Coffee Break

I'd like to say a few words about caffe italiano. Usually I go to the coffee bar by our appartment or school to have an espresso or cappucino. I made my first pot myself today with one of the silver 3 cup coffee makers they have here. It is about the size of a container of salt and sits on the stove top. The top and bottom unscrew and one puts the water in the bottom with the small coffee ground holder on top. Then the top pot is reattached and the whole thing is heated until the water boils up from the bottom through the grounds to the pot on top. It makes espresso which you may drink black or with sugar in a small espresso cup. If you want milk in it you must swtich to a larger cappucino cup. I like mine with milk though I can't make it foamy at home like they can at the bar. I just add it plain even though its already 14:00 here which is getting late for drinking milk in coffee. Italians do not take milk in caffe after lunch time, which here starts about 13:00. It feels good to hold this cappucino cup of hot coffee on the bench in the kitchen with the light from the window coming in my apartment. I surprised myself by wondering when this cup and saucer became my comfort objects. The 21 years I lived in the United States I have used a saucer maybe 7 times and never without wondering why people bother with it. I think it is because our cups that go with saucers in the US are too big. In my kitchen in Massachusetts our tea set is bigger than anything you would see in Italy. If you hold the saucer to carry the cup it feels like it will tip off. Every day here I carry at least 1, if not 3, cup and saucer combos. The cups are smaller, shorter and rounder. The saucer is the obviously perfect tray for the cup and spoon. The lip of the saucer curves up so my hand fits perfectly between it and the table so I can carry it with ease. It really is a remarkably well shaped object to fit the lifestyle here. A small cup of coffee is taken quickly at the bar before people are on their way somewhere else. Three sips and and you have finished an espresso. Greeting the bartender and thanking him when you are are done is as much part of the tradition as the cup or the spoon or the taste. In America portions are larger and more caffinated but the coffee tastes less like coffee. At Dunkins I can get coffee that tastes like cream, sugar, blueberry, caramel, coconut, the list goes on. Espresso is very small but very strong in taste. A coffee is supposed to last an American through a morning commute or for an hour at work. Maybe thats why its always so hot, so it takes longer to get cold. I've never gotten a coffee at a bar here that is too hot or too cold, always just right to drink quickly and move on. I do miss my to go iced coffees here but not so much now. Having coffee here is a little break time that Americans don't really believe in. It is not long enough to really multitask during and so it becomes just a quick pleasure. In italy that seems to be the requirement with food and drink, one must stop and be totally involved, everything is fresh and made to order in real cups, on real plates. None of this quick frozen burrito, bottle of soda business that happens to me too often in America. As much as I like this tradition I know it will make me a square peg in a round hole when I return to America and eventually I will adapt back, but hopefully not completely. As a person who doesn't plan a lot of non-multitasked time for herself I'd like to thank Italy for teaching me how to stop for a minute to relax. And I'd really like to thank Professor Kirk who taught me how to appreciate how to drink coffee like the Italians do.

Thank goodness for Italian

Last night Sam, Andy and I went to the movies. Andy told me they wanted to see Inglorious Basterds and there was a theater showing it in English. We walked up to the theater by Piazza del Popolo and bought our tickets. In this movie theater the seats ard assigned and very comfortable. The chairs are velvet colored and have foot rests that bring your knees up at just the right angle. (We've been talking about chairs in design class for two weeks and i'm a little bit stuck on it.) So the movie was not dubbed in italian which is what the signs mean when they say an american movie is in english. However 2/3 of the movie are spoken in french and german as a directorial choice. So very little was in english and the subtitles were all in Italian! If I thought I couldn't speak Italian, I definately can't speak German so really the Italian subtitles were what kept me understanding the movie. That and some of the best scenes were with Brad Pitt who only speaks English (well, and some Italian, lol) Anyway it was a really interesting way to experience the movie. Half the characters had language barriers in the film and there was an added dimension for us as audience memebers not being able to understand everything. I also noticed the camera shots and visuals a lot more because I was observing everything I could to figure out what was going on.
After the movie we went to the Trevi fountain and threw in coins to return to Rome. Then we went for gelato and walked the catch the night bus home. A very fun and unique experience.

dropping some things, picking other things up

I've put myself in the situation here of having to back track a little. Its been about two weeks, I think, since my last post and a lot has happened (I'm also adding lots of pictures to my facebook!). The big events have been a trip to Spoleto with Maggie, Christine and Michelle; an even bigger trip to Venice with Maggie, Christine, Michelle, Amanda, Darrian and Rachel; a night at the opera and general roman living.
While most of my pictures come from my trips outside of Rome, most of my experiences thus far have really been flavored by my life in Rome so I'd like to start by talking a little about that and then I'll tell you about the trips. My Italian is coming along slowly. I know about 100 words and most of them either have to do with food or public transportation. Most of my interaction with Italian speakers is at the grocery store or on the bus or while buying a bus ticket. Amanda and I went to buy monthly bus passes yesterday and I asked the man at the tabacchi (a store that sells bus tickets, magazines, cigarettes, lotto tickets etc.) something like "Vorrei un bigetto di autobus per un mez, perfavore," which roughly translates to "I would like a ticket for the bus for a month, please" though I think a few of those words may have been just Spanish words that I threw in there. He looked confused but then said "I understand" and I got my ticket. Success!
The day before we were out of matches for our stove (its gas and you have to light it by hand) and so I stopped at the tabbachi on the way home from class. I didn't know the word for matches so I drew a picture. When I got to the store and the cashier asked me what I would like, the answer came out in Spanish and English so I just showed him my picture of a flaming match. He said, "I like your picture" and showed me two different boxes to choose from. I am trying hard to use my Italian but you see I have been successful thus far also because of efforts by others to also speak English.
Now about our trips. Two weeks ago I organized a trip to Spoleto in Umbria. It is a medieval town which has in the last 40 or so years become a big center for the arts including theatre, music, opera and modern art. My favorite parts of the trip were seeing the outsides of the theatres (they were closed during the day), visiting the modern art museum (where I learned about a native Spoletian (?) sculptor named Leoncillo Leonardi, who worked in ceramics as one of his mediums!) and walking across the giant bridge made out of an old roman aqueduct. The bridge was epically proportioned and I savored the stone and scale and views as I have a tendency to do. The pictures from the trip of the bridge are especially cool.
Last weekend we went to Venice and it is another town that agrees with me. It is so peacefully quiet there without the cars and trucks. Rome is almost its opposite, though homey in its own way. The water smells lovely and the "bus" is a water bus which we took up and down the grand canal. Michelle, Christine, Rachel and I split off into a little group during the days and went to the Palazzo Ducale, St. Mark's square, the Peggy Guggenheim modern art museum, a yummy cafe, the Accademia, the Gran Teatro La Fenice and the Ca'Pesaro modern art museum. I just bathed in art for two days. I sketched and wandered in the museums with my friends. Rachel and I went for a self tour of La Fenice, which is a beautiful old opera house and they were doing a sound check while we were inside. I kept watching all the technichians, star struck by anyone in blacks. It was a treat. We even managed to do Venice on a budget with our flat rate public transportation tickets, camping hostel outside the city and off the beaten track choices for coffee, dinner and gelato. Dinner the first night was a recommendation from one of my travel books. We all got seafood and spagetti dishes for 12 euro or less and white wine. Wine and coffee in Italy are cheaper than soda. I am becoming spoiled. I had cuttlefish in black ink sauce, a venetian specialty. With the sauce being black, I wasn't sure what too expect but it was very good with a mild seafood taste. After dinner we went to a gelateria called Alaska which was so good we went back again the next day. They had so many flavors including, grape, ginger, watermelon, hazelnut, chocolate, green tea, kiwi, cream and the list goes on. Far better and far less expensive than the gelato in St. Mark's square.
Michelle, Christine, Rachel and I also went to a great cafe on Saturday morning. The cappucini and panini (pluralized words in italian have an i at the end) were really good. The panini had olive bread! I also admired the mirror in the restroom which was made out of white and blue glass. I asked the bartnder in my broken italian where it came from and he said it had been there for the 20 years he had owned the place. He started talking to us about visiting Venice and where we were studying. Over all we just had a very pleasant and fairly unrushed trip considering all the things we did in just two days. I could go there and think about art and drink cappuncino for weeks more!
Back in Rome I also went to the opera for class at the Parco della Opera, sala Santa Cecilia (the patron saint of music). We saw Il viaggio a Reims, written by Rossini for the corronation of Charles X and lost until the late 1970s. I read up about the show before we went which was good because there were no subtitles. It was a concert version but partially staged and with some fantastic performers. I'm really glad I've been able to go do and see the things that were my reasoning for chosing Rome for study abroad. At the same time I miss you all and the littlest things remind me of my friends and family from home. Thanks for sticking with me for this whole post, pictures are being uploaded next!