Being 'Merican

“Siena is a beautiful city,” he said, stunning the crowd with his grasp of the obvious. I never did write anything about visiting Siena did I? The trip was a long time ago. Clear back in August! Early August! Like many of the Tuscan hill towns, as Italy’s population grew and people migrated from the country to the city in search of food and work, the city expanded beyond the original footprint at the top of the hill, enveloping the hill with new development and spreading onto the surrounding space until it’s now difficult to see the hill for the town.


A proper Tuscan hill town, Cortona, where we spent the night before visiting Siena for the day.


The view from my hotel room in Cortona.

But as you eventually make your way through the outlying areas, you find yourself, once again, in a beautiful, bustling medieval city. The transition from modern to ancient is actually startling. In one step you’re picking your way down a sidewalk as scooters and cars and buses roar past and the next you’re in a cobbled street too narrow for anything but the occasional vehicle, the buildings leaning out over your head closing down the view of the sky above, surrounded by the remnants, presence and vapors of those long since dead.



Squint and you can see the vapors of the dead. Main St., Siena, Italy.

By now, these types of posts have a well established pattern. Went to a city. Food was amazing. City was charming. Something historic happened there once upon a time. Blah, blah, blah. So none of that this time. Just a few of my pictures juxtaposed with other unrelated happenings. Cognitive dissonance on a small scale. One thing I will say though. I am continuously struck by the thought that for many of these buildings, the men who laid the first and oldest stones very likely died before the building was completed and quite likely their sons or even grandsons were present for the champagne celebration when the ribbon was cut. It’s a little melancholy to think of these men, reporting to their first day of work knowing they won’t live to see the finished structure.


"My great-, great-grandfather built those steps." The main duomo in Siena.

Italy is hosting the 2010 Men’s World Championship Volleyball tournament and Ancona was one of the cities to host the second round. The US team was in the group playing here so last Friday Valentina and I bought tickets and went to the match. As the defending Olympic champions, I had assumed that the US would do to Cameroon in volleyball what Cameroon does to the US in soccer. But the US was flat and lacked any energy while Cameroon played like they were having fun and wanted to be there.


The best part of this picture is what you can't see - the horrified Dutch mother and son huddling right below that window while I lurk and skulk above them pursuing my art school fantasies.

Cameroon won the first and third sets, easily, with powerful serving, a solid front line and enthusiastic defense. The US gutted out wins in the second and fourth, with timely kills and by taking advantage of a few too many errors from Cameroon due to over enthusiasm. This set-up the deciding fifth and final set. By this time, a nominally uninterested crowd, inspired by a small but loud contingent of Cameroonian supporters were fully behind the team from Africa with constant, noisy, inspiring encouragement. You know what they say about not rousing the slumbering lions? Even if Cameroon are the Lions, they smacked the US one time too many and between the crowd and the prospect of being eliminated, the US summoned some heart and rallied to win the fifth set going away to continue on in the tournament.



This is the Piazza del Campo where they host horse races (palio) two times a year to the fascination of thousands of tourists, immense benefit of the local economy, and horror of a few activists. When it's not being used for horse racing it's a delightful place to watch the clouds and eat gelato.

For me, this was the first time I’d seen an American national team compete live, outside the US. In general, except for the Steelers, I don’t get that emotionally invested in cheering for a team. I root for the US because I’m American and I do love my country, but I usually just want to see a good match and the best team on that day win. I don’t go wild with passion, and in most of the major sports that “we” care about, the US is favored to win anyway and usually does and in everything else it’s easy enough not to care about the result because really, who cares who got the gold in luge and if it was Moldavia, well good for them.



The Tuscan countryside as seen from Ciciano, our third city of the day, and another fine example of a medieval, Tuscan hill-town.

But on this particular Friday, I think I finally understood what athletes mean when they talk about being so proud to play for their country and to wear the national uniform. At the start, it wasn’t just the national anthem being played, it was MY national anthem being played for MY team and MY country. And at the start, I assumed the US would win easily. I kept waiting for them to run away with it, but as the match carried on and the crowd went from neutral and relatively uninvolved to partisan and actively against the US, I could feel myself growing defensive, as if the win or loss reflected on me as an American personally and on the country generally. It became imperative to win, both so I could walk out of the building with pride and so “we” could shut all those people cheering against “us” up. And we did win and their disappointment and my joy felt good. It served them right! America is the best. And then Tuesday night, the US lost 1-3 to Italy in the next round, but I didn’t even watch the match so I really didn’t care. How fast it all changed. How fickle the fan.


I’ve got a doozy of a cold right now. Everything hurts. I leave for Istanbul on Saturday morning so I’m drinking honey and lemon, gargling salt water and pounding aspirin in the hope that I’ll be right as rain for the trip. Sean is in Egypt now. If you’re on Facebook, you can see him in front of the pyramids. Next week, you will be able to see us in Istanbul, a good three weeks or so before I will finally get around to posting about the trip I’m sure.

Roma is not pulita

You’re going to have to be patient with me and this introduction. We’ll get to the point eventually but we’re going to take the long way there. Or just skip to the next paragraph to get on with it. After I had finished writing post, I happened to be reading an article that was discussing how the format of a post to Facebook (video, image, text) impacts the audience response rate. The conclusions aren’t terribly surprising, an image post beats video and text, video beats text (if we could find a way for text to beat image we would have a new rock, paper, scissors) but it convinced me to add an image to this post (which was previously all text) so that it could be all that it could be. See, I told you we would get there.

For the regular followers of this blog (read: my mother. Hi Mom!) you’ll remember that I mentioned last week that I was going to Rome for the weekend to see my friend Slate. He had been on a multi-day bike tour across Italy (he actually rode through Ancona last Friday) and was spending the night in Rome on Saturday before flying back to Portland on Sunday. On Wednesday this week he was in Las Vegas at Interbike. The week before he was in Italy riding his bike up a mountain pass. Now he’s staring at Vegas’ take on Rome in Caesar’s. Cool.

Well I try to be blasé about it, casually saying, “Went to Rome for the weekend,” but I still felt pretty giddy getting off the train on Saturday afternoon. I mean, I wake-up Saturday morning, get on a train, ecco, I'm in Rome. Rome! I was talking to a friend of mine who lived there for a while a few years back (Hi Olivia!) and her take the desire to return and the simple pleasure to be taken in being there pretty much summarizes my giddiness.

I have been thinking of Rome a lot lately. I am not sure why. Maybe I am dreaming about it because I know I can’t go there anytime soon. Maybe it’s because I am so curious to see how and what I feel about it now, years later. I want to go back to Trastevere and walk the cobblestone streets. I want to go back to the Villa Borghese and sit on the benches and eat my gelato. I want to go back and sit in Piazza Navona next to the fountains and stare at the tourists aimlessly wandering by. I want to have drinks and a pizza at the tourist cafe that was right around the corner from my old apartment next to the Vatican. I want to walk up the hill to my old school and bitch the entire way about how hot it is. I want to fall asleep in bed listening to the incessant buzz of the motorinos.

He was late getting to the hotel. If we had been meeting in Gresham, I would have been bummed. But killing a few hours in Rome is pretty easy to do. I spent the time wandering around some of my favorite parts of the city, having a gelato outside the walls of the Vatican, and watching the nuns and priests walk across St. Peter's square. I love seeing nuns and priests in St. Peter’s square. They seem like props, like Mickey Mouse and Goofy at Disneyland.

When Slate arrived I showed him around Rome a bit (yup, I am familiar enough with Rome now that I can show someone around) and then we had drinks at a little bar within view of the Castel Sant’Angelo. Just hanging out watching the sun set behind the Vatican while having some wine. Ho hum.

Saturday night we went to Trastevere, the district in Rome trying its best to be like Alberta, and had dinner at a tiny restaurant. While we were waiting for our table, three girls walked up to take a look at the menu. I overheard (it wasn’t very hard) one of them loudly declare, "There are enough restaurants in Rome that I am NOT going to eat at one with English on the menu." Fair enough. I've been guilty of sporting the same attitude. Joke's on her though, and I wonder how often the joke has been on me, because a friend of mine who lives in Rome had recommended the place as one of the top restaurants in Trastevere and it's about as authentically Roman and Italian as you can get and we were the only tourists in there by the time we were seated. Cue ridiculous feelings of smug superiority. Also cue giant smile remembering the plate of roasted potatoes and the bowl of Polpette della Nonna. Seriously tasty. Back at the hotel we snarked about the silliness of single beds in twin rooms in European hotels. Yet somehow we both slept through the night and didn't fall out of them. Go figure.

Sunday, Slate left at 9 for his flight back to 'Merica and I sat on a bench in Villa Borghese and watched the people in the park and listened to the street musicians. Just another Sunday in the park in Rome. I had some amazing pizza from a place beneath the Spanish Steps which looked too touristy to be good but proved me totally wrong (I'm sensing a theme here...) and then took a hot, crowded, slow, crowded, hot, slow train (and crowded) back to Ancona. And that's what a weekend in Rome can look like.

I’ve mentioned my new roommate Simone? The vet. From Montova in Lombardia. We’ll just refer to him as Simone from now on, shall we? Our ongoing adventures in communication are fun. By fun I mean it’s fun trying to explain the flavor of ginger or why there is a name for blondes and brunettes but not for women with black hair. (In case you were wondering it’s so that blonde jokes can exist.) The Italian word for clean is pulita which I confuse in my mind with polluted in English because they sound the same. The word for dirty is sporco. I finally got that clear in my mind when I put my pile of dirty dishes on top of the clean ones he had just washed because Simone said they were puliti. (By the way, never refer to a girl as sporca because it’s REALLY rude.) And I keep calling cold water calda because those two words sound similar even though calda means hot. I’m told Italians have the same problem going in the opposite direction which is some consolation. That is, if you take consolation from knowing you make the same mistakes as everyone else.

The grocery store I frequent, as well as the daily farmer’s market, don’t sell chilis, but the farmer that Valentina buys all her vegetables from grows them so she occasionally brings me two or three since she knows I like spicy food, or at least I miss being able to eat if I’m in the mood. Sauté them whole in a bit of olive oil before adding onions and tomatoes and they make for the perfect heat level in sauce. Now if I can just find some fresh cilantro (coriandolo) I will have everything I need to make salsa and Raimondo's and Simone's heads will pop if I shove a bowl of chips and salsa in front of their maws. But finding cilantro is harder than you think it would be for a plant that is native to Italy. That surprised me too. I assumed it was from Mexico. It's not. I looked it up. The Roman soldiers are responsible. They spread it during their conquering and empire building. They would mix it with other spices and vinegar to rub on meat as flavoring and a preservative. But now, cilantro, indigenous, is "not typical" and seldom used in Italian cooking while tomatoes, unindigenous, are considered "typical" and always used. Today she brought me this bunch of fiery fellas.


This is the photo that makes this an image post which makes it more effective.
I left them sitting on the other desk in the office and promptly forgot all about them. A couple hours later my nose was running, there was a slight burn in the back of my throat, my eyes were stinging but I couldn’t figure out what was going on. That’s when I realized I’d mace’d myself! Because I’m a genius.

Hot, Sexy Teenage Girls & Beer & Justin Bieber

This post has nothing to do with anything in that headline. Except Mr. Bieber. Nah. I admit it. I used Google bait. It’s been so long since I posted anything that I figured it would take something titillating (hee, hee, I said titillating. Hee, hee, I said it again.) in your RSS reader to get you to come back. So welcome back.

I have this thing I do that I don’t know if anyone else does. No, not that! Don’t be gross. Besides, lots of other people do that. No, what I’m talking about has to do with time. I like being able to think about where I was and what I was doing at a specific date and time in the past. When I come back from a vacation and am sitting in my office again I get a kick out of thinking, “A week ago I was swimming in a pool at my friend’s house in Barcelona.” I know right where I was at 12:21pm on December 21, 1973. In a hospital room near 60th and Belmont in southeast Portland. I’ve seen the actual room. My dad took me there on my 18th birthday, just before we went to lunch and just after he’d dropped me off at a shrink. Weird birthday perhaps, but memorable.

Where was I? Oh yeah, time and place and space and all that. Ok, so birthdays are an obvious example. But. I have the pictures I took during the month I spent in Chamonix organized in separate folders by date. (I know that throws a light on my more anal, compulsive side but we’re not talking about that right now are we? Try to keep up!) Now I can go back though and remember that trip in the context of the continuum of time. It’s not just a trip that happened in March of 2009. It’s directly relatable to the present time. Every March 30th from now until I start forgetting my own name I can think about getting on the cable car to snowboard down the Vallée Blanche and with the time stamps get even more specific than that. While staring at a computer screen I can think to myself, “Two years ago today at this exact time I was standing at the top of the Vallée Blanche run,” or whatever. I get a kick out of that.


Valentina made me this cake to celebrate today.
Which leads me to today. Exactly a year ago today, 16 September, at around 12:30pm, I was stepping off the plane at the Ancona airport, dazed, cautiously optimistic that my luggage was soon to join me, and desperate to not to be a total disaster. Weird priorities I know. Up until today, I could say, “At this time a year ago I was in Portland.” But now, the story can start with me being in Italy. That’s pretty cool. One year. Italy.

I’ve been in Italy for a year. Mamma mia.

Valentina and I have a running argument that deals with a whole bunch of things (it rivals the Lincoln vs. Douglas debates in both its historic importance and intellectual sophistication) but basically boils down to Italy vs. the USA. Valentina is stubborn. Like a mule. The Italian word for stubborn is Valentina, as in, “Tu sei così Valentina!” also ”testardo come un mulo”. They’re synonyms. That’s a joke. She won’t laugh. She has a terrible sense of humor. Also a joke! I on the other hand am not stubborn. I’m magnanimous and open-minded. Really! That’s another joke. But the point of the argument is that we go back and forth with each other, each trying to prove to the other that our respective country, culture, food, music, food, energy policy, movies, food are obviously superior to the others.

Valentina recently returned from a holiday in Spain. As we were talking about her trip, I realized she was interpreting a lot of her experiences through the lens of how she is accustomed to and familiar with the way things are done, and done “right” or “better”, in Italy. “X is better” or “The way they do X in Spain is so strange” or “Why do they insist on doing X?” (I don’t know what X is either. Solve for X and get back to me.) What was fascinating is how much like me she sounded. I’ve spent the past year relating to and reacting to Italy through the lens of my Portland life. Obviously. But that filter is what starts a lot of our “debates” and it was fascinating to hear my words coming out of her mouth and gain that perspective. I’ve also noticed that I spend a lot less time comparing things here to the way they are in Portland and thinking that “they really should try doing it this way, it would be so much better”. My impression of life here has been to a large part informed by my tendency to relate to it in terms of how it’s different from “normal”, the normal I’m used to. I still do it a lot but I’m spending much less time experiencing things by how they are different and instead just experiencing things by how they are. And that’s about as far down this road we can go before my former philosophy professor gives this paper another “F” and tells me my ideas are terrible and please try again.

I thought I was just going to write about how I miss Portland but how much fun I’m having and instead I’ve dwelled on the continuum of time and Abraham Lincoln. Less gelato after work, more fruit.

I do miss Portland, a lot. All the time. And my family and friends and English. Especially English. I sat through the MTV Music Awards the other night just because it was so nice to hear English coming out of the TV. And I appreciate everyone who takes the time to keep in touch, say hello and share the news and send some peanut butter. Your kindness and generosity mean the world to me. And also make me miss Portland. So cut it out!

And how is Italy? Just before I left Portland a year ago I was freaking out, but in a really calm, suave way. I knew it was going to be overwhelming, but I way underestimated the sheer volume of whelming. It completely erased any traces of suave I may have brought with me. Getting to the point of being reasonably whelmed took the first few months and as I look back they are a blur. (Lucky for me I have my folders of pictures. See?) I knew the two years would go quickly but still, it was two years. That’s sort of like learning you’re pregnant (yeah!) and then hearing you’ll be having twins (yikes!). Amazing, joyous news, but a little overwhelming and hard to process. It’s enough to make your eyes roll back in your head and your world turn black if you think about it too hard. Two. Years. That’s plenty of time to do everything without rushing around. Right? But now one year has passed. And after today, each time I think about it, I’ll think I have a little less of that year remaining. That’s hardly any time at all! And I still have lots I want to do. Freak out! Ahhhhhh!

Reading this you could be forgiven for thinking I’ve decided to move back to Portland after my two year contract ends. The truth is, I haven’t decided at all and won’t make a decision until next spring but that doesn’t mean I’m not still using my two year timeframe as a point of reference. I don’t know what’s going to happen. And until I eat some pizza in Napoli I won’t make a decision. (Shhh, don’t tell my brother, but if he decides to come to Italy, we’re going to Napoli for pizza and to have our wallets stolen. It’s a secret though.)

The question I get asked the most is: How is your Italian? (That’s not the question I get asked the most but I’m telling you that it is because I’m tired of avoiding answering the actual question I get asked the most.)

Answer: Bene. (That’s Italian for good.)

Listen. Considering when I first arrived I had to write down a script just so I could order prosciutto from the deli at the grocery store and now I know all I have to do is ask Valentina to go with me to the tabaccheria so she can ask for my stamps or to recharge my phone for me (so I don’t have to write down notes, get it?) I would say I’m doing pretty well. To borrow a line from David Sedaris who wrote an excellent story about his struggles to learn a new language: Me talk pretty one day.

I speak fluent survival Italian. I speak terrible Italian Italian. I have a new roommate and he doesn’t speak much English which means if we want to communicate I have to speak Italian, and I speak enough Italian now that we have been talking and getting to know each other. Imagine that. I managed to travel with a friend around Italy for a week without causing an international incident. I laugh AT jokes now not WITH them just because everyone else has started laughing. Unless they are at my expense, which they usually are since I’m the funny American and then I just go to my default state which is to pretend I don’t know Italian. So it’s coming along. My Italian tutor said if she can make me fluent by the end of my second year here I have to stay for five years. I wasn’t sure if that was motivating or demotivating.

This has been a year of incredible adventures and the very rare misadventure. In truth, I can really only think of the adventures. (There was that incident with some pasta I made that drove my roommates from the kitchen…) For that I would like to thank the Academy, my parents, the director, my fellow cast members and anyone else involved. If I forgot anyone, you know who you are and how important you are to me and I thank you too. I guess I could name some of the highlights but I wouldn’t want to make the other lights jealous.

There is a trip to Siena that I will write about soon and this weekend I will be in Rome with Slate who promised to bring me more peanut butter. Next month I will be meeting up with Sean in Istanbul for a few days and I’ll be in Sevilla for New Years to visit Raimondo (he’s moving there at the end of the month for a new job). There is a rumor, much like the first snow flurry of winter, seen but unsure if it will stick, that a return trip to Ischgl is in the offing. My renewed permesso was delivered this week which means I can continue to live here. So I have Italy’s permission to stay and lots to look forward to. I’m excited to experience it all, beyond blessed to have this opportunity, and continuously mindful to take full advantage of the situation while it lasts, even if sometimes I prefer just to sit on my terrace and watch old Lost episodes. That’s plenty of naval gazing for now. Back to my regular gazing next time.

I wonder what Eric is doing right now. (Just kidding!)

Celsius, KM, San Michele Beach

The first part of this past week has been great. The heat finally gave way for a bit and it felt human again. The humidity was gone, there was a constant ocean breeze and the temperatures were a good 7 to 10 degrees cooler (and that's in Celsius which means something but I'm still figuring out the conversion). Then on Wednesday the humidity came back along with rain clouds. Humidity and rain are a lousy combination.

Speaking of Celsius, it's odd to have swimming pools under your arms and feel the moist drip of sweat slide down your back when the thermometer says 35. Thirty-five? Shouldn't it be snowing instead of the tarmac turning soft? While the temperature conversion continues to confuse me, I have made peace with the rest of the metric system. Sort of.

For distance, I've just decided that kilometers and miles, for all intents and purposes, will now be the the same thing. This works in my favor when a trip is, say, 500 kilometers, but only takes 3.5 hours. It's frankly terrifying though when you see the speedometer and you're doing 150 per hour in a Panda.

The metric system is fun in the kitchen. Most people have never heard of a measuring cup here as everyone has a scale and goes by weight. A quarter cup of sugar - using what size cup? I like it though. Makes me feel scientific. It also makes cooking pasta a breeze. Just weigh it. A typical serving is 80-110 grams per person. Done. But how much Parmesan should I add to the pesto? About a handful. And how much water should I add to the bean soup mix? A good amount, you know, enough.

Where was I? Oh yes, we were talking about my trip to the beach last weekend, or we were going to.



That's San Michele in Sirolo which is just a few kilometers/miles from Ancona. Going to the beach on the weekend is almost a formal requirement during the summer. I'm becoming more of a fan although I am not crazy about it which means it's just one more thing to be added at the bottom of the now quite long list of things my friends think are wrong with me. I'm trying hard to get more into the spirit but while they can spend six or seven hours at a stretch, the novelty wears off for me after a couple of hours. They are beach camels. Or whatever is something that is a good example of something that can do something for a long time. I am a fan of the rock beaches over the sand ones because I thought it would solve the whole "sand in the you know what" problem. Turns out you can also have a "small rocks in the you know what" problem which is kind of bizarre.

Sirolo is part of the Italian Riviera and survives mainly by what it earns from tourists in the summer. It's also a Blue Flag beach which is a cool program that started in Europe and is now spreading globally and basically means the beach is clean, accommodating to all, organized and well-run.


An Italian Lincoln City
The government owns the land but in the more popular spots, they lease it to companies who then rent the beach to visitors. You pay by the hour for a beach chair and/or umbrella and if you don't you can't stay in those areas. Not everywhere is like this and there are still places where you can drop towel and enjoy the beach for free.

To reach San Michele, we parked in the city center (and we found free parking!) and then hiked a couple of kilometers down a cliff through woods filled with pine trees.


It looks like a long way to the beach but remember, those are kilometers!
It was unsettling to smell pine in warm weather instead of Christmas but it was amazing. It's a rather steep, dusty track down to the beach, and there were cicadas in the trees making their racket. It was hot but in the trees there was a constant breeze that made it lovely. It all just screamed summer and by the time we made it down to the beach our feet were filthy, we were hot and a little winded and there was nothing to do but plunk down our kit and dash into the water. Most of the day was spent in the water floating and wrinkling. We had a picnic for lunch and then walked down the beach in the late afternoon for gelato. I got burnt but good. Being that I am brilliant, the night before I had frozen a bottle of water so I had that to drink all day as it melted. Delicious cold water.

They say nothing makes you as hungry or as tired as a day spent at the beach. "They" in this case being Valentina. For dinner we went to a pizzaria in Sirolo that only has outdoor tables. Just the bar and kitchen are inside. It's opens for the summer tourist season and does all the business it can before shuttering the rest of the year. There is a covered patio and a huge garden with tables nestled in amongst the shrubbery. It's really a very nice setting. The pizza was divine too. Thick, like Naples, and cooked in a wood oven. It's a party every weekend night as the town works to get as much money as they can during the season. Stores are open late, the piazza is full of entertainers, outdoor bars, vendors, etc. It's an amazing scene.

Compleano di Massi

There was a Festa della Sangria held last Friday in a village called Belvedere Ostrense which besides great local food, overly sweet and hang-over inducing sangria, and a DJ playing Latin dance music, was incredibly entertaining yet mostly unremarkable except for the incongruous pairing of a Latin themed Sangria festival being held in a small Italian village. No one else seemed to notice so I just went with it. It was me, Massi, Lorenza and Stefania and we met Lorenzo (who was giving a performance with his dance class) and his wife Veronica (amazing dancer). A long, very late summer night with lots of happy people, plenty of food and some sangria (wait, flip that) and too much dancing.


What wasn't incongruous was Saturday, 17 July, my friend Massi's birthday. To celebrate, he set-up a dinner at a local restaurant and then afterwards we all went dancing at the Passetto at a recurring party that happens every couple of weeks during the summer called "Passetto On The Rocks".

So after a big seafood dinner including (let's see if I can remember everything) raw octopus salad, salmon sashimi, muscles, snails, sardines in lemon and oil, cooked octopus, spaghetti with clam sauce, chitarra pasta with shrimp, grilled seafood platters, french fries and crema catalana we walked to the Passetto where there were two parties going on with separate DJs. The beach at the Passetto is rock, not sand and there are also a lot of large boulders forming a harbor for swimming. One the rocks there were also bars serving beer and cocktails. So, get it: Passetto On The Rocks? Not a bad double-entendre, no?

Eating dinner on the roof of the restaurant as the summer sun set, surrounded by many of the new friends I've made since moving here, and then going down to the beach for a gigantic, outdoor party - with only minor variations it could have been a birthday party in Portland, but as it was, it made me think about and miss the friends I have back home but also appreciate and realize how blessed I am for the new friends and the experiences I am having here.

And what can't and shouldn't be said with words can be summed up with this little number HERE.