Monday, May 25, 2009

Missing Rosolio di Mandarino

Often, at the end of a particularly productive or difficult day, my husband and I indulge in a sip of some treasured Italian liquour. We were honored at my husband's last business trip overseas to receive a gift of Mirto di Sardegna, a strong berry liquour. Our best friends in Milano like to vacation in Sardegna (Sardinia) each summer, so Mirto is a favorite of theirs that brings back good memories of those precious weeks each year when they can relax. We adore the Mirto too, and the bottle that they gave to us this past March is the best brand (Bresca Dorada) that we have ever tasted.

What we continue to miss, though, is an orange liquour that we acquired back in 2004 when these same friends drove us up to a gloriously beautiful abbey north of Milano, near Lake Como. The abbey was Abbazia di Piona, and the monks that live there are able to support themselves entirely by selling what they make (food and art), and take no money from the Vatican. On that trip, we came away with a bottle of Rosolio di Mandarino - mandarin orange-flavored liquour - and a large print of a photo of the abbey and its inspiringly-beautiful grounds. We had that print framed and it hangs in our home, continuing to bestow its beauty on our everyday lives.

These days, years later, the empty bottle of Rosolio di Mandarino also has a place of honor in our home. I think we keep it around mostly so that we can continue to look for it, just in case we find someone here in the states that can help us get some. Anyone who is a fan of bottle art would enjoy its design, too. The label and cap are elaborately decorated in an old-world style. If the appearance of a bottle of liquor could be described as romantic and historically European, I think that would come close to how this bottle looks to me.

Because the taste was so amazing - sweet without being cloying, vibrant orange yet sophisticated - and its origin so rare, I have a feeling that we will just have to plan on our next trip to Milano to make the trek up the mountainside to L'Abbazia di Piona and purchase a case to be shipped back home. It would be worth it.

http://www.terraincielo.it/monasteri/3923.php - Abbazia di Piona

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Why Does RAI Always Show Historical Movies?

It's Sunday. We call it "Italian Day" in our house, because our local Comcast cable provider broadcasts six straight hours of RAInternational programming direct from Italy. 7:00 am to 1:00 pm every Sunday I can immerse myself in Italian language, culture, cuisine, and whatever else they dig up to show us Italy-hungry Americans.
We discovered this broadcast in 2001, so we've been making Sunday morning Italian television a high priority in our household for a while, and I have observed several trends in what they choose to show to the American audience.
The trend that forces my analysis is that, when RAInternational includes a film in their programming, it is almost always historical, dark, and depressing. Sure, every once in a while they'll include a light-hearted soap like "Capri" or a cute mini-series like "Il Padre Quasi Perfetto". But, the rule is that they choose to show sad movies, often taking place around either the time of the unification of Italy or the time of WWII.
If RAInternational seeks to broaden its American audience (not sure that they are, but let's just assume that they as a company are capitalistic in nature), why all the sturm and drang?
Trying to be completely fair about it, I have to wonder if it is an attempt to keep the memory of Italy's hardship of the last 150 years fresh in the minds of Italy's expatriates and other interested parties. Is it possible that Italians and Italian-Americans are also hard-wired to appreciate hardship movies? I really don't know.
As a student of Italy, I have a working knowledge of the main events that the country has gone through to arrive at today. I'm not sure I need to watch actors recreate that horror and misery of it week after week to "appreciate it more". As a result, I typically use movie time to get other things done around the house.
Wish there was someone I could ask to find out what about this type movie is so important to broadcast, at the risk of depressing their viewers each week.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

A Dose of Reality - ExpatTalk.com

My favorite Italy information forum is at http://www.expattalk.com/. It is the forum attached to an amazing website for Expats in Italy, in particular. There is nothing like reading the dialog between people who have already moved there, and who are slogging through Italy's particular challenges each day.
My husband and I have wanted to move our lives there since we were married. Most days, we still do. But each day and each time I lurk on the ExpatTalk.com forums, I seem to put new conditions on that wish. Many of those conditions fall under the heading of wanting to be insanely wealthy before we move, since even folks with great credentials, experience, and connections never seem to get truly "comfortable" (in the financial sense of the word). We're definitely not wealthy (by American standards), but we're still trying - both the earning it kind of trying and the winning it in the lottery kind of trying. The desire for that kind of wealth is really grounded in Italy's sky-high unemployment rate. If we move, we need to be able to support our family.
The other umbrella topic that is of great concern is the bureaucracy - we complain over here about, for instance, standing in line for one hour at the DMV and needing to provide identification (the forms of which have always been well-defined and are not negotiable) . Those of you who know what the Italian bureaucracy is like, understand that the American version of being "inconvenienced by government" is ridiculously laughable compared to what the Italians deal with every day. You have not jumped through hoops, been given random and changeable "rules", or really been inconvenienced until you've had to apply for anything over there. I'm not sure I have that kind of patience.
Clearly, I have a lot of attitude adjustment to do before I get anywhere close to moving.

Monday, May 18, 2009

Prassi = Normal Procedure

As rule-oriented as I am, it's kind of funny that it has taken me 9 years of (admittedly intermittent) Italian lanugage study to run across this word in my Webster's New World Italian English Dictionary: prassi. It apparently means "normal procedure".
It sums me up in a way that is both comfortably reassuring and mildly unsettling.
I battle each day in my job to be completely reliable and consistent, above reproach, but my outside-of-work commitments don't always get the same treatment. Such as my on-and-off dedication to learning the Italian language...or my workout routine so that I could actually shop in those Milanese and Fiorentino designer shops...or my sputtering drive to become an internet entreprenuer.
Prassi. I should apply it just as evenly to the things in my life that matter to me besides my regular paycheck.

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Thinking Italy...and Finally Writing it All Down

After ten years of relentlessly pursuing any information I can find on current Italian life, I am finally live with the Thinking Italy website. We have recently returned from our 6th trip to Italy as a family, and things are really starting to click for me. Culturally and logistically, I’m trying to figure out how things work there so I can blend in better when we’re there. We have the extraordinary benefit of having some great friends who are native to Italy, and who still live in Milan and Rome. You would think that that lucky circumstance would make learning about Italy very simple. But Italy is far from simple, even when lifelong friends with fluent English skills are explaining it to you. As I figure things out, and then after I am corrected by my Italian friends after I think I have things figured out, I will record as much as I can here.