Greetings, loyal readers! I realize that demographic consists of my brother and maybe two other people. Anyhoosiers I have many things to say about Italy, these past three days have been incredibly amazing and awesome and eye-opening and delicious. I will begin with a quick list of things I have learned...
1. Italian food is beyond any sort of adequate description and now is the sole concern of my existence.
Our villa chef, Bruno, (do you hate me yet?) is the most talented cook I've ever known, including my own mom, sorry Maria. Every day except Saturdays we have breakfast at 8am, lunch at 1pm, and dinner at 7pm and I can honestly say that my day and all the villa resident's lives singularly revolve around these mealtimes. I'm already inexplicably attached to these times and look forward to them like five year olds look forward to Christmas morning. I'm seriously going to start taking pictures of the meals he creates for us. Breakfast is the simplest of the day, some cereal and really delicious flaky lovely croissants. Americans DO NOT do bread right. I don't know what secret we're missing but it's seriously an issue. Lunch is the biggest meal of the day. Saturday we had a kind of rice I've never had before which rapidly became my favorite kind of rice to date. Anyway, on top of that was this chicken and mushroom sauce mix. Dinner is usually salad (so fresh!), some sort of pasta, and always bread on the table. Oh, did I mention dessert? Last night we had some sort of rhubarb inspired souffle and tonight was a kind of apple torte drenched with the best vanilla sauce ever. I wish there were some names for the desserts our chef makes but whenever we ask him what it's called, he shrugs, mentions a single ingredient, and just motions for us to inhale it (we promptly do so). Both nights we've had these mysterious, captivating confections two of my fellow Real World: Florence members at our table refused dessert out of sheer volume of food ingested in the previous course, but Bruno in turn refused that refusal (the plot thickens) and placed a dish before them. Both people ended up finishing the dessert, it's that good. I really could talk about it all day long but I will save it for some quality food-blogging at a later date.
2. Water is not free.
This one is hard for me, but most ristorante italiane don't serve tap water, and instead charge up to €3. Ridic. However, you can buy a bottle of vino for about €2. This is how Italians live.
3. 13-year-olds can get into bars in Italy.
Okay maybe not exactly, but at a bar in our town my friends and I ran into a couple of Australian kids and some Italian girls who were all 16. They were just casually sipping on beers, looking cooler than I ever could have managed to when I was that age (almost 5 years ago- jesus). Even now, I'm not sure I'm as cool as them. I don't know where that falls on the scale of Europeans just being really cool or myself just being really lame, but it's at a point where those roads meet. On the other hand, there were many 20-something Italian boys who played foosball all night. Yeah, there was a foosball table at the bar, I don't know, whatever. They had cool piercings and taught us Italian swear words.
4. Bathrooms in establishments are largely "unisex", which is Italian for "a urinal that we tell women to use, despite whatever unsanitary consequences it might have in store for them".
I seriously almost took a picture of this bathroom in a bar I went to last night. It was a toilet without a lid, seat, or toilet paper. It did, however, have a what looks like a hose with a sink sprayer attachment on the wall next to it. Ew, ew, ew. I cried a bit.
5. In Italy, there is no set standard for stair length/width/steepness/material.
You really might as well sit on your ass and slide down them. It is a recreational sport navigating through stairs that are made of gravel, mossy and slippery, or 3 inches wide, one I now try to avoid with the hardened dedication I employ in avidly avoiding every other sport.
6. "Public transportation" is not a terrifying mythical beast, but a useful, economical, and ecologically responsible way of moving yourself from place to place.
Call it American suburban naivete, but public transportation has always vexed/horrified me. Trains and buses are confusing, loud, and dirty, but also kind of fun, and really make you feel like an authentic Italian (yeah it has only been three days but I think I live here). Plus now I am superior to all you gas guzzling, carbon big-foot footprint leaving, obnoxious Americans with your SUVs and salted bread. Again, these three days have been super transformative.
7. Apparently I look Japanese.
I was under the impression that Asian is possibly the last ethnicity I would be identified as, but a friendly street vendor was surprised that I wasn't. One of my roommates explained it quite aptly, saying "it's probably because you have dark hair and bangs".
"The voyage of discovery lies not in finding new landscapes, but in having new eyes" - Marcel Proust
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