Random Observations: Italy

• A legging is not necessarily a legging.  Mode of dress for women here from teen to too old is skinny.  Don’t get me wrong.  They all have the bodies for it.  Two variations cover it, in a manner of speaking.  Tall beautiful boots go with tights and skirts.  I should just say sk… because that’s as much as there is.  Very short, very tight.  Leggings with a tee shirt and a short leather jacket.  No long tunics in Italy.  Leggings.  Geometric, animal, swirly, paisley, wild prints with short leather boots or extremely high platforms. 

• Young children are not taught not to stare.  How do I know?  Because they become adults who stare…openly and without apology.  As a dedicated introvert, may I just say how very uncomfortable this makes me?  I try to wait them out…I see that it isn’t going to happen.  So I become bold on the face of it and stare back.  But the southern in me breaks through and I can’t help myself.  I smile.  They stare.  And the eyes go back to the floor.  Where on earth did I leave my sunglasses?

• The moon is the same no matter where you go.  And it always figures in for me.  My first outstanding memory of Europe is from that wild original trip Steve and I took when we were way too many hours on military planes.  At about 2:00 AM in Rota, Spain, I was strung out, tired, and needing exercise.  I walked up and down the street outside the air terminal under palm trees and a beautiful full moon listening to “Cornflake Girl” in my earphones.  Vivid.  When we arrived in Aviano, there we stood at the base of the Dolomites under another full moon.  Then last night I looked out our stateroom door and there stood a beautiful full moon lighting a path straight across the ocean and onto our balcony.  La bella luna.  (No, I don’t speak Italian.  I learned that from the old grandfather on “Moonstruck.”)

• The bells.  They chime the hours, quarters and halves.  They sing.  They war with the protest chanters.  They overwhelm and linger.  

• I have finally figured out the process.  There is some sort of hidden laser that, as we go through customs, labels us “American” on the forehead.  But there is an additional one that they save for a very few of us.  That one says “Gullible American.”  Can I tell you how many times I was approached by panhandlers, people with causes, people selling any little thing?  I stood on the Popolo Piazza in Rome with a young man who thrust a bundle of roses in my hand on behalf of a cathedral there.  I assured him I had no money with me (I didn’t!).  I tried to hand them back.  I gave them to Steve who handed them over quite easily while the young man tied a bracelet around my wrist for some saint.  I’ve tried the “no eye contact” rule; but the laser tattoo speaks for itself.  By the way, if I’m arrested by Interpol, I haven’t really done anything wrong.  It may be because of the petition I signed.  I told them I had no money (I didn’t!).  I didn’t understand how my signature would help because I’m not even Italian!

• Pizza in Italy is a work of art.  So is the division of labor between spouses worked out over the years.  It is understood that I will pack for us, wash out clothes on long trips, take care of details and organization.  I will unpack and nest.  Steve is the hunter/gatherer.  That means pastry and coffee in the mornings and foraging for food when I reach a point where my legs refuse to work anymore (see the footnote on hauling heavy luggage between trains).    So Steve fetched us a pizza in Rome, a pizza margharita with only fresh basil, fresh whole-milk mozzarella and light fresh tomato sauce.  Thick, pillowy, slightly chewy along the edges, crispy and paper-thin on the inside.  A minimum char on the bottom from the brick oven.  

• Women in Italy are casual, beautiful and impeccably dressed.  Young men in Italy wear scarves.  Old men in Italy wear hats.  The young men are handsome and appear quite arrogant (with good reason, I admit).  The old men appear rakish.

• I love Italy.