Strategic congress trips – Tuscany/Umbria

Cortona, Tuscany. I arrive for lunch after a short journey by train. I am here for a congress, a strategically located congress. Small quiet town, renaissance buildings and small streets paved with stones. Originally settled by the Etruscans. It is difficult to chose a place to sit for lunch, as they all look nice. I decide for one spot with less English-speaking people, and I order my lunch, which will be reimbursed by the University. The truffle soufflé is covered by crisp flakes of dark brown truffle, almost transparent, patterned with veins. I feel truffle, crunchy on the palate; olive oil, sharp and spicy, in the back of the tongue; the texture of the soufflé, soft and creamy. My eyes are weeping a bit, maybe is the wind, or maybe is the epiphany, which is followed by a vivid attack of the impostor syndrome. I just don’t deserve this treat. I mean, I am not that smart, at the end, there are so many people smarter than me, I will never get a Nobel prize, I am not such a good scientist, in fact the other day I was watching the last episodes of Hannibal instead of working at the paper. The impostor syndrome is quite common in the academic world, where the sense of almighty power alternates to the sense of immense stupidity very easily – unless your narcissistic personality prevails. Ah, it doesn’t matter: the antipasti is over and now it’s time for the main course, ribollita: a mix of bread leftovers and veggies, a sort of dense soup – not bad.

The two ladies in the table nearby are just beginners at being tourists in Italy. First they ask what carbonara actually is. Then, when the waitress brings the bread (here you never eat without bread, it comes on your table with the cutlery and a glass), they ask for butter. The waitress objects “ah, you mean olive oil for the bread!”. No, butter. you know? spreading. butter. Of course, what do you chose between fresh super healthy olive juice just squeezed from the trees of the country nearby vs. leftovers of the dairy industrial process? Easy answer for them. That poor waitress.

Other meraviglie from the area nearby, at the border with Umbria, on the way to the Lake Trasimeno: wine Gamay from the lakeshores, a French red grape, fruity and fresh, successfully imported a long time ago, excellent to accompany the fish from the lake. Fish like little fried agoni, to be eaten one after the other, with the whole head and everything, like French fries. Or pici (thick handmade spaghetti) with a red ragout of mixed fish from the lake. Toscana/Umbria is not only ham and cheese!

And finally, another nice thing from Tuscany: leather!

Osteria Broccaindosso

Osteria (or trattoria) is the successful formula of catering found in many regions of Italy, which revises old traditions of simple food and wine to feed a flow of customers. In Bologna is associated with a restricted choice of food and wine, extra local and extra traditional. The menu will surely provide you some accompaniment for the wine, consisting of a board full of ham, mortadella, salami, cheese, little sweet-sour onions, and fried bread (crescentina); but it can also include typical pasta dishes (tortellini, ravioli, passatelli, tagliatelle…) rigorously handmade; and finally some simple meat dishes and a choice of non-sophisticated (but tasty) desserts. The interior design style often consists of rustic wooden tables and stones on the wall, with questionable oil paintings or signs from the old times hanged on the walls (do not swear, do not molest the hookers before you’ve paid), and the owner should be a chubby not-too-young character busy checking how people are doing at every table.

Osteria Broccaindosso perfectly fits your expectations. On a first glance, it might look a bit too rustic for the final price paid (at least 25-30 euros each), but the food is so tasty and so abundant that you will pay your bill very happily. The food is more than abundant, in fact it reaches your table in a continuous stream. Basically the owner decides what to bring you: no menu, just the usual courses. Trust him. Antipasti, pasta… than we’ll see how much space it is left in our stomach. At the end you watch the endless series of desserts crowding the table of your neighbors and you wish you ordered less antipasti.

Summarizing: nothing new, nothing fancy, just a tremendous amount of supertasty food stretching your stomach to the limit, a quick service and a warm atmosphere. It wins again and again. Don’t miss the antipasti, the desserts, and the gnocchi with pumpkin and salsiccia.

Clothing in Italy: Putting the Germans to shame

First thing you realise: The people here care about their clothing.
Second thing: They either fuck up comletely or do a very good job with it.
Third thing: The amount of doing a good job exceeds the amount of fuck ups by a large number.
Fourth thing: A low amount of sneakers.

Coming from germany and being interested in nice clobber, a rare breed here, I have to say that it´s a heartwarming experience to walk the streets of this country with open eyes. I probably checked more men here than girls. The amount of good clothing is amazing. The youngsters, as usual, tend to be a bit more wild and experimental. But the Hipster chic is not really there. Probably because these people, being obsessed with good taste and style, don´t need role models. They choose by themselves. And they choose well. Dressing shoes, moccasins, sandals, flip flops, etc. are the thing to wear. And its not the weather. There are well crafted leather dressing shoes on feet between 14 and 80 under an unforgiving sun. Quality seems to be important. Like with their food. This is probably the reason for the lack of sneakers. You could buy 30 pairs of them in all the crazy limited superspecial colourways there are but it´s still the same chinese/vietnamese/whatsoelse „craftsmanship“ all over again.
This is not what the youngsters here aim for. Also it´s the aim towards being special through your outfit. Don´t wear what your peergroup wears. In fact, I didn´t realise any of the normal „I wear the same shit as the rest of my crew“ bullshit. And I saw a bit. A guy (long hair) with an old Mayhem shirt, when they were still a band you could listen to without being embarassed, sporting nice Grensons and very sweet chinos. WTF!!!! From classic british menswear to modern scandinavian chic with a hint of wearable runway fashion. It´s all there!
One evening we passed a meeting of anarchists, yes they still do this strange and ridiculous niche of radical leftwing „theory“ in great numbers here (probably because it´s easy to grasp and stylish because of the obvious connection to art), and they didn´t look like their german counterparts at all. We are talking nice haircuts, a wide range of shoes, shirts, coloured trousers, etc. AND NO FUCKIN HOODIES! None of them…
Haircuts, another interesting observation. Peolpe here have haircuts. Coming from Germany you are used to either the „I do not fucking care, just cut my hair and make it cheap“ attitude or the other one: „I am very special and individual so please cut my hair in the same way like all my friends have it.“ Again, there is no „I am part of a scene and I want to look like everyone else to feel special“ attitude. They think before they dress and get a cut. And thinking means that you don´t need a blueprint. Yeah yeah I know, still capitalism, still crafting the lie of being an individual through consumption, etc. etc. etc. But it´s very pleasant for the eye. And there is no obsession with the „all weather all ready I am a lazy and useless couch potatoe but still need gear that can withstand every extreme condition“ bullshit you find with the Germans. They just want to look nice. And they do an amazing job.
Uniforms. I didn´t write anything about uniforms by now.
My first visit to this country was because of the protests in Genua. I was a bit younger and a bit more stupid. A bit means that I was almost a complete idiot. With a big heart though, but still…
There were some days of rioting that left a kid dead for nothing. Shot by another kid who was scared for his life. Whatever. The cops here are, like in most countrys, complete cunts. This is what I realised and it, even if I was a bloody idiot back then, still rings true. But their uniforms….
Do I have to tell you that your cardigan was invented by the british military, your T-Shirt by the USMC and your bloody all conditions gear by people who wanted the military to be safe from the weather in all conditions? No? Or yes? Here is an update: Most of the menswear design, especially the radical chic, was done with the military in mind. Fact!
And the Italians do a bloody nice job. The details on the uniforms, the black belt with the red stripes, the awesome shoes, the little patches on all of the different uniforms…they look fucking amazing. German police force? A bunch of gardeners. Italian police force? Could walk on a fuckin runway.
And here we get to the source of the unique italian style.
AIM FOR THE DETAILS!!!
From the shoes these people are wearing to their haircuts. It is about details. You find it in the uniforms as well as in the drinks and food. It´s the details that matter…
Getting out of the plane in Germany, or even worse, out of the train in Leipzig, is like a punch in the face. Fashionwise.
No more nice suits packed with great details, no more jackets that fit with the shoes and all the other clothing niceties these people have in store. Instead you get a lot of chav idiots with mohawks and Air Max, checkered colourful pants and girls with double-coloured hair.

the original Romagnola Milf

It’s time to take my German partner to the real heimat, Romagna. That’s the area that includes Rimini (where my compatriots used to fuck your German blonde girls, before Mallorca got popular), Ravenna (Dante’s grave etc), the horrible fascist architecture Forlì, and the awesome little towns in the Apennines, on the border with Toscana (like my cute little town on the hills). People in this area are used to a prosperous lifestyle that comes from the tourist invasion of the 60-70-80s. They say that in spite of having such a muddy-gray-disgusting sea side (nothing comparable to the beautiful blue beaches of the other side of the Adriatic Sea, in Slovenia/Croatia), we managed to make an efficient accommodation an entertaining system: this surely comes from the stubborn attitude of the people of this region, who made good use of poor resources.

From this level of wealth coming from a land of former peasants (agriculture is still a major income for these lands), we have a specific target generation that is affected by a rather annoying degree of showing off: chav predisposition to big brands on display, pseudo elegant bling-bling outfits with a devotion to sun tanned skin (proving that you are wealthy enough to indulge in a few days at the beach here and there), customized race cars. This brings us to an awesome characteristic human breed, the Romagnola Milf: the right generation (~50 years old), the right golden plated high heels sandals, the right Gucci bag, and an overdose of sonnenstudio solarium UVA. And a bit of tits out, just in case. This specimen, that should be safeguarded like the Mora Romagnola for similar territory conservation strategies, breeds freely between the hills and the sea side. The German partner wondered if I would ever become one of these (with some kind of exotic fascination), and I assured him that it’s not necessarily the case. But who am I to say no to bling-bling accessories?…

spaghettistatemen.jpg

try to roll them on the fork, or next time i will make you eat with chopsticks

The Comeback

The Italian press calls it the “The return of the brains”, “Il ritorno dei cervelli”, like the title of a prototypical zombie movie. This is what I am doing, a standard procedure from the manual: after working abroad and doing my PhD in Genetics in a high-profile German institute, I come back to Italy for a cool project at University of Bologna – the oldest University in the western world. I am not sure to which extent my brain is actually following the rest of the body, but here I am, in a new house, in a familiar city where people speak my language and where the temperature is on average 10 Celsius degrees more than Leipzig.

Do not get me wrong: I loved the time in Leipzig. It was quite harsh from time to time, but great for that taste of social fluidity, complete lack of real-life responsibility, and possibility of forgetting your roots and the shame that comes from political corruption and absence of dignity – all over your Mediterranean heimat. The cultural conflict between the two countries (or between Saxony and Emilia Romagna, in particular) is so specular, in fact, that I thought about writing a nth blog about it.

And I wanted to involve my German partner in this sort of dialogue between cultures, because he has no idea of what this funny folk heritage actually means. He has to touch it. After completing my process of adaptation to the fresh-aired, organized and politically-correct Leipzig, now it’s his turn… Come visit me, enjoy the land of contrasts. Nevertheless, because behind this armor of scientific organization beats the heart of a proud housemaid, I had to put a particular topic on the plate: food. Food and wine culture, style, trying new restaurants and new recipes… this is some little pleasure we enjoy and we like to share.

There will be some merciless points where we will compare the German vs. Italian attitude towards food or politics, and you already know how it ends. At the same time, I am so confused about my sense of belonging that I could eat even pasta and sauerkraut in the same meal. Why not! Just please do not cut those spaghetti.