Some assorted thoughts

The other night, a big group of us went to eat at “Il Ducale,” which is just around the corner from our hotel. In the evenings, the restaurant sets up tables on the small piazza of the church next to it, and we chose the outdoor dining. It’s been so hot during the day, and only becomes slightly cooler at night. Because I had forgotten to eat lunch that day (it was simply too hot to think of eating), I ordered, and ate, an entire pizza con mozzarella di bufola, a cheese that apparently comes from really big, black cows, not bison. It’s very soft, and has a stronger flavor than regular mozzarella. There were also thick slices of grape tomatoes. I don’t know how the Italians do it, but somehow they’ve managed to figure out how to cook a tomato without losing is juiciness. If I find out, I’ll let you know.

After dinner, we decided to take an evening stroll down Via Santo Stefano, one of the main streets. Such a beautiful night, and in one of the piazzas there was an outdoor concert. I had one of those “am I really here?!” moments. This also confirmed my decision to live in this part of town.

A little further on, however, this strange guy approached us, saying he was from Utah…now, you and I both know that no one is actually from Utah, and if they were, they wouldn’t be in Europe. Sketchy! We got away from him quickly, especially as one of the girls said that he’d been following us for a while. We got back to the hotel with no problems.

Today, we got up rather early to go to the post office to formally apply for our permessi di soggiorno, which will allow us to stay in Italy for an extended period of time. Bureaucracy. It’s everywhere. On our way back to the BCSP office, I saw something which was even stranger than the graffitied picture of Dexter on the garage facing the hotel: it was this old man wearing a Notre Dame Irish t-shirt! Forgetting all the rules about not making eye contact with Italian men and being respectful to those older than you, I ran up to the guy and told him I went to school there. I must of caught him off-guard, because he just responded, “Brava” and continued walking. But wow. It is a small world, after all.

Speaking of Italian men, what they say is true. They are beautiful, they do dress well, and they very openly admire the women passing. There have been some cat calls, some whistles, and lots of up-downs. But, as my friend Rodolfo put it, if you know you’re in a country where the men act that way, wouldn’t it be worse if they ignored you? Clara and I have found a couple ways to mitigate this attention. One is to wear sunglasses. Then you can look at people without fear of your glance being taken the wrong way. The other is to walk like an Italian woman, which can be summed up like this: walk, thinking “I am so much better than ALL of you.”

Anyway, today felt long because for most of it I was absentmindedly searching apartments postings online while waiting for my 3:00 appointment. We finally decided to take a walk, and Clara and I discovered a giant outdoor market near the Montagnola gardens. They were selling clothes and shoes and accessories and plants and towels and curtains and jewelry and did I mention the shoes? We decided that we’ll return after we have moved into our apartments and have room to put all that stuff. What we did buy today were our planners. After looking at three or four cartolerie (stationery shops) to find ones that we were used to from the States, we realized that we wanted something really Italian. So now I have this inch-thick, hardcover book with one page for each day. The interesting thing is, it’s all graph paper! Italians use graph paper for everything. They don’t stay in the lines when writing, but they like to have them nonetheless.