My (boyfriend's sister's) big fat southern Italian wedding!

It appears that it's been 3 months since I last managed to do any blogging (well, it's been a busy summer) and also that I've now moved myself back to the UK (for at least the next year). I may have to start a new blog to reflect my change in circumstances (a look at my profile will show you that I am fond of doing that) as I am now a London-based trainee teacher...maybe a teaching blog will be the one that finally catapults me into national recognition, with a columnn in the TES perhaps...

But before I sort that out, I want to update my faithful readers on my cultural journey in Italy. This summer was a time of incredible cultural discovery as I left cosmopolitan Rome to travel south to the wilds of Puglia (otherwise known, to help non-Italians, as "the heel of the boot") to meet my fantastic boyfriend's wonderful family.

This was definitely among the most nerve-wracking things I've done since arriving in Italy (and there have been many). On the train from Bari (the regional capital) to his town (Ostuni, "la città bianca", population 30,000) I worked myself up to a state of absolute, sweaty-palmed, tight-chested, shaking-handed terror, not helped by the hours of "helpful" advice given me by various friends and acquaintances back in Rome. "Just be yourself", "Italian mothers make very hostile mother-in-laws", "they'll love you", "if you say thank you too much they'll get offended" etc. On top of the social anxiety, there was the language problem. Would I understand them? Would they understand ME? Would I manage to successfully use the polite "Lei" pronoun? [answer to the latter is no]. Was the present I was bringing for his mother (a plant) appropriate/too big/too small?

As it turned out, I was worrying too much (surprise surprise). My boyfriend's parents were as lovely as he is, treated me with the utmost courtesy and respect and even seemed to be genuinely glad to meet me. Of course, the language wasn't always easy, but there were no disasters. In fact, the only problem during our two week visit was their tendency to over-feed me with delicious, fresh, local, homemade specialties. (It turns out that what in the UK would pass for a polite refusal of seconds, in Puglia translates to "yes, please give me much more food, I am trying to bulk up.")

Anyway. I want to blog not so much about the experience in general but about one experience in particular: the family wedding which I was very happy to have the opportunity to attend at the end of July. In addition to making me feel part of the family, it was also a fascinating chance to contrast nuptual festivities from the deep south to freezing north of Europe,being was followed closely by my own brother's equally lovely wedding in Bristol in August.

Weddings are HUGE in the south of Italy. I had been warned of this beforehand, but I didn't really grasp the significance of this event until we arrived at the bride's apartment the day before her wedding to find various neighbours who'd been drafted in to clean the entrance hall and stairs and arrange huge vases of flowers: EVERYONE was involved in this celebration. My fretting about the suitability of my outfit beforehand had been well-warranted. The afternoon before the big day passed in a blur of errands in the car, calzolaio, cioccolateria, lista di nozze...we got a fortifying early night and were up at 7.30am.

The bride getting ready in the morning was already a big event, with the hairdresser, makeup person, person-in-charge-of-bringing-round-the-dress, and a few hangers-on and relatives all turning up at her flat between 8 and 10 in the morning. The photographers arrived towards the end for the obligatory "bride getting ready" photos, by which time the place was pretty crowded with family and friends. There was breakfast and coffee for everybody and those of us with not much to do took photos, chatted and (in my case) tried to follow what was going on. The guests paid maximum respect to the bride's parents: they were very much seen as the hosts and the secondary focus of the celebration. And outfits were IMPRESSIVE: I commented later that "everybody looks like extras from The Sopranos". My boyfriend quickly countered that nobody there was involved with the Mafia, but I don't have any other frame of reference for the opulence of the older men in pinstriped suits, diamonds and rolexes!

After the getting ready and breakfast session, the people in the apartment (which comprised about 25% of all wedding guests by this time) trooped down the road to the church. (There was a quick photo op on the way down for the bride, who had to cut a ribbon before leaving her apartment building on her father's arm - some kind of leaving-home or cutting-ties symbolism, I assume. The church was a Catholic one (of course!) but was an ultra-modern brand new building, which meant that I missed a certain amount of the incense/dark wood/ancient paraphernalia which I expected from a Catholic church. Nevertheless, the ceremony, which comprised holy communion, an offering of food for the poor, and alot of chanting responses, was sufficiently foreign and confusing for me to wish I wasn't seated in the very front row, just feet from the priests: I even started pretending to mouth the words in case it was too obvious that I wasn't participating.

After the religious service, the bride, groom and witnesses signed the register to the side of the church while the guests congratulated the bride's family. As I was sitting with the rest of the family, I found myself caught up in this, and spent the next 20 minutes feeling like a fraud and trying to figure out what it was appropriate for me to respond as people shook my hand or kissed my cheek, saying "auguri" (congratulations)...I mostly plumped for alot of awkward smiling. Similarly, the wedding presented another social conundrum: what is the appropriate response when innumerable uncles and cousins (generally male) shake your boyfriend's hand and tell him "you've found a very beautiful girl, well done!"??! As a feminist, I felt like maybe I should be kicking off, but then, as a polite English person, I equally didn't want to cause a scene or make people uncomfortable. I went for more embarrassed smiling, always my fallback expression.

Church over, the guests not lucky enough to be invited to the reception were dismissed - and that involved nearly all the non-relatives: the families were so huge that there just wasn't room at the reception for anyone not blood-related, sadly - and the rest of us headed out to an enormous hotel in the countryside for a six hour lunch.

Food was VERY important at all times during my visit to Puglia, so you can imagine the scale of the spread for the 150+ wedding guests. Just the aperitivi snacks were enough for a decent lunch for everyone there. The antipasti - starters - consisted of a buffet so extensive that I really thought that maybe that was the whole meal. It was an incredible choice, with seafood (giant prawns, smoked salmon, squid...), cheese (the freshest mozzarella I've ever tasted, and stracciatella, which, it turns out, is not just an icecream flavour, but a fabulous combination of mozzarella and cream! probably no less unhealthy than the ice cream...), vegetables and meat for the non-vegetarians, which would be...oh yeah, everybody. I had the honour of being the only veggie, which meant that before the meat course I was besieged by a group of waiters who wanted to know what they could bring me: "cheese? fish?" I was so full by that point that I begged them to bring me nothing at all, but they returned with salad and grilled vegetables. Anyway, I digress...the buffet was amazing but I forced myself to eat very lightly and not to try to finish anything, having been assured that there were plenty more courses to come. And there were - gnocchi, then pasta, then fish, then meat, then desserts. Mamma mia!! My boyfriend was shocked, saying it was the first time he'd ever seen me leave food on my plate.

However, the Italians like to mix it up, so this mammoth meal was interspersed with plenty of dancing. Between each course the band would turn up the volume and invite people to come to the dance floor for a variety of styles...a conga line with all the women behind the groom and the men behind the bride was my personal favourite. It was funny to me to get up in the middle of lunch to dance, but as my boyfriend pointed out, moving around a bit is the only way you can keep eating so much food. Plus, it's a nice change from sitting and talking to relatives. I think we need to import this custom to British weddings and encourage them to mix up the dancing/meal-eating elements a bit. However, Italian weddings don't have speeches, and I kind of missed them.

Finally, towards sunset we were ushered out onto the terrace by the palm-lined swimming pool for more prosecco, wedding cake and the biggest selection of desserts and tropical fruit I've ever seen (we couldn't name all the fruits). We danced some more, but despite free access to wine throughout the entire mammoth lunch, nobody got embarrassingly drunk: Italians really know how to behave. (I tried to imitate them).

The guests started leaving at about 9pm, each one presented with a beautiful little present from the bride and groom - called a "bonboniera", it's supposed to be a token to help you remember the day. My boyfriend's sister's one was a box with 2 beautiful coffee cups - a present that the guests get, just for going to the wedding! so this is definitely another tradition we need to import.

lightning trip home

Last weekend I dashed home for a quick bureacracy-busting day - paying for/sorting out paperwork for my impending PGCE course, mainly relating to criminal records checks. It's complicated when you have to run checks in 3 different countries (note to future PGCE candidates: don't bother living abroad, it's not worth the faff).

I rushed to the airport straight from work on thursday evening, arrived at Stansted after midnight and was met by my VERY dedicated, patient and self-sacrificing dad at Liverpool Street at 1.45AM! Thanks Gerald, what a legend. Then Friday morning I was up at 8 to head to New Scotland Yard to be fingerprinted (the Australian police want my fingerprints). As you can imagine, the whole weekend was experienced through a slight haze of tiredness.

I think it was partly the sleep-deprivation that made me feel I was experiencing London very much as a non-resident. Navigating the streets on friday morning was confusing. I kept looking the wrong way before crossing roads and jumping with terror when cars appeared from directions I wasn't expecting. I fumbled with my Oyster card, forgetting I had to swipe out as well as in on the tube. Paying for anything was a hassle (due to my having forgotten all my PIN numbers in the 6 months I'd been out of the UK) and I saw my funds dwindle as I changed my newly weakened Euros to pounds (damn you, Greece!) I wandered through Victoria looking for a suitable bus and obviously looked so pathetic that a kindly man asked if he could help me.


This befuddlement made other cultural differences stand out more sharply too, though. I was struck by how tall everyone was and how many blondes and generally light-coloured people there were. (Oh god, I sound like I'm building up to an Aryan-loving neo-Nazi speech. I assure you I'm not. I'm just neutrally and with absolutely no ethnic bias commenting that the average Brit is still lighter-coloured than the average Italian, no matter how many sunbeds we abuse). And I was struck by how polite and friendly everyone was. I think I've become accustomed to telling people that Londoners are cold and not as chatty as Romans, and have come to take it as set in stone fact, whereas this visit shook my tidy stereotype. It's not true! Brits are incredibly talkative: almost every shopkeeper and security guard and admin assistant I encountered chatted away to me. There were 3 security steps involved in accessing New Scotland Yard - bag scan, security pass etc, and each member of staff greeted me, asked what I was there for, when my appointment was etc, and then explained in several sentences where I needed to go for the next stage. Since in general it was "walk over there and ask that man to scan your bag" I felt that pointing would have sufficed, but...hey. It's good to talk. Clearly.


On the other hand, I still felt stupid for saying "hello" when I entered a shop - in Rome you have to do that, but in London I felt like I might as well have carried a massive "Weirdo" sign with me, from the baffled reaction of the shop staff.

The other thing that really stood out was the ploriferation of incredibly drunk people in the evenings. On Friday evening, I was in Clapham for a drink with some lovely friends and made my way home on the good old number 37. On Saturday, I was in central London and took the tube and bus. Both times, walking through the weekend-night streets I was surrounded, stunned and occasionally accosted by massively inebriated hordes...moving me to exclaim "Mamma mia, the Daily Mail is right, this really is Binge Drink Britain" or "Broken Britain", as David Cameron would have it. Obviously I'm in no position to criticise drunkeness, excessive drinking or...well, anything really: those in glass houses, etc...But there certainly aren't the same levels of drunkeness in Roman streets or on Roman nightbuses. I don't know what it is exactly about Italian culture that doesn't encourage such reliance on alcohol for social purposes, but I will be giving it some thought over the next few months.

Streetside Shrines

Since I last blogged I went for a very sunny and lovely weekend away in Napoli.



One of the things that struck me was the proliferation of these streetside shrines to Jesus, the Madonna (that's the mother of god...shrines to the singer Madonna would be most welcome though, maybe I'll set one up myself) or any of the huge number of saints popular in the Catholic church. I love the mysticism of Italian Catholicism - to me it seems so exotic and so strangely incoherent in a 21st century European country.



My friend who came to Napoli with me kept commenting on my insistence that we visit so many churches. Being a bit of a Lonely Planet hog, it was always me choosing our route:
"where are we going now?"
"well, we're heading towards the sea, but before we get there it says there's a medieval church down this side street. Then there's another church with a Caravaggio painting and another with the ruins of a ancient Greco-Roman marketplace underneath the crypt which sounds interesting..."
"For someone who claims not to believe in God you really love churches, don't you?!"



What can I say? they're such fascinating cultural documents, and they contain so much artwork and history. Plus, as I pointed out in my defence, if you don't visit churches on holiday in an Italian city, what DO you do?! I think possibly my favourite was this church with a whole extra chapel and tiny museum dedicated to a man who was only made Saint in the 1990s by John Paul II. He was a doctor who lived in Napoli helping and treating the poor for free, and became a local celebrity. The church was full of pictures and prayers sent to him by the many people he helped during his life.



Some of the other streetside shrines were more cryptic, though, like this skull. A bronze skull sculpture, strung with rosary beads and a white rose...what's the symbolism? we stumbled upon it late one night while walking home through the centro storico, and it was pretty creepy in the dark, eerily quiet via Tribunale.

It's been a while...

Hi there my faithful reader (s??!)

I'm sorry it's been so long since I updated. In fact, I'm very ashamed as I've just realised that my absence from the blogosphere (as an active writer, I still read all my favourite blogs regularly) is precisely parelleled by the story of my new relationship: it was just after returning to Rome from Napoli in December that I got together with my now boyfriend. This makes me feel like a Bad Feminist (abandoning my own interests for a relationship).

However, I think there's a slightly more conscious level on which I've been reluctant to blog since being with my significant other, which is the dilemma of how to approach the blogging - should I use his name? would that be indiscreet? is it dishonest to cut him from my blog musings when he's such an important part of my life? This is something I reflect on quite often when I read other blogs - there are the people who talk explicitly about their relationship, making me wonder "but does your S.O. read your blog? and if so doesn't he/she feel betrayed? and if not, aren't you constantly terrified that he/she will FIND IT OUT?!"

I couldn't realistically try to conceal the existence of this blog from my boyfriend, but maybe I have a better discretion-protection-system in place: the language barrier...I know only too well fatiguing it can be to wade through a different media form in your second language; probably he won't bother.

My new man has really made me happier than I believed possible, and I have so much to thank him for. In addition, being with him makes me feel alot more integrated into the whole italian culture, and he's introduced me to so many things culturally (theatre, film festivals, music, radio, books, a whole wealth of things that alone I might have found impenetrable or assumed I wouldn't understand). Meanwhile, on the socio-cultural front, I have made a few observations over the last few months on the differences between living in Italy as a single foreigner and living in Italy as a foreigner with a native boyfriend. Mainly that any chauvinists who might otherwise have been looking to objectify me will pay the compliment to my boyfriend instead - for example, the garlic-man (I'm referring to a man who sells bags of garlic in the local food market, maybe not the career trajectory his mother dreamed for him but nevertheless an honest profession) who turned to my boyfriend after we'd both greeted him and commented "che bella ragazza, è tua?" - "what a pretty girl, is she yours?" stunning me somewhat with the wealth of material provided for one of my patriarchal-society-women-as-chattel rants.

While I like to make my status as a Humourless-Feminist as explicit as possible, it's not that I'm immune to compliments: in some respects I do LIKE to hear that I'm beautiful and that random people (ie the receptionist at my boyfriend's doctor's surgery) compliment my man on his choice. But what it's made me think recently is that maybe there's a cultural difference here in the language used to compliment a woman. I think Italians are very intrenched in the idea that to compliment a woman, you HAVE to call her beautiful or carina - just "simpatica" (nice), "intelligente" or "affascinante" (charming) won't do. I noticed this alot when my family visited recently. ALL my italian friends who met my parents told me afterwards "ah, your mum's so beautiful." That's nice to hear - in fact, I should have passed it on earlier to my mum, so if you're reading this, sorry I've been so remiss about that! - but it makes me think "why do you have to say my mum is BEAUTIFUL?? why is this what we value her for? can't you say she's nice or friendly or interesting or good at bringing up fantastic children??" No one told me my DAD was beautiful. I think this is a double standard that's ingrained in all cultures (look at any Hollywood film for the higher beauty-grooming-skinniness standards imposed on women as opposed to men) but it's noticeably more explicit in Italy than in Britain. Evidence...look at any male/female pair of newsreaders on the RAI (state TV network).


Feminist observations aside, the aforementioned family visit was WONDERFUL...it was a pretty amazing feat just to get all of us in one place (my parents from London, my older brother from Germany and my younger brother and fiancée from Bristol and wedding planning!) and it was lovely to have them all together. We did some Roman things that I'd never done before (finding Caravaggios in churches because the Caravaggio exhibition had a 2-hour long queue, discovering the bone-filled crypt of a church at Barberini) as well as some of my favourite things (the Cafferella park, via Appia Antica, the centro storico, Frascati). Alot of pizza, pasta, beer and wine was consumed, and we played alot of Bananagrams (a scrabble-like word game).


I've moved house and am now living in a fantastic flat a stone's throw from Rome's wildest park. It's cheaper than where I lived before, more central and right by the metro (and that's metro line A, ie the one with air conditioning! a massive plus in a Roman summer). To top it all off - I have a balcony. Not even a shared balcony, this is my own, private balcony that opens off my room. It's big enough to sit out on for a couple of people, not to mention other more practical benefits like using it to dry my clothes on etc. I am really in heaven and can't wait to drink prosecco on it on warm summer evenings. I'm living with two italian girls, one who was already a friend before I moved in, and they're both much friendlier and chattier than my previous housemates (who, lovely as they were, hardly ever spoke to me!). So altogether I'm really happy with the move. Every time I go running in the park just 5 minutes away I can barely believe how lucky I am.

My new housemates are exceptionally clean, as italians tend to be. This is a cultural stereotype I really wasn't aware of before I came over, but it's true - Italians keep their houses Very Very clean. It's alot more labour intensive as well, due to the lack of carpets. No passing a quick hoover off as genuine cleaning here: there is sweeping, mopping and polishing of the tiled floors. I am trying to integrate by raising my own standards of hygeine (as opposed to attempting to drag everyone down to my level, an alternative approach which I am trying at my boyfriend's house), at least in public areas (I'm currently sitting in my bedroom, in my pyjamas, with dirty coffee cups everywhere and a dirty, dusty floor covered in dirty clothes and books...it's not slovenly, it's bohemian, right?!). I really don't know if my housemates think I'm disgusting - I'd be genuinely interested, but there's not really an objective way to ask as they're both very lovely girls and wouldn't dream of telling me they think I live like a pig.

OK, for now, work is calling (it's 11.45 on a wednesday morning and I am not yet dressed: I know, time to grow up, but I feel I have to embrace my slightly wonky ESL teacher lifestyle for the moment, now that I have definite plans to come back home and Get A Career from September) but since I said at the beginning that I've still been reading all my favourite blogs, I thought it would be nice to give links so anyone who's interested can see what I do with myself when I'm not updating (among other things, obviously - maybe I should add a caveat of "what I do ON THE INTERNET"):
First and foremost, KATE HARDING: http://kateharding.net/
my feminist icon, full of body acceptance and 3rd wave feminism

http://www.tiredoflondontiredoflife.com/
The blog single-handedly responsible for my planned return to London

http://toorudemag.blogspot.com/
A Canadian girl who introduces me to alot of culture I would otherwise have no idea about

http://www.runningforgrace.blogspot.com/
my future sister-in-law with lots of beautiful photography (especially of cakes!)

http://www.everythingreviewed.blogspot.com/
This blog is sadly dormant for long years but I'm including it as it was maybe the blog that got me into the joy of blogging: the writer had a deal with the Guardian where they published her posts. If you have time to spare on the internet it's well worth a retrospective read, it's hilarious (and who says this new media format is only worth reading IN THE MOMENT, anyway?!

bilingual activism

I've been trying to get involved with Greenpeace in Rome since I came back in September and decided my Italian was at a reasonable social level. Everyone there is really friendly and they meet near my house (bonuses) but unfortunately they meet on monday nights and since the beginning of October I've always had to work then. Anyway, on saturday there was an action day to keep up the pressure on the Copenhagen meetings and I finally managed to force myself to volunteer to go and help out. (I haven't before because generally I'm working (most of the others are students) and because I'm quite shy in Italian and not very sure of myself with regards to speaking to the public!

Anyway, Saturday was the day of my debut performance as a Rome Greenpeace activist. There was a kind of small festival in Piazza Farnese - the title of the day was "100 piazzas for the climate" - with a stage for speakers, games for children and a range of stalls from organisations ranging from Greenpeace to organic food to Christians for the planet or some such. It was a nice sunny day but VERY cold - my outfit choice of tights and miniskirt quickly revealed itself to be a poor one and I shivered in my Greenpeace t-shirt until a fellow helper convinced me to tie my coat round my legs to warm them up a bit.

We were giving out leaflets and information about the anti-nuclear campaign (Italy wants to start investing in nuclear power stations, Greenpeace don't want that to happen), selling merchandise to fundraise and also taking photos of people wearing masks representing the different G8 leaders standing in front of an "Historic Agreement Now" poster. As for this last activity, I wasn't entirely sure WHY we were doing it - this is one of the things about doing things in a second language, alot of general facts that in your native language you would pick up as you go along you miss out on. Not wanting to seem ignorant, I failed to ask anyone what the purpose was as I posed for a series of photos - the guy who was volunteering with me on the stall decided to use me as part of his sales pitch: "come and have your photo taken with the lovely Mary". Bemused passers-by must have assumed I was a)famous or b)a prostitute.

Another thing about comprehension of a language in which you're not completely fluent is that it's very closely linked to context. If you're expecting to hear something, frequently you can understand it. If someone makes a comment or asks a question that is unexpected or surprising, you'll generally respond with "huh? what?" This wouldn't be such a problem if people just repeated their comment, but all too often on saturday people would look at me more closely, and realise "ah! sei straniera!" [you're foreign] and then either give up, or attempt to explain in English. I was expecting questions like "what is greenpeace?" or "what size T-shirt is this?" but I wasn't expecting "where's via del Corso?", "where can I get something to eat?" or "can you hold this bag open for me while I transfer into it the contents of my other bag which is broken?"

I spent alot of time hiding behind other volunteers, letting them do the talking and dealing with people part, and feeling useless and unhelpful. My proudest moment was when a man asked "what does this mean?" of the title of the Greenpeace calendar, which is in English: "Standing up for the Earth."

Not so great was when a drunken old man, stinking of alcohol, came up and looked at some baby t-shirts. I asked if I could help him and he replied, with a horrible lear, in English, "Do you have something in my size?!" Then he marched off, cackling.

Probably the worst part though was when I was ambushed by a couple of girls who asked if they could ask me a question. Given that I was standing at a greenpeace stall wearing a greenpeace t-shirt, I really didn't feel I could say no, despite fears that they would reveal the gaping holes in my political knowledge, so I tried to summon my powers of articulacy and said "yes." They asked "what are your hopes for Copenhagen?" While struggling to frame a decent response, in Italian, I was most deterred to see them whip out a video camera and start filming me! I was stammering about agreements and they said "oh, you can answer in English if you prefer." I did, obviously, and gave a response to the effect that I hoped to see a strong agreement, the richer countries leading by example and setting a good precedent for the developing world. At that moment a campaigner, ie someone who is actually employed by Greenpeace and alot more knowledgeable than me, came up, just in time to see them walking off with their footage. He pointed out to me, very nicely, that any interviews and filming are usually left to the campaigners and not the volunteers...of course! I felt utterly humiliated as it looked like I just wanted to hog the limelight and as I risked embarrassing the entire organisation...I had nightmare images of me, saying something inappropriate in bad italian, being broadcast on international TV as "a Greenpeace spokesperson"...I apologised and assured him that I'd said "personally" (I had).

He said it was fine, and, of course, the footage hasn't surfaced anywhere (that I know of) - I mean, they were hardly from BBC News 24: they were both pretty young and to be honest I'd assumed they were probably doing a school project or something!

I sloped off at 6 o'clock, thoroughly chilled and needing to warm-up and de-stress...working for causes you belive in is all well and good but really takes it out of you.

Napoli

I LOVE the December 8th bank holiday weekend in Italy. Working 6 days a week REALLY makes you appreciate a proper weekend...and this year as the 8th is a tuesday my school (and alot of other businesses) decided to make the "ponte" by closing on monday as well. Good times...so I headed to Naples with my friend Emily. We'd been planning to do this for ages but as the time drew near we realised that, as often for english language teachers, our plans could be hindered by the universal problem of "not having enough money"; luckily we managed to organise the Napoli trip on an incredibly tight budget. It's only 12 euros from Rome if you take the 3-hour regional train, and we found a hotel room for 20 euros each a night (the bathroom was in the corridor, but hey, we didn't need luxury). So it was an excellent low-cost break.

We arrived on saturday evening having both worked in the daytime, and were both pretty shattered. We were also somewhat terrified. EVERYONE in Rome who heard I was going to Napoli reacted with a raised eyebrow and a "be careful!" Everyone gave extensive advice about not going into dark alleys, not going out alone, not carrying too much cash, not putting valuables in a handbag, not wearing jewellery...it was crazy. Obviously Napoli is a seat of the mafia and has huge poverty and social problems. That's evident...plus I've read "Gomorra", Roberto Saviano's book about the mafia and gangs in Naples and around the region...BUT still, I think people in Rome were overreacting to the danger I, a foreign tourist, would be exposed to. I suppose there's probably some inter-city rivalry going on (quite alot of people did react, when I said I was going to Napoli for the weekend, with "why??").

Anyway, we got off the train clutching our bags, having shuffled our money and passports around so that there was nothing valuable in our handbags (certain they'd be snatched by the first moped-rider who past) and removed our earrings (ridiculous! As you may recall, while I often wear conspicuous jewellery, it's strictly costume). We traversed the piazza outside the station nervously, looking round constantly, watching for thieves on mopeds etc...but in the event there seemed to be more danger from the traffic (something else I'd been warned about). It's true, drivers in Naples are REALLY crazy and don't seem to be constrained by any kind of traffic laws. Red lights are there to ignore, scooters are there for 3 or 4 people to be crammed onto, a couple of metres of space is licence to accelerate furiously...it was terrifying! Anyway, we made it to our hotel in one piece, established that it was ok and that the slightly dodgy-sounding name (Hotel Casanova) did not seem to have any implications beyond the fact that it was situated on Via Casanova...and headed out for pizza.

Many people had also spent time expounding the differences between Napolitan-style pizza and Roman-style pizza to me before this trip, and I'd kind of assumed it was all in their heads - you know, like different wines actually having different qualities, or separating eggs making any difference to the eventual cake. But the pizza was perceptably different - thicker dough - and really, really great. We tried to eat at Da Michele, a very famous pizzeria not too far from our hotel, but the crowd looked a bit mental, so we headed to an also quite famous pizzeria round the corner and got involved. Drinking excessively certainly does NOT seem to be a Napolitan vice: everyone else in the pizzeria was drinking coke, and the waiter raised his eyebrows when we ordered a beer EACH: "Two, are you sure?" The menu was spartan: marinara (tomato sauce and herbs), margherita (+ mozzerella) or about six variations on the margherita, adding just one topping each time. Whilst I do theoretically appreciate the italian focus on good quality, fresh, simple food, I also constantly bitch that they take it TOO FAR with the simplicity!!! Is it really a crime to put more than three ingredients on a pizza?? guess what, onions MAKE THINGS BETTER!! I also frequently sneer at people who order a margherita pizza in a restaurant: oh yeah, don't try anything new, it might threaten your world order. However, on this occasion Emily and I said alright, "when in Naples [oh hang on, that joke doesn't work outside Rome, does it? well anyway]...let's go for the margherita". And it was completely delicious.

Alot of tourists go to Napoli, and yet we still managed to feel like aliens. We were the only non-italians in the restaurant, and eventually the waiter plucked up the courage to ask us where we were from. "From England, but we live in Rome." "Oh, you have boyfriends in Rome?" "No -" shit, shit, when am I going to remember to lie in answer to that question?? "we work there." Next thing we knew, he'd gone off to tell the kitchen staff and there were pizza chefs peering round the partition at us, seriously, it was ridiculous. We got a bit of attention and harrassment over the weekend but luckily nothing seriously scary or threatening. (I had been considering dying my hair brown before we went, fed up with hassle from strange men and blaming it on being blonde, but then decided I was being hysterical...in the event, I still think it might have helped, but hey, I'd probably look stupid, and maybe that's Letting The Misogynists Win).

After pizza we refused the waiter's kind invitation to go for a giro with him and his friend in his car and escaped to via Tribunali, one of the main streets in the old town. It's gorgeous, I loved it - a really long narrow cobbled street, flanked by washing-strewn alleyways, badly maintained monuments, and churches. Gypsies rummaged through overflowing bins. Teenagers streaked past on scooters, yelling to their friends. We walked for kilometres in search of a bar and had almost given up hope ("people must not drink in this town! they just eat pizza!") when we stumbled across a beautiful little bookshop-bar with a dj pumping out some seriously weird music - Eminem followed by some kind of industrial-noise thing followed by country - crowds of people drinking "cocktails" that consisted of rum mixed with champagne, and others sitting down to games of chess. Fantastic. There were more people outside the bar than inside, as the no-smoking law seemed to be pretty much the only one that people followed, and alot of people smoked.

After a couple of (reasonably-priced) drinks and a bit of small-talk with a weird guy from Milan who'd been teaching italian in Russia, we explored further and found a piazza with several more bars, and stumbled home very happily at about 2am.

Next day, Sunday, we were woken early by church bells and annoying people making noise in the corridor (I remembered that hotels are always obsessed with cleaning the rooms at silly hours of the morning, and this is why I prefer hostels) but, both being knackered from work, managed to grab a few more hours sleep and didn't head out til 11ish. First, coffee - which, yes, is also perceptibly different in Napoli, ridiculously strong! I could barely drink it! - and pastries; I tried the sfogliatelle, which are shell-shaped ricotta-filled pastries and kind of delicious but also a bit confusing - too much crunchy pastry. Then we explored the street market near our hotel before heading back into the centro storico. We did some marvelling inside the duomo and then got bogged down in scary amounts of people in the little streets where there is a market for presepe.

"Presepe" are these kind of very elaborate nativity scenes, as you might find in a church but which here people often have in their homes, with figures about the size of playmobile people (but much more serious and less plastic-y, obviously). Napoli is famous for them, and they come complete with many special features - including streams wiht real running water, little bulbs to make the fires look real, hillsides, shepherds, farm animals, etc. There were streets and streets of shops and stalls in Napoli selling them...some more traditional and some more exotic. (Baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the shepherds - no one, barring Richard Dawkins, is going to argue they weren't at the nativity; but the napolitan presepe makers are getting creative. A woman, ironing clothes? a baker putting bread in the oven? a pizzaiolo? who knew pizza was a typical dish in Roman-occupied Palestine?? These are mechanical moving figures which are completely enchanting, mind, and I guess they spice things up a bit: who wasn't getting bored with the stable?). There were also christmas ornaments, foods, and lots of little charms involving chilli peppers (I have no idea why. Can someone please explain to me the significance of the chilli pepper in Napolitan Christmas symbolism?) and cards and games...it was fantastic. There were also aLOT of people; the crowds were quite crazy and we soon gave up on trying to plan where to go and just allowed ourselves to be bourne along by the current, endeavouring not to get separated.

Eventually, just when it was all getting a bit too much, the crowd thinned and we managed to duck into a calmer street and found a bar to have lunch in. Lunch was a nicely salty ricotta-filled pastry for me, and a crazy, rather unappetising prosciutto and cheese thing for Emily which was apparently called a panino napolitano. (The barman helpfully tried to translate that into english for us but got a bit stuck: "typical Napolitan...panino". haha. I didn't bother to teach him the word "sandwich", seeing as it was my day off).

After lunch we walked further, checking out a couple of churches and eventually making it to the seafront, where the view of the Castel Nuovo, the Castel dell'Ovo, and the bay really took our breath away. The way Mount Vesuvius towers over the city is really superb...as is the way the city rises so sharply up from the port to the Castel d'Elmo...it was sunset and the sky was streaked with orange, pink and purple. Beautiful. We walked along the seafront for a while and by this time were exhausted. After a quick peak in the domed church which dominates piazza Plebiscito, and which is modelled on the Pantheon so closely as to be slightly disorienting, we managed to locate a bus to take us back up the hill to the hotel.

The bus was ridiculously, horribly crowded, and given that we were in crime-ridden Napoli we were both a bit terrified - especially me, as I had both my and Emily's cash in my jeans' pockets. We clung on as the bus navigated through the crazy traffic, coaches pulling out in front of it, cars not stopping, and then a woman near me asked if I'd seen anyone get off the bus. "erm, no..." her camera had disappeared from the case which she was wearing round her neck. She seemed pretty calm about it but I felt so bad for her but also didn't know what to say!! since I was nearest I was kind of concerned that she might think I'd taken it, but wasn't sure how to proclaim my innocence without seeming paranoid/mental/rude, so I didn't try. Thank goodness I was more lucky and didn't have anything taken.

After a quick power nap we hit the streets in search of more food, and this time, in my quest to eat something a little different and local, I made an ordering error, ending up with a folded pizza full of ricotta, mushrooms AND HORRIBLE HAM STUFF. I'm normally so careful about asking if things contain meat but for some reason I'd got distracted. Having ordered the pizza and then cut it up and started eating it, my Englishness prohibited me from sending it back due to the meat content, so I opted to just suck it up and eat it like the bad vegetarian that I am. (If anyone reading this tries to use this as evidence to make me eat meat in future, just think: I try to stick to my (environmental) principles, but don't you think it's important to be flexible?) It was quite nice anyway, I love ricotta but don't really enjoy that type of tasteless ham-y meat even besides being vegetarian. Moral of this story - just order a margherita!! After limoncello we hit the streets again in search of bars and nightlife and ended up finding a piazza crowded with hip young things. It's all about hanging about outside in Napoli, so just as well we had such fantastic weather - it was positively warm compared to Rome.

On Monday we left the hotel and headed into the centre on the metro this time, not wanting to tire ourselves out with walking before we reached any new sights. The metro station ticket machine was operated by a 9-year old girl who controlled the queue, instructing everyone as to what to do. "What type of ticket do you want? do you have change? No, don't use that machine, it's broken." She was so assertive that it was kind of charming despite obvious concerns like "where do you sleep? where are your parents? should this child really be "working"?" so we gave her some change. We managed to navigate the system and took a funicular railway up the steep hillside above the port to the star-shaped Castel d'Elmo, from which there was a simply fantastic view. Napoli looked quite different to Rome, which must be partly due to the very different histories - Napoli was controlled by the Spanish for years, and they were the ones to build all these castles.

Listening to the dialect was interesting - I couldn't understand a word. It is, apparently, recognised as being a separate language from Italian. Even the local accent confused me and I found it harder to understand what people were saying. I also got into a mild argument with a guy in a bar when I used a slang word that people use in Rome - provolone for a man who tries it on with alot of women, and he told me that word didn't make sense...I stuck to my guns and insisted that this was a word used in Rome! very useful strategy, like how any time I don't understand someone I claim they must be speaking in dialect.

After a lovely lunch in a tiny little trattoria (to take the orders to the kitchen the waitress just turned round and hollered "Mamma!!") it was time to head back to the hotel, check out, remember to collect our passports and sample some Napolitan icecream - yet another food which is allegedly different there; it was nice, but we judged it too sweet - before we got our train. We had a minor incident on the train back because we hadn't stamped our tickets to validate them (we'd tried, but couldn't find the machine) and the ticket inspector tried to get us to pay a 50 euro fine each. As you can imagine, we were upset - this would have royally messed up our cheap-break plan - and helpfully a number of other passengers intervened on our behalf, pointing out that we were foreign and didn't know any better (we strategically kept our mouths shut about living in Italy) and eventually, the inspector let us go with an instruction "Next time you come to Italy - stamp your ticket!" we agreed.

So all in all, a charming weekend away. See, this is why I update my blog so rarely - I can't seem to resist writing a novel every time I sit down to it! If you've made it this far, well done and thank you.

My 27th birthday festivities

Hi there. A couple of people recently have referred to going to my blog to see if there were any updates and being disappointed that it was still just me, ranting about Roman men. Whilst frankly I think anyone should be thrilled by the opportunity to re-read some of my incisive and relevant feminist cultural analysis, I'm capitulating to the demand so here are some photos from my birthday meal last saturday. Enjoy!

It's me and my ex-housemate Lorenzo!! It was so nice to see him. He said my italian's really improved since we lived together


Lorenzo and three of my friends who are students at the school, Sara, Andrea and Claudia.


This is Liuba, another teacher and a good friend, and Anna, my conversation exchange partner who is teaching me Italian.


Me with Anna and Elena, my roommate from kid's camp in the summer. She's the one who introduced Anna and me.

We had a fantastic set menu meal of fish - I chose the restaurant because it's good for big groups; you pay a lump sum per head and they bring you a smorgasbord of seafood delights, basically. I was very happy to have 18 people...it was really lovely. So we had mussels, calamari, frutti di mare, copious amounts of white wine, and then a mixed grill of plaice along with other fish, bread, salad, and finally lemon sorbet and coffee. Everyone was chatting and pretty much everyone was sitting with people who spoke the same language (I was a bit worried about the social dynamics since we had lots of italian speakers, lots of english speakers, and not everyone has the fantastic bilingual fluency of myself (ha)!) I was bought several roses which was a treat. I also got some fantastic cards and presents. Certain members of the party tried to convince me to make a speech but I dodged that bullet (me making a speech after alot of wine is not a pretty sight as, unfortunately, quite alot of you probably know). Then a select crew went dancing afterwards, to a club which bizarrely had a London band on! all good. I love birthdays.