Clogged.
Stymied.
Thwarted.
I can't speak and I can't write.
Everything feels muddled. Muddy.
But perhaps I've muddled it all and my lethargy boils down to the heat.
Making everything muggy.
Giuseppe's mother bought gluten-free flour and tried to make a pizza for me the other night.
It was a catastrophe (and no, I'm not catastrophizing. Then gluten-free flour actually ruined her handy-dandy pizza oven). The bottom of the crust was partially black and the top of mostly raw. Margarita looked crestfallen as she motioned for me to just eat the toppings.
"Sensa-glutine farina no buono per pizza. Multo dificile," I tried to make her feel better about the many-textured crust, exercising EVERY bit of Italian I know (and improvising a bit).
"No buono, no buono," Margarita muttered as she puttered back to the devastated pizza maker.
She tried to prepare normal pizzas for Giuseppe and Tony, but it was too late. The gluten-free flour had wrought its evil curse on the rest of the pizzas.
"This has never happened before," Giuseppe said as he tried to peel tinfoil off the bottom of his crust, causing all the mozzarella and sausages to avalanche onto the plate.
This is a funny thing that inevitably transpires everywhere I go. People assume that I would prefer to eat the way they do, so they generously go far out of their way to purchase gluten-free bread and gluten-free pasta and gluten-free flour... when really all I want to eat is dairy, veggies and meat (Felix's dumplings are the exception to this rule). I'm quite content with the mozzarella and the tomatoes -- no need to put it on a crust. No need to stuff me full of patates and riso and all that carby goodness. I'd much rather live off of insalata and carne and formaggio, grazie mille.
Southern Italy.
I don't even know where to start when it comes to describing you. You've left me so damn disoriented with your noise, noise, noise.
With your heat.
With your constant stream of "Aimee, gelato?" "Aimee, cafe?" "Aimee, MANGIA!"
With your extreme emphasis on family life and community. Everyone knows everyone in the villages neighboring Reggio Calabria, swear to skinny Jesus. This probably has something to do with the fact that Southern Italians don't move from casa to casa nearly as often as midwestern Americans (or at all), so like it or not, the family next door is there to stay.
When I enter a Turkish home, I take off my shoes and leave them outside or in a designated area in what Americans would call the "mudroom".
When I enter an Italian home, people apologize to me if they're not wearing shoes.
"She never wears shoes," Giuseppe explains to them in Italian. "It doesn't matter where. Mountains, home, outside -- never wears shoes."
Giuseppe tells me that I will grow a shell on my feet. I tell him that a shell is nicer than shoes.
In Colorado, we honk if we're a) annoyed that someone cut us off b) a driver doesn't know how to merge properly and c) to avoid accidents. One hand is generally on the wheel and the other is out the window (I usually drove with one arm and one foot out the window. I don't drive anymore).
In Southern Italy, one drives with one hand on the stick and the other hand on the wheel. Southern Italians have also evolved an invisible hand that manages to switch between holding the phone, snapping on the seat belt, changing the music and honking at every single car driving on the road (and the people walking/jogging on the side). There's so much honking in Italy. People honk to say hello and to let other drivers know that they're coming around particularly treacherous corners. As everyone knows everyone and every other corner is treacherous (and I'm being generous in this assessment), the honking never stops.
Southern Italians are much shorter than their northern counterparts. In the north, there's a heavier Germanic influence. In the south, there's a heavier Arabic influence.
Margarita asked me a question that nearly startled my socks all the way into next year (they were surprised to find themselves back in Slovenia).
(in Italian)
"Aimee, is your mother tall like you or short like me?"
Ummm... did someone just refer to me as "tall"? I want this on record. When I visit Maud in Holland, I can tell her that Southern Italy made me TALL.
I haven't been so surprised since a boy I was dating in Grand Junction told me I was a good driver (he must not have noticed my foot out the window).
Southern Italy.
You're so festive. Music festivals, art shows, film festivals.
Each village seems to get one, and you've got a lot of villages. And a lot of your villages are complete with fortress/ruined castle, so you have some pretty great locations for your abundance of festivities.
Mushrooms.
You have SO many mushrooms.
You also have a large population of old men who enjoy mushroom hunting (and are far better at finding mushrooms than I am).
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| It took me two hours to find these guys. With help. |
As in the Balkans, the majority of people own their homes in Southern Italy. This gives them much more freedom to take artistic liberties with the walls. I would have loved to make random paintings like this happen on the walls of all the apartments we rented in my youth.
Calabria. You are very proud of your sea view. Whilst most commoners simply get the sea, you get the sea and Sicily. Go you.
The television. You love your television almost as much as you love your espresso. It lives in the dining room of every Italian family, seldom sleeps, and has about as many unfortunate shows as I witnessed in Turkey.
"It's a Mediterranean thing," Giuseppe shrugged.
Southern Italy. You have perfect coffee cups. They're big and round and fit in my plump palms like they were made for them. They make British teacups look like the lightweights they really are.
If my psoriasis wasn't raging out of control, I would drink coffee with milk for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Just so I could enjoy holding your cups.
Giuseppe's workshop occupies one of the many empty rooms of the Zema house.
As of late, he's been building and selling fruit dryers for families to utilize the parched climate to preserve their tomatoes and mushrooms and other delicious Mediterranean produce. As I experienced in Rovigo back in 2011, Italians are masters of the dying art of growing and preserving their own food.
Giuseppe is exploiting this phenomenon and spends a good deal of his afternoons hammering away in his workshop. But regardless of the amount of time he spends, making actual money is proving to be challenging.
"We are not good at business in Southern Italy," he said after he told me that he was making a fruit dryer for his friend's mother (for free).
Everyone knows everyone and people don't charge the people they know.
Pyramid businesses would not fare well in this country...
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| View from Giuseppe's workshop |
My friend toured me around the coast and city center of Reggio Calabria. I asked about second-hand shops where I could purchase something yellow or something blue to wear to my friend's wedding in October, and he told me I'd do better to try my luck in Barcelona.
"We don't like to wear those things here."
"What do you do with old clothes, then?"
"We throw them out."
Not a good place for vagabonds... I thought as I stared at the unreal on sale price tags. Guess style is very important to people in this part of the world. My poor hairy legs feel quite out of place.
One of the many festivals took place in the gorgeous mountain village of Bova. As Giuseppe is doing his best to be an excellent host (even though he's still struggling with his health), he drove me and an old friend from Rome to enjoy a night in Bova.
We took road less-traveled on the way in.
I thought the panda would rattle into bits and pieces and we'd be stuck on the mountainside with all the mountain goats for days.
We stopped at the ruins of Castello Ruffo for a scenic detour.
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| fichi d'india. Giuseppe's favorite fruit. I prefer plain fichi, but fichi d'india is a suitable substitute. |
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| "Pronto." |
This was the most terrifying road I've ever been on.
And girl's been through Albania.
One of the main positives about being on such a ghastly road was that a) the scenery was spectacular and b) no one else was on it.
Other than random flocks of goats.
The festival in Bova was my favorite experience in Calabria thus far. I didn't take pictures because I fail at using my camera in low-light, but the ancient Griko speaking village was stunning.
"Could you live here for a month?" Giuseppe teased, knowing that my answer would be an enthusiastic,
"YES. I could definitely live here for a month."
Old stone buildings. Magical streetlamps. Benches for views. Tiny, cobbled streets. Cheese, cheese, cheese. Mountain air and festive vibes.
What more could I want?
An exploding donkey.
U Ballu du Camiddu.
I felt myself drifting off around midnight. All the gelato and espresso have (once again) wreaked havoc on my health --
why can't I learn? Why won't I let myself be healthy?
-- and my back was in so much pain that I could barely breathe.
Like Margarita's gluten-free crust, I am not catastrophizing. I was really, truly hurting.
Why do I have to keep sabotaging myself like this?
"We can go after the donkey dance," Giuseppe told his friend and me. "I want you to see that."
The donkey dance? Sounds... exciting?
"It'll really wake you up," the friend from Rome supplied in her limited English.
When Giuseppe said there was a donkey dance, I imagined something like the Italian version of the hokey pokey. I did not imagine a man strutting around a circle wearing a fireproof suit and holding an exploding donkey/camel costume.
Watch this youtube video: DONKEY DANCE
It woke me up.
Moral of the story. If you're in Southern Italy and your host advises you to hang in there until the donkey dance, hold your horses and wait for the exploding donkey.
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