BUZZURRO

When I mentioned dark chocolate gelato with Chili peppers being my ultimate favorite in gelato flavors to a friend living in the United States, she responded “Eww. Sound disgusting”, but in reality this is the best gelato flavor I have tasted: the sweetness of dark chocolate with a little spicy twist.

In fact I love regular dark chocolate laced with chili powder too, although to be honest the contrast of the coldness of gelato and the hotness of the spice is better.
There is a gelato shop near where we stayed that I admit is not the best Italy has to offer, but it quite good.

This gelato flavor seems only to be available in the fall months. Like many foods in Italy, everything has a season, and autumn is the season for Dark chocolate gelato with chili peppers. I ordered a cup (size large of course), and I enjoyed immensely the chocolate gelato with chili peppers.

It is a strange thing to take a vacation in a place that you voluntarily left.
While I enjoyed seeing family and friends, and enjoyed eating and drinking as well, there were many things to remind me of why I left in the first place including uncaring people, dirt and dog poop all over, high taxes for everything imagineable, senseless bureacracy, and things that don’t work.

While living in Italy I was an American expat. During my stay there, whenever I took a trip to the United States I was filled with a great sadness when those trips were over.
I thought I might have similar feelings upon leaving Italy.
After all, I did live there for 4 years. In reality I had none.
Sure I would have liked to stay a few more days in Italy, but my feelings were nothing like they were when I departed the US for my Italian home.
Overall though, I would have to give a positive vote for my trip, and am looking forward to my next one.

On my trip to Italy I went to a restaurant and had Ravioli with Truffles.
It was 4 large ravioli topped with truffle sauce and shavings of real truffles-and I don’t mean the chocolate kind either.

I usually don’t like truffle sauce but this kind was obviously made with real truffles, hence the real truffle shaving on top but this was very good. The best food I’ve ever had.
If I were a food critic I would definitely give it a 10 out of 10.

While living in the United States I hated Tiramisu with it’s overpowering tastes of coffee and brandy, but after moving to Italy I began to love the stuff.
Why ?
Because it is completely different. A very distant cousin to the Italian-American dessert which bears the same name.

For one it is quite creamy, made with a lot more mascarpone than it is in the US. Several times I have had it served in a cup.
It also has a slight flavor of coffee instead of the overpowering stench that one finds with American Tiramisu.
It is also not served with any liquor in it. It is sweet, but not overpoweringly so and very flavorful.

Now I live in the United States again. Tiramisu is not enough to keep a person living in Italy so with the exception of one time, which reinforced why I like Tiramisu only in Italy but not in the US, have I eaten Tiramisu in the United States.
On my current trip to Italy I ate a lot of it.

As in many nations there is fee charged when you sell your automobile to another person, thus changing the title of the car. This makes sense. Employees have to work. They have to get information to type up a new title.
When Buzzurro and I moved to the US and bought a car we payed $60 for this service. I am not sure if the fee that we paid was linked to what we paid for car, it’s size and engine power, or it’s age.

While in Italy we sold our old car for 500 euros. It was 11 years old. We went down to ACI (sounds like the sneeze, AhChee) to change the title. I know that taxes have gone up a lot in Italy.
Many of our friends in Italy have been complaining about that, but I was still unprepared for the tax that ACI charged to change the title on the car that cost 500 euro.
They charged 497 euro.
To my untrained unmathematical mind that is 99 percent of the actual price. I have never heard of a 99 percent tax. That is ridiculous. I know taxes have risen, but a 99 percent tax ?

Later on it was explained to me that this was a flat rate tax and that even if the car cost 1 euro the tax would remain the same. Everyone who wants to change an automobile title has to pay it.
A few years ago a person had to go to a notary to sell a car. Now one doesn’t, and everybody thought that this was progress. It was liberalization. Freedom of the market. A good thing for the population of Italy. Viva L’Italia, but the state has to get their money (and more). The Italian population must pay. There are no tax cuts here. Only a change in payment location.

The Italian Post Office is different from the Post Office in the US, in the sense that in the US one only goes to the post office to send mail or packages.

In Italy a person can go to the post office for the same thing, but also to pay bills and to buy bollos, which are basically stamps to show that a certain tax has been paid.
Italy has many taxes, and many people have bills so there are always long lines in the post office.

A few months ago Buzzurro noticed that the bollo on his passport was going to expire. The passport itself wasn’t going to expire for a few more years. Usually the expiration date on the passport is enough but for some reason which I don’t understand, Italy requires that all Italians with an Italian passport buy a bollo every year to validate it. It expires every year unless a new bollo is attached.This amounts to paying a tax every year for an Italian passport.

In the past we always bought bollos at the post office. This year while in Italy we went to a post office and waited in line for 20 minutes or so. A short wait when we got to the counter we told the clerk that we’d like to buy a bollo for a passport.

“We don’t sell those here.” she loudly said. Then she continued talking “We stopped in June, 2006. Haven’t you been watching TV or reading the papers? It was in all the papers. And on the TV.” You have to go to a tabaccaio (tobacco shop where they also sell bus tickets and bollos). Not here.” It was in ALL the newspapers!”

Everybody in the post office of course turned to look at this person who committed the crime of thinking that the post office still sold the bollos and never watched TV or read a newspaper in June. It was quite a humiliating experience. Why can’t the clerks just say in a normal tone of voice that they don’t sell the bollos anymore and that a tabaccaio does. Does it really matter if one didn’t know where to buy the bollos anyway ? I mean we waited in line like everybody, we didn’t cause a disturbance or riot, yet we were treated like idiots ? It’s not like we were trying to do some terrible thing, we just wanted to buy a bollo, i.e. give the state money. Their rudeness was simply uncalled for.

Buzzurro responded to her saying: “Excuse me signora, but I wasn’t even in Italy in June.” but really does that matter? They shouldn’t be so rude to people no matter where they live or how long they lived there.

Post scriptum: we went to the tabaccaio and bought a bollo.

Buzzurro and I spent 11 days in Italy. This is a story of our last few minutes in Italy-in the duty free shop at the airport. I’ll post more details of our trip later but I think that this is important and cannot wait.
Buzzurro and I went to a duty free shop AFTER we went through security.
“I’d like to bring a few bottles of wine home” I said.
Buzzurro replied “I don’t think you can bring bottles of wine to the US.”
“But” I said “You can buy bottled water and soda from airports in the US if you are after the security checkpoint, so what’s the difference between wine and those other beverages?’

We then decided to go into the duty free shop and ask the clerks there if we would be allowed to bring wine into the US. They should know. We asked a clerk. “Sure you can” she replied. “Just as long as we put it in a clear plastic bag and staple it shut. We’ll put the receipt on the outside of the bag so they know that it came from us.”
So, I bought my 30 Euros worth of wine with a smile on my face. I will be able to drink Italian wine at my home in the US.

Skip ahead to Paris, where Buzzurro and I were to catch our connecting flight to the US. We went to security. They told me that it was forbidden to take bottles of wine aboard a plane bound for the US. I responded “But I bought these in a duty free shop in the Florence airport which is located after the security check, and they told me as long as the bag was sealed I could take the wine with me.”
The security person said to me “Well, they lied to you. You can’t take large bottles of any liquid, including wine, on a US bound plane.” And then he pointed to a piece of photocopied paper dated September 26, 2006 which was from the US. It said that only travel size liquids that could fit in a 1 liter sized plastic bag would be permitted, with the exceptions of baby formula and medicines which must be declared.
I gave them my 3 bottles of unopened Italian wine and walked away towards the plane.

Surely if an airport in France received this notice stating clearly what was allowed and what was not allowed on a plane headed for the US dated 1 month and a half ago an airport in Florence received the same one?

If this notice prohibiting liquids was dated a few days ago I might give those clerks in Florence the benefit of the doubt, saying they simply did not know which items were allowed on a flight to the US and which weren’t, but this notice was dated over a month. They lied to me.

They knowing took my money for an item that they knew would be taken away from me before I hit US soil. They should have been honest to me and said “Wine is not allowed.” And maybe tried to sell me something else.
In Italy it is too common for store clerks and others to not care about their customers, to only care about themselves and if they make a few dollars profit.

There is no honesty in these transactions.This is my last impression of Italy.

I will finish this post with an old Italian curse used towards those who make a profit by being dishonest to others, dedicated of course to those store clerks in the duty free shop in the Florence airport who sold me the wine (for their profit):
“May you spend it on medicines.”