Category Archives: culture

Signs That You Are in Italy

culture,

  • “These paintings are from the 17th century, so they are very modern.”
  • You have seen two straight men wearing purple pants in the last four hours. One had a matching lilac shirt and purple moccasins.
  • Voice acting is a serious study; the dubbing is spot on for American TV programs.
  • Coach buses come with coffee makers.
  • McDonald’s is placed next to Roman ruins.
  • You pull to open a door, push to close.
  • Wine is cheaper than petrol.

  • Even though the public water supply is perfectly safe, there’s no water fountains anywhere and if you ask for tap water in restaurants, they look at you like you are crazy.
  • Eggs aren’t refrigerated, milk goes bad in 3 days, unless it’s the unrefrigerated shelf-stable kind that lasts forever.
  • Everyone is super friendly and chats with the person behind the counter. Every queue takes forever because everyone is having a chat with the person behind the counter.
  • Nothing is open between 12:30 and 3:30 pm (4:30 pm in the South). Nothing is open on Sundays. Nothing is open on Mondays. Nothing is open for the month of August.
  • Ginger comes with the label “exotique.”
  • You use plastic gloves to pick up vegetables at the grocery store. Public restrooms have no toilet paper.
  • The prime minister owns the media. The Pope owns the prime minister.
  • Flying to London costs €9. Taking the train to Rome costs €49.
  • Your roommate wakes up in the morning and turns on the TV while saying, “Let’s see if Berlusconi is dead yet!”

Gridlock: Battling Wits at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament

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“For this puzzle, each answer will be a 7-letter word. I’m going to give you the first and last letters, and the middle 5 letters will be an anagram of the word ‘inset.’ If you think you know the answer, yell it out. Ready? F, S.”

“Fitness!”

“D, T.”

“Dentist!”

“J, G.”

“Jesting!”

“Ok, this next combination has two possible answers. D, Y.”

“Destiny—and density!”

I scribbled furiously. All around me, the best puzzle solving minds in America were gleefully shouting out answers. Meanwhile, I could barely keep up recording the answers on paper. Clearly, my brain was missing some wiring in the verbal juggling department.

“All right, this next puzzle was one that I decided was too difficult for radio. I’m going to give you a word and you’ll add two w’s to rearrange it into a new word. So if I said ‘took,’ you would say—”

“Kowtow.”

“Apish?”

“Whipsaw!”

“Armies?”

“Swimwear!”

“Healthier?”

“…wherewithal?”

“Yes, that’s correct!”

Our host was Will Shortz, editor of the NY Times crossword puzzle and puzzle master of NPR’s Weekend Edition. Shortz is the only person known to hold a college degree in enigmatology, or the study of puzzles. But he is not alone in his love for inductive reasoning. Around me sat over 600 of the most brilliant wordsmiths, trivia buffs and mental gymnasts to have ever massaged the English alphabet. This is the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.

Personally, I have never solved a crossword puzzle in my life, and I usually fill in a scant half of a Tuesday crossword before giving up. But Jenn was in town on a mission—to crush her enemies in a gridlocked tangle of wits. This was her 9th year in a row of participation. And she insisted that I would have fun at the tournament’s evening festivities, when the high stakes crossword competition gives way to more laidback verbal jousting. Who am I to say no to hanging out with crossword nerds on a Saturday night?
Continue reading Gridlock: Battling Wits at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament →

Politics in Italy: Electing the Doge

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After football, one of the greatest past-times in Italy is bemoaning the state of Italian politics. After all, there is nothing quite like the mixture of sheepish chagrin and amusement one feels when hearing that class-act Prime Minster Berlusconi has been caught with yet another outrageous quip, like “I am a man who works hard all day long and if I sometimes look at some good-looking girl, it’s better to be fond of pretty girls than to be gay.” (You can see the news conference here…and hear the resulting applause from the audience.)

In my anecdotal experience, it seems like Italian voters are tired of the corrupt and ineffective Berlusconi machine, but there is no other charismatic leader who has stepped up to the plate and mustered the necessary votes to sweep him out of power. And thus, he stays on.

Perhaps we should go back to politics as we used to know them. I randomly stumbled upon the method for electing the Doge, or the leader of the Most Serene Republic of Venice (~700-1797 AD). The procedure was as follows:

Thirty members of the Great Council, chosen by lot, were reduced by lot to nine; the nine chose forty and the forty were reduced by lot to twelve, who chose twenty-five. The twenty-five were reduced by lot to nine and the nine elected forty-five. Then the forty-five were once more reduced by lot to eleven, and the eleven finally chose the forty-one who actually elected the doge.

The goal was to minimize the influence of the city’s most powerful families and aristocrats. It certainly seems to spread power more effectively than say, the Electoral College system.

A Foodie State of Mind, Or Damn They’re Strange in Flyover Country

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Serious Eats links to the above map of food-by-state produced by the hard working folks at I Can Haz Cheezburger, which is actually a lot more interesting than I had anticipated. Sure, lots of the chosen foods are obvious regional specialties or major crops associated with the state (MA clam chowder, Idaho potatoes, Georgia peaches), and then there are the lesser-known items coming from the (let’s be honest) lesser-known states. Michigan and pasties, is there a large population descended from Yorkshire miners in Michigan? Arkansas and jelly pie, an item invented out of the necessities of poverty, like Indiana’s sugar cream pie? And Colorado’s Denver omelette looks an awful lot like a burger to me, rather than fried eggs folded around diced ham, onions and bell peppers.

But that’s not where the real action is happening. For a few states I had no idea how to pronounce the associated food, much less what it was. (And they say the US is much more homogenous than Europe.) Enter the rad powers of Google:
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Finding Sticky Gold: The Greatest Grocery Store in Bra

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Publication forthcoming in the January 2011 edition of the UNISG newsletter

The discontent arrived in fits and starts. Mere days after arriving in Italy, I stood crestfallen at the market, valiantly searching for a bunch of cilantro. Piles of parsley surrounded me, a taunting, isomorphic reminder that I was far from home. The bulk bins were swollen with cannellini beans and lentils, but there was nary a sign of black beans. In the baking aisle, I combed the shelves for baking powder. Instead, thin packages with florid photos of cakes touted the ammonia-based leavening agent inside. Skeptical, I stifled my frustration and went home to yet another meal with pasta.

In June, I fell in love with an avocado. The supple, emerald skin beckoned from across the supermarket aisle and I could not tear my eyes away. According to the label, the avocado had been imported from Israel. In lecture that morning, we had discussed the concept of food miles and the merits of buying local goods. I ignored a nagging feeling of guilt and bought the avocado anyway.

But wait, I moved abroad to learn about classic Italian cooking, did I not? Why on earth was I longing for corn tortillas? With freshly made focaccia and grissini in every corner bakery, how is it that I could not shake my yearning for one good bagel?

Italy is renowned for the depth and sophistication of its native cuisine, but the strength of this staunchly traditional food culture comes at a price. Despite the persistent forces of globalization, there have been few inroads made in the availability of international food products, particularly in Italy’s smaller towns. This poses a conundrum for UNISG’s international student body, accustomed to cooking and eating in a more cosmopolitan fashion. In a land blessed with over 25 officially recognized types of cured meats and 400 cheeses, what happens when all you can do is fixate on finding a jar of peanut butter?
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Badass Sage and Sausage Stuffing, or a UNISG Thanksgiving

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No cranberries. No pecans. And forget the canned pumpkin. Celebrating America’s most foodie of holidays while abroad certainly poses its challenges. But by jove, we were going to try our darndest. The email was sent out to the class: “The 4th Thursday of November is a national holiday in the USA, a day originally to remember and celebrate the hospitality that the Native Americans showed the pilgrims during their first winter. Without the Native Americans sharing their knowledge of native crops, of squash, corn etc, the pilgrims may not have survived. (Whether the Native Americans may have later regreted this generousity is another story.)” A list of suggested dishes was provided, with the invitation to choose one and bring it to the Thanksgiving potluck. Without giving it too much thought, I volunteered to make the stuffing. After all, the StoveTop version takes six minutes to make; how difficult can this possibly be?

I should mention that my family has never done a Thanksgiving dinner with the classic roast turkey; we think it’s too dry/flavorless to merit 20 hours of roasting time. In the past, we have made curry turkey or deep-fried turkey, or deviated entirely away from turkey to lobster, soft-shelled crab, duck, hotpot…you get the idea. I did suggest hotpot for Thanksgiving dinner to my classmates, but this was met with strong cries of resistance. Ah well.

As it turns out, for many people, stuffing is the pinnacle of the Thanksgiving feast. (And here I thought it was all about the turkey.) Immediately after I announced my intent to make the stuffing, people began barraging me with questions on what kind of stuffing I was making, which recipe I was using, whether I was using drippings from a turkey that I’d freshly slaughtered in my backyard, etc. Okay, I am kidding about that last point, but the onslaught of concerned inquiries made one thing quite clear: stuffing is Serious Business. I assured everyone that yes I have made stuffing before (um, sometimes I toss rice with pan drippings?) and I would be using my grandmother’s traditional recipe (actually, my grandmother has never eaten stuffing in her life). Then, I started scouring the internet for stuffing help.
Continue reading Badass Sage and Sausage Stuffing, or a UNISG Thanksgiving →