Ferragosto and Calcio

I recognize that the updates on this blog have been sparse lately. Fortunately though, it is not due to a lack of happenings on this end. Actually, we’ve been pretty busy doing a bunch of different things as well as welcoming our first of several visitors coming to town over the next month or so. Here are a couple of highlights:

August 15 in Italy is a national holiday called Ferragosto aka the Feast of the Asumption for all you Catholics out there. Though it fell on a Saturday this year, Natalia still had the prior Friday off of work so we took advantage and went to a hill town in Umbria called Orvieto for the weekend. Only about 90 minutes by train from Rome, Orvieto is an old Etruscan town known for its ceramics, Orvieto Classico (a delicious white wine), and small town charm. I definitely recommend it to all. I’ve posted a ton of pictures on facebook from this weekend, but here are a few for the non-social media folks reading this. We stayed at a nice bed and breakfast, which had the luxury of a television (sidenote- we’d been without tv for about a month in our new pad, though our landlord brought one over last night. We can now get dialed in to the world of Italian game shows, dramas, and commercials. Bravo!). During down time in Orvieto, we watched some Italian MTV(Euros do love that high energy music) and one night I stayed up late watching E.T. in Italian. I forgot what an epic movie that is. The highlight being E.T. exclaiming “telefono…casa”. Too good.

The price of wine in Orvieto was unbelievably cheap. Many enotecas (wine shops) were selling 3 bottles of good local wine for anywhere between 6-12 Euro. Converted that’s about $9-$18. Or $3 a bottle. Again, bravo! The one wine shop we stopped into gave us a free tasting of about 6 different wines allowing us to choose the wine that best serves our novice pallates. That’s one of the more stand-out things about Orvieto. Everyone was so nice. Maybe it’s the fact that wine flows like water or that they live in such a beatiful environment, but the folks we met were just great. Another memorable exchange occurred at a ceramic shop where we were looking to buy something as a memento of our visit. We settled on a cool little olive oil bottle. Anyway, the lady at the shop could not have been more helpful and pleasant. She told me several times how beautiful Natalia is. So much so, that I began to wonder if she was really saying how did you pull that, you moppy haired, unshaven Americano?

As we were leaving, I wanted to get a business card so we could remember this spot for others. Unfortunately, I don’t know the word for business card in Italian. Once we figured out a way to get our message across, they gave us a card and I asked “come se dice questo?” (how do you say this?). The lady was unsure and turned to her husband who thought a minute and responded “beez-ee-ness card”. We all laughed as did other foreigners in the tiny shop as I guess he thought we wanted to know how to say it in English. Once his wife told him we wanted to know in Italian, and we were in fact native English speakers, he shrugged and muttered something. We all had a good laugh.
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This past weekend, our friends, Stephani and Sean, came to visit from DC. They win the award as the first friends from home to toast our arrival in Italy. (The rest of you reading this are now on notice.) Such a blast to have good friends from home share the experience of living abroad. Not to mention, the fact that they brought us American magazines, Ziploc bags, Ipod tunes, and a reason to try a ton of new restaurants. We had a great time. Among the many highlights included catch a soccer game at the Stadio Olimpico. It was opening day actually for Serie A, Italy’s top soccer league, and I couldn’t have been more stoked. There are two local teams in this league, Roma and Lazio. To put this in American context, I would say that Roma is like the Lakers and Lazio is like the Clippers. Not to say that Lazio has had a prominent history of futility like the Clips, but I think the majority of folks around here support Roma, just as most Angelinos are Lakers fans. This could not be more evident by the attendance at the game. I’d say that the stadium was about 40% of capacity. Tons of empty seats. Shockingly so. There could be a number of reasons for this though. One, as mentioned in a previous post, most Italians skip town in August. Since its still August its conceivable that most Lazio fans are still seaside or in the South of France. Two, Lazio played Atalanta (no, not the Falcons). A bottom of the league type team and not really a lure to the Stadium as AC Milan, Inter Milan or Juventus would be.

All in all, we had a good time at the game. Steph and Natalia were initially worried that the stadium might be packed with rambunctious and rowdy Italian fans, which was clearly not the case…unless you consider these guys pictured here rowdy.

Lazio won 1-0, which let the fans go home happy, and is always nice. As most of you know, I’m a pretty big fan soccer fan and left the stadium unsure of how my fandom would play out while we are here. I’d always known this, but it was so evident during this game-- Italian soccer players are floppers. The dramatic pratfalls and writhing around on the field in “pain” whenever there is a bit of contact irks me to no end. (The most egregious and memorable example of this for most is when France’s Zinedine Zidane head-butt the Italian player during the last World Cup and the Italian player basically went into faux cardiac arrest in a play that could not have possibly taken him off his feet.) I’m not sure if I can really get fully invested in a league whose players are lying on the field as if they just got shot. Only time will tell I suppose.
More soon…

Agosto en la Citta (August in the City)

Its officially been one month since arriving to Rome and I’m feeling pretty comfortable about my ability to get through typical daily activities now. Markets, grocery stores, asking (and actually giving) directions, and restaurants are becoming pretty manageable at this point. Admittedly, I mostly know nouns and am still struggling to get comfortable with verbs and proper conjugation and such, but it’s a start.

There are still some other transactions that continue to be tricky though. For example, last week I had to purchase a wireless USB device in order to get internet at our new apartment. There is no way I could have made it through this process without a friend of mine that happened to be in town and speaks fluent Italian. Despite this help, I still screwed up and wound up spending 30 euro (~$45) for about an hour of internet the first night I hooked up the device. Apparently, I didn’t realize that I needed to sign up for a specific program before logging in, which zapped all of my credit pretty quickly. Live and learn.

I do have a helpful phrasebook that usually gets me through most daily interactions. Its broken down into helpful chapters like Eating, Shopping, Sleeping, etc. Upon reviewing the different chapters, I found the particular order of the following series of phrases pretty funny. Under the section, “Oh, Amore”, phrases listed in this exact order include:

What’s the best place to dance nearby? (C’e un bel locale da ballo qui vicino?)

Do you want to dance? (Vuole ballare?)

I have no diseases. (Non ho mallatie.)

I have many diseases. (Ho molto mallatie.)

A couple of lines later, the phrasebook continues with:

Let’s have a wild and crazy night! (Passiamo una notte di fuoco!)

Can I take you home? (Posso accompagnarti a casa?)

Why not? (Perche no?)

How can I change your mind? (Posso cambiare idea?)

From what I can gather, Rick Steves, famed author of this particular phrasebook, seems to think that upon dancing, one should immediately include disclose their health status, and one should also expect that their hopes of a wild and crazy night will be shut down immediately so here are some phrases that can help you sound desperate. This should help. ( I expect all visitors to try out these lines. I look forwa

rd to witnessing the results.)

Aside from my slowly improving Italian, I am still adjusting to the afternoon siestas that Italy continues to follow. From 1pm to 4pm, the city virtually shuts down. Sure, the tourist areas are still buzzing and some stores remain open, but for the most part, Rome is a ghost town. Its crazy. There’s no way possible that this could even happen at home. Its actually kind of nice, but working at home and hoping to take an afternoon break with a quick lunch or drink has proven to be a challenge. To magnify things even more is that August is basically a vacation for most Italians. In my neighborhood, Testaccio, about 30% of all stores are shut down for the month. I don’t know how they can afford to do this. The stores that are closed are usually the mom and pop restaurants, grocery stores, clothing stores, etc. Maybe they are backed by the infamous “waste management” money. Who knows.

Again, imagine this at home. The Mission in SF is closed for a month. The East Village only has 25% of its bars open. Hollywood swinging is limited to a handful of joints. Crazy. Yesterday, we had a lazy Saturday afternoon watching a marathon of Mad Men. As it was approaching evening, I went out to grab a bottle of wine for dinner. During my walk to the enoteca about three blocks away, I only saw four people, one scooter cruise by, and no cars. Again, this is in the middle of Rome, not a 

remote hill town in Tuscany or a suburb. So crazy.

I’m told that things start to get a bit busier and hectic around these parts come September, which will be interesting, though I sense things will still be pretty mellow. I just hope I can stay clear of the dance-related diseases.