Before I knew Italy, I could only picture myself wearing a light-blue cotton shirt, sensuously unbuttoned to capture the lemon-scented breeze as my burnt-orange convertible traced the winding road that winds along the Amalfi coast. In this dream I’d barely have to look at the road, as no other cars, or even the idea of traffic, could even exist in this fantasy world. Instead, I’d only have to tilt my Persol adorned face to bask in the moment as I carried a balanced expression of unrestrained joy and effortless eleganza. Somewhere I’d have a cream-colored jacket on-hand to wear as the setting sun melted into an evening sea breeze.
Landing at Rome’s Fiumicino International Airport, earlier this year, I contended with horizontal rain and crisp late-winter temperatures. Little did I know that my Italian dreams would be held at bay by a persistent winter and unseasonably cold spring, keeping the jackets and sweaters in constant circulation. Neptune, the Ancient Roman god of the sea, must reside towards Italy’s western horizon under the Tyrrhenian Sea. His anger at land-based rivals evident in the late-winter rains that flooded roads while seething waves attacked the shore. Astride this shoreline lie a string of hibernating towns, with few year-long residents, waiting out the winter’s wind until relieved by the sun’s liberating warmth.
In Fregene, one of these Roman beach towns, a single restaurant was open. Our waitress leaned against the counter chatting with the cook, warmed by the pizza oven. In summer the windows would be opened to allow the evening breeze to pass through, but on this particular night the place was buttoned up against the cold of mid-February. Despite the season, the restaurant’s full offerings were available and Maurizio’s, my most recent acquaintance, order included stops along the antipasti, primi piatti, and secondi piatti, and dolce sections of the menu. We started with prosciutto and mozzarella plates, fried calamari served underneath a squeezed lemon, and in-season artichokes cooked in olive oil. The progression of plates allowed stories to weave through reaching arms and forks lancing morsels of food.
I’m uncertain whether the conversation paused to allow for eating, or if the eating stopped to continue talking. Maurizio couldn’t express himself the way he wanted to in English, so he giggled as he spoke to his phone’s Google Translate app – an imperfect tool. Jokes told in Italian were imperfectly rendered even funnier, and oddly poetic, in English. Ripping the pizza bianca, unadorned pizza dough, in between volleys of conversation, his eyes gleamed with satisfaction. Everyone at the table had an entree, mostly thin-crust pizzas topped with buffalo mozzarella, and arugula, or simple margarita pizzas of tomato sauce gently resting on crispy crusts. It wasn’t the best pizza I’d ever have in Italy, but each piece folded well and didn’t overwhelm with salt or acidity.
Fiorella, Maurizio’s wife, described to me the charms of this little town during the summer while their youngest daughter playfully braided her hair. The winter’s sun had set even before we began eating, and now the night outside settled into a thick calm. The light from the restaurant’s windows barely reached the edge of the sidewalk tracing the building’s walls. After an hour and a half of eating, and my own belt taut against the digesting meal, paper plates stacked with fried dough balls drizzled with chocolate syrup came out from the kitchen. Still hot, we used toothpicks to puncture their sides and let the heat out.
Maurizio stood up from his chair and at the end of his outstretched arm he grasped a glass of amaro. With his digestif in hand, he gently sang along to “Volare” playing over the restaurant’s speaker system. Gianluca, his son, sat slumped in his chair at the end of the table, staring at his phone. Too tired to be embarrassed, Gianluca didn’t even look up when his father began singing. There was no reason to. Around our table were the only customers in the restaurant.
The aperitif was a prop. Maurizio was singing out of happiness. He had grown up in this town and had seen thousands of people come and go. Many of them left as his friend. He exuded warmth and friendliness, and each encounter with him was book-ended by an informal clasp of hands and one-armed hugs. My place at the table came courtesy of my American co-worker, who sat to Maurizio’s left. They were friends and I was that night I was being introduced. Like a baton passed during a foot race, Maurizio was being asked to look after me in my new environment. My job had plopped me down into Italy, a new country, a small town, and at that moment . . . a whole Italian family. A few days after that dinner, Maurizio helped me find a place to stay, comfortable and clean, with every convenience and spacious enough to accommodate visiting friends and relatives during my stay – which they would do.
Over the next several months I would make this town my home. As I commuted to my work, I’d pass the same people waiting at the same bus stops, greet the same cashiers at the grocery stores, and develop a common language with a barber – the most daunting of foreign language challenges. In my new environment the guidebooks were useless to me. Their authors usually wrote for audiences with briefer attention spans and a need to see highlights. If there was even a mention of my adoptive town, it was to advertise a trendy beach or the novelty of surfing within an hour of the Roman Forum. I was in for a longer duration and it forced me to change my approach to the country – I would learn by doing.
The basics were the most humbling to learn. At the grocery store, unlike in America, the customer weighs and tags their fruit and vegetables at the point of selection. On my first foray into the market, I was sent sheepishly from the checkout line to weigh my onions and apples, holding up patient mothers and their wiggly children. Train tickets provided another opportunity to grow. Purchasing the ticket from a kiosk was simple enough, provided I knew the name of the station I was headed to, but validating the ticket was not as obvious. A good-natured, finger-waving conductor made me aware of this all-important step when he nearly slapped me with the obligatory €100 fine for failing to do so. Most importantly, I learned to drive like an Italian after experiencing the NASCAR like-aggressiveness of the average Italian driver. In a series of different rental cars I’d learn the potholes, speed bumps, and shortcuts of the area. I painstakingly built a map of the roads disfigured by ancient tree roots pushing the asphalt into steep ridges, while developing a Formula-1 driver’s touch for passing Fiat 500s and Renault Twingos. I have even developed a sixth sense, a natural radar for scooters and motorcycles that perpetually lingered in my car’s blindspot.
Through it all I inevitably learned. I learned to tag my own vegetables, how to prepay for my gasoline, how to ninja my way through train stations and metros, how to order an espresso in Italian and give the appropriate greeting and farewell with appropriate expatriate charm. I learned to swim in Italian society and culture without the telltale signs of the drowning foreigner. However, it wasn’t until I learned to dress like an Italian that I really became part of the scenery.
I had read that in Italy the appearance of a thing is believed to reveal a deeper meaning. Beautiful lines of a sports car indicate its swiftness and power, but also the nature of the driver who would dare own it. In the same way, the cut of a pair of pants, the elegance of a shoe, and the considered coiff of a fresh hairstyle hint at the truth of a persona. An Italian can decode many things, sometimes bordering on the absurd, but it does influence every day interactions. In time, I would eschew the baggier clothing designed for comfort and elect to wear more tailored clothing, matching the colors of my clothing with a bit more care, and adopting a better posture to present more elegant lines in my profile. There is no hiding my Americanism, but the additional consideration given to fashion and style probably improved how my character was assessed and allowed me to blend-in – when in Rome, eh?
From the same restaurants I watched the frigid air of winter evolve into the storms of spring, into the naked days of summer. A similar evolution of cuisine unfolded on my dinner plate. The hearty sauces meant to warm the soul and the body were retired as the fresh vegetables, sauteed with garlic and capers, combined with expertly grilled gamberi to create a refreshing dish on a scorching summer day. My American diet gradually became infiltrated with espresso and cappuccino, olives, tomatoes, attractive burrata and stracciatella cheeses. Ironically, the lighter my diet became the longer I would sit at the table. A two-hour meal accomplished without overeating by can only be done through the art of conversing. Only taking bites of food, and savoring them, as punctuation between well-told stories and jokes.
An Italian storyteller doesn’t go straight for the punchline. They build their stories into a crescendo reflective of the progression of courses in a family meal. An Italian story can’t function with a beginning, middle, and end. No, it has to tease you, growing richer in detail as the narrative builds. The shortest story should contain some semblance of the aforementioned Italian meal, progressing through antipasti, primi piatti, secondi piatti, insalata, and ending in the sweet dolce – the moral of the story. Dario Castagna’s short novel, An Osteria in Chianti is excellent examples of this. Castagna carved out a career from his love of his native Chianti, starting a bespoke tour guide service and becoming an author of nonfiction and fiction works – all centered on his passion, knowledge, and lifetime spent in the hills of Chianti, in Tuscany.
“I filled my lungs with these fragrant scents of the October countryside; at the same time my eyes drank in the suggestive beauties of the territory. And at the very moment that my brain was archiving them, its prince of products, the wine (which I had abundantly abused over the past few days due to the annual feast in honor of the vendemmia) mixed with the blood now pumping so forcefully through my veins. And all at once I felt I was indeed an essential part of this splendid corner of the universe.” – An Osteria in Chianti
Passages like this gave me no urge to shortcut the story, but compelled me to follow the narrative where it wanted to lead me. It also taught me how life in Italy is anything but monochromatic. The depth and breadth of colors that pervade the dinner table, the conversation, and communities of Italy – as I would witness in Arezzo and Siena – is breathtaking.
That first night, Maurizio was anything but static during the dinner. In a lonely beach town restaurant on a cold February evening, he expanded his range of interaction and camaraderie beyond our simple table. After indulging those around him, Maurizio circulated within restaurant. On a summer night, if he had friends amongst the other patrons, he would spend a third of his evening devoted to joking with them, patting their children on the head, and visiting the chef in the kitchen. However, on that night, in an empty restaurant, Maurizio sang as the evening drew to a close. It was a night that swelled with feeling as ever-increasing quantities of delicious food amplified by laughter and abundant gesticulations engaged all the senses. Again, Dario Castagna provides the right words:
“I asked why he banged the glass with so much ardor. He eyed me curiously for a moment, as if assessing me, then scratched at the bristly white hairs on his chin and gave me a smile that might have been mischievous or challenging, or both, and declared: “When one drinks wine all the senses ought to enjoy some benefit. The mouth gets to savor the taste, the nose captures the bouquet, and the eye is enriched by the color. Why then should the ear be excluded?” – An Osteria in Chianti
My time in Italy would dazzle and enchant my senses in unexpected ways. My memory contains the smell of a rain-drenched winter Rome intermingled with the feeling of my shoe cautiously slipping along wet stone sidewalks, the sight of festival champions being hoisted onto the shoulders of loyal contradaioli; the sound of my three-year old son shouting “Maximus! Maximus!” inside the Colosseum; and the comforting taste of my second mid-morning espresso as I stretched my back away from my desk. This was the Italy I knew; the Italy I will remember as a second home.
Andrew Zapf is a co-founder of Pushing Horizons.
Disclaimer: All views expressed are that of the author.
È una descrizione coinvolgente ed emozionante, sembra quasi di viverle le atmosfere descritte, anzi di riviverle con maggior intensità!! Splendida descrizione dell’Italia e del suo fascino accattivante.
Wonderful!