Ancona

Last week, we took the train to Ancona. It’s a port city about an hour and a half from here.

I think maybe because it’s a port city, it has a lot of immigrants and because of that, there are an abundance of markets—asian, African, eastern European—that cater to them. It was lovely to be somewhere I could find ingredients and treats unavailable here, but the main draw was a “kiosk” selling raw and cooked fish. Really, that’s why we went. Even though we’re near enough to San Benedetto, a beach town on the Adriatic, all of the restaurants there seem to offer the same stuff—fried fish, spaghetti and clams…..e basta.

We got off the train and meandered toward the city center, stopping to buy habanero and jalapeno peppers, chinese red bean cakes and a bamboo spatula/spoon thing for the wok.

Then, we headed up the pedestrian shopping street and across through the daily street market to Chiosco da Morena in Corso Giuseppe Mazzini.

It’s basically a hut, nestled between an ice cream shop/pizzeria and the fountain of the “tredici canelle” with a couple of high bar tables with chairs. On the other side of the street are a bunch of tables and chairs, sheltered from the sun by canopies.

The day we were there, she had some cooked stuff, like giant shrimp and “snails of the sea” (seashells, basically) in three different sizes, shrimp cocktail served in scallop shells and baccalà. We were there for the “unusual” by Italian standards, so we ordered a couple of hundred grams of the small and medium lumache and some raw oysters and what we thought were biggish clams, the size of cherrystones.

 To eat the small sea snails, you jam a toothpick in the hole, pierce the meat and twist it out. The medium ones have had their tips chopped off, so for those you cover the tip with a finger and suck on the opening, then cover the opening with your thumb and suck the meat out of the tip.

The oysters were French and so good, but unfortunately on the expensive side at €2 each and the “clams” that turned out to be cockles (fasolari) which I guess are some type of clams (what do I know about bivalves, really?) for €.50 each.

We were too late for the indoor market, so after lunch we headed back to the train station by way of the port, stopping in at the Lazzaretto. I think at times it was used as a barracks and also to quarantine immigrants but now it houses a museum where you can actually touch the artwork.

the hexagonal Lazzaretto from the "molo"

the temple inside the Lazzaretto

on the "molo" (wharf)

We stopped in the Mix Market, full of eastern European delicacies where I got a Russian ice cream cone and then got on the train.

Dirty Laundry

 There are so many things about living in Italy that can make you feel like you’re living in the middle ages and I’m not just talking about the architecture (ba-dum bum).

When I first moved to Italy, I didn’t have a washing machine. I know. I didn’t just move to the old country, I moved to the last century.

After working 12 to 16 hours a day, every day, in a pub/pizzeria in summer serving ice cold flavored vodka, pizza and cheese burgers and washing piles of  dishes, I’d lay down on the floor with my legs perpendicular against the wall, drink a beer and watch the shooting stars off the balcony before going to sleep knowing that the following day I’d have laundry to do. When you’re sweating half your body weight in a pizza kitchen during the summer in Italy, you always have laundry to do.

I’d haul the laundry into the utility closet that had a sink with the little grooves on the sloped front and wash our stinky clothes, our bath towels, our bedsheets by hand. Then I’d hang them out on the line on the balcony to dry, hoping no birds would fly over them.

My first Italian clothes dryer

It got worse as the weather got colder. I still had to hang everything outside or across some chairs in the living room, but  the house was just as cold and damp as it was on the balcony. Besides having no washing machine, we had no heat. The apartment did have a, um, heating system. It required a fire to burn constantly in the living room fire place. This fire could, in theory, heat up the water running thru the pipes that ran across it which would then carry the hot water thru the apartment to the radiators. As long as you were home all day to make sure the fire was going, you had heat. If you had wood. And we didn’t. After washing, rinsing, wringing, repeating with all our dirty clothes, I’d lug them outside and string ‘em up in the damp mountain air, bundled up so I wouldn’t get hypothermia.

In December of that first year, we moved to a different area and rented a furnished  apartment while we looked for another place that could hold all our furniture. This apartment had a washing machine, but the heating situation was only slightly better than the first place. There was a fireplace, but no pipe system, so unless you were standing directly in front of it, a risk to both you and the furniture as there was no screen on it, you were cold and your clothes still took days to dry outside.

I would put the laundry in the washing machine, wait an hour and a half for it to be done and drape it all over the cold, damp house. Three days, one hour and one half later, the laundry would be done.

I started to notice that I wasn’t the only one wearing my jeans and sweaters many times in a row. Some people, I noticed, wore the same entire outfit for days on end. Med-i-e-val.

When we found the place we’re currently in, I was delighted by several things. It could accommodate all of our furniture. It had gas heat AND a pellet stove (much cheaper than gas). It had a clothesline that was covered and it had a washing machine. It was thirty years old, but it was a washing machine. It took three hours to complete one load of laundry.

Swish, swish. Wait. Swish, swish. Wait.

This is what a 30 yr. old Italian washing machine looks like

The other notable thing about this washing machine is that it just had a dial with numbers. Nothing about temperature. Nothing about speed. Just numbers and lines, like some sort of timer. For laundry.

The first time I used it, I noticed two things. One, there appeared to be steam rising up from it. Two, my very expensive, fancy eggshell-colored underwear bought in my previous life were now a very strange dark grey/purple color from either the lavender scarf that is now half its original size or from the t-shirt with the photo of the Hong Kong skyline that is now a dingy grey. It seems I had boiled my clothes. The Italians thought this was hysterical. The Americana doesn’t know how to use a washing machine. Didn’t I know that I had to push the button that looks like a snowflake for cold water? I thought it was bizarre that my washing machine could heat up the cold water that ran into it. How was I supposed to know?

One day, the machine just stopped. The front loading washing machine just stopped mid-cycle, full of water and clothes and would not move on to the centrifuge/extraction step. Apparently, there was a filter that needed to be cleaned out periodically. Who knew washing machines had filters? Of course, it was located a centimeter off the floor and when opened, water would pour out of the machine.

The detergent dispenser was broken, so I couldn’t put fabric softener in it at the beginning of the wash, and besides, I had to keep checking to see that the filter didn’t need cleaning (swish, swish, wait. wait. wait. swish) or worse, that it had just finally given up and stopped working entirely. I would set the kitchen timer and cross my fingers that I could run upstairs and dump the fabric softener down the dispenser right as the water started to run through before the second rinse. If I did a load of wash, I had to be sure I’d be home for the three hours it took to do it and I had to start it at early enough at night to avoid the high day time energy costs yet early enough to put in the fabric softener before falling asleep. When I took the clothes out, they’d be sopping wet.

I’m not sure why, but after three years, the landlord bought us a new washing machine. I am delighted. It has a dial with words! They’re Italian words, but I get the gist. “Eco 20’” must mean “energy efficient, 20’ water temperature”. It has a “hand wash” cycle. There’s an option to do a “rapido” load in fifteen minutes. It has an LED panel with buttons. One section has hours listed. One has centrifuge speed and one has an iron. I think that last one is like a “fluff” cycle to make ironing easier. I don’t know. I don’t iron. I don’t really care, either. I don’t even care that the instruction booklet is in Italian only or that we couldn’t find an English manual online or even find the brand being sold anywhere but Italy and India. I have a washing machine that goes “swish, wait. swish wait”, that I can set at 8pm to start at 2am and that I can dump my fabric softener in right at the start. It still takes about an hour and a half for a normal load of laundry and I still run the risk of accidentally boiling my clothes if I’m not careful, but at least I’m not scrubbing my sheets in a utility sink and when I take them out, they’re almost dry. Progress.

Getting an Italian Passport

 Last Wednesday, I went to the Questura to get an Italian passport.

In the US, when I last renewed my US passport, I’m pretty sure I got some photos, filled out an application, either wrote a check or provided credit card info, mailed everything to New York or Albany with my old passport and waited to receive my new one. Ten minutes to put everything together, maybe, plus the wait for delivery. In Italy, it went like this:

I arrived at the Questura around 10am and took a look around the room to note all the folks who were ahead of me. Once they’d all been helped, I’d know it was my turn.

“Y’know, “ I said to V. “They should really have the applications and the information sheet with what you need out here on the shelf so people don’t have to wait on line.”

“Why? So it could be more convenient for people?”

“And if they just took credit cards, this would take no time at all.”

V. rolled his eyes, weary of my refusal to just accept things in Italy as they are. “They don’t care how long it takes you.”

Thirty minutes later, I walked up to the window,

“I would like an application for the passport.”

The man leaned over, his stick-straight brown hair swinging forward from behind  his ears, and he said something very quickly which I didn’t understand. I stared back blankly, distracted by his dress shirt unbuttoned part way down his chest.

He handed me a square of paper that detailed everything I’d need:

• a money transfer payment or “versamento” at the post office, made to the Minister of something for €42.50
• a government tax stamp in the amount of €40.29
• a copy of my identification
• 2 photos

“And the application?”

“When you return, “ the man with the hair responded.

We walked down to the post office. It’s a large one, larger than the one in our town, so instead of the usual “chi è l’ultimo?” they have a number system. A machine dispenses these numbers, based on what type of service you need. I located the button for “versamenti” and waited for my letter/number combination to appear on the overhead screen, worrying that I’d not make it back to the Questura before it closed at 1pm.

Forty-five minutes later, my number appeared and I paid my €42.50  plus  €1.30 in “tax” or service fee, got my receipt and headed over to the tabaccaio. Now, the name “tobacconist” is a bit incomplete. Sure, they sell cigarettes, but they also sell lottery tickets, newspapers, magazines, candy, small gifts, the ever important tax stamps and will also send a fax and make a photocopies for you.

At the tabaccaio, I got my “marco di concessione” and a photocopy of my carta d’identita and headed back over to the questura.

The line was much shorter and after five minutes I handed over my marco di concessione, my proof of payment receipt from the post office, the copy of my carta d’identita and the sheet of photos I’d gotten last week from a photo booth at the mall.

The man behind the window handed me the form and I filled out the usual “name, address, birth date, birth place” info required on every single form everywhere in Italy while he entered my info on his computer.

He took electronic imprints of each of my index fingers and told me to come back in three weeks to pick up my passport, handing me a piece of paper to show him when I return.

It only took a little over two hours.

I Swear (Becoming Italian, part 6)

 I continued to check the website of the Ministero dell’Interno almost daily. Once I’d deleted my old profile that had the wrong K-number and wrong submission date, everything was as it had been.  In other words, nothing had changed. The application was still being reviewed.

Then, A. texted to say that she’d gotten a call from R.. My documents were ready. R. had tried to call me, but the number didn’t work.

We went to the Prefettura where R. showed us the decree. She thought that it’d take longer if she mailed it, so she tried to call to tell us to come see her but our phone number didn’t work. Turns out, she had misread my phone number on the application. They don’t just speak differently in Italy, they write their numbers differently, too. Always mistaking my “6”s for “4”s and stuff……

I took the decree to the Comune, made an appointment to take the oath, went back a week later, the mayor read the decree and I  took the oath, signed my name on the giant pieces of paper that go in the large books in the town hall, handed over my Permesso di Soggiorno and got my new Carta d’Identita. And popped open the bottle of proseco my friends had brought with them.

One year and three weeks from the date I submitted my application, I was granted citizenship.  They still had eleven months to decide, according to the law. Not bad, Italia.

Now, to get a passport.

Everything's Green (Becoming Italian part 5)

 For a year, I was checking the status of my citizenship application online.  Every day, the status was the same: L'istruttoria è stata avviata. Si è in attesa dei pareri necessari alla definizione della pratica (The preliminary investigation is started. One is waiting for the necessary opinions to the definition of the request) until one day, it wasn’t.

The first week of February, a year after I’d submitted my application, the status changed. It now said “The request is not accepted. Check with the Prefeturra.”

I freaked. It was a Thursday afternoon and I couldn’t find anyone to come with me to the Prefeturra to find out what the problem was. I didn’t trust my lack of Italian skills.

On Monday, armed with copies of all my documenti, two Italian friends and their friend who works somewhere in the Prefeturra or the Questura, we went to find out what was up.

Our first stop was in the Questura. The uniformed woman behind the counter listened as we explained what we saw on the website and proceeded to ask the following questions.

“You were born on January 17^th?”

Um, yes…..

“Your husband is an Italian citizen?”

And on, and on, as though this was my first time meeting someone in the citizenship office to discuss my application.

I wanted to say, “Uh, yeah. That’s why applied. And why my application was accepted by the people in the citizenship office. Why are you asking me these questions? Why are we even talking to you?”

I decided instead to smile pleasantly and let all the Italians do their thing where they answer such questions as though they’re not redundant and imbecilic and trash talk the bureaucratic system and the bureaucrats themselves.

She made a phone call and we walked over to visit R. in the citizenship office.

“Why you didn’t call me? Why you go to the Questura?”

“Because, if I call you, maybe I don’t understand what you say. I no speak Italian well and on telephone is more difficult for me,” I replied.

She tapped her keyboard with her fuchsia fingernails and declared that according to the internal website,  “everything is green”.  All of the Italians seemed pleased. I was not.

“OK, but on the website where I check my status, it is written my application not accepted.”

After ten minutes of “but everything is green” and “but the minister’s website says it’s not”, she finally logged into the website as me.

“The application number is wrong. And the application date.”

The Italians all smiled knowingly at each other. Obviously, the straniera had screwed up and caused all this drama for nothing.

I knew I hadn’t screwed up. I knew I’d taken the number straight from the letter they’d sent me and quadruple checked it when I set up my profile.

“Here. Here is my letter from the Ministry. See? The number is the same.”

Turns out, whoever had typed the letter had typed the number correctly at the top of the letter but incorrectly in the body of the letter. Guess which one I’d used for the profile?

So, everything was indeed green. For me. I was told the investigation should probably be complete by May or maybe June. Some other poor soul, however, with that other k-number was sadly not as lucky.

What Halloween Tastes Like

According to the carton, this juice tastes like Halloween.

I always thought Halloween tasted like candy corn, Smarties and mini Butterfingers but since I can’t find those here, I’ll give the blood orange and pumpkin juice a shot. 

The Sagra

A friend asked me recently what a sagra is. Now, I know what it is to me and I’m pretty sure that this varies greatly from what it is to an Italian, but here goes....

To me, a sagra is kind of like a New York street fair.  But different. Like a street fair, it takes place in a neighborhood, but in Italy, this neighborhood is sometimes an entire town and there are usually some interesting things to see that you might not otherwise, be it ancient graffiti on a church wall, a natural thermal pool, or locals doing line dances.

It is often organized by the town’s Pro Loco, which as far as I can tell is a group of people who live in the town and try to make it better for its residents, who organize events to try to raise money. Towards that end, they organize things to get folks to come spend money in the town, a population which is increasingly often non-townfolk. A good way to do this is to gather a bunch of vendors to sell stuff to the folks who come to check out a particular food the area is known for.

Some sagre feature an ingredient like polenta, porcini mushrooms, truffles, mussels (cozze), wild boar (chingiale), a specific pasta. You get the idea. Typically, the people of the town will cook various plates, typical of their area, using the featured ingredient and sell them from stalls. Sometimes, they’ll hire professionals to do it.

Other sagre may feature a particular dish. Spaghetti all’amatriciana, lasagne, arrosticini.

The idea is always the same. Go to a town, eat a bunch of food, drink some wine or beer and listen to the (often) live music provided.

Most sagre have one area where you look at the list of food available, make your selection, hand over your euros and get a ticket or tickets. You then stand in line in another area, hand over your tickets and get your plates of food.

These events take place yearly, around the same time each year. For instance, the Sagra della Porchetta Italica of Campli in Abruzzo is always around the 2^nd or 3^rd week end in August. Some sagre are tied to religious events and these are governed by that calendar.

Some of them have live bands, some DJs, some folk music with dancers. Some, all three.  There might be carnival rides and cotton candy.

There are also Feste. These are much like sagre. Sometimes, exactly the same, but sometimes, there is a theme versus an ingredient.

Roasting chestnuts, Acquasanta Terme (AP)

In Acquasanta Terme in the province of Ascoli Piceno, there is the Festa d’Autunno. This is typically held the third weekend in October. There are vendors roasting chestnuts and selling vino caldo. Other folks sell sausage sandwiches and fried pizza dough (known, variously, as fritelle, crispelle and I’m sure several other names). Street performers roam around, market vendors sell everything from truffles to skeins of wool. The local group of Alpini, retirees from the army’s mountain division, open their lodge as a restaurant. The restaurants in town offer special menus featuring fall recipes of tagliatelle with chestnuts, roast pork with apples, etc.

Win a prosciutto. Castignano

Castignano, also in Ascoli, is a walled medieval town that capitalizes on its connection to the Knights Templar with their yearly Templaria Festival in the middle of August. Legend has it that some Knights lived there and each year, the town is transformed into a medieval village, with minstrels and Templars roaming about, market areas with vendors selling handmade leather goods, wooden items, jewelry and more. There are stages throughout the town featuring jesters and dancers. Churches and museums are open, showcasing various items from times gone by. Palm and tarot card readers tell the future. Themed restaurants open, showcasing soups and stews of rabbit, deer and wild boar. While you’re eating, performers might come by talking of their poverty and the wife might complain of the scrawniness of her husband and her daughter could take a look at your husband, commenting on the size of his belly at which point the wife might ask if she can take your husband home, promising him to return him shortly. You might consider it.

Some of these events, like the porchetta sagra/contest in Campli and the autumn fest in Acquasanta have been happening annually for more than forty years. Others are in their second or third edition.

The strangest thing to me about these sagre and feste is how hard it can be to find information. As you drive around, you’ll signs posted announcing a sagra. Usually, the town, the dates and the theme or food is announced. Sometimes, the name of the sagra gives no clue to the non-local about what food’s being served or the signs featuring the local dialect mean nothing to you. This can be a drag if you’ve, say, driven an hour to find that the annual fried frog sagra in Atri has been canceled this year and as you’re driving home, you’re passing sagra after sagra but don’t know if it’s worth it to you to stop. The signs rarely say specifically where in the town the sagra is or the starting time. Internet information is often just as limited. I guess it has to do with these parties originally being for the locals and the locals all just know, inherently, the details just as they know that you can pay your water bill at the newsagent or where it is you go to buy cheesecloth (for the record, I think it might be the hardware shop). Thankfully, this is starting to change, but I think I’ve cracked the code.

In summer, most sagre start at around 7pm. As the sun starts to set, it’s actually cool enough to contemplate eating food. As this is also the time that your house, which was almost cool during the day is starting to heat up, it’s the perfect time to go for a drive or take a walk into town, get a drink, find something to eat and be entertained.

Many feste towards the end of August and into fall, may start in the morning or early afternoon, especially on Saturdays and Sundays. The Festa d’Autunno and the Sagra delle Patate in Leonessa do this. Sometimes, they’ll say they start at noon or at 3p but if you’re thinking of going the first day, you might not want to believe them. They may still be setting up at 5p. Like many things in italy, it depends. Like most things in Italy, on what, I don’t know. But if you’re driving around and see a sign for a sagra, you should probably stop to check it out.