The Italian Paradox

The Italian Paradox, as we learned it in class, is that Italy produces some of the best quality wine in the world, and yet the inhabitants of Italy, the Italians, actually prefer to drink cheap wine of lesser quality. The high quality expensive wine that Mario Batali boasts of is actually created with foreigners in mind. 

However, the Italian paradox that interests me has very little to do with wine and more to do with kcals-which is what the Italians call calories. Kcal values are on every box/product of food here, and they are done per 100 grams. 75 kcal per 100 grams of pesto/beans/salami. Only it is really more like 100000000 kcal for salami, but I digress. The paradox that I am referring to is how little interest the Italians have in exercise, and a great interest in food, and yet America is the country struggling with obesity. The logic just does not make sense. Yes, yes, I know, everybody thinks it is because Italians walk everywhere and have smaller portions and don't have processed food. Only this is bullshit. Very few Italians walk great distances ever since the Vespa was invented, and Nutella is most definitely processed and full of transfat, and that is a staple in an Italian's diet here.

This is how an Italian eats: Breakfast consists of a pastry of some sort, and a foamy and milky coffee. Lunch includes mozzarella, lots of bread, pasta, and wine. Many glasses of wine. 

After that, later in the night before dinner, the "aperitivo" is taken. This is basically happy hour for the Italians. They gather at a popular bar and have an aperitivo, which is a drink that is supposed to open/ready your stomach for dinner. A typical aperitivo is a glass of white wine, champagne or Compari Orange. Do not be fooled however, by the word aperitivo. It might be singular, but it always involves drinks in the plural. Two or three glasses of wine. If my mother had 3 glasses of wine before dinner, she would be on the floor. 

Dinner is then eaten much later at night. So late in fact that my parents, despite being 6 hours behind me, probably have dinner before I do. In Italy, dinner starts at around 9:30 pm, and goes for around 2 hours. They also have four courses-so this stuff about Italians having small portions and us being used to extra large Olive Garden portions of pasta is simply not vero (true).  Also, the Italians start their first course, primi, with pasta. Their secondi with meat, and their contorni (third) with salad. This is the opposite of the United States, where we eat our salad first to prime our stomachs for heavier food, and to help full us up so we don't gorge ourselves on pasta and pizza. Finally, after the third course of salad that no doubt they cannot really eat after all of the wine, cheese, pasta and meat, there is dessert and coffee, or sambuca, which is an after dinner drink that tastes like licorice.  

This is, as you can imagine, quite an assault on the stomach. A lot of alcohol, a lot of food in general, and then because it is so late, the food simply sits in your stomach. This is the paradox. How can Italians shun exercise, and then eat all of this fatty food, especially in such large amounts late at night and still remain slender?! It goes against all of the advice of South Beach, Atkins, Weight Watchers and most importantly, Oprah (otherwise known as God) who never eats later than 6pm because otherwise the calories you take in will not be burned off. 

This may just sound like an interesting anecdote about food and culture and Italian, but to me, this realization has rocked me to the core. Everything I thought about life (and as girl who recently relinquished, quite unwillingly and not without a few temper tantrums, her teen years to enter her early 20s, I have spent a good portion of my life thinking about nutrition and calories) is no longer true. It is as if I just found out that the sky is not actually blue, but red, and that nothing is how I think it should be. Much like a Quentin Tarintino movie. 

...while I may be exaggerating a little, this Italian paradox is still quite shocking, no?

PIKA ITALIA

abbe, maria, maggles, brooke, christine, monica, katy and anyone else who regularly accompanies us to the frat of the underachieving, always-hungover/drunk/in that transition point-boys who don't hit but don't respect bitches....BE JEALOUS. Why?

Because I found Pikes in Italy. Oh yes. I know, you just stopped breathing for a moment. Before you break out the Everclear to reminisce about our drunkenly fabulous freshman and sophomore year, let me tell you about my night. 

In earlier posts I mentioned how we had a dinner party with a group of italian boys nicknamed "The Dream Team" for whatever reason. We went to there house for the first party, and then we hosted a party at ours for them with 4 cheese mac and cheese and actual silverware. Another anecdote about that night that is important to mention is how we went to a bar afterward, and some random dude groped my crotch. yes! not even grabbed my butt, but actually went in and cupped my crotch on the outside of my jeans as he walked by. I never caught his face, but was obviously distressed. The boys of the dream team, some of whom speak english, some of whom do not, came over and asked why I was upset, and I told them some sketchy guy just basically went to 3rd base with me. Very inappropriate. The boys were confused by my vocabulary, in particular the word "sketch". To explain it to them my friends and I reached out with our hands and grabbed their shoulders and were like, "If someone does this, or touches you, it is sketchy. Creepy, si?" Oh the italian boys. They now think the word sketch means to grab someone, and now as a way of greeting when they see us they will pinch our arm or cheek and go "Sketch! Sketch!"

We learned last thursday night that it  the boys of The Dream Team are pretty sketchy themselves, and do not really need a lesson on sketching. We had them over for a second dinner party, where they were supposed to cook Mexican food for us. When they called from the supermercato asking if they should bring white or wheat bread, we decided to scratch the Mexican food fearing that they would put meat and tomato on white bread and call it a queseadilla.  So instead they showed up at 9 o'clock, which is when Italians typically eat dinner, with 15 bags of tortellini. Oh, and they were wasted. Completely wasted from the tips of their toes that were so fashionably encased in Gucci loafers to the tip of their overly gelled hair. Apparently they went for an aperitivo, which is the Italian before dinner drink which usually is a glass of white white, or proseco or compari and soda. They must have had all three and then some. 

Anyway, the boys are cooking (or attempting to boil hot water) while smoking cigarettes (which they lit while holding it in between their lips and leaning over the burner) and we have music going. All is fine. The boys there are Micael, Antonio, Nathan (an American who lives here) Francesco (a bartender who was not at our last dinner parties, but is 32 and speaks great english, and is very nice and calm-and not drunk, like the rest of the ragazzi. (boys)) Valentino and Phillipo. And us girls. After dinner, we turn up the music and are dancing around the apartment, after having a lot of vino ourselves. Sara, Micael and I are dancing together near the coffee table and Antonio decides it would be a good idea to get up on our glass coffee table and have a little spotlight moment.

While I appreciate a spotlight moment myself, I have enough common sense to know not to dance on glass tables. Why? Because you fall through. Which is what Antonio did. He shattered the coffee table into a billion pieces, cut his feet in multiple places, and just kept dancing. We finally (as in the girls, the boys were still rocking out to "American Boy" and "Miley Cyrus" (they only listen to American music, it is the funniest thing) get Antonio to sit on the couch and we give him band-aids, while others are picking up the glass. Distracted, we finally notice that the boys are no longer dancing and are around the table. What are they doing? 

OH, JUST SMOKING CRACK!  Now, the girls of my apartment started freaking out because 1. they are way sketchier than we imagined and what bizarre behavior we  had previously chalked up to being cultural differences is, in reality, probably just due to being drugged. 2. because they brought the crack into our apartment, and that is absolutely unacceptable and our host institute was very clear when they had the chief of police of Perugia speak to us on the first day about how if you are caught with drugs in your house it is an automatic 5 years in jail. In Italy, you are guilty until proven innocent. You don't have bail.  

Understandable, then, that the girls are freaking out. I however, was not so much freaking out as I was stunned. And, oddly enough, homesick for the Pi Kappa Alpha frat of Richmond, VA. It felt comforting and very familiar to me to watch boys ingest cocaine in a variety of ways, and I had the strongest urge to call Ricky Rudolph and tell him I met the boys that would be his BFF should he ever visit me in Italy. 

Needless to say, we told them we don't care what they do in their free time, but they will never ever ever snort coke, cook coke, or smoke crack in our apartment again. And that they owe us a coffee table. 

Just to Brag

Here is a quick sneak peek into the trips my roommates and I have planned (and have already taken) for the next 3 months. Thank you cheap flights on Ryanair. 

September

12th-14th Sorrento

20th-21st Rome

26th Florence

October

3rd-5th Milan (possibly)

17th Florence

18th Pisa and Spain

19th-24th Spain, specifically Madrid and Barcelona 

November

6th-9th Parents visit!!!

13th-16th Prague

21st-23rd Skydiving over the Alps (possibly, flight costs 500 euros, please feel free to donate!)

December

4th-8th Paris

17th-Home!

Red, White and Blue

Last week I had a mini-breakdown of sorts. The week started well, with me industriously deciding to wash my now 10 day slept in sheets. For anyone who knows me well, they know I prefer to wash my sheets every few days, and this 10 stretch was probably the longest I had slept in anyone one place without a cleaning-except maybe in the womb. Anyway, while we have a washer in our apartment, we do not have a dryer. This means that sheets must be done first thing in the morning or they will not be dry by night time. So I assumed. 

The morning comes, and I go to do my sheets, and I see that Sara was planning on doing the same thing. Remembering my latest effort at going with the flow, being an easy going and relaxed person, I said "hey, no biggie, you go ahead." She, of course, being a naturally easy going and relaxed, not to mention nice person said that she did not have class until later in the day, so she would put my sheets in for me as soon as hers were done since I would be in class at that time. I had class all day (ugh) but had texted Sara and asked if she would mind hanging my sheets up on the drying rack since I would not be back in time. She understood, as we had already realized that because the washer took 2 hours to run a cycle, everyone would have to help everyone else out when it came to laundry, because obviously no one could hang around waiting for 2 hours. 

I return back from class at 4pm, and automatically call out "thank you soooo much for hanging up my sheets". Silence. Turns out that since Sara's sheets were already hanging on the drying rack inside, and it was raining outside, they had to get creative with where to put my sheets. May I just say that while there was no ideal location, they suck at creativity? I discovered that they hung my sheets in the bathtub. The bathtub that everyday 5 girls shower in and had not been cleaned in the two weeks since our being there. There were dirty footprints on my sheets from the tub, there were various clumps of hair, some being of the lower region kind, and to top it off, my sheets were soaking wet. 

I flipped out. I managed to mumble a few words about consideration, and then I ran out of the house to go to Conti, a home good store in the neighborhood that I had hoped was something like Bed Bath & Beyond. I had to buy another set of sheets because at 4pm, there was no way I could rewash my incredibly dirty sheets and dry them in time for bed. So at Conti, sheet shopping, realizing how incredibly handicapped I am because I have been spoiled all these years by my mother's affection for egyptian cotton and high thread count, I find nothing but sheets that feel like canvas and have Looney Tunes on them. Nonetheless, I am forced to purchase a pair, that in broken Italian, I ask if they include a top and bottom sheet, and the lady at the counter "Si"s me. Great. I bring the sheets back home, amazed they cost 30 euros when they feel like a new canvas plastic hybrid, and realize that I did not purchase a top and bottom sheet after all, but a mattress cover that you are supposed to zip your mattress into. 

NO! I look frantically for the the piece of paper she wrote the exchange out on, so I can immediately return it, and realize that I am missing my credit card. AGAIN. I depart the house, in the rain, making raindrops of my own as I sob my way to the gym, located 1 mile away from my apartment, to try to find my credit card, thinking this is the last place I used it, to purchase a gym membership earlier today. The man assures me that no, they do not have my credit card, and when I all but fall down under the weight of the not-sheets-but-a-mattress-cover and my own disappointment, he takes my wallet from me and looks for the card himself. And of course he finds it. My relief is somewhat eclipsed by my embarrassment that I am crying in front of the entire gym over a credit card that was in my wallet the entire time. Sheepishly I thank him, "Grazia mille" (thanks a million) and head back to Conti to return my mattress cover. I decide on the way over that 30 euro is not worth trying to find the right sheets, and when I hear from my roommates that they have kindly re-washed my sheets for me, I think that I will just rough it one night and sleep without sheets, as gross as that is. 

I arrive at Conti, and discover another thing that the good ole' USA has that Italy lacks besides a dryer, microwave, one shape of socket (yes, plugs here come in many shapes and require multiple adapters), chinese food that the sweet and sour chicken does not come boiled with pickles and pineapple (?!!), and that would be: a return policy. Yes, as it turns out, no where in Italy can you return something for your money back. Only exchange, and that is if you're lucky. Ciao, 30 euro! While we may have an embarrassingly oafish President and be known as the uncultured mac n' cheese eating masses, at least we have established return policies, and for the record, I like mac n' cheese.

Sorrento

It has been a while since I have blogged-been sick, tired, and lacking of internet. But I digress. Last weekend, my roommates and our neighbor, Karole F. traveled to the Amalfi Coast, specifically, Sorrento. I had pictured a charming little cafe type island (no doubt where Sophia Loren was born and raised), beautiful beaches, and an even more beautiful ocean, lapping at my perfectly pedicured toes. Somewhere during the 7 (!) hour train ride, which included 3 trains, 2 buses, 2 subways, and 1 mile walk, I remembered something called reality. This meant:

1. My toes are not perfectly pedicured because all of Perugia is downhill, and my toes hit the front of my shoes, which makes it difficult for a pedicure to remain glossy and smooth

2. Sophia Loren would never had stayed at our hostel, which turned out to be more of a campground, complete with a cabin! Though there was no actual flag raising, we were woken up as early as one is at camp: 6 am, by a torrential downpour, as well as various animals running around on the leaky tin roof above us. The conditions of the cabin, however, were far worse than camp, because one of the mattresses had a huge blood stain, and on the tree outside of our cabin, there was a huge chunk of hair, and what I suspect was scalp, hanging off our branch. Murder typically does not happen at summer camp, so whatever memories that the rustic cabin that had no towels and sheets and smelled like urine brought up, were quickly squashed with this disturbing thought.

3. There are no beautiful beaches, although, I must grudgingly admit, there was a beauuutiful ocean, of a greenish bluish color. There were huge dark rocks that hit the edge of it, no sand in sight, so we took a sheet that we did manage to find from the cabin and laid it on one of the dark rocks and listened to the ocean as we sunned ourselves. This was in the mid afternoon after the torrential downpour had stopped, and I suppose the rain had scared off many visitors, because we were lucky enough to have the beach/rock to ourselves.

All in all, I had a really great time (minus one blood stain), and learned various lessons: bring your own towels and sheets and that nobody really looks at your pedicure when you look hot in a bikini.

My name is Gina

Thursday night my roommates and I were invited to a dinner party at the apartment of the owner of Eden, one of the more popular bars in Perugia. So like any good mannered connecticut girl would do, I put on my cocktail dress and dropped by Sardi's, a pastry place for some dolci, sweets, to bring as a thank-you-for-having-us-present.
This is where normal ended. Pisco, the owner, who is very eccentric and inappropriate, picked up my friends and I in front of the fountain and city center and we then walked oh, about a mile, to his friend's apartment. He was 30 minutes late AND they haven't even started cooking when we arrived. I might have been expecting a traditional italian sit down dinner with white napkins and such, but what I entered could have been a dorm room at U of R, with lots of posters of sex drugs rock and roll. etc. The owner was a jhorts (jean shorts) wearing boy named Vincenzo, who when we peeked in his bathroom, had no less than 10 tubes of hair gel, all of which were the size of my torso. His head probably sported another tube roughly equal to half my body weight. Shortly there after, Valentino arrived. He has an American mother and worked for two years in at a pizzeria in manhattan, so he has great english. He was to be the chef for the evening. Micael, Amedeo, Antonio, Francesco then arrived. Micael, Pisco and Valentino are the only three who spthe size of my torso of hair geeak english, but the others communicated with lots of cheek pinching, which apparently in a form o affection in italy. Also a lot of head patting, to the point where I actually wondered if in fact they had mistaken me for a dog that liked head patting and ear scratching-yes they did this too. Actually, it was much preferred to the American boy form of affection: groping. I was also renamed Gina, as Carson, even pronounced Car-son, was too much for them. My roomates were renamed Tina, Lina, Mina and Dina too. I called them all Fred in retaliation.
At around 930, we sat down to a dinner of a lotttt of wine, and gnocchi with a sauce of pesto and tomato. I drank the white wine and the red and made sure to eat my gnocchi to soak it up. We all then chatted for about 45 mintues after dinner, aided by the wine. I sat on a chair in my cocktail dress facing the couch that had a lot of the boys on it, and with a italish (italian english hybrid) mix we managed to communicate, plus Valentino and Micael would translate. Apparentely though, when i would turn around to look behind me, my legs would open just a little. Valentino must have noticed, as he asked me "Gina, dearie, would you please cross your legs as I need the blood to return to my brain". Everybody in the room hollered with laughter as I blushed something fierce, and the boys gave me a baseball cap to put on my lap to cover myself, and then pulled me to the couch and consoled my embarrassment by letting me pop all the champagne bottles (after they loosened them, i haven't gained super human strength in italy) as they chanted "Gina, Gina Gina!" It was a little bit surreal. Our second course was pretty much ignored and not eaten as it was....frozen fishsticks? Tres authentic italian food no doubt. We brought out the dessert but it was mostly ignored for the champagne that we would all take turns pouring down each others throat.
After the party wrapped up, we all walked another mile to the bar that Pisco owned, Eden, to enjoy some free drinks and socializing until Domus, the dance club, opened at 2 am. More on that later.

Whirlwind

I arrived in the Rome airport of Italy yesterday, Monday, August 29 after an 8 hour cramped plane ride next to a couple that was honeymooning. ick. For anyone who says plane food is bad, you must try Italian plane food. We had gnocchi, which is a type of potato pasta, kind of like little pasta pillows that melt in your mouth. An amazing tomato sauce that could rival Rao's-and you know I could practically drink that stuff. I then wound up spending 5 hours in the airport waiting for the next flight for Umbra to arrive. Just me and my 112 pounds of clothing. I brought everything-again, referencing the Paris Hilton syndrome. 

Five hours later, plus a three hour bus ride to Perugia, I arrived at the hotel in Perugia and met my roommates. Alex, who goes to Northeastern and is from Long Island, Sara, who goes to Elon and is from D.C., Angela goes to Stonehill and is from Boston, and Kelley is from Texas and goes to Austin University at Texas. Oh, and that evening at the hotel, we had gnocchi, again. 

The next day we woke up at 9am and moved in to our apartment. It is two buildings down from one of the buildings for our school, and is one block from piazza novembre, which is the center of town and has many restaurants, gelato shops, stores a huge fountain and a church. We got really lucky. Our apartment is beautiful. I feel like Eloise in the Plaza, only more italian. It  has marble floors and 20 ft tall ceilings that are molded on the top with gold. There are huge french windows that stretch the entire floor to ceiling and have sheer long white curtains that billow out  in the breeze. The kitchen is furnished sparingly but it has basically everything we need: refrigerator, washer, sink, table with 5 chairs, a large sofa and two arm chairs. The bathroom is similarly very modest, but I was definitely grateful for what we did have. There are two doubles and a single. Angela and Sara have the double on the far end of the apartment next to the bathroom, it has carpet, tall ceilings, and is on the smaller side. Alex has the single, which has pink carpeting, a bookcase etc. Kelley and I live in the large double near the front door, with two huge long windows that we keep open, a marble floor, a vanity table where we do our makeup, a wooden table and chairs, a hugggge wooden wardrobe to hang our clothing- it has two sections, and kelley was nice enough to let me have the large one since I brought more than double what she did. too much. There are two single beds and a fireplace too. It's more than perfect. I can only compare it to a very old fashioned and grand apartment that has gone slighty to seed in old age-like the von trapp house in sound of music. (such a dork). 

That morning, as we were moving ourselves in, the doorbell rings. When we finally figure out how to open the giant wooden door, we see a blondish italian man of about 30 years old standing there. He is wearing a denim shirt that is embroidered with the word "L'acqua" which is the italian word for water. It basically looks like a uniform. He knows no english, we know no italian, but with a few words here and there we somewhat understand each other. His name is Marco, and he calls to his friend Evan (spelling?) who also works with him and is much younger and much (x ten) cuter. They are very friendly and they mime that they want to come in and ask if it's okay. Since they're so polite we let them in, and they ask for the kitchen. We show them and they look around but don't particularly do anything. They then count our heads (uno, duo, tre...etc) and leave. .........Only to return 30 mins later with espresso shots for all of us. They sit at the table in the kitchen and we all drink our espresso (ew) and we try to talk to one another. It's surprising how much you can understand by guessing and hand gestures. It was a great first moment in italian, especially when Marco goes, "Obama!" and does a victory gesture. We indicate we like he too and the two italian stallions chant for Presidente Obama some more. Guess they're a fan.