How Little We Know

I can't resist commenting on the cultural differences that leave me astounded and often helpless as I trek through this strange new world. There will be more, I am sure.

Toilets have no seats--ladies, think about every time you have drunkenly sat on a toilet seat that some inconsiderate male before you has forgotten to put back down. You know that sensation that you're about to fall in? Now imagine that every time you go to use the loo. Terrifying. Sorry Mom, but those super handy toilet seat covers you insisted I bring need actual seats in order to be useful. But they do make beautiful origami swans.

On the upside, every restroom has a bidet! Just kidding that that is an upside. I cannot for the life of me figure out how they are used. Even less so do I have the desire to. I am certain, based upon the way they are structured, I would only succeed in squirting the water everywhere but where it is meant to go and ruining yet another pair of pants. But the mental image of people using them is worth it.

You can park anywhere you like--meaning on the sidewalks or facing opposing traffic. You can even stop your car in the middle of driving it down the street, with no warning to drivers behind you in traffic, if you suddenly decide that you absolutely cannot CONTINUE without an espresso right at that moment. The resulting chaos is no concern of yours.

You can smoke hash anywhere--all right, those of you who live in Venice Beach probably believe that this is already being done. But I don't mean covertly, while your eyes dart to and fro on the lookout for roving cops, and a weed-induced paranoia destroys your high. I mean, you can smoke it while dining on the patio at an outdoor cafe, while sitting at the dinner table when you're invited to dinner, while on the job at the local restaurant in town (in the back room, where I assume they believe the smoke will remain unnoticed by the patrons). I have yet to discover if you can roll a joint in broad daylight. But if I had to venture a guess...

Stoplights and stop signs are a nuisance--And in some places, like Napoli, they actually seem to be optional. Drivers also must score extra points for mowing down pedestrians. The irony is that there don't seem to be any traffic accidents. Maybe because the drivers aren't talking to their agents, while checking emails on their blackberry, while being consumed with the mistaken belief that they are the only person on the road who has somewhere important to be. A funny thing also is that you can drive your Vespa on the sidewalk, which I don't think is really allowed, since the drivers always seem to be in the WORLD'S BIGGEST HURRY to get back on the road. However, this makes scoring extra points for vehicular manslaughter exponentially more likely.

Sinks in public restrooms are operated by foot peddle--this was very confusing for me. In the States, when a faucet has no handle, you assume its one of those fancy automatic ones. Which, on more than one occasion, has left me with sticky, soapy hands waving frantically at an imaginary sensor, and desperately trying to determine how to say in Italian, "how do you make the sink work?" without feeling like the world's most pathetic idiot. Fortunately, I have discovered the secret of the foot peddle. Which in truth, makes a lot more sense if you are attempting to conserve water than the auto sensor sinks which seem to never actually be able to sense your hands, and the auto flush toilets that flush AT LEAST a hundred times during one pee.

Elevators require you to feed the meter--THIS was amazing to me. I stood in the elevator for a full two minutes until I realized that nothing was going to happen, at which point I noticed a machine on the wall with instructions written only in Italian. Fortunately, after a month here, I know how to deduce when something is asking me to insert 10 cents. But what about tourists who come for a week and know nothing? How do they survive?! Nevermind if you are laden with luggage and your hostel happens to be on the 7th floor. Or if, as happened to me, you have barely managed to drag your ragged, exhausted, having walking 500 miles all over Naples self to the elevator, dreaming of siesta, only to discover that within the 3 pounds of euro coins you have lugged around all day, you have not one single 10 cent piece. I mean really.

It ain't kosher--If you have an aversion to pork, you might as well cross a visit to Italy off your list of things to do before you die right this instant. In Italy, pig is the drug of choice. I have to laugh when I go to order a panino and my choices are mortadella, proscuitto, parma, or salame, all of which are kinds of pork. In many restaurants you can get myriad types of pasta in wild boar sauce. I am certain that animal-flavored sauces are something that I have not yet worked up to. Especially when we're talking swine sauce. And don't think you can escape the pork police by ordering fruit--your pineapple will come draped in delicate layers of...you guessed it, pork! Before I had even noticed this trend, I stopped and took the accompanying picture because I thought it was so funny that a store that specialized in making ceramic miniatures of things--people, elves, wee villages--had an entire bowl of tiny ceramic hamhocks.

Things That Make You Go Hmmm...

Would anyone like to venture a guess as to what this means? Note the pervy expression on the duck's face before forming your conclusion.

The Philosophy of Affection

Palermo is an electric city—gritty, raw, and frenzied. As with Naples, it was love at first sight for me because it evokes everything that there is to love about New York. It stands in stark contrast to Syracuse, the sleepy seaside town, recently reconstructed and thusly pristine; a town that so profoundly appealed to my peace-seeking, introspective side. In Palermo, on the other hand, I knew the party girl in me would have no shortage of entertainment.

Unfortunately, constantly moving to a new city every few days, sporting bruised shoulders caused by a heavy backpack, and having no time for the important things (like writing) or the mundane (like doing laundry), wears on you eventually. And it was here, in the city with the most exciting “to do” list that I hit that wall.

The night I arrived, it was already dark and raining, and I succeeded only in having my worst meal yet (see "Beef Feet" post) before bedtime. The following day, the allure of free wi-fi in the privacy of my room kept me in doors until lunchtime, when I was forced to go do laundry by the prospect of not wearing any underwear for the next few days. Which, as a point of fact, is all the motivation I need. I was annoyed to discover that my tiny pile of clothing would cost 10 euro to wash and dry and that the restaurant next door that proclaimed “Pizzeria” on the sign, was out of pizza, which was all I was in the mood for. Add to that the fact that I was being especially timid with my Italian today, so everyone was looking at me as if I was speaking Martian. By the time lunch and laundry were completed, it was siesta and all the tourist sights that I particularly wanted to see were closed. Having reached my aggravation threshold, I resolved that the only thing that would make me feel better was a giant bottle of beer and an even larger bag of homemade Sicilian pastries. Armed with these items, I went back to bed.

Come evening, however, I knew that a cabin-fever induced leap off my third story balcony was impending. I cheered myself up with the idea to go on a citywide search of a few specific Sicilian delicacies I especially wanted to try. I would set out for a certain restaurant which I happened to know served one of the items and read every menu along the way, in search of the others. The restaurant with the greatest number of offerings on my list would be the winner. The location of my final destination, however, was not well researched and was therefore about a minute and a half away from my hotel. And after having traversed a very dark backalley in a city not well known for its safety, I decided I had better stay put.

Outside, there were only two diners who, within moments of my arrival, insisted I sit with them. Giovanni spoke maybe 100 words of English. Giuseppe spoke none. They had already ordered their starter and there was a mountain of mussels on their table. Mussels were not on my list, and I’ve never been terribly fond of them anyway. It wasn’t ideal. But to be truthful, I wasn’t in the mood to be alone.

Sometimes when you are forced out of your comfort zone, you make amazing discoveries. The mussels were spectacular. And when there’s absolutely no alternative, I speak pretty decent Italian. I’d say we had about 40% comprehension. Not bad considering I have never not been within shouting distance of someone who could translate. As it turned out, the guys were friends of the owners, so at any given moment we had one of them, or for that matter, any number of passing locals at our table, helping to make a dent in our prosecco. We were also joined by Marcello, the middle son of Andrea, the proprietor and namesake of the establishment. At 13, it was easy to see that Marcello will grow up to be a heartbreaker. He kept telling me how beautiful I was. In fact everyone kept talking about how beautiful everyone was. Giovanni asked again and again if I thought Marcello was “bello.” Marcello explained, completely unprovoked, that his older brother was very handsome. He also wanted to know whom I believed to be the best looking of the three of them. I whispered in his ear, that I thought he was (which was actually 100% accurate).

It occurred to me as I watched all of this unfold that affection is a tangible entity in Italy. The fact that male twenty-something’s greet one another with a gentle touching of cheeks is heart-meltingly endearing. They grab each other around the back of the neck and are simultaneously pulled into a momentary embrace. A legitimate bodily connection. None of this puffed-chest, back-slapping, pseudo-hug nonsense that a society that has yet to overcome homophobia has instilled in us as the norm. This philosophy of affection is painted all over the country like a cheerful fresco, from the couples making out with unabashed fervor on a park bench to the tender way in which children are handled. Although unrelated, Giovanni held Marcello’s face gently in his giant palm and playfully chatted with him about school. And Marcello, for his part, didn’t flinch, and was as giving of his warm hugs with Giovanni as he was with me. It felt overwhelming, this pervasive love that can capture anyone in its tantalizing net; anyone, that is, who takes the time to notice, to appreciate, and to succumb to it.

After a beautiful four-course dinner, Andrea opened a bottle of the most delicious substance I have ever tasted. It is a dessert wine called Braghetto, produced in-house and not available for sale anywhere else. Made from Muscat grapes and amarena cherries, it is sweet, make no mistake, but I could sip a small glass of this every night for the rest of my life. Without even asking the price, I insisted on buying a bottle.

Although I was clearly basking in the glow of this warm display of human nature, graciously accepting Umberto the waiter’s insistence that I spoke wonderful Italian, and nursing a glass of this sweet ambrosia, I was keenly aware of the flipside of all this loving behavior. The side that we American girls, about to embark on a solo backpacking jaunt to Italy, are repeatedly warned about. In a society where so much man-handling is the norm, clear lines never seem to be drawn in the sand about what is an acceptable amount of touching amongst strangers. The boys, who had hardly let me pay for anything, despite the fact that I had bought a bottle of wine, had already asked me to join them at the discotheque. I was loathe to get into a car with two strangers, and I made certain that our destination was not more than a short cab ride away. To be clear, it is nearly impossible to judge someone’s character when you can only understand 40% of what they are saying. So I had to decide based on other factors.

The pros: (1) They knew everyone in the restaurant, men who were terrifically kind, accommodating, and not at all creepy, and who even knocked 30 euro off the bill. (2) They also knew everyone on the street, people who seemed eager to stop with a smile and say hello. Although I suppose this could also have meant that they were drug dealers. And (3) the way they were with Marcello was so loving and gentle, and he seemed so keen on spending our entire meal with us, that I became enamored with this perceived inherent goodness.

The cons: (1) Within moments of my sitting down, Giovanni had asked if I had a boyfriend. (2) At some point he said something along the lines of I should open my home in LA to him, the way he was opening his home in Palermo to me. When I said “I don’t understand,” he said, “You don’t want to.” Hmmm.

Fast forward. Suffice it to say, I survived the evening. But not without experiencing first hand just what the can happen when this philosophy of affection kicks in to high gear. Never mind that this affection is clearly (in your perspective, anyway) unrequited. Never mind that no matter what enormous sum the man is willing to blow on yet another round of tequila shots, you are on your guard—aware of where your belongings are at all times—and how quickly you would have to run to reach the exit before he notices, so under no circumstances are you getting drunk. Never mind that you have asked everyone in the club who speaks English what they think of these guys in an attempt to save yourself if they are, indeed, the local salesmen of vital organs on the black market. Never mind that at some point it all becomes like bad slapstick when Giovanni takes your face and squeezes it like a vice so that you cannot escape his kiss, while your limbs flail like a cartoon character and you pry him off by pressing the entirety of your upper body strength into his nose—HARD—with your fist. In the States (and if it were not happening to me) this would be the making of an evening of hilarious entertainment. In Italy, no one laughs. No one even seems to notice. Perhaps they have just become immune to the sight of female tourists struggling to come up for air. But the icing on the tiramisu was that after Giovanni’s repeated amorous failings, Giuseppe, who’s baby being born that day I could swear we had been celebrating at dinner, had to try his luck. Evidently, nearly punching a friend in the nose is no deterrent for an Italian man on a mission. 

So I think it is safe to conclude that in the subject of procreation, Italian men, exhibiting no fear of humiliation, ethical obligation, or physical pain, get an “A” for effort.

Rosario Macaroni

I’m told Taormina is beautiful. Especially in the summer. And probably also in the light. I wouldn’t know because due to a little directional snafu, it was dark when I arrived, and pouring rain. Fortunately for me, the town has a wonderful little restaurant frequented by locals despite its very un-Italian name—Cafe O’Neil. The owner, Salvatore, will see to it that you try the amazing, locally produced almond wine, and perhaps, if you chat him up for a bit, even a free dessert.

Taormina also is home to an ancient Greek Amphitheatre that is also purportedly spectacular—when it’s visible. But considering that my few hours in town in the morning were spent sprinting through sheets of torrential rain, and trying to take pictures through a drop speckled lens, I wouldn’t really know. But the other thing Taormina has is Rosario Macaroni, an abundantly friendly little old man, who wouldn’t leave my side. I met him on the way to the bus and he insisted on driving me to the site of the ruins. When he turned on the car, Welcome to the Jungle sprang forth from the radio at top volume.

On route, we had to stop for a cappuccino. But we had to make it quick, because Rosario Macaroni doesn’t like to pay for permits to park legally.

Rosario spent our time together trying to get me to cancel the next leg of my trip, and offering to let me stay in his home for as long as I liked. He walked me to the ruins, so that he could hold the umbrella, which meant that I had to walk hunched over while the umbrella pressed firmly against the top of my head, or risk being decapitated by it. I finally gave up the awkward hunchbacked ambling and put on the ridiculously over-sized poncho that my mother insisted I bring. Rosario took one look at me and cracked up.

At the end of our time together, Rosario Macaroni dropped me off at the train station after sadly explaining that he was going home to cook for himself, after which he would watch tv by himself, and then go to sleep by himself. I realized that perhaps he thought his meeting me might have the potential to change all the “by himself” parts of that story. I smiled, promised to call him, and walked away wondering, yet again, if a plague wiped out every male born in Italy between 1970 and 1980.

But despite the fact that they all seem to be 20, 55 or 70, the size of their hearts is the same.

Beef Feet

In Palermo, Sicily, I had my worst Italian meal ever. I hope. I didn’t take any pictures, nor do I remember the name of the restaurant. I’m trying with all of my will to bury the memory deep within the folds of my brain, where my most embarrassing moments and most horrific illnesses also reside. A place from whence this particular moment in time will, optimistically, never reemerge.

In all fairness, it wasn’t any fault of the restaurant. They offered a three-course meal for 13 euro, and I jumped at the opportunity to have a lot of good, cheap food. For the appetizer, there were many mouth-watering offerings. But for some reason, I was feeling adventurous, and asked instead, for the chef’s choice. This caused the waiter to get curiously flustered, as he tried to explain something to me about what it entailed. The one word he said in English? Beef.

“Ah beef! Si. Mi piace.” (Ah, beef! Yes. I like it).

What arrived was an array of pickled vegetables and some strips of, I guess beef, along with a delicious eggplant involtini, and what looked suspiciously like a stuffed, rolled sardine. One of the vegetables was an unidentifiable thing, kind of an opalescent, whitish-yellow with a soft interior, like seeds inside a cucumber. I popped it into my mouth, but it was nearly impossible to chew. It had the texture of undercooked pasta—I thought maybe it was some kind of fibrous root vegetable that was, well, undercooked. Regardless, it was far from delicious.

The funny thing about my comprehension of the Italian language is that I always figure out what people are trying to tell me. About five minutes after the fact. So as I was scrutinizing the alien vegetable and thinking to myself, “Is that hair?..” it dawned on me that what my server had been saying was “piedi.” Feet. His mistake was saying, “beef,” which caused my brain to go in to English mode and disregard the rest. So I had just eaten a very large, foul-textured piece of beef foot, or cow hoof to the layman. For any of you who have ever had pickled pig’s feet, I imagine that this is quite similar. For those of you who are normal, you can understand that this was a revolting revelation. Which left me, after eating the non-alien vegetables, and the eggplant thing, with a piece of extremely fishy fish (after all, sardines are the fishiest there is) complete with skin and bones (I don’t even eat the crispy skin on chicken); the meat, which was very fatty, flavorless, and eerily tender; and a pile of hooves.

Now it was starting to sink in than in addition to saying “piedi,” the server had also been gesturing to his face. I couldn’t remember the word, but I figured it was something like “cheek,” or “tongue,” or worse, “brain.” I think I’ve had beef cheeks before, and I had tongue a few weeks ago, and it was actually quite good. But I really had reached my threshold for risk taking so I practically held my nose and slid the rest of the meat and the sardine down my throat. Mom always taught me to clean my plate. The hooves however, were not going anywhere.

My second course was mushroom ravioli in a sauce of three tomatoes. Not too scary, I figured. The three types of tomatoes appeared to be sun-dried, cherry, and heirloom. But the sauce was brown and tasted odd. I wondered if it was flavored with beef stock. And the mushrooms were pungent, and tasted almost like…fish. It was practically like eating fish ravioli in beef sauce. But perhaps I just had fish and beef on the brain.

The best part of the whole experience was the three hours of sardine burps afterwards. I recently heard a Sicilian man say, “A day without sardines is like a life without sex.” I’ll let you eat some fish bones and burp for three hours and then decide which is the worse evil. I know my answer.

If Capri Isn't Heaven...

Nope. You're gonna have to wait for the book on this one...

The Enemies of Fun

These little demons may stand in the way of your expectations of a fabulous island getaway, a mud bath, and a little torture.
By torture, I am referring to Ischia’s Museum of Torture, located in the Castello Aragonese, which is reason number one that I decided to visit the island. Reasons two and three were the purported beauty of the destination and the abundance of mineral springs and mud baths available to all who desire to make use of them.
However, I had not counted on a cast of characters and circumstances conspiring to make my relaxing visit more on par with stabbing white-hot pokers into my eyeballs while being serenaded by the sound of children throwing temper tantrums. I urge you to keep an eye out for these pesky villains throughout your own adventures.

The Charming Swindler—He Will Make You Miss The Boat

I made one last stop in Naples, determined to catch the one tourist-y thing I had yet to do—the Duomo (chapel). I’m grateful I did, because it was the single most stunning piece of architecture I have seen in my life to date. I did not, however, plan on being accosted by a very charming, very handsome, slightly older Italian gentleman who offered to give me a tour. I had sort of planned to pop in and pop out, since I was on a tight deadline to catch the hydrofoil to Ischia. But of course, with so generous an offer from such a cute guy, I said yes, and proceeded to be led around by this very knowledgeable and VERY patriotic Neapolitan. I got way more out of being guided by him than I would have otherwise. And then, after about 50 minutes more than I had planned on staying, he held out his hand. I smiled, batted my eyelashes, and shook it, thanking him profusely in Italian. Then slowly I realized, when he didn’t go away, that he wasn’t looking for signs of affection, or my phone number. He simply wanted the money that I was so jealously guarding during my days in the expensive big cities. And I was a sucker.

The Union—It Will Leave You Stranded

When I arrived on Ischia, two hours later than planned, I was rarin’ to go. However, the nice man at the tourist office informed me that my hotel was really, really, really far away from the main harbor, and that the only way to reach it without paying through the nose was to take a bus. And the bus drivers were on strike. For the next four hours. And since the idea of wandering the island with my entire worldly possessions on my back did not appeal to me, I settled for having a cappuccino and planning the rest of my day, thinking that the first bus out would be at 2:15.
But the 2:15 bus evidently leaves at 2 every third Tuesday in all months ending in “y.” And waiting for the 2:30 bus seems like a good idea, except for when it is, in actuality, a 3 o’clock bus, as was the case today.

Hidden Hotels—And Cheshire Cat City Planners

Elsewhere in Italy, each bus depot lists all the stops the bus makes, so that you can determine exactly where you need to get off. In Ischia, however, they only list final destinations. So when I saw two signs for my hotel in the span of a minute, I figured I must be very near. I was wrong. From where I got off, I still had to walk 1.5 km to reach my destination. Up the world’s steepest incline. With 40 lbs of crap on my back. And in my arms. And around my waist. As I got closer to the hotel, the directional signs disappeared. There were no maps, no further signs with my hotel's name on them, and nothing was open so that I might ask someone, seeing as it was siesta at the moment. The street my hotel was located on appeared to be a tiny alley, hidden from mainstream society in a back corner that any logical person would completely overlook. Which is ironic considering that I booked the hotel through Expedia.com. Baffled by this directional inconsistency, I half expected to encounter a sign that said Hotel Internazionale, under which lay two arrows pointing in opposite directions. This seemed perfectly reasonable, considering that though the address was #33, it came after numbers 7, 9, 13, 45, 30 and 37, in that order. I determined that if I did everything that was counterintuitive, I would survive this island.

The Misguided Concierge—He’s Far Too Busy Playing With His Beribboned Poodle To Be Bothered With Your Needs

At dinnertime, I asked for a non-touristy restaurant where I could get pasta, and was told by the man at reception that I should head to the docks and eat at a place called Mezzanotte, or midnight. I should mention that the docks are just about the only place where the tourists are certain to be, and that the restaurant, which was closed on this particular night, every week of the year, only served pizza. I should also mention that he told me that the last bus back to my obscure part of the island left the station at 12 am.

I waited for the bus to the docks in the town square for at least a few centuries. In the rain. With an Italian girl who was simply furious, and kept barking angry questions at me in Italian. Each time she did this, I repeated, “I don’t speak Italian,” but she continued to hurl her contempt at life and the aggravating bus situation in my general direction. I was relieved when we finally got on the bus, and the driver became the target of her very focused tantrum, which lasted the full thirty minutes back to the marina. When they parted ways with a flirty, “ciao,” and a kiss, I realized that this is just how Neapolitans sound when they are conversing, so perhaps the young lady had not confused me with the person responsible for causing all the buses to be an hour and a half behind schedule.

The Dead Battery—Only Happens When You Need It Most

I found a lovely restaurant that was practically empty, overlooking the bay, and absolutely devoured a pizza and a half bottle of wine, reasoning that the nearly unbearable trek up the side of a mountain justified eating every last bite. I headed back to the station at around 11:20. At which point, I made the discovery that the last bus to my part of the island left at 11:05, as it does every night of the year, and not at midnight. Also, evidently, it is the only bus all day in all of Ischia, which leaves promptly when it is scheduled to leave. In my annoyance, I decided to call the proprietor of my hotel and demand that he come pick me up. But the cell phone I am borrowing from Sue and Ross was dead.

Fortunately, another driver on a different route took pity on me and let me off at a stop not officially on his route. He looked apologetic as he explained that I still had a ten or fifteen minute walk, and it was up a rather steep hill. I looked out the door of the bus, looked back at the driver, and grinned. I recognized it. By now I was a pro. It would have been nice to have had a mud bath when I got back, but I think I fell asleep with my shoes still on.

I figured I might still catch the Museum of Torture (which I now believed to be quite apropos of the island) early the next morning before embarking for Capri. After a terse scolding to the concierge about the bus schedule and a refusal of the coffee I so desperately wanted, out of fear I might miss the bus, I had the pleasure of waiting two hours for it to arrive. This was because the buses were labeled differently than it stated on the sign, and differently than they had been the night before, so I let two go by without realizing that the CS bus also traveled the F bus route (because it’s perfectly obvious, isn’t it). I reached the marina just in time to catch the one and only boat to Capri, and to bid Ischia goodbye, and good riddance.

But perhaps only by journeying through hell, are we truly able to appreciate heaven. And if Capri isn’t heaven, then I refuse to die.