As I sit in my Italian living room, watching Italian Who Wants to Be A Millionaire, just having finished my Italian feast with my Italian roommates, I ruminate upon my newfound foreign-ness. While I recognize the comfy leather armchair I sit in as something my body has sunk into before, the television program as something I grew up glued to, and the fantastic pesto pasta I just consumed as something I have craved many a time at Conn, these experiences are adjusted and magnified by the slight changes: leather more buttery than in the U.S., an Italian with a charisma that far surpasses Regis Philbin’s, and supermarket house brand pesto which is the best my taste buds have ever shmoozed with.
My apartment is only a handful of steps outside the main piazza of the city, Piazza del Campo, in which residents meet, eat, and merrymake day and night. Skinny streets sprout out from the Piazza and my route to school happens to follow the most hilly one. Just as I have skidded down the cobblestones of the medieval street, I must hike up the steep incline of the same road. At the same time, however, cars sneak up behind me, nearly bumping my backside so that I will jump into the nearest doorway, and let them pass. Vespas similarly weave through bodies, the long Italian locks of their drivers shimmying in the wind. There are no lights, no traffic signs, and no one to direct the vehicles, thus they enter streets at any moment from any direction. I hope I will survive this semester unscathed, however I feel a burgeoning amount of hatred towards these unruly motorists. I do not envy them however, it is much easier to get around the city by foot-which I have learned the hard way by trying to follow GoogleMaps driving directions instead of walking directions.
If I ever feel homesick in Siena, I know I can always find solace in a pack of the finest chewing gum the city has to offer: Brooklyn gum. Not only does the package bear the title of my fair county in menacing silver block letters, but the plastic covering exhibits a studied rendition of the Brooklyn Bridge. Once, while introducing myself to a group of international students, a bespectacled fellow became excited when I mentioned I came from the same place as his favorite gum. “Brooklyn!” He yelped. “We have a gum here called that!” The tagline of the gum itself is “Unexpected Freshness”, and boy is that assessment on point! The first time I had an entire piece; surely a mistake as the freshness which I did not expect inundated my mouth with a overwhelming minty-ness. I have since limited myself to half a stick at a time, and when sharing the powerful pieces with others, mentioned that I am not being stingy by offering them half, but rather saving them from the boldness of my borough’s flavor.
I have absolutely not been limiting myself from the glorious gastronomic treats this land has to offer. Although I became a vegetarian freshman year at Conn and have, at times, participated in vegan competitions with my archrival abroad blogger,-note to brave challengers: Conn’s cereals are NOT vegan- I have completely dismissed all my former predilections for MEAT, EVIL MEAT! Every delicious sandwich I have indulged houses provolone swathed in salami, and at a local agroturismo I got lost in a plate of veal bathing in a blissful puddle of its own juices, with rosemary potatoes nestled on the side.
The most anticlimactic and hilarious food adventure I have been on in Siena took place last week in a café at the end of my street. My friends and I ended up there for lunch after finding that the University cafeteria was closed. When we took a seat inside we were gifted with leather bound menus with a host of delectable sounding pasta dishes penned in attractive computerized script. We each chose a dish and marveled at the low prices. Seconds after the waiter left, however, we heard the formerly familiar sound of microwave buttons, alien to our newly Italian ears as the appliances are rare here. We nervously giggled at the idea that our pastas might be birthed from the large white incubators we could see our waiter tinkering with. At further examination of the café’s space, however, we noticed there was no other place for our food to come from, there was no kitchen! Someone said they had heard Italian frozen dinners were much better than those of America. Another offered that this could be happening to us at restaurants all the time, and that at least here they weren’t trying to hide it. An uncomfortably short amount of time passed until our meals arrived, the pasta steaming in its flexible plastic vessel. We were all clearly a bit embarrassed, to not have had the inside information to immediately blacklist this establishment, to not have seen the sign on the bar’s counter with glossy photos of each of the meals set before us. But perhaps most embarrassing was the fact that the food was not all that bad. The tortellini with ham and peas was particularly yummy, although we all decided that the peas could have used some more life. The lasagna was a little burnt on the edges, which we decided was a nice home-y touch. Worries of nuked meat aside, we were eating pasta with new friends in Italy, and we all knew where the closest gelateria was located.
