying these flat sandwiches and ‘the real thing’ was too tempting. From the list of offerings including il nonno (grilled vegs and brie), bolognese mortadella with cheese, lettuce and mayo, violenta (wurstel, ie. hot dogs with ketchup and mustard – a reference to either Germans or Americans, I suppose, the violent hotdog eaters of the world), I picked the fantasia (prosciutto, brie and arugula). I know, brie doesn’t sound too authentic. I wasn’t expecting much, but I was pleasantly surprised. A piadina resembles a fat tortilla – about a half centimeter thick, pale, with browned patches. It was pleasantly salty and must be made with olive oil on a griddle. Typically Romagnola, which, I’m informed, is very different from Emilian cuisine. My friends couldn’t explain exactly why, but they insist the two regions (politically one region) are very different. They also couldn’t explain why they hate the Modenese, they just do – that’s how Bologna and Modena are. I’ll keep asking – I am sure the history is centuries old.

************************************

There was an American tv commercial a while back in which a woman is jogging entirely in the shade, following truck traffic that blocks the sun, crossing streets at the point at which a tall building casts a shadow. I’ve been trying to do the same only while walking very slowly. A thermometer on the street registered 35 yesterday, that’s 95 Fahrenheit. The sun is unbearable. It is humid. My tan has faded and I feel suffocated. The upside is that there’s an excellent gelateria near my apartment.

*************************************

I’ve been on the lookout for a good salon, since I’m approaching the emergency-haircut stage. Around the corner I found one with the worst name I have ever seen: Slimery. I have no idea what the hell they are thinking that means. I’m tempted to go in and explain how repulsive it sounds in English.

**************************************

Some of the kids in the university quarter give a new meaning to "shady characters". This coming from someone who's been living in New York. My friends call the type panca bestia, because they're all accompanied by a beast - mangy pit bulls or mutts that are underfed and more pathetic than frightening (though a hungry pit bull is pretty frightening). I'm more or less immune to the piercings and tattoos and dreadlocks, it's the squalor I can't get used to. These are filthy people with no flesh left on them and no occupation besides shooting heroin and stealing bicycles. There is apparently a trade circle - bicycles are stolen from students, sold to students for cash, cash purchases heroin, addiction drives further thefts... I've been advised not to buy a bicycle I won't mind being stolen. And my quest to find a non-stolen used bike, as a way of not supporting the panca bestia drug habits, is laughable.
I can't help but wonder if these kids came here straight, ordinary students and got sucked into this world, or if they came here already distrutti. Columbia would look very different if all the drop-outs were still hanging around, begging for money to buy heroin. I'm sure the same thing exists - where do they hide them?

where in the world is miss adventure?

at the festa dell'unita on friday night in Carpi, near Modena:
I went with a group of friends to hear the Bluebeaters, an Italian rocksteady band that they're all fans of, in this little town that inexplicably has the second largest piazza in Europe. We had to stop to ask directions five or six times, but arrived in enough time to sit down at the makeshift osteria and eat fried specialties and drink very cold lambrusco. We had plates of prosciutto and mortadella with gnocco, which is a big flat fritter, various types of fried polenta, tigelle, which look like little pancakes and are not unlike english muffins - griddle cakes. The tigelle came with pesto - but pesto alla Modenese, which is the furthest thing from the pesto from Genoa we know in the States. In Modena, it is a paste of lardo, mortadella, garlic, and other tasty things. Basically, flavored hog fat. Delicious. I was skeptical about lambrusco, but in this context, really really cold and very dry, it was perfect.
the concert was great, it reminded me of going to ska shows in high school. we danced and enjoyed ourselves and passed out in the car on the way home.

Saturday there was a party for Cipio and some others who just graduated. This has been a great time to be in Bologna, seeing the graduates around town wearing laurel wreaths on their heads. Cipio and his friends rented a place in the country, a cottage behind a nursery. It was a little strange to approach a party through the rows of potted plants, past guard dogs, but the outdoor space was lovely. There were animals and gardens and a gorgeous pool under a domed greenhouse, surrounded by tropical plants. I made friends right away with the goat, admired the chickens and geese, sampled the salad greens directly out of the garden. I found a corner where there were black raspberries growing and snuck off periodically during the evening to eat a handful. There was swimming and lots of dancing and throwing people into the pool. The night degenerated fairly quickly and at the end I found myself riding back to town in my friend's car next to a laureate who'd tucked his shirt into his boxer shorts and pulled his black socks up to his kneecaps, improvised a tie out of a strip of plastic ribbon, but had lost his pants at some point. I told him it was very rock and roll.

My archivist is now on vacation. I have to make due with the other libraries in town for a couple of weeks, which gives me time to hassle the people at the Salaborsa to have their wireless network repaired. Although the network tech is probably on vacation.

bologna

I'm beginning to think my choice of blog address wasn't very well thought out. First, I'm not in Rome anymore, and second, I'm settled into Bologna for a long haul.
which makes me very happy.

Knowing that I can buy houseplants or install hooks in the wall or put a print on the wall changes the whole experience of being here. Living here. I have a kitchen, I don't use someone else's kitchen. Right now I have the apartment to myself: one roommate just left and the other doesn't arrive for some weeks.

everyone wants to show me something or teach me something.
Letizia introduced me to a Sicilian gelateria where we had watermelon-jasmine gelato. They also make bergamot-jasmine, fennel seed, pistachio-almond, ginger.... dangerously good stuff.

Zimmi and Jacopo insist that despite my ability to recite the ingredients of a real ragu, and the way to make a good broth, I know nothing about Bolognese cuisine and have to be tutored over dinners.

My archivist gives me big smiles when I arrive in the morning and starts in on a lecture about the Italian left in the late 40's or the pagan origins of Ferragosto.

Enrico taught me the history of the Cassero, the national seat of Arcigay and the most incredible nightclub I've ever seen in the city's historic salt market, the story behind radio kappa centrale, and explained his coffee dependence stems from when he was 3 years old, when he'd make his cappuccino and smoke a cigarette while his mom cooked lunch.

Alvise has introduced me to everyone, gotten me involved in a video project by a collective of artists, taken me out to an agriturismo restaurant in the hills above the city with his friends....

I'm busy and content to be settling here.

today's lesson in Italian expressions

"ogni riccio, un capriccio" -- Every curl, a caprice.

(Let's hope not.)

comments?

I've been hiding from this morning's rain in my room but it has now stopped so I'm off to do real work. When I get back, I'd like to see some feedback - has anyone tried to subscribe to the podcast? Do you like it?

podcast!

I've been playing on the computer this weekend and have surpassed my wildest dreams of technolgical competence. Here is my podcast.

What this means is, I have a little radio show you can download onto your computer and iPod. The latest version of iTunes supports podcasts, so you can subscribe to mine and it will automatically update whenever I make a new podcast. Do this by pasting the following URL into the dialog for "Subscribe to Podcast..." under the "Advanced" menu:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/missadventure

This first attempt is just a series of songs I've been listening to lately, love, and want to share. Let me know what you think! If I enjoy doing this, I can get a microphone and add my voice to the feed.

The playlist:
Kunek, "Good Day"
Sufjan Stevens, "The Lord God Bird"
Regina Spektor, "Samson"
Kunek, "Bright Eyes/The Swell"
Sufjan Stevens, "Sister"

fun with language

a laugh for your sunday morning:
The English idiom "wants to have his cake and eat it too" in Italian is "vuole la botte piena e la moglie ubriaca" translates: "he wants to have the cask full and his wife drunk too".

the pacifist

I was sitting at my post next to the cash register at my neighborhood wine bar the other night, nibbling a plate of cheeses that Giacomo had composed and chatting with the waitresses when I heard a loud English voice over my shoulder barking, "Give me another beer." I rolled my eyes in solidarity with the waitress who was enduring this treatment, happy I could blend in enough to not attract the attention of the Anglophone. Italians aren't fooled at all by my I-don't-understand-English trick, but foreigners are usually oblivious; in my linen pants and sunglasses I do a credible non-American. Dutch maybe? French (rarely)? Some Scandinavian type? I think I look Croatian, but nobody ever comes up with that one.

The loud Englishman was shortly abandoned by his friends and came to sit at the counter next to me. "Godamnit!" he bellowed, "after two thousand years a man can't smoke in this city! What am I supposed to do? Take drugs? Is that what you do, do you take drugs?", looking to me. I shrugged to suggest maybe I didn't understand what he was saying, or maybe I did but didn't care to comment. The new Italian law banning smoking indoors in all public places, by the way, is marvelous. Bravo! Who'd have thought Italy would be the first with such a comprehensive ban?

The Englishman persisted, "Do you understand English?". I quietly answered, yes. "Oh, good. Italians never speak English." This despite the fact that the waitress he'd been haranguing all night speaks as if she'd attended Cambridge.

I answered that I am, in fact, American.

"Really?!" He went on to tell me how he's Irish but not really and he's lived in Paris writing books and making films for the past 15 years, except when his wife got a job in Belgium, then they lived there. Who cares.

The explanation of what I'm doing in Italy launches this man into a diatribe on Nietzsche...

"So Plato was asking, what does it mean to be a being? What does it mean to be a being? Do you understand what I'm saying? Are we speaking the same language here?"...
"And Nietzsche said, "Curse you! How dare you! How dare you challenge the gods, how dare you call into question existence. You've undermined all of civilization. Damn you a thousand times! Do we understand each other? Are we speaking the same language?"

Clearly the man is inebriated and in love with the sound of his own voice. I'm enduring this jerk, out of boredom or politeness or some combination.

Then begins, "I've done things you can't even imagine. I was in the military, you know. I was in Yemen. When I think about the things we did, it's just all so...amusing. These war films have it all wrong, they have no idea what they're talking about."

"We used to take diazepine and then have to stay up all night. We'd have diazepine at 8 and then stay awake until 5 am. Because if you didn't, you were fucked. You'd be dead if you didn't stay awake. It's all so hilarious. And this is the way it was. But it was all covered up. You have no idea, no idea what goes on, and it's all covered up."

Then he rolled up a sleeve to show me a jagged scar, crude stitch marks tracking the entire length of his arm. This is where "so amusing" goes horribly wrong.

"It was all covered up. I did things you can't even imagine. Killing 40 people in one night, can you imagine? Of course you can't. Of course you can't. Shooting 40 people and throwing grenades to finish them off. In one night. And no one has any idea, it was all covered up."

"And then, back in England, you'd go to the pub and they'd ask, how are things in the Middle East. And you'd answer, nothing happened. Nothing happened. Because if you say, great, I killed 40 people in one night, they look at you like you're nuts. And then the nightmares, I still have nightmares." Here his eyes well up with old man tears.

"And my marriage, of course was total shite. I couldn't tell her what happened. Then I couldn't even live with her, the nightmares."

"I couldn't talk to anybody"

Now fully weeping, "I'm such a horrible person. I've done things you can't imagine. You can't imagine killing 40 people in one night. I'm terrible. Terrible. You do things, you know, and then you have to live with them the rest of your life. And now I'm a terrible person."

Uncomfortably human.

italicized

my morning shopping. cherries from ravenna, almost too sweet; peaches and tiny green-gold plums; eggplants and zucchini; a sack of rughetta and cicoria and lollo for salad; a bunch of basil. total: 5 euros.
























I am such a rockstar.

Really, see how well this lifestyle suits me. I'm not really an Italian but I play one on my blog.













here's a more familiar Laura.

sinking in

the mood in my neighborhood last night was "we're next". no one seemed too preoccupied though, i had to keep explaining why i was a little sad. of course, in recent memory: the synagog bombing here, the brigate rosse, the assasination of Aldo Moro, so many judges and officials murdered by the mafia, the bologna train station... are they just accustomed to the idea of terrorism or is there a failure to empathize? i found my roommate in fetal position in front of the tv. i went out instead to find my artisan friends, had a little too much wine and made them promise to get rid of berlusconi and do something about these lega nord jerks.
in return i've offered my brother as business partner to a carpenter here. seriously, buy a ticket, Brad, you've got a job.

earth is not a nice place to live

I feel like I've been pretending otherwise, working at living well here in Italy, bumping along on my research and writing about everyday things. Then, senseless violence.

To top it off, I was hit by a bus today. I'm fine, not even bruised, but (pardon my language) I was hit by a fucking bus!!! The cretin driving was too close to the curb and caught me with the side mirror in my shoulder.

I don't think cheese and wine are going to provide much comfort. I'm sending lots of love to all my friends and family and everyone else.

help?

What is to be done? My allergies of cats have become so severe that they're seriously interrupting my social life. I was over at a friend's house yesterday and as difficult as it was, did not pick up and cuddle his two tiny grey and white kittens. I popped a Claritin and hoped for the best. Regardless, within minutes I was wheezing and coughing. My head doesn't get too congested if I take the Claritin but I get sudden asthma attacks. I'm still not 100% today.

I spoke with a pharmacist yesterday. She was very sensible, "Stay away from cats. Make new friends. Nothing else works and it will keep getting worse and worse. You can't mess around with asthma." That wasn't what I wanted to hear but I was glad she didn't just try to sell me something that wouldn't work.

So is that it? Make new friends? Refuse invitations to people's homes? Remember to ask if they have cats before going for dinner? No more visits to Nellie or my other good friends with cats?

maybe that would have been better

I accepted an apartment offer that Alvise had facilitated yesterday. The girls - I've written about this - had posted an announcement on a website I was using; I’d answered their post and then heard from Alvise that they are really cute friends of his and that the situation is perfect for me.

I met Letizia Monday and saw the place - a newish building with a doorman, a cute kitchen with apricot-colored cabinets, a big room (ahhh, with a human-sized bed) with azure walls and drapes. The rent is very affordable and Letizia at least, I haven't met Marta, is great. Both are from Palermo. Letizia speaks about 1000 words a minute, which made our first meeting a little awkward until I asked, so where are you from???

She laughed, "You can tell I'm Sicilian?"

"I’m just having a hard time with the velocità."

If the doorman gives me a hard time - mi rompe le palle (literally, breaks my balls, not as ugly in Italian as it sounds in English) - I'm to report I'm a cousin of Letizia. I already have a story planned out about our fathers being brothers, mine having immigrated to the US and having American children. I'll see how far I can push adopting Palermitan relatives. If I'm charming enough maybe I'll convince them.

Alvise was a fantastic host. Right before I left he made me a great lunch of tagliatelle and meat sauce, we talked about Bach cello suites and cannibalism and other favorite topics of mine. He's a photographer and collects fototessere, the little ID fotos you get from automated booths. I saw the books of them he's made; the effect of the pages of faces without labels or context is fascinating. Dominique, who is featured prominently in the books, had warned me to bring him one, which I didn't understand but faithfully followed orders. I got the explanation when I presented it; I also left him with an extra library card with possibly the ugliest photo of me in existence. That's how much I like Alvise, that I give him ugly fotos.

He also has the most endearing accent I've yet heard in Italian. Like Dominique, he speaks with soft throaty r's not hard rolling ones.

Before I left the Bologna train station I enjoyed a perfect caffe shakerato, (I have Matthew Sohm to thank for introducing me to this treat). I requested mine from the barista wearing the nametag "Mohammed B.". This handsome Arab man commenced a ten minute project of shaking my espresso with ice and sugar until it was a thick foam. I've seen this done before, but never with such care: he listened to the shaker to check the status of the ice and sugar, continued shaking, continued shaking, continued shaking until I was convinced I was going to miss my train. Finally he presented me with the glass, delicious. The other baristas were astonished - that's not a coffee, that's a capolavoro, a masterpiece, they joked. The other barrista gave me a look, then a double, and triple take when I laughed along at their joke - "oh, you understand, you're Italian?” incredulously. “No, no, but I understand perfectly.” I left an obscene tip and bowed to Mohammed on my way out the door instinctively, as one might in the presence of a great artist.

Annoyed with the lateness and the inexplicable layout of the train station I stopped to ask a Trenitalia employee, “Scusi, dove avete nascosti i servizi?” Where have you hidden the toilets? He unfortunately lacked a sense of humor.

I've decided from now on I'm only buying tickets for trains that are scheduled to have already departed in Bologna. Today I stood at 3:50, waiting for the 3:00 trains to depart so my train could get into the station. If I'd arrived at the station a half hour late, I'd still be there in plenty of time. Although sometimes the 15:46 train departs before the 14:46 train. That's just unlucky. Trenitalia is trying to get passengers to reserve seats more in advance. How can you be expected to reserve seats when you never know in what order the trains will actually depart?

Overheard, two nuns hopping quickly off the wrong train:

“Oh dear, we would have wound up in Venice instead of Rome!”
“Maybe that would have been better.”

I was eager to tell them their train was the next on that track. Something about talking to nuns just makes me happy. Habits.

9 days and counting.

I've been in Bologna continuing my search for a home for the past days. My sublet is up here the 15th of July.

I found, with some help from Alvise, a great place to live with two friends of his. More on this later. Alvise is at the top of my list of favorite people. I've been fairly flighty about my move to Bologna, and he made it very easy to be in a strange town. Not only is he a great host, with a marvelous apartment he's refurbished, he can cook and he's tall and curly-headed. The best type of person!

more later...

to market to market then eat some roast pig

After a little too much sun at the beach yesterday, I forbade going today. Somehow I rubbed off the suncreen on weird patches on my belly and one thigh, which are rosy but not badly burned. So this morning I woke up early to go to Porta Portese instead.

Porta Portese is a Trastevere market that stretches along several kilometers of Via Portuense, including some side streets and piazzas. It is hot and noisy and crowded and full of pickpockets; it is also one of my favorite things in the world. Housewares and clothes, new and used, antiques and CDs and complete junk fill up stalls that go on and on seemingly forever.

On my approach from a side street I encountered a booth full of parakeets and lovebirds and cockatiels. They had canaries singing as if they know full well that's their only reason to exist, and tiny angora bunnies startling at every move. I'm not sure how you're supposed to take a parakeet home from the market, it's not like a goldfish you could just throw in a plastic bag.

Today I was picking through piles of clothes with dozens of other women like so many pigeons scrabbling over crumbs. The hawkers sat or stood on the middle of their tables where they can watch everything and from where they scream out:

"AiO! due euro, due euro, due, due, due euuuuuuuuurrrrrroooo!"

"belle merce, belle merce, tutte belle merce"

"tre euro al pezzo, bella roba americana, tre, tre euro"

"ragazze, ragazze, vede questa parte qui, tutto solo due euro. ragazze, ragazze"

I wish I had a recorder.

One vendor made a particularly ugly scene when a Sinti Roma woman came to look through her piles of used clothes. "Get out of here," she screamed, "I see your bag already open. Get your dirty hands off my things, thief." Another gypsy girl passed me, a lithe young woman, maybe 15 years old, max, as stunning as any supermodel, with her toddler slung over a shoulder. More gypsy girls with babies were camped out around a CD vendor playing mesh, Eastern dance music. An older man displayed oozing sores on his ankles as he scooted down the pavement on his butt, unable to walk. Is that leprosy?! I watch them with a combination of pity and fascination and repulsion: I deplore the phenomenon of child brides and panhandling as a profession, I can't blame them. If my wallet went missing at the market I'd assume it was a Sinti Roma pickpocket. "Watch out for the Albanesi," I'm warned. (I don't know if that's an ellision of all poverty-striken peoples from parts East, or specifically about Albanians - and are these people from Albania at all?). I don't know to what my x parts prejudice and y parts legitimate concern add up.

I had a great conversation about fabrics with an antique linen dealer; I came home with ideas and addresses and without caving in to his sales pitch on a truly beautiful silk skirt from the 1950s. The price wasn't bad, I just don't really have much use for it. I was also tempted by an antique silver ex-voto, an offering made, usually to the Virgin Mary, representing her intervention in someone's life. In some churches you'll see a chapel filled with seat belts, motorcycle helmets, little paintings and silver objects, standing for the ways the offerer felt Mary saved them. I've always loved this tradition, and the idea of having an ex-voto to display seemed cool, but also creepy. I walked away wondering why it wasn't still hanging in a church.

After a few hours under the sun, I was experiencing Porta Portese overload. I was starting to sympathize with the African purse vendors near the entrance, with their sad, tired faces. I left in search of a good porchetta sandwich and a beer, which I found at Aristocampo in the corner of Campo dei Fiori. Good porchetta, a kind of roast pork with just the right amount of creamy fat left on, is the most divine sandwich meat. Aristocampo makes a particularly good one, full of garlic and herbs and often with a sliver with crispy skin still on it. On a crisp ciabatta with a cold beer -- I defy anyone to come up with a better one ingredient sandwich. It doesn't need condiments: the pork is flavorful and the fat melts out of the meat onto the roll, making the whole thing moist and savory.

Serving suggestion: follow with a nap.

mind the generation gap

warning: this post contains descriptions of scenarios involving homosexuality. it is not appropriate for relatives over the age of forty, or for others infected with homophobia.

A typical Saturday in Rome involves a trip out to the beach; trains leave every half hour for Ostia full of people already suited up and ready to sun themselves. The beach at Ostia is crowded and dominated by stabilimenti, private lengths of beach where you must rent your space and pay to use toilets and changing rooms. These can have very nice facilities, fancier bars and fresher snacks than places that don't charge admission.

I prefer to take a bus further down the coast to the gay beaches. There are a few advantages: first, I can go alone as a single woman and not be harassed. There is quite a pick-up scene, just none of the pickers are looking at me. Second, I love the anything-goes-ness populism of it. Go naked, wear a Sumo wrestler's thong, who cares! There are pre- and post-op transexuals sporting bikinis, body-building heterosexual couples with terrifying amounts of plastic surgery, fat people, skinny people, foreigners, Italians, everyone is welcome. Except, another plus, children - or at least very few and usually buck naked which makes it more ok somehow when then run by and kick up sand in their wake.

This time was a little different because right off the bat the lifeguard was flirting with me. Huh? He wasn't too creepy, so I chatted with him a bit. He turned out to be Rumanian, only been in Italy for one month. He was very nice when I signalled I didn't want to talk, but if I stood up he'd rush over to see what I needed.

African and Bangladeshi vendors came around on the beach to offer sunglasses and towels and other beach accoutrements, some carrying cold beverages. There were also Chinese women who offer massages. I'd seen this before and watched curiously. Yesterday I asked the prices, and upon seeing the woman in the chair next to me enjoying hers, accepted a 15 euro massage. A little treat for myself. Aside from the inevitable grit of sand, a massage on the beach is great. I just listened to the waves and went limp.

After this afternoon of relaxing in the sun, a nice breeze off the water keeping me just the right temperature, I was ready to return to the city. On my way back to the bus a Roman man presented himself to me, to my chagrin. I was very sharp and said, yes, I'm taking this bus but listen, I have a boyfriend so I'm not interested in anything like that. Ok. He said, fine, but continued to talk generally about the beach etc. It turns out that he's quite nice, an astrophysicist (how many astrophysicists can a girl know? I must know almost all of them by now between Maurice and Paolo and this Costantino). We had a pleasant conversation about American vs. Italian universities and then took a detour on the way home to take a walk through Garbatella.

Garbatella was fascinating! It is a suburb of Rome begun in the fascist era and has marvelous examples of architecture of the 1930's. 'Find the fascist iconography' makes a fun game there. Many of the streets are shaded by tall pines, homes have gardens and fruit trees growing in back. It was very charming. I'll include pictures when I have them. Today it is a strongly left-wing area, as evidenced by the institutions and graffiti I saw there - hammers and cicles,
refounded communist party branches, the democratic party of the left, etc.

So I returned home having had some unexpected adventures, having made new friends; I was exhausted, and slathered myself with fake tanning cream for good measure. Mission accomplished.

postscript

uh-oh. the other (genuinely messy) flatmates are making an omelette. this should be amusing.

La Giulia

I love my flatmate Giulia. She is one of the most generous, sweet, gentle people I’ve ever met. However, when it comes to matters of household cleaning, she terrifies me a little.

Lauren tells a story in which I’d used a bowl to beat some eggs, cleaned it, and left it to dry on the dishrack. Giulia, the next day confronted me with it, “Can you smell this ?!”. I honestly couldn’t, nor was there any evidence of use left on the bowl. You don’t have to know me very well to know that in matters of the kitchen, I don’t mess around. My clean dishes are clean.

“This bowl stinks (puzza) of eggs.” She insists. “Mi dà fastìdio il puzzo d’uova.” I can’t stand the stench of eggs. Dare fastìdio is one of my favorite expressions, because it for an Anglophone it suggests the irrationality of the repulsion – Giulia is fastidious – though Italians use it neutrally to express dislike, not to illustrate a quality of the disliker.

I took my scolding, offered to clean the bowl again and promised to be more careful next time, though, I don’t think I’ve made eggs again in this household.

The episode is exemplary of the huge gap between my understanding of a clean home and Giulia’s. Her morning routine involves care of the balcony garden, sweeping and dusting the entire house, and sponging down the bathroom and kitchen every day before she sits down to work. In New York, by contrast, I have a couple of cacti I water ever two weeks and I run the vacuum with about the same frequency. In the bathroom and kitchen I am more fastidious but they by so means get daily attention. The invention of the Swiffer duster has changed my life: now my apartment is dusted about weekly.

Another Giulia moment occurred just last week: “Laura, I keep finding your hair everywhere.” Ok. I’ve been shedding more hair than usual, and with a recent haircut, little pieces that got trapped in the thicket on my head are still just escaping. But what did she want me to do about it? She asked that I clean up the hair I’ve lost on the floor when I leave the bathroom. This is reasonable – but the problem arose in the first place not because I’m carelessly messy, but because I didn’t see the same mess she saw. A stray hair or two simply passed below radar for me. What next? “Laura, you’re shedding too many squamous cells?”

So I try to accommodate Giulia’s standards of cleanliness and she puts up with my slovenliness. If I become a better housekeeper for it, then all the better. But if I ever get to the point of ironing my underwear, please intervene.

postscript: Giulia and I are living very happily just the two of us. We do our own things, meeting occaisionally in the kitchen or to show off new purchases. I'm tidy, she's warm and understanding - I think the stress of extra people in the house was too much for us all.

a shout out to all my foodies...

in response to requests for more recipes:

I'm sitting down to a plate of sticky green figs and a spicy pecorino crotonese cheese. I'm sorry, but you just have to move here. Nature defies my cooking skills.

eureka?!

This is either the epitome of it's-a-small-world phenomena or an example of why I am lucky to count Dominque as one of my best friends.

I sat down today to the tedium of searching through ads for a room in Bologna, responded to the emails I'd had in reply to requests for the same with a sense of hopelessness. A few sounded good, some at prices that are steep, considering, and others at prices that seem too good to be true. In the latter category was a listing that corresponded perfectly to the dates I need to be in Bologna; I half-heartedly wrote to ask to see the place.

Not half an hour ago I got a message from Dominique's friend Alvise: "I think I have a house for you in Bologna." This place, it turns out is the same one I'd written about this morning, and furthermore, is occupied by a friend of Dominique. I go to see it Monday.

I can't imagine I'll ever find an apartment as nice as the one I'm currently in. Right now there is a delicious breeze at my window (where I have to sit to get reception for wireless internet- the laptop perched on the sill). The view isn't very pretty, marred by the antennae of the neighborhood, but there is lots of sky.