Dreaming In Italian

OK, not really Taormina. I had planned to stay the next night at Acireale but didn’t really find it very interesting so continued on north. But first a little about leaving Agrigento. My hotel in Agrigento was on one of the tiny little streets. As I was leaving the guy said “ take a left at the first street”. OK. Well, the first street to the left was REALLY tiny and went down at an alarming angle. Not only that, it was a hard left turn. I decided to take my chances on continuing straight ahead. Of course there were cars parked even in this narrow street which left inches on either side to pass. At one point it was so tight that the right side mirror bumped into something and folded back against the car – no harm done but I was holding my breath. Finally I came to the way down. Steep but not TOO narrow but with a hairpin turn where I had to back up to complete the turn. After that I was able to breath again and had no trouble finding the road in the direction of Catania. I went through a bunch of little towns and some not so small. I was glad when I could take the road inland away from it all. Note: if you want to explore the centro storicos in Italy rent the smallest car that you can tolerate! If I’d been in my Audi A4, not a particularly big car, I’d probably still be stuck in that road in Agrigento with a lot of really pissed off Sicilians behind me,

So I was on the principle road to Catania when I was passed by a Carabinieri car (Alfa-Romeo) that seemed in quite a hurry. A few kilometers up the road the car was sideways blocking the road and all of the traffic was directed to another road. Whatever. Not a bad detour as it turns out. I wound up heading toward Catania again in a valley absolutely filled with orange trees. The air was filled with the fragrance of oranges. This went on for miles eventually replaced with fields of artichokes and olive trees. Ah – I almost forgot there are lots and lots of huge prickly pear cacti around full of fruit which is widely sold there. Unfortunately (I think) I didn’t sample any. It was really hard to take pictures because the roads rarely have shoulders and pullouts for scenic views basically do not exist.

I finally reached the autostrada and went on to the Acireale and after checking it out, took a secondary road to Taormina. Well, as I said, not quite Taormina. I did drive up to Taormina just to get an idea of what it was like. It is really quite something but I knew that most of the hotels were breathtakingly expensive and decided to backtrack to the nice looking place that I’d just passed through. So I spent the night in Giardini Naxos. It’s really a nice place right on the ocean. I found a cozy B&B for 30 euros a night and have a recommendation from the owner for what he says is an excellent restaurant. I’m keeping my fingers crossed but have the feeling that he wouldn’t give me a bum steer. Since there is no internet access here (note to self – don’t toss that Internet Key prematurely the next time!) I found a place where I could get web access. The major reason was that I was a little concerned about my reentry into Palermo after my last experience. It seems reasonably straightforward and I made meticulous notes about the route. Again, I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Update: The dinner was great. I was disappointed that the restaurant didn’t have seafood but they had an mixed plate of appetizers with much of it Sicilian. The Eggplant Parmigiana part was obviously not Sicilian but was better than anything similar that I had ever tasted. I had a brief discussion with the waiter (and maybe also the owner) about the BIG news that Berlusconi had lost his majority in the parliament and was finished as premier of Italy.

I didn’t get many good pictures because it was raining a lot that day but at least here are two.

I showed up at the car rental agency AutoEuropa – Sicily by Car. The car was ready to go, I was ready to go and then came the defining moment – the credit card. The card that I have is from Chase – one of the gargantuan American banks – but the card has no raised numbers. He immediately said “we cannot accept an electronic card”. What?!! It’s a credit card, your machine can read it, it’s from a major american bank, the information on the web says “credit card” not “credit card with raised numbers on the front”. Sorry, no dice. OK, I want to talk to a manager. I called their number and they repeated – no dice. Bummer. So the manager directed me to another agency where I rented a car. For him I had to leave a 200 euro cash deposit because I had the suspect electronic credit card. I’m just hoping that all goes OK on the return.

So now a whirlwind tour of the car noting two dents, not at all abnormal for Palermo, and quick directions I’m off in my Renault (diesel I might add). Just take a right at the light and follow the signs to the airport to get on the autostrada heading west. OK. Except there are no signs. Zip, zero –  and I watched closely. I had an interesting tour of the city which lasted about an hour and a half until I finally got clear directions to find the right road. It’s too long a story to relate but, well, interesting. Man, this is one time that it really helped to speak passable Italian.

So Agrigento seemed like a good place to spend the first night. It’s about a third of the way around the island, was originally a greek city starting somewhere around 600 BC and is bless with a tourist attraction: La Valle dei Tempi – The Valley of the Temples. Antiquities are not generally my thing. I’d rather go to supermarkets, hardware stores and especially wine shops to experience another country but what the hell, I decided to go for the temples. There are a couple of really impressive temples, one of which is largely intact. From there it goes downhill. It’s just one of those things where a sign points to a pile of big rocks and says that this was some important and impressive structure at one time. To me it’s still just a pile of rocks.

Still it was a bella passeggiata (a nice walk) in practically springlike, short sleeve shirt weather of 22 degrees C. Sunny despite earlier forcasts of rain. I drove on into town around 3:30 PM to look for a hotel. This was a real challenge and my tolerance for long searches for parking spaces is thin at best. Still after only 15 or 20 minutes driving around small streets followed by impatient drivers I saw a sign for a hotel close enough to the historic center and parked only slightly illegally and found the hotel after asking a couple of people for directions. They had a room and the cost is 30 euros a night with breakfast. The manager (I think a family member) moved his scooter to give me a place to park.

In driving from Palermo to Agrigento I have found Sicily beautiful and sometime dramatic in it’s landscape. It seems to be semi-arid but just things are cultivated almost everywhere. There are lots of veggies, olive trees and vineyards. First impression of Agrigento is that it’s much cleaner than Palermo although that is, after all, a pretty low bar. Unfortunately I ate in what may be the worst restaurant in Agrigento. Let’s just say that I learned a lesson about accepting advice from a couple of nice older gentlemen on the street and the value of trusting one’s own instincts. Perhaps I ate at the place of a stupid brother-in-law. The evening was somewhat redeemed at a stop at a pasticheria. Sicily is rightly famous for it’s sweets!

I arrived on the flight from Palermo and decided to take the train. When I arrived at the train terminal in the airport the guy at the ticket office said that the it didn’t go all of the way to the station because there was construction and I would need to take a bus the rest of the way. I thought, “no problem” based upon the assumption that there would be a bus supplied by the train service to take me the rest of the way there. But, NO, when I arrived at a stop where everyone exited the train I went outside with an expectation that a bus would be waiting and there was none. I asked a fellow at the bus stop and he told me to go over there – pointing – and take the #52 bus into Palermo. He was speaking Italian but the accent was so completely different that I had a really hard time understanding him. So I headed off in that direction and there was a store on the corner that was open where they sold tile – like for the bathroom or kitchen. I asked again. This time I could understand better but in the end the couple there looking for tile for their house offered to take me there in their car. I was SO grateful for their generosity. We talked some in the car on the way, where I was from, etc. It seems that everyone has a cousin, sister, daughter or uncle living somewhere in the U.S. In this case it was a cousin in New Jersey. They seemed amazed that it was 3000 miles away from where I live. Such distances are hard to comprehend in a country that is the size of California. It’s really great to be able to talk to people a bit.

They dropped me off somewhere along Corso Vittorio Emanuele and I walked perhaps half a kilometer of more to the hotel, asking occasionally for the whereabouts. Then the real adventure began. The hotel has an ancient elevator since it is on the 3^rd and 4^th floors so since I was trailing a suitcase I took the elevator up. After checking in I asked at the desk for a recommendation for a restaurant. I had heard that Sicily has great seafood and I was really hungry. She indicated a place nearby but also told me about a place called Da Salvo with modest directions and said that I could always ask, if confused, the whereabouts of Piazza Kalsa since she said that everyone knows where that is. So I walked, and walked, and walked, asking along the way. It was at least a kilometer and probably further but worth the trip. When I arrived there was some seafood displayed outside and a pretty rotund guy said “what do you want” and I just said “I’m hungry”. So he indicated the entrance and there where a few tables that seated a total of 14 people, max.

 

The waiter came around, no menu, and said “grilled fish?” and I said “whatever you recommend”. I really think that the staff mostly spoke Sicilian rather than Italian so it was all a bit hit or miss. So I ordered a half liter of white wine and a bottle of water and bread appeared. After a while came the plate of fish which included something like a branzino, a largish calamari, two big shrimp and a thin slice of swordfish all grilled to perfection. Another couple, obviously locals, came in and sat at the table close by and had a salad of tomatoes, anchovies and olives, that I envied, followed by a bunch of sea urchins. They offered me one to taste and it is quite different from having it on sushi. Another table had a heaping bowl of steamed mussels. So I had a cannolo, a coffee and a grappa before leaving. I talked to the fat guy a bit and mentioned that I thought that I had seen something about this place in the New York Times a while back and he went inside to retrieve a copy of the article. They’re open tomorrow (only for lunch) so I plan to return and this time talk about the food a bit before ordering. They had a big bowl of small clams that I’ll bet go extremely well with spaghetti and I saw a plate of fried calamari arrive at one of the table. Yum.

So my initial observation of Palermo is that it is energetic, old, run down and has lots of little streets running of in odd directions from the main thoroughfares. I started dinner at maybe a little past 9 PM on a Saturday night and most of the restaurants were lightly populated. As I was walking back at 10 the same restaurants were packed with people. I didn’t go to bed until almost midnight and the street outside the hotel was still jammed with traffic and a lot of people were on the sidewalk. It made it difficult to go to sleep. I need to remember to travel with earplugs.

Update: I returned to Da Salvo for lunch on Sunday. I had the salad, some spaghetti with clams and some grilled shrimp. I really wanted the triglie (red mullet that are terrific but I’ve never seen them in the states) but I think that they ran out before my order was next in line. So after the considerable walk back I’m ready for a nap after my two hour lunch.

The city certainly seems to suffer from neglect as you can see in some of the photos. One shows the typical paving stones of the the area. Many of the streets and sidewalks have these stones and sometimes on the sidewalk they seem dished. I guess if they been there for god knows how long after a few million steps they get worn down.

There are lots of churches around in the city and I went into one this morning. Visiting churches is not really my thing but I figured that I couldn’t be in Palermo and not see a church. The mass was in progress and I felt like an intruder. In the front the decor was almost the definition of baroque and 3 dimensional to boot. Unfortunately when I went back later it was locked up tight.  I was going to find a picture on the web but it is apparently not even a major church here. Maybe when I’m back here I can get a picture.

I am now ending my 9 weeks of school at ALCE. It has been pleasurable and frustrating in turn. I now can not only ask for directions but usually understand the answer – an important consideration. Not only that, if I don’t understand the answer I can ask for clarifications. I can carry on a half-way (underline half-way) decent conversation in Italian but have a limited vocabulary. Still, it is a substantial improvement. I now dream of coming back to study more but but like so much in life – it depends. Time will tell. I have enjoyed the city a lot and if you’ve read other posts you know that I highly recommend it.

Every two weeks on Friday morning there is a test to see how we have progressed. There is a grammar test, a dictation, oral comprehension and conversation tests. Sometimes I do miserably, especially on the oral comprehension. My biggest challenge is listening to a recorded conversation and understanding what is being said. I will continue to practice when I return home and hopefully one of these days I’ll feel comfortable in the language.

I’ve had some very good teachers and some who I know more by random conversations at school than actual lessons. I think that I’ve covered just about everyone in the pictures accompanying this post. Every Friday following the morning lessons there is a little party to say goodbye to those at are leaving. So this happens almost every week since people come at various times and stay for various durations. You’ll have to click on this photo so see everyone. Most I don’t know but starting with the guy with the t-shirt there are Nick, from Germany, Ciaran from Ireland, me, Romy from Israel and Pasqualina from Australia. Of course you’ll need to click on the photo to see everyone.

There are always two teachers each day – two hours of grammar and two hours of conversation. There are extra lessons on Monday and Tuesday, usually on some aspect of grammar or phonetics. There are excursions regularly including “aperitivi” on Wednesdays and Fridays which I have attended often. On these occasions a group of students accompanied by a teacher gather at the Due Torre (two towers in central Bologna) and go to a bar for something to drink and eat. There are also out of town or in town excursions for various interest.

People come from all over as noted above. Here are some others:

So here goes the gallery:

Grammar: The first teacher was Agnese who left after two weeks to have her baby (she had a boy), next came Fiametta for just two weeks and then Davide for the final 5 weeks. I like them all but especially Davide.

Conversation: One teacher lasted the duration, Claudia, who I really like a lot. She has a great sense of humor, is very patient and is dedicated. I think that she ran out of red ink correcting my homework.

There were two Franceschas – Francesca and Franceschina. I never had Francesca as a teacher but did go with her and two other students to Ferrara one Saturday. Francescina earns the diminutive due to her size – just over 5′ tall. She has a great dry sense of humor and I enjoyed not only her lessons (usually extra lessons in grammar) but talking with her from time to time. I kidded Franceschina and called her la cowgirl because she wore boots when the weather got colder and smoked hand rolled cigarettes.

I never had lessons there with Marilena but she was my Skype tutor for several weeks before I left for Italy and I saw her frequently at school.

There are also the staff members: Rosanna, Luca and Sanja. Rosanna is a principle of the school and Luca is as well. Sanja is a staff member from Denmark.

The last day I was already having a nostalgia attack. By now ALCE seemed like home. I hope to return soon and will really miss the people.