Speaking Italian...Sort Of

Well, it’s happened, as everyone said it would. We have fallen in love with Italy.

I was a bit apprehensive at first, because before we came here, everybody kept telling us how wonderful Italy was and how much we were going to love it.

This made me nervous that the build-up and expectation would lead to disappointment. It’s like going to see a movie after everybody has told you it’s the best movie they’ve ever seen. It raises expectations to a level that can often be difficult to meet.

But I am happy to say that so far, Lake Como has been everything we’d hoped for. Once we got used to the bells, of course!

What I find so interesting is that it is difficult to put my finger on why it’s so wonderful here. Yes, the lake is beautiful, but so were the lakes in Norway. And certainly in France there were cute old towns with cobbled streets, but neither of those places have anywhere near the feel of Italy.

What has struck me so much about the Lake is the almost tropical lushness of the mountains surrounding it, and the dramatic steepness of those mountains. I mean, look at that picture above and tell me that this doesn’t remind you of Jurassic Park!

People here have been very kind as well. Willing to suffer through my terrible Italian, and either switch to English, or continue talking to me in Italian, but very slowly and with a lot of hand gestures! It’s like a non-stop game of charades!

I took a basic Italian class before I left, but I am limited to a few random words or very specific phrases. Still, I try to use what little I have whenever I get the chance.

I decided, when making a dinner reservation at another local restaurant, to try to do it in Italian. I looked up all the words carefully, and called. I got through my opening statement, asking if it was possible for me to make a resrvation for that evening, without a hitch. And the man who answered the phone was so kind as to even answer me in Italian.

And this is where the trouble began: I had absolutely no idea what he was saying to me. Not a clue. He might have said: "A reservation, what a wonderful idea!" Or he might have said: " The restaurant is closed." Or he might have said: "I have athlete’s foot and smell like cheese." It was all the same to me.

Undeterred, I decided to plow on, offering up the time of 8:30 for us to arrive. To this he said "Si". Si!!! I know what that means! Then he said something else. I have no idea what, but I decided that the best response would be to give him our name. To which he said "Si" again. Then there was a long pause, during which I felt a slight panic.

What do I say now?? I didn’t know how to say “See you tonight” I wasn’t even sure how Italians say good-bye over the telephone, especially since they say “Pronto” when they answer the phone, which I always thought meant quickly or hurry up. Maybe in that vein, the way to end a phone call was to say “giddy up” or “Hang up the phone!!!” or something. How was I to know?! So I waited, and finally I said “Grazie! Ciao!” which were the only other words I could think of at the moment.

Steve was very impressed with how it had sounded on my end, until I explained to him that I had no idea what the man had said to me, and that for all I knew I hadn’t even called the restaurant at all. It was very possible I had just made an appointment for a full body wax or a tooth extraction.

It was not until we arrived at the restaurant that I realized what the man had probably been saying, which was that we didn’t need a reservation, since, apart from one table of two we were the only people there.

The menu at this place was very similar to the other restaurant we went to in the area: a lot of fish and a couple of pastas and rice. Steve had a Bolognese and I decided to try their version of fish and rice. Food in this part of Italy definitely seems to be less about pizza, pasta and meat and all about fish and rice.

The food was nowhere near as good here as it was at the other restaurant, but the desserts were wonderful: a tiramisu with a kind of doughy, bready layer instead of ladyfingers, and a cold nougatty semmifreddo, which tasted kind of like a whipped and frosty marshmallow fluff with nuts. Yum…

Ossuccio and Villa del Balbianello

Greetings from Ossuccio, Italy, a tiny town on the western bank of Lake Como. The apartment is beautiful, and the views from our front balcony are stunning (photo at left), but the bells, my God, the bells. Never in my life have I experienced such an overabundance of bells. Why on earth, does one town need so many bells?

Of course, the problem is, in this area, there is one tiny town next to another, and they are extremely close together but still separate so that each town has its own church with its own bells, and these bells must all compete with one another and out-chime each other so that there is in fact a constant cacophony of bells.

And I am not kidding when I say these bells are constant. THEY ARE CONSTANT. Even now, as I write this, the 4:30 bells are chiming (but because it’s Italy, the 4:30 bells are actually chiming at 4:33). These bells are chiming out a tuneless song that now will last for at least 5 minutes.

Bells chime on the hour; they chime on the half hour; sometimes they even chime on the quarter-hour. Sometimes they chime out the time of day, but other times they just lazily ring and bing and bong for no apparent reason. They chime ALL NIGHT LONG, and at 12:30am and 7:30 am there is a particularly long and exuberant session that causes the dog out back to start howling, and ends just in time for the 7:45 bells to begin.

Never in my life have I heard so many bells, and I believe that some government somewhere will discover their usefulness as a form of torture. I’m telling you, if I had any secrets to tell I’d be spilling them now, just to get the bells to stop ringing. Please, I beg you, MAKE THEM STOP!!!!

Poor Steve is sleeping with ear plugs again, and both of us these last two mornings have woken up by 6am and have been unable to go back to sleep.

The bells are not the only issue, unfortunately. The house sits right on a very busy road, and so on top of the bells there is the added sound of cars, trucks and motorcycles rolling by day and night. The windows have pretty good sound proofing, but not enough to block it out completely, and with the beautiful view, it is a shame to not be able to enjoy the lake with the windows open.

Needless to say, it is not particularly peaceful. The street we lived on in Brooklyn was quieter than this, to give you some idea. In fact the car noise is not far off an NYC street, though without all the sirens.

There is a reason that the owners of this house ask for the money up front in cash! And it’s a real shame because the apartment is lovely and the view of the lake is extraordinary. It’s just a bit trickier to enjoy it than we would have liked. And when you’re so tired because you haven’t slept because of the street noise and the bells, it’s harder still.

I thought the bells in Alsace were bad; those at least stopped from midnight until, I think, 8 or 9 am. What I wouldn’t give for those bells now!

OK, enough complaining!!

On our first full day here, we walked over to Villa del Balbianello. For those of you who saw Casino Royale, the beautiful grounds of this villa were used as the site of James Bond’s (Daniel Craig) recovery after having his goolies smashed in by the evil Le Chiffre.

For those of you who saw that movie, I imagine you will agree with me that that scene was one of the most preposterous in Bond history. I mean, I know I’m not a man, but I was under the impression that if a guy got whacked very hard repeatedly in the old beanbags with a baseball-sized knot of rope, that man would, I don’t know….die.

Or at least pass out. Or vomit. Or both. Simultaneously. But not our James Bond. Nooooo. What does he do? He yells a bit, and then he laughs, and asks the man to do it again, because he has an itch.

Then, a few days later, he has sex. Repeatedly. Because it takes more than broken balls to keep James Bond from getting’ his groove on. I only wish they had shown Vesper's face when she got a look at Bond's manhood surrounded by eggplant-sized testicles, because, I'm sorry, those babies would swell.

Rain for the next few days, so I imagine things will be quiet: lots of sitting in cafes reading, or doing laundry, or watching Casino Royale on my computer.

Back soon, hopefully, with wine!!!

East Side Gallery

As of yesterday, I am in possession of a super-short Berliner hairdo. Think Mike Myers as Dieter from Sprokets on Saturday Night Live ("Now's ze time on Sprokets ven ve danse"), only curly.

I kind of like it this short, but it will take some getting used to.

After my shearing, we took ourselves to the East Side Gallery, which is the longest (1.3km) and best-preserved remaining section of The Berlin Wall. In 1990, dozens of artists from around the world created over 100 murals along this stretch of wall, making it, according to my Lonely Planet guidebook, the world's largest open-air art gallery.

It's pretty impressive to actually be looking at a section of the wall itself, and very moving to see all of the different artistic creations inspired by it.

After that, it was off to dinner at a terrific restaurant, Schwarzwaldstuben, for what else.......Schnitzel!!!

Tomorrow we are off to Prague for four nights, followed by one night in Munich as we make our way down to Lake Como, Italy, where we will stay for two weeks.

I am not sure what the internet deal will be in Prague, but I do know that our apartment in Italy doesn't have internet, so we will have to go to an internet cafe in the town 10 minutes away.

All that is to say that I'm not sure how often I will be able to post over the next few weeks. I will do so as often as I can, so keep checking back periodically.

Ciao!