Day 90

Today's my last day in Italy and this is presumably my last post on La Dolce Vita! There's still a bit of packing to be done, I need to clean up my apartment and say my final good byes to my new friends! But I wanted to put down these final thoughts that were running through me last evening. I think you tend to introspect more when you're by yourself on foreign ground. Maybe it's because you're out of comfort zone or perhaps it's because you often have more free time on hand with no major commitments.

So, here's a list of things that I have discovered about myself:

1. I love tea! Now this is a little weird since I should technically have developed a taste for coffee. But the more cozy bars here also serve different (and rather exotic) types of tea. While coming from India I brought my box of Taj tea, thinking that I would find European tea rather tasteless. But surprisingly I have developed a liking for the more subtle flavours that are preferred here. Of course I had to travel all the way to Europe to discover something that's really from the East! I hope I continue exploring tea when I am back home.

2. I realise the there are distinct cultural differences between Europeans. Like most people, I tend to club everybody from a region as being the same. But I know now for instance that interacting and working with people from Southern Europe is very different from working with people from the North. The Italians and Spanish are much more family oriented than the Germans or Dutch. At work, you'd better be careful in the way that you critique an Italian or French. But if you're dealing with a Belgian its probably better to be direct.

3. I enjoy being by myself! This is a huge step for me, since there was a time when I hated being alone. I always wanted company around me. In the last few years I have tried gradually to snap out of this need to be around people and the time I have spent by myself in Italy has been crucial. On many an afternoon I have out of choice stepped out alone for a long walk, to have tea in a cozy restaurant, to read on a park bench, to shop by myself. I think its made be calmer and more comfortable with myself.

4. I have rediscovered the pleasures of blogging. I have truly enjoyed writing these 12 posts. I hope I feel inspired to write again when I am back in Bharat!

Bardonechia

I wanted to see the Italian Alps before I left the country (which is by the way, in two days). With only one day to spare, Bardonechia was an ideal choice as it's only an hour and a half by rail from Turin. Having seen beaches, vineyards, monuments and a lagoon, the mountains seem to complete the Italian experience in some sense. (Aside: I am doubtful about the last statement. I still need to visit Florence, Naples and Sicily at least for me to feel that I have really seen Italy...hope there's another time!)

My first impression of Bardonechia was that it looks so much like a little Swiss village. If somebody had blind folded me on the train and told me on arrival that we were in Switzerland, I think I would have had little trouble believing them.

This time as well I had Deborah for company. Once again it was a trip where the only specific purpose was to have a good time. And there were really only two options - to have a short walk and a nice big meal or to take a nice long walk and grab a quick meal...needless to say that with me around, the choice was rather obvious ;) While tucking into our rather sumptuous Piedmontese meal, we ran into a colleague who happens to be a Swiss national from around the Zermat region. She had done things the Swiss way...tough hike all by herself with only cheese and chocolate for company. Did I feel guilty? Nope! I gleefully shoveled in some more of the Ravioli telling myself that when in Italy I must do as the Italians...even when the town looks more Swiss.

Here are some pictures...one of them is actually from a different trip that I made to a place called Gurten while living in Switzerland! Let's see if you can spot it ;)

Autumn Hues

This post has been in the works for the last three weeks. Unfortunately the weather gods didn't favour me. I waited for the lovely autumn leaves around me to turn a shade more orange so I could capture the leaves at just the right moment. But the downpour we had two weeks ago ruined them completely.

Lesson learned-always always carry your camera so you capture the moment rather than wait for it to get better.

But the photographs aside, I have realised that Autumn is my favourite season in Europe. The air is crisp and nippy and you see the trees in lovely shades of orange, yellow and fuchia. When there's a strong breeze its as if the sky is raining leaves. Once in a while I manage to catch one of the leaves that lazily floats from from the high branches. The glee I feel at that instant is almost child-like.

Despite the rain, lady autumn smiled a little for my Olympus...here are some pictures from the ITC ILO campus and Moncalieri

Stop! My dog needs to poop!!!

I tried hard to resist blogging about this because its really random. But, here goes...

I was walking to work yesterday when I saw this stylish Italian woman walking her little dog. (Aside: I love dogs...but this one was not exactly likeable. It was one of these really fancy breeds that look more like large rodents than dogs.) Suddenly the dog stops and decides to take a poop right in the middle of the road. The woman makes no effort to pull the dog to the side walk. Instead, she elegantly whips out a gloved wrist to stop this massive trucker that's coming towards her. The beefy driver watches in amazement as the woman waits for the dog to finish and then carefully cleans up the poop with a plastic bag (yes...they can't leave it on the road). The woman looks least hassled by the line up of cars that patiently wait for the trucker who helplessly waits for the woman. By this time I am chuckling at the scene that unfolds. Beefy driver pulls down his cap to cover his face, pretending to be embarrassed. I know he's just playing along since I am so amused. I walk away sighing to myself about hot Italian women, their ugly dogs, beefy truck drivers and cars that don't seem to be in a hurry to get anywhere...just another day in Italy :)

Venezia

When Deborah told me that Venice would be like nothing I had ever seen before, I was a little skeptical. The city, not unlike Rome, is after all rather synonymous with Italian tourism. The funny thing is that Venice is indeed quite the tourist spot with its many souvenir shops, expensive restaurants, extremely expensive gondola rides and the infamous list of 'top things to do'. And yet it is surreal, truly something that I had never seen before.

Venice is actually only one of many islands of the Venetian lagoon in the Adriatic Sea. So, the only way to get around the lagoon is via the waterway. The idea fascinated me to no end. If I lived in Venice I would probably have to own a boat instead of a car!

The place apart, this was a trip with no plans. Deborah had insisted that we simply book our train tickets and get there. I had not read anything about the city and had no clue as to what I must expect. Once we got there, we ambled along, stopping for a photograph when something charmed us enough, going along the flow of of tourists to find our way and breaking away from them when we noticed a deserted piazza. I lost track of time. When I glanced at my watch again, it was time to board the train to Milan!

At the end of every trip I try to think of the moment that will define my memory of the trip. I like to think of it as my Aha! moment. But Venice had so many Aha! moments. I hope my photographs can preserve for me those moments at least to some extent.

(Aside: The Aha! moment is actually something I look for when I read a book. It's a nice little activity I picked up during a discussion I once attended on Saul Bellow's Humbolt's Gift...incidentally a book with no Aha! moments for me)

Aha! Moment 1....walking out of the railway station to realise that the only way out of the city is via the water way!

It was a beautiful day...a little chilly but so blue!

Aha! moment 2...Venetian balconies

Aha! moment 3...narrow canals through which gondolas make their way

Deborah was so much fun to be around...here she's writing a postcard to her mother as she chats up with a wayside singer

Italian road signs :D

Gosh those paintings were lovely!

Relaxing with wine at Piazza St. Marco

Aha! moment 4...watching the Venetian sunset

At Murano, another island in Venetian lagoon which is well known for its glass art...the 'garden' in the background is entirely made of glass! I picked up a lovely pair of earrings :)

Quotable Quote

"Piazza Vittorio Emanuele and Via Roma are like spaghetti in Italy"

-Deborah Ferrari

Vittorio Emanuele is revered as the first king of Italy while Roma is...well Roma! Almost every city or town in Italy has at least one Piazza named Vittorio Emanuele and one road named via Roma. Deborah, a colleague and of friend mine aptly sums it up :)

Boots

(To Nanju who always offered to help me shop)

One of the toughest parts of being abroad for me is dressing right. And by this I mean being comfortable in what I wear while not seeming like a complete fashion disaster. And somehow I never seem to get it right. Add to this the inability to communicate with shop assisstants and you have several frustrating weekends spent in the city centre unsure of what to buy, how to wear and how much to spend.

I had been putting off the hunt for boots because I knew it would be one of the more difficult things to buy, especially in Italy, where every woman seems to be wearing a beautiful pair of boots that are perfectly matched with her bag, coat, hat and gloves. But my cold feet (pun intended) got the better of me and I finally dragged myself to the fancy city centre of Turino. I had spent most of last week paying close attention to womens' boots and had concluded that knee length black boots would be the ideal pick. I could wear them over most clothes and they seemed reasonably chic.

But of course there was more to it. I still had to choose between boots with heals versus flat ones, boots that fit snug versus those that hung loose around your calves and boots with buckles versus those with zippers. Four hours, twenty pairs of boots and several unpleasant shop assistants later I finally zeroed in on a pair of black ankle length boots because I realised that I feel like a gladiator in the knee length ones. But I think I mostly chose the boots because the two middle aged women at the store were really nice to me and even managed to communicate in broken English.

One week with my new boots and how do I feel? Well...they're too snug to tuck my jeans into them and too loose to drape my formal trousers over them. Plus they have these tie ups that are always coming loose. So they probably score quite low on the fashion scale. But they keep me warm, which (I have been telling myself) is what really matters.

Lesson learned: If you need to buy boots in Italy, take a friend who's a shopper and can speak Italian

Roma

Elizabeth Gilbert in her book Eat Pray Love (later made into a movie) coins the word 'sex' for they city of Rome. I am not sure if I agree with her, but I couldn't help but be anxious about having a unique word for the city that would capture my own impressions of it. I think it also reflects how important it was for me that the city indeed makes an impression on me. Some how, all the build-up in history text books, popular cinema, travelogues and good old Discovery channel had to add up to something.

(Aside: While I found most of Eat Pray Love rather forgettable, the first section which is based in Itlay, made quite an impression on me and in several ways inspired me to dream about visiting this country someday.)

As it turns out, I didn't have to think very hard, though I permitted myself to cheat a little and use three words instead- Super Size Me! The phrase is actually a rip-off from the title of Morgan Spurlock's documentary, which takes a critical look at the American fast food industry. 'Super Size' is in fact the largest meal option that Mc Donalds offers its customers. Now what is the parallel I am trying to draw with Rome? Every building in Rome (even the lesser known ones) are simply awesome in the true sense of the word. The magnificence and opulence of it all makes a lasting impression. It's almost as if the Roman emperors always wanted to super size any blue print that was ever presented to them!

As for making an impression in the more figurative sense, well, I feel like I need to go back to the city and take it in another time. This trip was planned to every detail and was about visiting all the 'must-see' places in the two-day time frame we had. We had prebooked every visit to beat the ques and had specific time slots in a spread sheet itenary that mapped every leg of the journey. And amidst this whirlwind of activity I seemed to have missed getting a pulse of the city. I do hope I can go back to visit the eternal city again to take in its food, culture, crowds and chaos!

Here are some snaps of the trip.

I missed adding that Appa was my travel companion! Here he is taking in the size of the Colosseum

The Pantheon...unanimously voted the high point of the trip for being an icon of Roman engineering

Charming Piazza Navona with Bernini's Fountain and Borromini's Church

The room of tapestries inside the Vatican Museum...it impressed us more than the rather elusive Sistine Chapel (oops did I just say something blasphemous?)

St.Peters Basilica...definitely a stunner!

The Swiss Guard :D...they actually do dress like that!

Trevi Fontana...nope I did not throw a Euro in...but I did insist on making it a Patel point ;)

Spanish steps...seriously over rated unless you have Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck on them

But guess what I discovered while sitting on the steps!

Liberating Pasta

For me cooking pasta till this point has been about making a spicy sauce by sauteing tomato puree with vegetables and throwing in Basil and Oregano with a large dash of pepper/chilly powder to suit my Indian taste buds. Then you raid the fridge for cheese (any variety will do, even Amul cheese spread) and add a huge dollop of it to the spicy 'curry'. The final step involves toppling the sauce into the pre-cooked pasta. I still love this and on a cold evening, it could be just the thing to cheer me up.

The Italian's here didn't completely disapprove, but when I asked them if it was good enough to cook my way into an Italian boy's heart, they wore that characteristic expression of European diplomacy. "You know, it's rather spicy for the Italian boy" suggested one of them. Further discussions on this subject of prime importance revealed that there were other ways to cook pasta without spicing it out of recognition.

Here's my favourite-

Add olive oil, freshly ground pepper and salt to warm pasta (I prefer spaghetti). Saute mushrooms (you could replace this with shrimp or anything else that requires only light cooking) and throw that in as well. Mix it up a little so that the ingredients blend in and your meal is ready. It tastes extremely subtle, but suddenly I know what the pasta tastes like since its not masked in tomatoes and spices.

Buona Appetito!

Life in Sepia

I live on the outskirts of a little village called Moncalieri. Since my office at the ITC ILO is at the edge of the city of Turino, it worked out more convenient to live in Moncalieri rather than in Turino's city center. (Aside: It takes a bit of time to orient to a new reality where major cities and little villages coexist and I can actually move from one end of a city to another in under one hour!)

My colleagues at work are always a little amused when I tell them that I live in Moncalieri, which is typically associated with old people, old churches and shop vendors who speak the regional dialect of Piedmontese rather than standard Italian. But for some odd reason I feel at home in this quaint little village. Maybe it's come as a welcome relief after the noise and chaos of Bangalore or perhaps its because I am not built to be the city-center person.

My house is located in a 'piazza', which is essentially an empty square space that is enclosed by a church, residential complexes, shops, cafes, banks and other commercial establishments. The empty space at the center is used for social occasions, for flea markets and sometimes just for parking. This is typical to the Roman style of town planning. So when I say that I am located in the piazza, it means that my apartment is actually located amongst the first line-up establishments around the square. And I live on the fourth floor, which gives me the ideal vantage point to peek down on Italian life as it goes by at its slow best. Weekends are particularly interesting, I watch weddings, Sunday markets, people sipping their coffee, children peeking into the moss filled baroque fountain. The fourth floor vantage point also offers me a breathtaking view of the the city of Turino against the backdrop of the Italian Alps. I love watching the city light up gradually in the mornings, with the buildings that are farther away turning a lovely golden a few seconds before the buildings ahead of them.

And the highlight of it all? I wake up to the sound of church bells and the smell of coffee and fresh bread from the confectionery downstairs...for those few minutes each morning, life seems truly at its sweetest.

Some pictures from my life in the historic center of Moncalieri

View of the Piazza from my apartment-the tallest building is always the church.

The sunrise over Turino

I wish I could paint :( or atleast that I had a better camera

The Sunday flea market

And...the apartment itself

ps: I forgot to add that I now have connections...Sonia Gandhi is believed to have next of kin in Moncalieri

Of Nutella, Wine and Truffles

I discovered only a couple of years ago that Nutella is in fact a product of Italy. Till that point I had somehow assumed that it was one of Uncle Sam's instant foods. I can still remember three Italian colleagues in my office in Geneva looking rather displeased at my geo-culinary (aside: I think I just invented a term) faux pas. That's when I heard about the city of Alba, which is home to the famous Italian food confectionery, Ferrero, the creators of Nutella. Ever since, the city which smells of chocolate had captured my imagination.

Alba, which is located in the region of Piedmonte is everything I had dreamed of and more. Besides Nutella, it is also home to some of Italy's finest wines and the Italian white truffles. In fact, the annual truffle festival was in full swing the day we landed in Alba. The festival is said to draw people from all over the world and a kilo of truffle can cost up to 2000 Euros! Personally, I didn't think much about them, but well, I am hardly a connoisseur.

Shutterbug time!

The city center...yes you can actually smell the chocolate in the air :)

Wake up and smell the chocolate coz its running from your taps!

Of course I was the stupid tourist who photographed truffles on display

Alba is also known for its varieties of Focaccia....I really should stop photographing food

Vineyards in Barolo...sigh what it would mean to be the guy who lives in that cottage and probably owns this plantation

La Rosa dei Venti

I think it's appropriate for the first post in my blog to be dedicated to the person who inspired me to start writing it. Surprisingly, my muse is not somebody I know very well. I can't speak her language, much less communicate with her. And yet I felt like I understood everything she had to say when I met her last week. And ever since then, I have been filled with this urge to pen down my thoughts about her and freeze in someway my memory of that afternoon.

She calls herself 'The Rose of the Wind' or La Rosa dei Venti in Italian. Rosa owns a charming restaurant in Albisola, a pretty little sea side town in the region of Liguria in Italy. I was invited to celebrate the birthday of a friend's friend's friend in Albisola and that's how I found myself at Rosa's amidst a group of chatty and hungry Italians.

I call it a restaurant, but it was really just Rosa's home. She cooks for only ten people everyday. And her meals are the stuff of Gods. We were eating for over four hours and each course only got better. Italians, not unlike Indians, take their food rather seriously. The traditional Italian meal comprises of five courses - The Antipasti (Appetisers), the Primo (First course, normally Rice/Pasta/Soup), the Secondo (the main course, normally Meat/Fish/Chicken), the Contorni (a side dish you have with the main course, normally a salad) and finally the Dolce (the dessert or anything sweet). And after this you will be served cafe or a digestivo (an after dinner drink)...I think you get the point-Italian meals are big meals. It was my first experience of eating the complete Italian meal and I was very keen to keep track of where in the course of meals we were at any point in time. But with Rosa serving large helpings and at least five varieties under each course, I gave up while we were still at the Antipasti.

As a foodie, I think I have an instant connection with anybody who enjoys food and loves cooking. But Rosa did more. She was the chef, the waitress, the cleaner and the entertainer all at once. And none of the roles seem to weigh on her and she handled them all with enviable efficiency. I later found out that Rosa also owned horses and made wine. She loves dancing and scoffs at the younger people she meets in the disco. "They come only to drink. How can you dance if you drink so much?" she asks reasonably. For a 60 something year old, Rosa's spirit and enthusiasm was inspiring.

After the meal, we chatted up with Rosa. Her's is a story of triumph against the odds. I am not going to talk of her difficulties. I am not sure if she would like that. But let it be enough to know that she woke up one morning to realise that life is sweet and that she should spend it happy and making other people happy. And what better way than to do it with great food and great wine!

As we stood up to take a walk to the beach, Rosa called out to us "Come back in one hour, I'll make you pizza!"

I leave you with some images of Rosa, her restaurant, my new friends in Italy and Albisola.


Chatty, hungry Italians :)

Rosa getting (what I think is Secondo) ready

Rosa in Action (It was impossible to capture her without the haze)

Rosa entertaining us...I am not sure what she was doing..maybe pretending to be queen?

The view from Rosa's kitchen

La Rosa dei Venti (the restaurant and her wine is named that)

The beach was beautiful even though it was cloudy