Dreaming In Italian

I returned by train to Bologna. I had to change trains in Milano for the Bologna bound train and was on the Freccia Rosa (red arrow). They have a screen at each end of the car that provide advertisements, mostly for their trains but also regularly shows the velocity. It’s really nice traveling in a 300 km/hr (about 186 mph). After an overnight stay in Bologna I went to airport the next day and picked up my rental car and headed south. I stayed with an acquaintance, Joan, who is a retired nurse and moved from Oakland to Umbria. She had bought the house many years ago and restored it. It’s really a beautiful house (but I forgot to take interior pictures). For me it seems incredibly isolated. A couple of kilometers from a tiny town and there’s a dirt road that you follow for 3 or 4 kilometers to arrive at her house. I’d go nuts.

In any case we went on Sunday to the only city of any size within a reasonable distance, Citta, di Castello where they had a flea market/antique fair. They were also having a chocolate festival. That was mildly interesting but more interesting were the truffles, both black and white that were on display. The larger white truffle in the picture is about the size of a small child’s fist and the price was 235 euros (about $300 these days). The black ones on the other hand, as you can see, were much more reasonable. Each was about the size of a large walnut. I can attest that these are also delicious. I’ve never had the white ones.

There was also a monthly street fair of antiques or at least collectibles. Include were some musicians. One playing a hurdy gurdy that he may have made himself. And also, believe it or not, a mariachi band. Who knows, maybe they were Italians faking it but they seemed real to me.

I was able to taste some salame made with truffles and was knocked out by the taste. We met some other ex-pat acquaintances there, had a coffee, walked around, and had lunch. I was the only man among the 5 or 6 women. All but one of them lived there and some for several years but none of them spoke Italian as well as I did. It would seem strange to me to not learn the language of the country where I was living. It certainly limits your meaningful human contact.

I’ll toss in Urbino here is well. After a 2 night stay at Joan’s place I headed to Urbino which describes itself as the “ideal city”. I remember reading a selection in Italian class by the famous Italian architect, Renzo Piano, who, when asked what city he thought had the best architecture, replied Urbino; so I wanted to see it. Unfortunately it was raining cats and dogs the whole day so it wasn’t a very good day for walking around or taking pictures. The one below comes from the web. I’d like to go back some time because I can see why it is highly thought of. Again the high point of the day was lunch; pappardele with a sauce of cinghiale (wild boar) and porcini mushrooms.

We call it Turin. I never have understood why we change some city and state names and not others. Pescara is Pescara, Lombardia (the region, equivalent of a state for us) remains Lombardia, but others, as you surely know, we change. Whatever. Anyway I had visited Torino a couple of times before. Neither time was I particularly impressed. Of course every Italian city seems pretty different from the others. Habituated as I am to Bologna, Torino seems foreign. In fact the architecture often seems more French than Italian. That makes some sense since it was part of France during part of it’s history. It has lots of wide streets, in marked contrast to Bologna and consequently it has more cars and terrible parking. This time, however, I found a lot of charm. I went there to visit Massimiliano and family. I ate lunch at their house twice and the meals were great. The meals out, not so good, but that’s not because Torino lacks good food but as a family on a budget we ate at places that would almost be considered fast food here. It was still an enjoyable weekend. On Saturday I went with them to a partita di calcio (a soccer match) in which their son Alex was one of the players (he’s 12). In the first half the opposing team scored four goals but fortunately Alex’s team came back to score four in the second half to the relief of at least half of the parent spectators. Unfortunately I was forgetful and didn’t take any photos.

On Sunday I arose fairly early at my AirBnB room (20 euros) and took the subway to the center of town. I walked around for almost two hours down one street or another, just exploring. I found that Torino has the charm of small old streets as well as the grandeur of the larger boulevards. Thank god for the iPhone and Google Maps. I never get lost. It would be so much harder with only a map. So I only have a few random photos of my walk around the city that morning.

In the afternoon I went with Max and family and a bunch of their friends to a museum there called Museo di Pietro Micca. It seems he was something of a hero in a battle to defend the city from the French. A lot of the tour was in little tunnels that were used by the Italian troops. It’s too long a story for this post but here’s a link to click on if you’re interested. There were a bunch of kids, probably a dozen or so and we had a tour guide whose specialty was tours for kids. I was delighted that I could understand almost all of what he was saying. By the way, I wouldn’t recommend this tour for anyone with claustrophobia. The part underground lasted about half an hour in narrow tunnels that my head touched when we stopped.

Last Friday was a holiday here (the saint’s day for the city – San Petronio). I thought that most of the stores would be closed, but no, a lot of stores and bars (really a cafe here but they’re called bars) were open. The first one that I happened upon after I walked down the hill to Via Saragozza was a fish store (pescheria). I walked inside to browse and there I found fresh octopus. I’ve never seen in fresh in a store in California – never. I really don’t understand why Americans dinon’t seem to like it. Surely it’s the “yuck” factor. Of course 15 or 20 years ago we had the same reaction to calamari but now it seems that almost everybody has not only become accustomed to it but relishes it. Octopus tastes great and is valued in most parts of the world. I’ve eaten it in Mexico, France and Italy and have friends in Germany that not only eat it but cook it at home.

Before I bought it I sent a text message to Cesarina (my host here) and asked if she liked it and if she know how to cook it. She responded in the affirmative to the first question and in the negative to the second. I’ve never cooked it but, what the heck, I decided to give it a try. For whatever reason she found it hilarious that I’d bought it anyway. As an aside she found it quite inventive when I added some parsely to a tomato sauce that I made – she’s quite traditional. So I trudged home with the critter and checked the web for a recipe. It said to put in the freezer overnight and thaw it in the fridge the next day so that’s exactly what I did.

I was dreading cleaning it. I’ve cleaned a lot of squid and they are pretty disgusting to clean and was afraid that octopus would be worse. But, no, it was really easy to clean. It was also quite easy to cook. Following the recipe I quartered and onion and added it to a pot of water along with 3 or 4 garlic cloves and a little bit of red pepper flakes a couple of bay leaves. Cesarina caught the spirit of adventure and tossed in some tomato scraps. What the heck, it would probably be good. So you cook it for whatever time. The recipe that I had said to cook it for an hour but I tested it after 30 minutes and it was fairly tender and I didn’t want it too soft. I suggested that we use the octopus cooking water to cook some pasta and Cesarina thought that I was a genius. So after extracting the octopus I cooked the spaghetti and it was indeed a great idea. I cut up the octopus into small pieces, coins for the legs and similarly sized pieces for the rest and topped the spaghetti with it. It was delicious! Cesarina contributed some thin grilled eggplant and bell pepper slices for the contorno (side dish) and a bottle of white wine made by neighbors of her daughter and it was a great meal. I had also stopped by a pasticceria (pastry shop) for a couple of baba’ au rum which we had for desert along with a little cup of espresso and, of course, some grappa. A fine meal indeed.

By the way, at the school here they said that the origin of baba’ au rhum (the italian spelling) is Neapolitan but Wikipedia disagrees. Probably a good point of discussion between a Frenchman and an Italian. Regardless of origin, it is indeed now a very traditional Neapolitan dessert.

Unfortunately I was too busy consuming the meal to take some photos so you’ll have to use your imagination.

When I was in the Dolomiti, Marilisa told me about a disaster that happened there in 1963. I find it interesting that when I remember this story I remember it in Italian. Maybe it’s a good indication that the language is finally taking hold. In any case, the Italian authorities decided that this would be a good place to build a dam. It would provide water for watering crops downstream and would also be a good place to generate electricity. It seems that there was a lot of debate. The story, as she told it, was that there were two geologist. One had said, absolutely no problem, build the dam. The other one said, this area has a great history of landslide, you certainly shouldn’t do it. The interests of “progress” prevailed and they built it. So of course the lake formed behind the dam and on the night of October 9, at 10:39 PM a massive landslide occurred. The volume of the material from the landslide was three times the volume of the water in the lake. The result, as you might imagine, was a huge wave estimated at over 800 feet high which of course went over the dam and totally destroyed the town below and some villages downstream. At least 2000 people lost their lives and 350 complete families were totally erased. Of course the authorities all ran for cover saying that it was just a rare phenomenon of nature but it really was clear this area had had numerous landslides in the past and was incredibly stupid to build this dam.

The damn remains since it wasn’t destroyed. But who can blame the Italians for distrusting their government – self serving politicians that ignored obvious warnings of a potential disaster. Lately it seems that our own politicians have similar ways of being.  I didn’t get any pictures and of course I wasn’t around there in 1963 but others recorded the evidence of the catastrophe.

 

I wanted to go by and see the dam and the now dry lake but as chance would have it there was some kind of fair going on including a detour through the current town and I couldn’t go there. Still it is a stirring story.

Recently there was a story in Corriere della Sera about the first responders, mostly firemen, who found so many people dead and others that wanted them to come to some location where their family members were buried in the ensuing mud. But when they went there they could find no landmarks to know where this bakery or house was because almost all of the landmarks had been swept away.

You can read an English account by clicking here for the Wikipedia account.