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.
