Simple.

Ahhh, the simple delight of Thursday evening dinner! Fresh, tender mozarella, rustic bread, cherry tomatoes tossed with olive oil, salt, and oregano, and a touch of balsamic vinegar! I could get used to this!

New People

Lately I've been craving the mountains. Perhaps it has to do with the freedom I associate with the outdoors, or maybe it is because I want to smell the fresh breeze that only a wild place can provide. Here in Caserta, I can see the peaks and dips of the mountains that tumble and dance in the shadow of Mt. Vesuvius, but its hard to find public transportation to 'the nearest hiking trail.'

I've also been craving friends. I love my family here--they are wonderful, and we get along very well. But they have been my only contact, and without knowing the language I haven't felt comfortable wandering the streets in search of new friends. Faking Italian with Spanish words can only get you so far!

So I posted on a website called couchsurfer.com that I wanted to hike this weekend, and to contact me if anyone was interested in meeting up. I was surprised at how many people responded, but for various reasons it was difficult to organize a group outing, and I ended up just meeting up with one Italian guy, Gianluca.

Sometimes you meet people at the exact moment when they are most needed. Gianluca was that person for me. After spending time with him this weekend, I feel like we have been friends for years. We have common interests-- the outdoors, photography, and indie music. I met some of his friends who are artists (http://www.siximlab.com/collezioni/) and we chatted in Spanish, English, and Italian. We savored nutella ice cream and ate pizza in Naples at midnight. Sunday morning, Gianluca and I hiked through hazelnut and citrus orchards to the ruins of the ancient Castle Cicala and sat on the wall eating the sweetest oranges from a nearby tree, with a panoramic view of Mt. Vesuvius and the Naples valley. I can easily say that this has been the highlight of my time so far in Italy. Beautiful memories, and the even better, the satisfaction of knowing there are many more adventures to come!

'Pick the day. Enjoy it - to the hilt. The day as it comes. People as they come... The past, I think, has helped me appreciate the present - and I don't want to spoil any of it by fretting about the future.' -Audrey Hepburn

P.S. I have some photos to share, but I haven't been able to upload them yet. I will post them soon!

Tiramisu and Sleep Walking

Tiramisu.

Probably the most delicious Italian confection. And I just learned how to make it, straight from the source! I soaked up the experience like the lady-fingers absorbed the steaming espresso. An analogy almost as cheesy as the sweet mascarpone we used, but I can only think in terms of food right now!

The beauty and decadence is in the simplicity... silky mascarpone melded with a few tablespoons of sugar, then folded in with frosty egg-white peaks. A fresh press of espresso soaked each narrow lady-finger cookie, and after the pungent foundation was laid, the rest was just bricklayer's work. Fluffy mascarpone and espresso cookies, an enticing Jenga tower rising from the platter. Like an artist's signature, the dusting of cocoa powder settled silently on the top, completing the masterpiece.

It's chilling in the fridge now, silently taunting me. But dinner is coming, and the best culinary architecture usually meets a gristly demise.

I'll distract myself, (and you as well, hopefully), with a funny exerpt from my daily routine. I live on the 4th floor with Nona Maria, and the Monteleone family lives below me on the 3rd. Depending on the morning, I wake up and descend in my slippers to warm the milk and bereave the children of their toasty pajamas in favor of the cold realities of school uniforms. On a particular morning last week, my mind had not completely left Dreamland before I wriggled into three sweaters and slid into my slippers. I walked out the door, UP the steps to the 5th floor, and knocked quietly.

No answer.

Hmm... not typical, but perhaps they were busy. I knocked again, louder this time. Then I rang the doorbell, two short buzzes, the family signal. At that moment, I blinked enough sleep out of my left eye to notice the skylight and ladder on the wall. How strange that I hadn't noticed them bef---- !!

Sleep disappeared and adrenaline brought my eyes to an instant salute. I looked at the nameplate by the door and realized my 7am visit to the elderly man upstairs would not be appreciated. I then executed what could be titled the 'sprinting tiptoe.'

I wish I could say that I haven't done that since, but that would be a lie. The very next morning, I again lumbered to the 5th floor, but caught myself before ringing the bell.

I guess it's good that I'm always trying to move up in the world, even when I'm asleep! Perhaps I should sleep more at night though.

Fajitas and Teflon Children

Mmm... I believe I have created the perfect hot drink.

Melted german dark chocolate and milk, frothed like a capucchino using the espresso machine's milk steamer! There is nothing better than cradling heated ceramic on a cold night... the warmth exponentially suffuses to every little frozen recess of my body, and I've ventured away from the steam heater for a while.

I know I'm being a baby--the house is only 20 degrees Celsius, and outdoors it never drops below the 8s and 9s. But I lived in Southern California for 4 months before coming here, so I'm claiming a sliver of an excuse.

I finally washed clothes today! First time since arriving in Italy almost two weeks ago, although I did do laundry the day before I left England. By doing a little sign language dance-off with Nona Maria, my live-in grandma, I managed to indicate that I wanted to use her washing machine. She cheerfully gestured that she wanted to take care of it for me, and began stuffing my clothes into her hamster wheel-sized washing machine. So sweet of her to do, and mutually beneficial I think. Feeling needed is poignantly imperative. It's hard to be house-bound with very little to do, particularly when the person you live with is only proficient at basic italian greetings. (Sidenote: when buying unmentionables, consider what your italian grandmother would think. She insisted on hanging my clothes as well...)

My family believes that the only colors I wear are black and red, because all my long sleeved, extra fuzzy/warm/snuggly clothing are some amalgamation of those colors! Unwilling to believe that the word COLD was miscible with the word ITALY, I foolishly packed all my tank tops and just three of my long sleeved shirts for my European foray. I'm going to use this as an excuse to enjoy some italian shopping sooner or later.

Yesterday, I became possessed with a desire to introduce my family to fajitas. I found a great marinade recipe for the meat, but a trip to the grocery market yielded about 2/3's of the ingredients, (they've never heard of cilantro here!), so I just improvised and carried on. Additionally, we couldn't find tortillas, so I attempted to recreate those from distant Honduran memories. After sacrificing 4 hours on the Altar of Cooking, I was able to reestablish how TV dinners had achieved their wild popularity! Fortunately the end results were pretty tasty, and I enjoyed the process.

Today, I made a wall chart for Bruno and Chiara out of posterboard. I'm trying to make learning English fun, so I decided to bring in the big guns and offer stickers in exchange for words learned. We will see how effective I am... so far the English words I've repeatedly taught them have settled on their little Teflon helmets and effortlessly rolled away unlearned. At least that's how it feels. Perhaps a few droplets of English have drizzled into some unprotected inner ear chamber and will spontaneously spawn someday. It's what I'm holding out for!

Well, it's past midnight for me, so I'm off to bed! Gotta be fresh in the morning to prepare a hearty breakfast of cookies and milk for the picolinos before they head off to school, hal! 

I love hearing from you, so drop me an email if you get the chance... reichsiempre(at)gmail(dot)com. 

Godere la vostra settimana! 

European Showers

European showers...

They're spacious enough for a range of motion comparable to being sealed in a casket.

Don't even try to move; the ensuing claustrophobia will overcome even the strongest willpower! Just enjoy the water drizzling over your head, pretend that plain water rivulets will wash away dirt, sweat and grease, and then step out when the water begins to get cold (or when 2.3 minutes is up, whichever comes first).

Also, the tiny sink in the bathroom is not just a thoughtful installation for families with toddlers. They have a special name for them:  bidet. News to this North American!

Sugar Brown, I've found a worthy european candidate for your profound words--

'SHOWERS:  Ain't nobody got time fo' dat!'

Neopolitana

Transcribed from my musings written on a Neopolitan dinner napkin at Antonio&Antonio restaurant, January 9:


I am sitting alone at a lovely restaurant on the waterfront in Napoli. The sunshine keeps punching its fists emphatically through the clouds, and the individual shafts of sunlight are like spotlights of gold on the bay. I am waiting for my pasta to be served... simple fresh wide noodles al dente, in a sauce of blistered cherry tomatoes cooked in olive oil and topped with fresh basil leaves--the perfect pasta al pomodoro. The Neopolitan masterpiece skyline of centuries rises on the other side of the bay. It is a beautiful view!


I've come to Napoli today to visit the US consulate. I'm pretty sure that a small forest was leveled to provide enough paper for all the forms, certificates, and paperwork I had to fill out, but I am the proud owner of a temporary passport!! It's nice to have an identity again. What a strange feeling to have absolutely no way of proving who you are!


After the consulate meeting, I almost skipped out on experiencing the sunshine, view, and pasta. Being at the consulate and restating everything I had lost brought it back to the forefront of my thoughts, and I was really wishing that I had someone to walk with or sit next to on the train. Someone who spoke the same language would be an extra bonus! Upon leaving the consulate, I had the choice between returning immediately to Caserta or walking along the sea, and as obvious as that decision may sound now, I almost wanted to just go back where I would be around people who knew my name.


It was just a moment of lonliness-- you've been there before, right?


The words of Liz Gilbert came to mind at that moment. I thought they were particularly relevant for me since she was also a solo traveler to Italy: 'When I get lonely these days, I think: So BE lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience.' (Eat, Pray, Love)


And perhaps I am wrong, but it seems like once you accept the reality of being alone, lonliness loses a lot of its fervor and intricacy, and you can enjoy where you are in that moment instead of investing energy in wishing for something else. Which is why I am going to stop writing and start eating, directly after I shred some fresh parmesan on my pasta.

Panhandling for a passport

Tomorrow I'm catching an early train into Naples. At the moment, I'm a living theatre of Dante's Inferno... in my current position, I am placidly drifting through my days in the 1st realm of hell:  Limbo. This is certainly an improvement over my earlier defacto associative experience with the 8th realm in Rome last week. Tomorrow I'm going to do my best to avoid realms 4 and 5 as I speak to people who possess US passports and may not be expedient or terribly understanding.

I'll let you know how it goes.

I can also make this simpler for you:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_(Dante)

Mangiando in Italia

Buon Giorno!

It's a lovely sunny morning here in Caserta... I can see the sunshine from our windows on the 3rd floor of the apartment complex. I thought Italy would be the solution to my compulsive need for scarves, long underwear and extra sweaters, but the temperatures here are comparable to Walla Walla much of the time and my Italian family's aversion to turning on the heat has been impressive so far, ha! If I could type while wearing my mittens I would.

So many stories to tell! What an experience this has been to truly integrate into a different culture! I've lived in other countries before, but I never realized how very separate my experiences were from how people actually live. This is authentic Italian city life.

For starters, coffee is essential. Espresso to be specific. If I were to add as much milk as Starbucks puts in their lattes, I would be laughed out of town. Every time I enter a home, an espresso is shortly in my hand. I think I had four yesterday. My family has an espresso machine, and I have already learned the proper protocols. My tiny espresso cup and saucer sit empty on the desk next to me. Delizioso!

Next:  PASTA!! Italians are Godfather-serious about their pasta--I have yet to go a day without at least one meal of pasta, and often it's twice a day. Yesterday it was pasta shells and beans! I didn't realize that there is a science to pasta preparation, but the quantity of pasta to be cooked must be weighed, and then a timer is set to cook the pasta to perfection. Each type of pasta has a different, specific cook time. On Sunday night, the grandparents, aunts, and uncles were over for the evening and pizza was ordered. You do not serve  yourself food here, it is served and placed in front of you, but the 16" pizza on each plate seemed a bit much! Everyone finished their pizzas long before I was halfway through my margherita. So delicious, but so much food!

The children have a pet... a snail who lives in a glass cup with tin foil over the top. His name is 'snail,' and he is well-loved by Bruno and Chiara. It will be a sad day when he gives up the shell, so to speak.

Regarding shells, we had a Neopolitan speciality on Sunday beyond the range of my cast-iron stomach. An entire pot of quarter-sized clams, cooked in at least 3 cups of olive oil and then mixed in with the pasta! I did try one bite, but it was more than I could handle, and I stuck with the bread for that meal. I also learned that the thinly sliced cured meat Chiara was eating yesterday was horse meat, apparently a delicacy. Yum!

I am realizing that this has become a food blog, so I will have to share more stories of my family later. For now, I am going to run up and down the stairs of our five story apartment complex to balance out my impressive eating regimen, haha! Francesca and Domenico think I'm crazy. They're probably right, but my tennis shoes weren't stolen so I'm obliged to use them! They've come too far to sit collecting volcanic dust from Vesuvius.

Have a wonderful day! Abbracci e bacetti a tutti!

Introspections of a plundered peripatetic pilgrim

I had written a lovely post on my macbook while on the plane from London on Friday, but instead of posting that I decided to post an object lesson:


Never keep all your eggs in one basket.


Particularly if your eggs consist of your macbook, camera, passport, tablet, cash, wallet, external backup hard drive of your macbook, ipod, jewellery, watch, makeup, and North Face rain jacket.


Your basket could walk away with an anonymous italian at the Rome train station.


A plethora of life lessons are lurking in this colossal mess. My options at this point are 1) devolve into a hysterical seizure of frustration and loss, or 2) do my best to see the humor and keep going. I'm trying to stick with the second. Primarily, this has been a time of introspection regarding what is truly important in life. I can honestly say that virtually all the belongings I held most dear were in that bag when it disappeared yesterday evening in the crowded station at Rome. And yet most of the electronics were essential in conjunction with experiences--the camera would be useless without people and places to photograph, the computer and tablet would lose value if they weren't useful as a means of communication with the people I care about. And these connections can be patched, even if they won't be as efficient or pretty as before. I still have the opportunity to travel, meet people, and write blogs from borrowed computers. Life can be just as sweet; I'll just have to shift my perspective for now.


At the risk of pontificating, I wanted to note one more perspective that have come to light since The Event of yesterday evening:


Simple things may be more important than you realize. You probably take many simple things for granted that would leave a hole if they were gone. For me, the loss of my chapstick, ibuprofen, and notebook filled with annotations and quotes from the first two weeks of my trip were items I didn't even think about. But when they're gone, you miss them! My experience was with losing things. Don't let yours be with losing people.Be more aware of and grateful for the people and things that surround you. (For me, increased awareness has many meanings... this blog would not exist if I had been more aware, ha!)


Kind people often seem to multiply when you need the extra support. A man at the train station who did not speak English at all stayed with me the entire time while I first searched for my bag, missed my train, reported the theft to the police, and tried to change my ticket. Although I could not get the ticket counter to give me a pass on the last train to Caserta and did not have any money to change my ticket, this man convinced the train's conductor to let me ride, and gave me 4 euros to make phone calls if I needed it. I am so grateful for him. Once I arrived at the dark and deserted Caserta train station, three hours past my expected arrival, the conductor escorted me to the police station and attempted to explain my situation to the three police officers on duty. The five of us in coalition were able to find a way to contact my host family (since all my contact information was in the backpack), and they offered me pizza and a warm place to wait. Today, Domenico and Francesca bought me Clinique face lotion and chapstick and made me espresso with whipped cream. I am a lucky girl.


Perhaps this is a sign. I've had the same tube of foundation makeup since I was 13, and the stitching on my backpack was unravelling. My face looked like a dinner plate in my last passport photo, and my laptop was two years old. This is an opportunity for new things.