Don't Read This One

...that is, if you don't like food.

I recently told an old high school chum - as his Facebook status proclaimed his upcoming trip to Hong Kong as a 'Dumpling Quest' - to 'please post food porn, and frequently.'

(And here are some questions about foodie-ness, given the sheer number of cooking shows and publications devoted to cooking and food that only seem to CONTINUE to grow in prevalence:  how do you know when you've crossed over from just being fashionably food oriented to truly serious? Is there a specific benchmark of some kind - a particular appliance, the extenuating circumstances you will endure for procuring or preparing food, the acquisition of some rare spice?  What does it take, and how hungry do you have to be?)

How I came to be such a fan of food, cookery and baking is a story for another time.  But if I recall my first food experience in Rome - at the tender age of 20 - I can tell you that in another era of my life, I most assuredly did not have discerning taste.  While I knew that my first taste of Roman pizza (from one of the many spots you can find around the city, with large, rectangular pizzas of medium thickness, sitting on display, sliced and at the ready for the hungry, budget-minded tourist) was remarkably disappointing, I could not say why, exactly.

It's generally called pizza rustica.  Rustic.  Sounds romantic, but...it isn't.  Stay tuned for an upcoming visit to Pizzarium, near the Vatican, in which a master pizza maker makes pizza just like this - but reportedly, better than anyone else on the planet.

And years later, with a sizable number of college student trips (and pounds, oy!) under my belt, I can say exactly why.  Pizza here, which should never be confused with pizza in its many forms and traditions in the States (I write this as an ode to the pizza I can get here, with full acknowledgment of the great types of pizzas found at home.  Once I take a full-size food processor off the hands of a state department employee who's selling off her 220 volt appliances before leaving the country soon - I'll be scheming ways to make Chicago-style deep-dish pizza.  But I'm excited to try the indigenous forms, too), ought to be like this:

From a hotspot for all the fashionably young and hip, Porto Fluviale.  They let me in once I agreed to put a paper bag over my head.

This is, by far, the absolute largest place I've eaten in, in Rome.  A converted warehouse, of course, divided into separate dining rooms.  Ours was also a second kitchen, in which you could have a private party or cooking lessons for your friends.

I am excited to report to all beer-ophiles that beer is not that difficult to find here. Craft beer is also making an appearance, but that's another blog post.

Although technically, I would be corrected by a Napolitano who brought us here this evening:  you're looking at Naples-style pizza, which is evident from the amount of crust around the outer perimeter. Roman pizza is similar in thickness and style, except that a lot less real estate is devoted to the naked crust.  Instead, the ingredients tend to reach further out towards the edge.

While I know that this distinction is important to many, what should be stressed here is that either version is unbelievably good.  Done right - hand-tossed to order and baked for 10 minutes or less in a wood-fired oven - this is nirvana.

Super-thin crust, crisp edges that are blackened in spots, with good quality sauces and fresh, minimally teamed ingredients in a vast array of combinations (but also set forth in complementary combinations, strictly speaking, so no gargantuan, artery-clogging 'meat-lovers' varieties here)...Although admittedly, my favorite is the closest thing you're going to get to a 'pepperoni pizza,' here. Peperoni in Italian (spelling change - dropping one 'p') is the word for a pepper - a vegetable.  Pizza diavola ("devil") is tomato sauce, mozzarella (buffala would be best, but sometimes that's not in the cards) and spicy, or piccante, salami.  If eating like this is eating with the devil, then I don't want to be good.

And it's all yours.  You are expected to order this as a personal pizza. It's more like the size of an American medium pizza, but its de-emphasis on crust (in thickness, only, so don't assume that the dough isn't an artform, because it IS) makes it a potential one-person job.  Albeit a very hungry person.

So, spend a few days hiking all 7 hills of Rome and then sit down to this.  No worries.  You'll have room for gelato afterwards, because you have to walk somewhere to find it anyway.

And this is another topic that deserves some attention and clarification.

Gelato.

It's what ice cream aspires to be, when it is dreaming alone in the freezer.  Gelato is ice cream's rich, rotund (but having, allegedly, less butter fat than ice cream - and less butter fat actually enhances your ability to taste the flavors) cousin who issues no apologies for being so damnably attractive and simultaneously bad for your health.

And as you roam these rough, cobblestone streets, that sweet siren calls to you.

I remember a high school student on an Italy trip I chaperoned, years ago, whispering to me, almost tremulously, "I can't eat dinner.  I don't want it.  I had 5 different gelato servings today.  They were so good - I couldn't help myself."

Her roommates later reported that she went to bed early, with a tummy-ache.

And not to be outdone is gelato's non-dairy neighbor, sorbet.  Done well, it is creamy enough in texture to make you stop between spoonfuls - however briefly - and wonder aloud whether they didn't sneak some cow in there somewhere.  And then you quickly rationalize that it's too late; dairy or no dairy, you're committed.  Granitas are icier, often fruit flavored and less sugary, treats that really hit the spot on a sweltering day.

This is what the typical tourist in Italy sees and identifies as gelato:

But while that may qualify, in the loosest way possible, if you want the Good Stuff, you go looking for this:

Teatro Gelato - blessedly close to the apartment...but still requiring a walk, which gives you time to reflect upon the sins you will commit when ordering...and consuming. 

Note the differences between images:  the more colored stuff piled high, almost piped into the bins, aerated and plumped with artificial ingredients...versus the far less colorful stuff that sits at a far more demure level, with just a little humble, tell-tale decor for identification purposes.  Note the sampling of taste combinations here:  peach with lavender, lemon with rosemary, raspberry with sage.  

Hel-lo, lover! Celebrations of all things summer.  

The truly artisanal producers of this desert change their menus like any restaurant changes up their daily specials, necessitating (ahem) your routine visits.  

You know you've struck gold when the blackberry sorbet is, in fact, black-purple, like the deepest bruise, and full of seeds, because some things deserve full investment.

While I do admit to saying, once I've reached the bottom of the cup, 'more blackberry...want. more. blackberry,' it should be explained here that 'more' (MOR-ay) is the word for blackberries.

The Saigon Cinnamon is a tad bit gritty - but because there's real cinnamon in the mix.  The delicate Five Spice is a challenge, because you will encounter whole cloves here and there.  You know that a gelato maker is serious when delicate rose wines are enlisted for a special flavor.  Ricotta cheese flavor?  Someone's making it. And even if you go for the very basic but still delicious Crema flavor, you can still taste the pride that went into making it.  

The spouse and I go on our passeggiati, to better digest dinner, to enjoy that three hour window of cool temperatures (which are thwarted some time around 10 or 10:30pm, when Rome's stones on buildings and streets start to radiate the heat they absorbed during the day) and we both initially avow that we will not have gelato that evening.  We're fine.  We can do without.  There's always tomorrow. And then we see just enough people in our path, meditatively working on a cone or otherwise immersed in cups with plastic spoons, and that's it.  We cave in. We go to St. Crispin's, Teatro or Punto.  We've been told by many that there are others to discover.

I'm not sure we can walk that far without stopping first at a known favorite, though.

And this just in:  I've finally found these.  I'd read about them, but never seen them.
I've been looking for years.

Lolli-popes!  

Tremors

A Roman taxi ride is a little like being in a cocktail shaker; you are not only jostled up and down but also from side to side.  Wear the seat belt.

Your teeth can rattle right out of your head on a bus ride in Rome.  The streets are old, and made of multiple materials and levels.  It's worse in the back of the bus.

You can hear the faint vibrations of objects inside your apartment, timed with the rumbling of big vehicles going by, three floors down.  I am constantly aware of the outside.

And apartment dweller can feel the movements of people ascending and descending the stairs of the building.  I envy the fleet-footed.

The massive, heavy front door to the street, opening and slamming closed, reverberates through the walls and floors.  Closure is good, though.

Living with a heavy-footed person means that I know he's up and about, even if I don't know where, in our living space.  There is comfort in this - unless I'm trying to sleep.

The rickety elevator shakes a little, every time you step into it.  We trust it anyway.

Yesterday, I learned that I slept through earthen tremors.
Yesterday, I learned that I have to tell people that I'm o.k. when I'm o.k. (Otherwise, I forget)
Yesterday, I was reminded that natural disasters elicit the same reactions from all of us, regardless of how we express them:  grief over loss, shock at swiftness, wishing for warning, blame for senseless victimhood, avowals to make things right and whole somehow, because they actually cannot be made right and whole - ever.
I have seen the footage, even when I could not understand the words.
All the right people have paid the televised visits to survey damage, make the appropriately vague and probably heartfelt statements, and shake the hands of the local officials.

And right now, in a darkness that is so dark most of us cannot imagine doing this, there are the ones who continue to search.  They call for silence so that the silence can be broken by a call, if a voice is left. So here is some space for that.







I have nothing profound to say.  But I had to say something:

I'm extra glad that today, I could wear a seat belt, ride on a bus, listen to the sounds of the populated world outside my door and my building, feel comfort in closure, sleep in a comfortable bed, and trust an elevator.

I did all of those things today.  And I don't know if I'll get to do them tomorrow.
I never did know, but I thought that I did.

We're grateful for your queries, worries and calls.
We're o.k.  

 

Voce III

San Antonio dei Portoghesi

I’ve previously mentioned the sounds of a chorus and an organ in my bathroom.  It turns out that on an especially enthusiastic day in San Luigi dei Francesi, the sound can reach further into my hallway too.  This is a semi-regular thing, as Catholic mass is held on Saturdays and Sundays and select holidays. A lot of area churches also hold concerts.  They’re invariably free and also a good way to both see and experience a new place. 

We attended an organ concert at S. Antonio dei Portoghesi a couple of weekends ago.  Former students will remember that for me, ‘churches are museums, and museums are churches.’  So one of my favorite Roman past-times is to wander into unfamiliar churches, to see what treasures they hold, how the spaces are organized, and generally learn stuff.  I wandered into this particular church just days prior to the concert, was blown away by the polychrome marble in the interior, saw the concert signage and brought The Spouse back for the performance. 

I have a cousin who can seriously play the organ, but I must confess to not having a serious appreciation for the art form.  I don’t know what I expected exactly, but I did not expect improvisational (something that this organist is known for, apparently) sometimes ultra-contemporary, even dissonant music.  I did not expect to watch the organist's (click on that link for his website - he has quite the impressive pedigree) limbs ALL appear to fly all over the instrument, with its 5 keyboards, dozen or more foot pedals, and countless stoppers (what ARE those things supposed to be called? aha! drawknobs).  Granted, this is a warm, Mediterranean locale, but this guy was really sweating when he concluded his performance. 

This instrument is a bigger deal than I realized.

Pipe-wise, this is all that's visible to the church visitor, but there's much, much more (click on the hyperlink in the preceding caption)

A lot of time and energy was devoted to the restoration of this organ.  It is clearly the jewel of this church.

I could say something predictable and preachy about how we should stop and savor art wherever we find it, and perhaps many readers would agree with me.  Too much agreement can kill a nice chat, though.  To be fair, I can’t exactly say that I completely savored the music in that performance.  I’m not sure that I could say that I appreciated the music, either.  For me, appreciation accompanies some degree of enlightened understanding.  Clearly, a few other attendees would have concurred, thereby justifying their exit before the conclusion of the performance.

We stuck around until the end, though. 

Because here’s what I did appreciate:  that Roman (and in some ways, generally Italian) affinity for co-mingled eras in time.  In a remarkably ornate 17^th century church interior, outfitted with religious and mortuary art, an overwhelming amount of gilded architectural elements and gorgeous colored stone and, of course, an impressive organ, the church organist staged a performance of 20^th and 21^st century music that was edgy and raw and most unlike the kind of music that that organ was originally intended to issue.  The tourists who thought they’d experience a free show didn’t know what to make of it.  And the older, established community  members may have also not known what to make of it, but they listened very attentively anyway.  I have a theory about why, but first...

You can go to find musical performances in this city, or they can come to find you.  

How often does one visit a large metropolitan place like this - or like New York, like San Francisco, like London - and find performers on street corners and in mass transit stations with their guitar cases open for the coins that passersby might offer?  It's a regular feature.  And if you've seen enough of them, you've encountered a wide range of types and qualities. In this instance, Rome is, for the most part, no different.

Virtually every restaurant in the historic city center has outdoor seating.  It's so popular during the evening hours to sit outside because for some reason, despite the blistering heat of the day, there is this magical window of time between 6ish and 9ish that the heat and humidity dissipate, and the air is wonderful.  But to sit outside carries with it the high risk that a busker of some sort will set up and serenade you, whether you like it or not.  Whether they're any good - or not. And when they're done, they'll pass the change jar, table to table.  

And even if you aren't 'blessed' with such performances while dining, you'll most assuredly encounter them on your passeggiata.  The Spouse has a low threshold for bad musical performances.  Really low. This virtual intolerance can have positive and negative impacts.  Positively speaking, it means that he will go out of his way to spare coins for the good performers when he encounters them. 

For the young woman playing classical pieces on a violin in the piazza fronting Santa Maria Sopra Minerva at 10pm, coins went into her violin case.  And for this vocalist, bravely putting it out there on a tourist-laden evening street, singing to people lapping up gelato, The Spouse spared coins as well:

Organ concert-goers listening attentively to this sometimes dissonant, ultra-contemporary performance in a 17th century church...opera on a cobblestone street, stationed between fluorescent-lit gelaterias and pizzerias with turisti menus...yes, this seems perfectly normal here.   

Because…art.  Because it’s everywhere, here.  Because the old co-exists alongside the new, and it’s all embraced and encouraged and even sometimes tolerated because it's all gravely serious. 

Because it matters. Fundamentally. 

It is akin to breathing. 

I’ll return to this theme often, I’m certain, because it is borne out here in so many ways - in fashion, architecture, design, fine art.  It can't not be a cornerstone of this blog. 

And it is still – even after my repeated visits, and even while learning to live here – such an earth-shattering concept to this American, from a place where beauty is not necessarily a birthright.

Because August

August 15th is otherwise known as Ferragosto here in Italy.  This holiday is a very big deal, here.  It has ancient and Christian origins.   Emperor Augustus (yes, that's for whom the month is named...as an aside, it bears mentioning that his birthday fell in this month.  We know this because his original, given name was Octavian, and that name is attributable to his being born in the 8th month of the year) declared this a festival month, designated at least in part to reward those who'd labored over the summer harvest.

If you ask a contemporary Italian about the meaning of Ferragosto, the more mature one will tell you that this is the feast day for the Madonna's assumption into heaven (she literally ascended into heaven when she died, whereas the rest of us soul-float and leave our corporeal selves below, if we're headed in that direction).  The church behind my apartment held a morning mass for this occasion.  My bathroom was filled with the sounds of the organ and the choir.  And the bell-ringing on every half hour - from all area churches - during the mid-morning was remarkable.

The more secular Italian will tell you that Ferragosto is the beginning of his or her annual summer holiday leave (although the more religious Italian will hastily add that this is true for them, too).  The modern tradition of taking leave during this holiday dates back to the 1920s.  In true Fascist fashion, any citizen - ranging from the most modest to the most well-off - could have 1, 2 or 3 days off.

Imagine being in a city of approximately 5 million people.  For some of you, this is very easy.
Imagine having well more than a half of that population vanish.  For as little as one week and as much as four or even six weeks (the Fascists would be aghast).
Imagine that population - comprised of staff and whole businesses - of your dry cleaner, your fishmonger, your pharmacist, your banker, your bus driver, your doctor...even (to my horror) your favorite gelateria....also your favorite grocer.
All of them are on beaches or mountaintops somewhere.  Every one of them.  Sunning themselves and not thinking about you.  

I shot these Closed for the Holiday signs in a sort of 'hail of bullets' fashion.  It was easy; each business was next door to the other, and all were directly across the street from me.  A bar, a pasticceria, a small store, and a deli. They not only take vacations at approximately the same time, they have the same signage.

The only poor souls who are stuck working during this phase are the ones who serve the tourism industry:  select restaurant staff (on or near the major sites), employees at major attractions, hoteliers...and (to my horror), the marginal and chain gelaterias...and the tiniest of grocery stores.

I've been told that women are advised to not get pregnant in October/November, because even most obstetricians are on holiday in August.  The pharmacies all conspire to make sure that at least one is open within a given area.  So you might get heat stroke trying to find that pharmacy, but rest assured, one is open somewhere. 

People are only half-joking when they say that this city becomes a little spooky.  Pardon my Walking Dead reference, but when you can saunter by yourself across a Roman street that is bereft of traffic, only to then turn the corner to find hordes of sweaty, dragging tourists with slack jaws and glazed eyes stumbling around IN Piazza Navona, you can't help looking for Rick and Daryl.

AND with a full moon.  Yikes.

When you arrive back at your own door, you keep your back to it while fiddling with the key and the lock and furtively looking around at...the sheer absence of people.

Oddly - for a person who grew up in the mountains, who had to train herself to lock the front door because she did never had to, at home - a greater sense of safety is conferred upon a city sidewalk heavily populated with strangers who don't even notice or care about you.  Take them out of the picture, and it's admittedly creepy.

Bright side, you ask?  Is there a bright side to this emptying out of a very large urban center?  
Is there one?  I suppose if you're Roman and you stay, then it's a lot like living in your favorite college town during holiday and summer breaks; you can actually park, you can probably get a table at a decent restaurant, and the line at the grocery is really short.

For the new person living here, there could be a bright side, if all of the right things are in place.
Here's one of those things:

There's our little chariot, after her sea voyage.  I saw her for about 5 minutes as she was deposited outside the garage where she'll live.  She was then whisked away into said garage by a nice man named Mariano.  That garage is located three blocks behind this:

That's the high court of Italy.  It will take 15 minutes' walk - if the traffic isn't too bad - to get to that garage from our apartment.   

Why, you might ask, didn't I hop into our chariot right then and there and take her for a spin in these mostly deserted streets? After all, everyone says that this is the best time to try driving in Rome - when it is relatively empty. 

Fine idea, I'd reply, if it weren't for the fact that the other aforementioned things are mostly not in place.  

I have an international driver's license.  One for the plus column. 
Now, for the negative. 
Our chariot has to have proper tags ("oh, you will wait for about two months for those" said one Italian to me, characteristically shrugging his shoulders and lifting his half-opened hands upwards - the very embodiment of 'feh, what are you going to do - complain?!?') and a super important sticker that enables her to be in the historic center of Rome, where only vehicles who have that sticker are allowed to roam.  

This is, in many ways, a funny place.  Locals will fully admit to being neck-deep in bureaucracy.  I signed my name more times for a basic bank account here than I signed for a mortgage in the U. S. I cannot change my ATM card PIN to something more memorable.  And there is no signing the back of a check and sliding it into an ATM machine for a deposit.  Instead, I must go to the bank, see a teller, and then sign my name three times on two different pieces of paper, avowing that I just made the deposit.  

Contrarily - well, to me, at least - this is a very cash-heavy economy.  No, none of that very American approach to flashing your credit card for the purchase of a bottle of soda here.  I can't even set up an automatic pay-to entry on that bank account for paying my cell phone bill.  I have to drop by an authorized dealer - who could be a tobacconist, actually - and submit to that dealer an otherwise blank slip of paper with my handwritten telefonino number on it, along with cash.  He handles the rest.  To be a bit British about it:  the tobacconist 'tops up' my phone account.   

I read once that Romans have this saying:  si effettua una legge, facciamo una scappatoia: 'You make a law, we make a loophole.' There is this kind of attitude about flouting authority, exhibited most regularly when you see Romans get on and off busses without ever validating a pass, or evoked when hearing about how there are ex-pats who have lived here for decades without the proper documentation....and authority can indeed be very lax, here.  We strolled thru Fiumicino airport with two recently arrived, foreign cats, but no one stopped us (it took more energy and time and resources than I care to detail to have the right health certificates and whatnot, so we were totally ready for it) to see the proper paperwork.  We were not asked to provide documentation of our residence here in order to obtain cell phone plans, even though we were told we absolutely would.  


But the threat of getting caught is ever-present, I'm told.  And discovered infractions can be very expensive. VERY expensive.  The fine for not having a validated bus pass is several times the cost of the pass itself. 



Combine that with the awareness that Italian street signs are plentiful and confusing, and well...you just don't want to accidentally drive into the wrong area, back out while thinking that surely, no one saw you, and then arrive home several days later to a big fine delivered in your post - because a camera caught you.

Sure, they're translated here, but when you have 5 mad Italians honking their horns behind you, that is not the time to try looking up what 5 of these things at one corner of two one-way streets may mean. Amusingly, more than a few resources I've consulted insist that all of these are very intuitive.

So our chariot sits and waits for her required accessories.  And that's what can happen to the bright side: dimmed by requirements and at least a healthy regard for authority - whether or not it will ever come near you. 

And to many of my work colleagues back home:  the irony is not lost on me.  I wrote the bulk of this entry on the day that you went back to work - the day *I* went back to work, for 20 years straight.  It was indeed so very strange to listen to church bells on every half hour, reminding Rome that vacations had begun, when I knew that people elsewhere were scribbling in fresh calendars, sitting in meetings, and sharing what happened on their too-brief summer break.  

Hello to you all, from my vantage point, where it is quite unbelievable that everyone can and mostly does take a vacation at the same time, until I consider that in many places, everyone can and mostly does go to work at the same time.  May your stresses be few, and your students be brilliant.  And if they aren't brilliant, then may they be of favorable temperament.  And if not that, then at least do this:  drive your car to your dry cleaner and pay for your bill with a credit card, then drive to your big, brightly lit grocery store heaving with choice, and get the best fish and the best ice cream you can afford.  Stop by the pharmacy and pick up your prescription, preferably from a drive-through window.  And eat that ice cream while you pay your phone bill online.   

And send photos.  Because...August. 

Fare il Bucato, or Mundanities I

Welcome to one of the mundanities of living, made more complex in a new place:  laundry!

Here are my washer and dryer. Launderettes are virtually non-existent, at least in the centro storico of Rome. This assemblage is placed in a super narrow space that I'm convinced was once an open balcony that someone walled and windowed up. The units are quite new, and quite small, compared to their American counterparts.

And here are the controls for the washing machine.

When I brought students to this country for short-term study abroad, I used to joke with them that there was such a thing as 'Italian time.'  Italian time - like island time - is not exactly speedy.  This concept addresses how long you will wait for restaurant service, or for your electricity to come back on (after someone with a penchant for using the wrong wattage hair styling tools has blown a fuse and wiped out your entire hotel hallway), or for mail delivery.  This is not to be confused with 'Roman driving time,' which is hurry-up-or-I'll-bump-you-from-behind-at-the-light-which-has-been-green-for-9-nanoseconds.

But honestly, neither of these concepts can justifiably apply to the time that a new European washing machine can take to complete one load.  Let's say that among these controls, I select 'cotoni' (cotton), at 40 degrees and a speed of 800 or 1200 for the spin cycle.  The washer will then tell me that the load will take....wait for it....

2 hours and 44 minutes.

Selecting 'rapido' (meaning what you think it means) will shorten that time to...you think it will be much more like your American machine, don't you?...wait for it....

55 minutes.

Care for a tiny illustration of why this might seem like a long time?

Now, brace yourself.  This could be a boring video, or it could interest you for a wee bit.  Watch the rotation of the washer:

That the unit will rotate clothes in two different directions seems to be a smart innovation.
But the energy with which the washer actually rotates - in any direction - is almost equivalent to the energy with which Salvador the 21 year old cat gets up from his typical reclining position to do... anything.  Like switching sides on which to continue napping.  This washer's get-up-and-go is like the oomph of an electric car.  It's so...reluctant.

And the dryer?  Here are the controls:

The array of selections is an embarrassment of riches!  But should you trust a 'jeans' cycle any more than you might trust a 'popcorn' setting on a microwave?

The time, dear readers, the time it takes to dry something...oof.

Now, if you're me, you're of the opinion that dryers are kind of evil, the same way a hot water wash is evil:  these things will shrink your garments and wreck elastic.  You are o.k. with line drying.

If you're like The Spouse, you prefer to retrieve your clothing from the fiery depths of Dante's seventh circle.  You bring butter and jam to the laundry room because you anticipate that your pants and shirts will be nicely toasted.  Nothing feels completely dry if doesn't require the initial use of asbestos gloves or tongs to handle it.

To achieve this state for clothing from a dryer here is quite the undertaking.  So in the States, you might run a load of cotton things like socks and towels twice, probably.  Here, I don't even know.  I can't babysit laundry all of my life, here.  I have to go get groceries every couple of days (future blog post topic) and pay bills (another future blog post).
Also, here's a unique bit about the dryer.

Do you think much about where the water from your freshly washed clothes actually goes when you run the dryer?  Right - that vent you're supposed to routinely clean out, but rarely do...

We get to think about this every time we run the machine.

If the tank isn't emptied, the clothes just don't ever become dry.

Now that we better understand our equipment here, The Spouse is starting to accept that line drying is a necessity for some things.

What we also have to be mindful of - in all things aqueous - is the heavy calcium content of the water in Rome.  The water here is unbelievably hard.  It's quite safe to drink, but people prone to kidney stone problems are cautioned against regular consumption.  Every metal surface that comes into contact with city water develops crusty, filmy deposits.  This can build up pretty rapidly, so there are a number of products that must be enlisted to combat serious problems - in every drain as well as equipment that uses water (don't forget the minor-but-still-crucial ones, like coffee makers).  And heaven forbid that you use that same untreated water in a steam iron.

'Sale' is salt.  It must be occasionally run through the dishwasher. Decalcifying tablets must be placed in drains and washing machines. 

I don't have a picture of it here, but older readers will remember the brand Calgon.  The name resumes its otherwise lost meaning here.

While we can get some American brands of detergent at the commissary, we've also been exploring what the locals buy.  Nothing seems to come without a heavy perfume.  While the water here may be hard, it seems to have no odor, so what gives, I wondered aloud to The Spouse.  Why does the detergent have to be thoroughly scented?

His speculation?

Having your clothes perfumed gives you a few extra hours to be sweaty in them without offending your neighbor on the bus or the street.

And in the deep end of a Roman summer, I have to concur.

Where's Home?

On the taxi ride back into Rome a few days ago, I ruminated on these thoughts:

1. I no longer have a ticket to fly back home.
2. THIS place is now home.

Every daytime drive I ever made from Georgia to Virginia over the last 26 years was punctuated by certain sites that became fixtures, for me.  Fixtures that may have symbolized literal progress in the trip (the Gaffney Peach is proof that you are in South Carolina, and that years-long mess of transitioning from 85N to 77 in North Carolina was a halfway mark) or fixtures that spoke of a sense of place (BBQ restaurants, fireworks stores, and LARGE truck stops).

The two fixtures that tell me I am in my home state are:

1. smooth roads (Virginia is a commonwealth, so taxpayers pay for better roads)
2. this:

The smoothly undulating horizon line of the old Appalachians, the blue-green cast of those forms, the countryside, a split-rail fence...all of those things, compiled into one view.  That's home. And while I don't necessarily aspire to ever live there again, that view never fails to command my notice.  I am fiercely, utterly compelled to regard it (it's so attention-grabbing that it's best that someone else drive).

Over a year ago, I happened to go to my hometown on the weekend of my high school homecoming.  I didn't really care for football when I went to school there, but I rationalized that I'd probably see some old friends.  The game was in early evening, and I couldn't capture the scene, but here's a standard graduation image from the same open stadium:

Yes, tradition dictates that Glenvar High School graduates wear green and gold for graduation.  This view is a slice of what those in-the-know call 'Highlander Heaven.'  Picture credit goes to John Wimmer, with the Roanoke Times.

I sat in the stands with a friend I've known since the 8th grade.  And we talked about lots of things, and I sort of watched the game, but I could not stop looking at that mountain backdrop in the cool twilight.

I felt like kicking myself for ever having taken the view for granted.  It was so...luxurious.

And on my taxi ride into Rome, I thought about the fixtures - the markers - the 'hey, you're in ROME now' sights that would play out in front of me every time I return.

First sighting:  umbrella pines

the sun-soaked oranges and yellows of apartment housing

the immense lines outside of the Vatican...

they really do stretch for blocks and blocks

A Space Invader!

zebra crossing...the pedestrian-friendly alternative to dying on a road

Palm trees...

domed churches

no chance of scurvy here...orange trees line a number of streets

Little winding cobblestone streets

Big monuments...hordes of tourists

Statuary

Odd sculptural fragments - many ancient - embedded and otherwise interwoven into more modern architecture

That rotunda, lurking in the neighborhood

And always this.  This is my neighborhood. Home.