I remember a demonstration a science teacher once provided our class. He filled a jar with large rocks and asked if it was full. “Yes.” we droned. Then he poured a jar of little pebbles around the rocks and asked the same question. “Yes” we replied again. Then he poured in a jar of sand. By now we had learned the trick but what could be smaller than sand, we thought? Then he poured an enormous jar of water in it. There is always room for a little more it seems.
Looking down on a Roman street a few weeks ago I remembered that lesson. At the stoplight trucks came to a halt, five across, on the three-lane street. Around them cars quickly began to fill in at odd angles, creating a miasma of steel and diesel exhaust. Seemingly full, along came a fleet of scooters that fearlessly squeezed into every available gap like 100cc kamikazes. And finally, just as the light turned green, pedestrians braved the intersection like a swarm of ants on a donut. To make matters even more dramatic, in Italy, the yellow light isn’t a warning for when the light is about to turn red. It is an alert that the light is about to turn green. So, when the yellow light comes on, 100 motorized machines rev their engines and prepare for a dash off the starting line, while pedestrians make a last ditch effort to get back to the sidewalk.
There are an inordinate number of lavatory injuries here.
Not that I have personally witnessed any. But every bathroom—from hotels to restaurants to even our remote little villa—is equipped with an emergency alarm pull, which just happens to look very much like the cord to a ceiling light or a fan. A thin rope dangles from a switch along the wall just begging you to pull it. A word of advice: Don’t. Especially if you happen to be doing your business in the toilette at your local restaurant. Because if curiosity gets the best of you and you pull the little cord to see what sort of light comes on or fan motor starts whirring, you’ll find that instead it signals a rather noisy alarm that rings in the middle of all the other patrons so that they all make a point of looking at the idiot stepping out of the lav. Hypothetically.
I suppose the injuries may come from the awkward little water fountains they seem to have installed alongside nearly every toilet on the continent. How you would possibly maneuver yourself down to a kneeling level, adjust the sprayer and actually get a drink is beyond me, and I suppose that might well be where the prevalence of injuries stems.
The countryside is romantic. To a point.
Scorpions reside in nearly every country on the planet. We did not know this before we came to Tuscany, but a quick Google search proves it is true. They come in lots of sizes, with varying degrees of pain and poison. The Tuscany ones, if we were to judge by the one Hannah scooped up in the living room and presented in the kitchen on our second day here, are rather small and pale. Further Google research suggested they only sting in August. It was now September 4th I duly noted. The debate that ensued covered an insect's ability to follow a Roman calendar, and what would happen once it turned cold out and they wanted inside things like warm slippers, like the article also suggested. We started tapping our shoes out and fluffing the covers at night, but three months later, we have thankfully not seen another one.
Some of the best meals stare back at you.
I don’t mean to offend the vegans, or make some redundant claim for the omnivore diet. But in Italy, there is an honesty to the food that is at once fun and adventuresome. They don’t play marketing games with their food. At the butcher, the case is lined with whole chickens that have been (reasonably) well plucked. Alongside them is usually a stack of small, skinned animals with little paper wrappers politely protecting the heads. Hannah googled coniglio on my phone and nearly fainted. Rabbits. Also in the case, cow tongue, cow brain, cow livers, and, of course, cow stomach lining all ready and waiting for your Sunday dinner. Order fish and you can eat the roasted eyeballs if you so choose. In Pompeii, I ordered a seafood dish that featured two dozen whole sardines, each battered and gently fried. And shrimp are almost more trouble than they are worth, with heads, legs and even antennae still attached. I realize here that in the states we are politely insulated from much of what makes food such an adventure. Wild boar, which seemed exotic when we first arrived, is old news now. And I don’t think we could stomach another bowl of squid ink risotto. Last night we had a salad of quail, which the kids gamely tried. Then I went all in and ordered a pigeon soup with fois gras. It was gray and creamy and tasted vaguely of liver. I probably should have opted for the risotto.
There are two words in Italian for “eggs”
Usually once a week or so I rise to find nothing in the fridge, and head off to the market to grab a few breakfast groceries before the rest of the household wakes up. To add insult to the nutritional injury, I found last week we were also out of coffee. So off I went, stomach growling, only to find our regular market closed. So I headed into the city (another 10 km down the road) for a more ambitious shopping adventure in a new grocery store. After collecting most of my things, I found I had circumnavigated the store about 5 times without finding eggs. (Eggs are not refrigerated here, so they can be just about anywhere.) Fortunately I have a trusty translation app on my phone that allows me to look up English words and they suggest the Italian counterparts. Blurry eyed from lack of caffeine, and, according to my optometrist, middle-aged myopia, I squinted at the screen and asked the pretty stocking clerk where they were located. “Dove testicolos?” I said with confidence.
She looked at me rather surprised and I looked back at my screen. The beauty of Italian is many words, once you stop and ponder them, make sense. Such is not the case before 8 am when you are in a hurry. I realized my blunder about the same time she realized I was not actually asking her where I might find some testicles, but rather some uovo, which, on closer inspection was the second option of the list of possible Italian words. Whoever the hell decided that was the proper order for an English travel translator app must have been giggling all the way to the software conference.