BUZZURRO

Thanksgiving is not an Italian Holiday.

Yet nevertheless, as an American woman it was a holiday that I have warm memories of, and I wanted to keep that feeling alive.
My husband had obviously never celebrated it before, so I wanted to make this year’s thanksgiving extra special.
The year was 2002.

Not only was it my first Thanksgiving in Italy, but it was my first Thanksgiving as a married woman.
Even though there are only 2 of us in my household -me and my husband- I was determined to get all of the foods required for a real, proper Thanksgiving meal to show him a little what it’s about…

My planning started a few days before. I went into a store that sells English and American products and looked for cranberries. I didn’t find any.
The store did however sell canned cranberry sauce. I looked at the price tag… 6 Euro.
Too expensive for a can of cranberry sauce !
I decided at that point to forget it. Who needs cranberry sauce anyway ?

I then went to the supermarket to buy things they called sweet potatoes, and zucca, which I thought was pumpkin, but after I bought a chunk and got home, discovered that it was more like a butternut squash.

I also saw that the store sold turkey legs, so I figured that somewhere there must be a whole turkey in hiding but, no.
For that you have to go to a butcher shop.

I then went to a butcher and told the guy behind the counter that I wanted a turkey.
He pointed to some dead chickens complete with feet and heads hanging from the ceiling.

I repeated my question, thinking that maybe he didn’t understand me when I said TURKEY.
I was expecting one of those big breasted animals that I’m used to seeing. The butcher again pointed to those chicken-looking things hanging from the ceiling.

On closer inspection I did see the crown that you find on turkey heads on these creatures, but after seeing their yellow feet I just couldn’t move myself to buy one.

I know that turkeys have feet, but I’m too used to buying my food pre-packaged with the head and feet removed.
I decided NOT to buy turkey. Who needs turkey on thanksgiving ?

“It will be a just have to be a vegetarian Thanksgiving” I thought to myself.

As justification I reasoned that my husband and I are not really fans of turkey anyway.

Back to those items that I thought were sweet potatoes they weren’t. They were hard as rocks and white inside.
There were 4 in each package.
When I saw a worm crawl out of one I threw them all away.
We had regular potatoes in the house for mashed potatoes anyway.

I was planning on serving both kinds of potatoes, but, well, who needs sweet potatoes when there are already mashed potatoes being served ?

The ‘pumpkin’ I bought was just too hard to mash up to make a pumpkin pie.
And the canned mix they sell in the stores cost 6.50 Euro.
Too much to spend on a can of pumpkin mix !
Oh well. Who needs dessert anyway. Just extra calories.

The greenbeans I made looked a little funny without the fried onions that I usually use for a topping, but oh well you can’t have everything.

Buzzurro came home early from work that day for a lovely thanksgiving dinner of mashed potatoes and greenbeans and of course lasagna.
It was not really special as I wanted, more like a normal meal.
Next year we’ll just order pizzas.

Another day has gone by in which I have not been paid for work I did in September/early October.
It is very frustrating, and sometimes I feel like screaming.
I think today that instead of writing a negative blog entry about Italy, I’ll just chill for a while. Relax. Drink a glass of Chianti…. or better yet, I think I’ll go to the bar and have a hot chocolate.

When I first came to Italy and I went to a coffee shop I saw on the menu they had several types of hot chocolate. One was 65 percent cocoa, another was 70 percent cocoa and the third was 72 percent cocoa.
“How strange ?” I thought. As I ordered the 65 percent cocoa because it was the cheapest.

What the barista handed me was nothing I had ever seen before. He handed me a coffee cup with what looked like thick, gooey mud in it. I tasted it anyway. It was out-of-this-world good ! It tasted like liquified fine chocolate ! It was heavenly ! The hot chocolate in Italy is the best.
It tastes nothing like the stuff called Hot chocolate in the US that sometimes has little marshmallows floating in it, sometimes not ! It even has the color of chocolate instead of the watered down brown that is found in the US types.
Even the powdered mixes you buy in the store and add to milk at home are so much better than the hot chocolate of the US.

Tourists may come to Italy for the beaches, for the art, for the outdoor scenic views, but only those coming in the Winter/late Fall/early Spring will be able to taste the best hot chocolate there is !

Update: After writing this post I did go to a bar and ordered a hot chocolate. I must say it was the worst I ever tasted in my life. Figures !

When I first arrived in Italy I saw the grand old buildings, the museums filled with great works of art and the wonderful scenery with amazing views of natural beauty.
Italy was a quaint village, all the way down to its cobblestone streets.
I ate the best food and drank the best wine and coffee. I saw friendly people that said goodbye when you left their store.

3 and a half long years later, I am singing a different tune.
Those grand old buildings that I once admired are now rundown, uncared for buildings that are in need of new paint, or repairs or just something, and the cute cobblestone streets I now see are overrun with large quantities of trash.
Instead of seeing all the great works of art I see the graffitti on the walls.
Now that I understand Italian better I understand that the people are not friendy, but the rudest I’ve ever seen.
When they say goodbye to you in the store it is a custom.
Italy is big on customs.
For genuine niceness it is just not the place to be. I no longer see a quaint village in Italy but a society that is hopelessly stuck in the 1800s when it actually offered the word something.

What changed ?
Not Italy. Things never change here. Must have been me.

What has happened to me to turn this Italy admirerer into an Italy non-admirer ?
Could it have anything to do with needing to fill out 300 different forms for a service, only to find out that what’s good for one area of government is not good for the others ?
(Example: What’s good for the police at customs is not good for the Italian Motor Vehicles Department)
Yes, the bureacratic inefficiency here is a nightmare.

Is it that I can’t seem to find a job due to legalized age discrimination ?
Jobs here post a maximum age, usually in the low 20s. I am in my mid 30s. Therefore, I am an unemployable old hag.
Could it be that when I miraculously do find a job with either a bad contract or an illegal “black” job I either get paid very late and after days of bitchy phone calls, or maybe not at all ?

Perhaps if I were able to attain some liveable standard of economic stability I would not feel this way. I am frustrated beyond belief.

I definitely have the Italy blues.

Gary Sinise (best known for his role as Lieutenant Dan in the film Forrest Gump) is a cofounder of the organization Operation Iraqi Children.
On a visit to Iraq in 2003, Mr. Sinise was saddened to see that Iraqi children often go to schools that lack in everything from pencils, and books, to working toilets and floors.
Under Saddam Hussein the school system was not updated.

“How are the kids supposed to lear anything in school without basic supplies, such as pencils and books ?”

Sinise continues to stay in touch with the troops in Iraq. From them he hears the good news that he says is overlooked in press coverage from Iraq.

“I get another side of the story that we don’t hear through the media,” he said. “And it’s more positive things happening than you would think based on the perception that we have on a daily basis.”

The news reports, he said, are “always about a bomb or a suicide bomber or somebody getting killed. Of course that’s dramatic and all of that but, on a day-to-day basis, there is a lot of improvement; there’s a lot of hope, a lot of kids that are going to school that never got to do that before.”

What difference might a school book make? For Sinise, all the difference in the world.

“If we can help these little kids,” he said, “and they can see that there is freedom to learn - to just go to school and have a pencil and learn - something might happen in the way they grow up, and take charge of their own country.”

Here is their website: http://operationiraqichildren.org/.

When I first arrived in Italy I had a very limited Italian Language vocabulary. This did not stop me from looking for a job, however.
I figured that since Internet Cafes are mostly frequented by tourists, many of which speak some English ranging from fluent to a few words, I could work there.

At the first internet cafe I found, I asked if they were hiring. The girl at the desk didn’t answer me, but asked me for my CV (resume).
I handed it to her, she looked at it and then asked me, “Do you speak Italian fluently ?”
“No” I replied. “I am currently taking Italian language classes though.”
And she replied “We are in Italy. You have to speak Italian fluently.” And of course I did not get that job. I did not get any job that day. Not a big surprise there. She was right after all.

Today, 3 years later I went to a local market.
I saw a table with some beautiful jewelry. I saw the seller, and in Italian I said, “Good morning. Are those earrings real silver ?” and he answered me, not in Italian which I know, but English, an English that was unintelligible even to me, a native English speaker.

I’m not sure what he said, but it sounded like. “Make make mine blue. Twelve euro.”

I really didn’t understand the answer (except for the price) so I repeated the question in Italian.
“Are those earrings real silver ?” “Make make mine blue. Twelve Euro!” he insisted, as he gestured at me to try them on.

I am sure that he heard in my voice when I first spoke to him in Italian an English accent. Everybody does.. He was probably only trying to be nice to me.
Maybe he learned English somewhere and just wanted to practice it. Who knows his motives for trying to speak in English to a person that addressed him in Italian, but it was 10 AM on a busy morning.
I had things to do, and so did he. I was not in the mood to play a guessing game.

I finally said, in Italian “I don’t understand. Please speak Italian” and he did !

It happens to me so many times when I go to the touristy areas in Italy that I ask for something in Italian, and I get a response in English. It’s not worth fighting anymore.
I usually just go with the flow. If people can understand me, and I can understand them, life works.
After all, language is just for communication, and if you can communicate, it doesn’t even matter if they are the same.
But sometimes it pays to be a little rude and insist on speaking Italian.

If you go to the Technorati search website, http://www.technorati.com, and type in the words ‘idiots abroad’ and look in ‘Blogs About News’, the first blog you will see is ours, Buzzurro blog.

We’re famous !!!
We’re number one !!
Although in this case, it’s better to be number 867 !

Al Qaeda was behind the bombings at the 3 hotels in Amman where 57 people died.

27 of the victims were Palestinians. 1 of them was Israeli.

Read About It here.

Aren’t they supposed to be on the side of the Palestinians ? Is this how they show their support ?

Yesterday was a nice sunny day by me.
The perfect day for a walk. Perfect for me, and perfect for about 3 million others too.
The streets were filled with dogs pooping on the sidewalk while their owners smoke like chimneys, little old ladies with those shopping carts on wheels just daring anybody to walk in front of them, old men on bicycles that look like they were around at the time of the second world war, young men on motorinos driving the wrong way on the one way road (only 2 today-a good day), me and a pair of Mormons looking for converts.

When I first arrived in Italy I was surprised to see pairs of well dressed people with bags full of little books walking down the street.
“Those look like Mormons looking for converts” I said to my husband.
“Those ARE Mormons looking for converts” he replied.
I was shocked. Of course many of them are American or English, and Italy seems to have an obsession for things American and English, both good and bad, so, why not Mormons too ?
Back to my walk, I have learned early on, that unless I want to discuss Mormon philosophy for hours the best thing to say is, of course, that I am a foreigner in Italy and do not speak Italian because obviously, they do, but I also must say that I do not speak English.
I cannot say that I am American, but neither can I say that I am Canadian, English, Austrailan or any other English speaking country nationality.
I also do not want to say “I No Speak Italiano o Eengleesh. I French..”, or Spanish or German or any other language that their is a good probability that someone knows.
For this reason I usually say “I am from Slovakia.” Or the Ukraine. Nowadays I’m using Polish, so I told the 2 Mormons on the street that I am from Poland.
That shuts them up fast. They want to hand out their little booklets and convert the infidels (in this case Catholic) to their religion.
I am not embarassed to be American or to speak English, but sometimes it is just faster to say you are neither and walk away.