i had my first italian lesson tonight with giorgio. giorgio is fantastic because he is italian, he is milanese, and because he dislikes atlanta, and did you know how fun it is to bitch with someone in a foreign language about something you both dislike? it is MOLTO FUN. he is also fantastic because he is an aerospace engineer, and when we were chatting and i asked him where he thought he might work after finishing his phd, he said, you know, airbus, or, you know, nasa. then i asked, "vorresti costruire i razzi un giorno?", jokingly - would you like to build rockets someday? he said, very seriously, "si. forse." yes, maybe one day he would like to build the rockets. awesome.

so, you know, i spent the night chatting with an italian rocket builder. pretty sweet. it's also gratifying to know that my italian skills haven''t swirled down into the drain of my empty garbage disposal mind, but were merely lying dormant in a corner, like a sad ignored puppy that just wants to be petted. and wait till i give that puppy some beer. its italian will be GREAT.

oh, man. the porcini chronicles has a recipe for steak tar tar - also known as basically raw hamburger. tommy and i ate this a couple of times while in italy on wine trips with adolfo - and while the first time i took the plunge i was terrified and repulsed, it was actually incredibly delicious. if you've got a hankering for some raw meat, i suggest you give her recipe a try.

because i don't have enough to do as it is, i suddenly got the urge to upload all of my photos that live on the blog to flickr. just for safety's sake. the first ones to go are some taken in italy over the past three or four years - you can see the beginnings of my uploading effort here. they're pretty disorganized, though.

sigh. what did we even do before flickr?

UPDATE: there are just a crapload of new pictures up there, so you may as well click through on all of them. this one is a favorite. I LOVE TED LEO.

hurrah! the only america's next top model as far as i'm concerned, elyse, has packed her bags and moved from hong kong to milan. this is wonderful for me because now, instead of photo-documenting the atrociously-named-and-sounding food and other products distributed in HK, she can do the same in italy! and trust me, they've got some weird ones. just for example, check out these two posts. wuao! she may as well be shopping at dear old eurospin or the winner (weiner) bar.

matty and his lady are a-heading to europe, and more specifically, florence, and he's asked for my input in the area. emboldened by my success in advising matt f. during his italy trip, i've put a massive amount of suggestions behind the cut for the beautiful city. feel free to chime in.

if that's your bag. three years ago i was celebrating easter in naples, where i saw the madonna dell'arco procession down via tribunali. here's a nice photo of this year's procession from mafaldablue.

i've been reading the italian web sites today to see what's been going on in that insane country's insane election. of course, as you probably know, the results were astoundingly close (we're talking down to the tenths of percentages here). but what almost bumped the election from the top of the pages was this story about bernando provenzano, a siclian mafia boss who's been on the lam for FORTY YEARS (for those of you in chicago, this makes joey 'the clown' lombardo's nine-month stint on the run look like child's play). he was found in a farm near his home. npr has got more, including an interview with the former mayor of palermo.

sigh. i am sick, it is flurrying here in chicago, and i'm feeling a bit of travel wanderlust (or, more accurately, extreme nostalgia for italy) that i get from time to time. reading this post article on searching for truffles at restaurants in alba didn't help too much.

the post is doing a rather good job of informing readers about the magic of the piemonte region, the part of italy where turin is located and where the 2006 winter olympics will be taking place. they've got a blog going, and have had several articles and chats about the area. though piemonte is a fairly overlooked region amongst italy fanatics, it is one of the places not to be missed for food and wine, as i discovered during my year in milan through adolfo, the former librarian at the american school of milan.

ahh, adolfo. how to describe. physically, the best way i can think to conjure him up is have you picture bilbo baggins from the lord of the rings movie, except darker, with a round belly the size of a volkswagen beetle and an odd, hurky-jerky style of walking on his pencil-thin legs that was the result of serious back problems and some sort of disability. he was also perpetually cranky, with good due - he had been pushed out of his job as the school librarian by caroline, a perky-yet-psychotically-terrifying blond-frosted woman from arizona whose favorite thing to hiss was "AH-TEN-SHEE-OWN-AY" and "SEE-LENS-EE-OH, PER FAH-VOR-AY" to terrified children who spoke above a whisper while reading books. adolfo became the school's printer, responsible for making stacks of copies of lesson plans and math homework. his small, cramped printing room was in the hallway adjacent to the library, and always smelled faintly of cigar smoke. everybody, except caroline, who constantly looked at him as if he might off her one day with his cane (with good reason), adored adolfo.

heh. i find this funny. via my dad, dario fo is running for the mayor of milan. results to be expected soon.

update: never mind! i see over at la stampa that his opposition, the former police chief of milan, looks like he's winning handily.

my flickr contact mafaldablue posted a beautiful set of photos of matera, which is one of my favorite places in italy. it's the cave town. you can read some info i've wriitten about matera here, and see some photos i took here (captions include "you've got dead monk on your ass," so you know it's worth it).

we all know well that d.c. loves public art involving wacky animals. well, they're not alone. florence is pulling out the cows. not at all out of place amongst the florentine beauty, i'm sure. apparently chicago does it too. (via)

you can see my florence photos here and, if you feel like browsing an enormous unorganized directory, here.

is it just me projecting my italophile viewpoint on to d.c., or are there suddenly a lot more vespas roaring around the city? is it just the way of the future; does it have to do with gasoline prices; or is the devious steve rubel behind it?

an interesting and completely depressing column about italy and why it's almost ensured its political and economic doom.

If anyone belongs to Italy's tight group of power brokers -- in Italian, the salotto buono -- it is Carlo DeBenedetti. He briefly ran the Fiat industrial conglomerate before a falling-out with the controlling Agnelli family, whose members he knew from childhood. As the head of Olivetti, he made a bold if unsuccessful run at IBM in Europe but used the remnants of the company to make a fortune during the heady days of telecom privatization. Today, his "group" includes a media empire of newspapers and radio stations, a giant auto-parts company and an energy division.

But sitting in his small, unmarked headquarters on a narrow side street here in Italy's capital of finance and fashion, the 70-year-old DeBenedetti speaks of a "perverse and unwritten alliance" among politicians, financiers and company owners. This alliance, he says, is slowly destroying Italy, enriching its members while undermining the nation's economy through excessive debt, protectionism, serial devaluations and shortsighted "concessions" to unions -- concessions that Italian workers are paying for in the form of meager take-home pay, high unemployment and deteriorating public infrastructure.

"There have been 52 postwar governments, but in truth they have all been the same," said DeBenedetti of the oligarchy's enduring power.

can you get pizza in a FUCKING CONE.

[hat tip to whatevs.org]

the new york times and washington post out-retard each other in simultaenous, lengthy articles about the new hotspot regions of italy (tuscany is soooo over). the new york times annoints le marche; the washington post annoints puglia. the post must be late to the game, because i was raving about puglia back in '03. i have never been to le marche, but jackie of the long trip home lives there and often blogs appealing entries about the town of macerata.

if there's one thing i can't stand, it's articles that a) try to discover the "new tuscany" and b) claim the best part about a region is that there are no tourists and it's undiscovered, then publish their articles in a newspaper that only gets about 2 billion readers a day. NOT TO MENTION the post also does a blurb on matera, which i also visited in 2003. you can read my account of the town here. you know what really gets my goat? back in my too-ambitious days of attempts at freelance writing, i queried the post with an article about matera. of course, nobody ever contacted me back. so they can go shove a a big ol' trulli up their butts.

wherein i get a bit of the frances mayes disease. really - it's full blown later on. oh dear.

so, i started typing up my 4 or 5 entries on our trip to italy. this one is staggeringly boring; the only thing remotely italian about it is that i was flying on alitalia. mostly it's me bitching about the flight, the wine, the [fake] forgetting of the camera battery...so be warned.

for those who missed the earlier post:

naomi's italy photos are here.
sara's are here.
and now, teresa's are here.

sorry for the lack of blogging. i really do want to write about the villa and creepy cortona and creepier etruscans. but a week sans catherine, and work is falling apart! well, minorly. well, not at all. but there is stuff to be done. see you at the DCist happy hour!

the first of the photos have started to trickle in - naomi's 184 are posted here. enjoy!

PS - it seems a couple of flickr posts have decided to republish themselves. i'm not sure why, but take a second to reread the english translation at the agip gas station in cortona. if it hadn't cost me 30 extra euro, i'd find it HYSTERICAL. select the wanted bomb!

PSII - deleted the repeated flickr posts.

PSIII - the lovely sara, one of the three ladies on our trip who drove stick for hours on end without complaining, has posted her photos here.

i already posted about several of my meals, but i'm going to go into a more extensive description here. prepare yourself for a post that ruminates on the philosophical beauty of italian pizza or the truth revealed by a perfect plate of pasta!

UPDATE: i just finished writing the post, and rereading it, it's terribly boring and more of me saying, "this restaurant was good, and so was this one. and THAT restaurant - OHMIGOD, so good!" so forgive the repetitive nature. i guess i intend it to serve as a guide for anyone searching around the internets for italian restaurant advice, especially of the cortona variety.

coming later: my impressions of cortona and our villa, next to a monastery built in 1211 and owned by a couple who delivered us fresh eggs every day. i HATED it!

since i didn't take pictures while in italy, i figure the next best thing is to take pictures of all the stuff i bought afterwards! and believe me, this pile could have been MUCH LARGER. but i used my famous self-restraint and only spent euros on things i really needed.

the purchases pictured in this photo, starting more or less clockwise from the big white box at top:

Too tired from a full day in rome to post anything coherent, but I
thought you might want to hear about the food. The sweet, sweet food.
Thus follows an index of all my dinners so far:
Sat: at trattoria dardano in cortona. Pici alla contadina (thick round
noodles in a slightly spicy duck sauce); yummy roasted rabbit. Gelato at
the ridiculously named but totally awesome gelateria snoopy.
Sun: spend afternoon drinking wine at a couple of enotecas in cortona
and eating their delicious bruschetta. Dinner is a quick two slices of
pizza-truffle and spinach-and gelato from my friend snoopy. Mmm hazelnut
gelato.
Mon: after a day in perugia and assisi, we go back to la grotta in
cortona for what is, so far, the best meal of the trip. Tommy and I
split the mixed antipasti, which included some wonderful prosciutto e
melone. I had the truffle ravioli, then, and I lie not, the best
porkchop of my life-braised in vinegar and topped wirh green
peppercorn.
Tues: we head to osteria la tufa in the nearby town of ossaia. Iread it
recommended on a blog I found by an american woman who just moved to
cortona. It's naomi's birthday, and after she and four others in our
group spent the day skydiving, they are ready to go all out. I started
with the crostini caldi - little pieces of toast toppeds with cheese and
anchovy or prosciutto. Next was penne alla norcina, a cream sauce with
flavorful sausage. Then the BEST MEAT OF MY LIFE. A filetto di ferri -
I'm not sure what it is, but it was some kind of steak or something, and
it blew my mind. Dude.
And I can't even begin to recount the 476 times I had gelato.
Tonight I want to hit up trattoria dardano again, if we're not too tired
to move from running around rome. We're on a train back to cortona right
now, passing hilltop towns and green fields streaked with vineyards.
I'll make sure to record the rest of my meals, but for now I think I'll
stare out the window.

Well, I've got a problem. It's time to draw from the vast collective wisdom of the internet -- I'm counting on you guys. But this is sort of one of those "I'm running out of space for all my gold doubloons" problems, and I'll understand if you all just bitch me out instead.

So Catherine and I and several of you are all going to Italy at the end of April. It's gonna be great, and I'm going to eat thiiiiiis much gelato and ride the gondola twice. Or at least drink my bodyweight in wine.

Well, it'll be a fun time, but while they were busy filling their country with picturesque locations and people the Italians frustratingly neglected to build an effective, pan-Tuscan mass transportation system. The trains are great for moving between cities and non-miniscule towns, but we're still going to need some rental cars.

Italy boasts some of Europe's priciest rental cars. For an automatic transmission I'm having a hard time cracking the $700/week level. If I could drive stick, though... well, nearly $300 could be shaved off that figure.

The problem is that I haven't driven stick since I was sixteen. My mom felt it was important that I learn -- she approached it like a survival skill, and wanted me to be prepared for the complete lack of automatic transmissions that would doubtless accompany the nuclear winter/viral epidemic/zombie attacks of the future. So we spent a few hours driving up and down my grandparents' street in their decrepit Volkswagen Rabbit. I didn't perform very well, but neither did the car, so for all I know I could be the world's greatest manual transmission driver, EVER.

So what do you guys think? Is this fake-able? Is there a good way to learn before I go? The rental car's clutch only needs to last for seven days, after all.

alright. this is actually the second parter of my spring break, so please go back to the one entitled something silly like "spring break bonanza" and check out those pictures before looking at these. not that it really matters, but being chronological is nice, don't you think?

i believe we ended up last on the island of ischia. that night on the beach was great, but later that evening, trying to sleep in the hostel, an army of mosquitoes attacked us. it was miserable, and since my face was the only thing not wrapped up in my cocoon sheet, i ended up with 8 bites on my cheek. very schifo. so i was kind of glad to get out of ischia. next stop: sorrento.

sorrento is, like basically everything in southern italy, very beautiful. lots of dramatic cliffside, stunning sea views, endless groves of lemon trees, blah blah blah etc. we settled into our amazing hotel, il nido, which i highly recommend to anyone staying in sorrento, as it's cheap, has a huge breakfast, and FREE INTERNET!!! so, www.ilnido.it if you're interested. the hotel itself is actually about 10 minutes up in the hills beyond sorrento. great vista of the sea, the town, and vesuvius!

only i would make vesuvius look small by comparison.

sorrento also had the best restaurant EVER. yes, ever. :) we wandered around the cobblestone streets for a while that night until we happened upon l'osteria del buonconvento, which, by the way, was never mentioned in any of our guidebooks, so shows what those retards know.

we settled into the cozy little place at our cozy little table in front of the pizza oven and proceeded to have our food orgy. first, the cutest old pizza man ever made us this great sort of crispy foccacia thing, free of charge. (i think he thought we were hot.) then we had lots of white wine. then i had insalata caprese (mozzarella, basil and tomatoes, drizzled with olive oil), then i had pasta with fresh swordfishmmmmmmm. then the best chocolate tiramisu. by the time we finished the three hour meal, we were best friends with everyone in the restaurant and had already decided to come back there the next night. how loserish are we?

the next day we ferried on over to capri, island of the rich and famous. i was *so* hoping to see a celebrity there. well, it's a pretty island, but otherwise i would say it kind of sucks. it does have some natural amazing sights, though, like the natural arches and the blue grotto. the blue grotto is actually fantastic -- you take a boat out to this little hole in the side of one of the island's cliffs, and then a scary rowboat man will row you in (after you tip him like 12 euro). the hole is really kind of a small entrance -- i was convinced my head was going to get smashed if a wave came up so i cowered in the back of the rowboat as robin laughed at me. but once inside...well, look for yourself.

the amazing natural light is created...somehow.

after the blue grotto, we took a two hour hike around the island.

these arches were also created somehow.

the other girls went on to anacapri, a second town on the small island, and i decided to ferry it home. that night we did indeed go back to our wonderful restaurant and they forcefed us everything on the menu. also, during dinner, the girls told me they had seen suzanne sommers in anacapri and i got really jealous they'd seen someone famous. then they told me they were lying. evil whores. i guess i am not really that upset about not having seen fake suzanne sommers.

onwards! after the pleasures of the amalfi coast, natania and carly went on to pompeii and vesuvius, while robin, cynthia and i decided to get an early start on to southeastern italy (the heel part of the boot). we took several crazy forms of transportation to matera. at one point we ended up in a completely desolate train station, and i am pretty sure we are the only non-italians to have ever come there.

the train station at ferrandina, where the only person happy to see us was a dog.

matera might be a town you've never heard of, but you should. it's completely amazing, visually and historically. until the late 1950s, people there lived in caves. yup, caves. six to a cave on average, most of the time with a horse and a few chickens thrown in there for fun. the caves are called sassi (stone), and are carved into two sides of a ravine that splits the town.

here are some of the sassi, although they were of such scope that it is really hard to convey what they looked like and how stunning they were in my photos.

nowadays, a lot of the sassi are being renovated into new bars, stores and even homes. it is pretty cool.

by far one of the coolest things we did in matera was to go on a tour of the rock churches -- several churches that had been built directly in natural caves. now, i've seen a hell of a lot of churches since being in italy, but nothing has impressed me as much as these. they have low, craggy ceilings, little light, are completely damp, covered with rotting byzantine frescoes...it felt really raw. unfortunately, photos weren't allowed, though i sneaked in this one:

these are the dead monk chairs. there was one room in one church were there were a bunch of seats carved out of the walls. when a monk died, his body was placed in this chair. to be gross and rot. and then other monks would come in and see the gross rotting body and were supposed to meditate on death. i bet they mostly just threw up. anyway, i sat down on one of the seats in order to take this photo, and got some white stuff on the seat of my pants. therefore, through the rest of the trip, if you had anything on your butt, it was, "you have dead monk on your ass!"

alright...the length of this is becoming epic. next, we went on to alberobello, which is a town famous for its trulli structures. the trulli are buildings of indeterminate origin that have conical roofs and are built without mortar. they are very cool looking. i mostly liked them because i knew they would enable me to take many artsy fartsy photo shots, as i love doing.

and that was alberobello. next, we went on to the beautiful, beautiful town of ostuni. it was all white, and up on a hill, and it was what i imagine deserted greek towns to look like. of course, my camera card was filled up at that point, so i took pictures with a manual, and they're not scanned yet. so you'll have to do without. but i had the best meal of my life there. l'osteria del tempo perso. you know, if you ever happen to be in puglia. which i highly recommend you do.

next entries: long-overdue pics from a trip to slovenia, and pictures of david okano's and heather johnson's wedding in charlottesville! i spent 24 hours traveling in order to be in the states for 72 hours. that's how much i love them.

please leave some comments. no one ever does and i feel so sad.

well, once again the bottoms of bottles of wine has lured me away from my lovely blog. but i'm making a triumphant return with a slew of new pictures from some very interesting places. for my spring break, i traveled with several apartmentmates to southern italy, hitting naples, ischia, capri, sorrento, matera, alberobello and ostuni (the first four are in western southern italy, and the latter three are on the eastern side, down by the heel of the boot). i really have to say, southern italy sure is pretty. the wine's good, the food's great, it's sunny, and you GET HARRASSED CONSTANTLY BY SKETCHY MEN.

our first stop was naples, which might be fairly called the smelliest city in the world. but i did really like it. it's chaotic, basically, and enormously dirty, and severely smelly, as i said, and the people there are just weird. also, the men are a little forward. i took the train down with natania and carly, and soon as we stepped out of the station, we received several offensive comments in about 15 minutes. for example: "very goooood, very goooood" was the first we got. then came a man barking at us, very realistically might i say, from a car. but the winner was (directed as natania as she took off her jacket): "yes baby. it is very hot. you need some children."
now, it remains a mystery as to if this were an insult, a direct statement, or an offer to be natania's child-bearing partner. i suppose we will never know.

this was on one of the most ancient streets in naples, which was about three feet wide. i really did think that my last view of this life was going to be a vespa running over my stomach. naples is vespa mad.

not only is it vespa mad, but it's got some really bizarre, yet strangely beautiful things going on. for example, on that same street, we heard firecrackers and music coming off from the distance. we waited, and several men dressed all in white and playing horn instruments came marching down the street, with this float behind them. the men carrying the rather large float were swaying back and forth and singing, their movements evoking the sea, as i think the float was something to do with mary star of the sea. we just watched for a while, and then they were gone.

okay. so people like to dress identically in naples. i don't know what it is. we saw maybe three pairs of people dressed exactly alike, just meandering around. we saw these army girls once, and just stood with our mouths agape. but then i saw them down the street again a few hours later, and i stopped to point and shout, "THE ARMY GIRLS!!!" to carly and natania. then we proceeded to tail them for several blocks and secretly take pictures. i think we scared them, cos they kept looking back and eventually crossed the street.

i do love the artsy, blurry, black and white shots. i took this shortly after we went on an underground ancient acquaduct adventure tour, where we were lead through narrow caverns with candles and we saw a goonies-like cave room filled with water. it was cool! except for the german superdork journalist on the tour with us.

so, naples being finished, we moved on to the island of ischia, which is where a lot of "the talented mr. ripley" was filmed. it was purty, though way too traffick-y. the first part of our trip there was spent at the most fantastic castle ever, and of course i had forgotten to bring my camera, so too bad for you. the evening after the castle, however, we spent on the beach. boy. that was an experience.

here's myself, robin and cynthia on our little beach patch. let me explain something to you about the beach. no wait, about italians. italians are freaks when it comes to temperature. they feel no heat. starting in october, they swaddle themselves up in down jackets and scarves beyond belief, and these don't come off until the end of may. so there were tons of italians on the beach with us, and even though it was beautiful weather, they were ALL in jeans and sweaters. so we come tromping onto the beach in our bikinis, and basically, madness ensues.

first, boys behind us start chanting, "USA USA USA" and will not stop. i attempt unsuccessfully to pretend i am deaf-mute, and then i give up on that and just put on my frigid bitch face. sorry, i'm mean, but agressive italian boys are a pain in the ass to deal with.

a few of the girls near sunset.

it gets even worse when carly decides to actually go in the water. god forbid! it's seventy degrees out! she's going to die! when she takes off her shirt and enters the water, i swear, the entire beach went silent. one of the guys talking to us says, in fractured english, "she is much like a submarine!"

to deal with all of this, we begin imbibing wine. we run out. oops. so carly and i decide to take a trip to the little mini-market down the road to get a couple more bottles. we are way brutta figure (which, by the way, means "looking ugly" -- pretty much not fitting in or following societal rules or whatever). cos she's only got a towel and a t-shirt on (that has wine spilled on it, of course), and i'm wearing my button down plaid shirt and jeans rolled up to my knees. we also have THIRTY GUYS following us at this point. how this happened, i do not know. carly turned around and said something like, "when did we get a posse?" i was actually talking to one of the guys, who was decently nice, and i complained that our little road was really narrow. he says, "the narrow path is the one you should always take in life." i tell him that's very deep and that he has a lot of thoughtful quotes -- where does he get them from, i ask? he replies, and i swear this is true: "depeche mode."

our last shot of ischia. bellissima. the madness of that beach will never be forgotten. i had a blast.

alright, my fingers are cramping up, and even though i have dozens more photos, they will have to wait till later and you will have to be satisfied for now with these nuggets. i also have to go home to deal with the trauma of the fact that a student's mother asked me today if i was HAVING A BABY. aiya. time to go on a diet.