Kataroma

I'm back!

2010-11-21T21:16:00.001+01:00

I've decided to revive my blog so hello, I'm back! We're off to Thailand and Australia in a few weeks and I'd like to blog about the trip and post some pics. I'm dreading travelling with a 2 year old but really looking forward to actually being there.

Since I last wrote here we've been devoting pretty much every Saturday morning to househunting as we decided that it's about time that we both bit the bullet and became home owners. We don't plan to be in Rome forever but we're committed to at least a few more years here and prices have come down slightly so it seemed a good time. As a nice househunting side effect we've both been getting to know the real Rome a lot better and venturing out to areas we'd never ventured to before. The more I see of the less central, more residential areas of Rome the more I realise what an amazing place this is.

Some native Romans I know recoil in horror when I tell them where we are looking (snobs!) but we like it out there and, frankly, don't care. For Sydney people, we're looking in the equivalent of somewhere like Ashfield or Strathfield rather than Mosman, Darlinghurst or Newtown. For the New Yorkers let's say we're looking in Bayside, Queens rather than the East Village, Williamsburg or Park Slope.

Random stuff

2010-01-10T15:03:00.002+01:00

The baby is having her afternoon nap, husband is at work (on a Sunday but that's life when you own a Bed and Breakfast) and two of my sisters in law who were here for the weekend have just left to catch the plane back to Holland.

I've started walking to work which gives me plenty of time to think and lately I've had all these great ideas for blog posts which of course I can't remember now that I'm actually sitting in front of the computer blogging.

Before I had a baby everyone said that "having a baby changes you". I was kind of anticipating that I'd feel the sudden urge to chuck it all in at work and become a stay at home mother. But, strangely enough, having a baby has had almost the opposite effect on me. I enjoy my work more than I did before as, I guess, work is the only place pretty much where I get to be just ME rather than Astrid's mummy. So while I really enjoy weekends and evenings at home with the baby it's also nice to go to work fulltime and get a bit of a break from being the mum of an active toddler (well, ok I'm still her mum but I get a bit of me time at work even when I'm working). I definitely hadn't expected this after seeing so many of my friends give up their careers outside the home when they had kids. I guess everyone really is different.

I have indeed changed a lot but it was not having a baby which did it but rather being very, very sick last summer and having a close brush with death. I feel so cheesy now but this little brush with death (I'm fine now though, thank you) really hit home that we're only here once (unfortunately I don't believe in reincarnation) and we have to enjoy every minute of it. Even trudging to work after a night of insomnia or 3 am baby wakeups have their upside - 'oh well, at least I'm alive!'

On the other hand, spending so many weeks in a 6 person hospital room with a bunch of much older women made me kind of morbid. I need to work on feeling like a 'young' (well, 38) person again and being more carefree.

Health care in Rome

2009-11-28T14:37:00.004+01:00

It's difficult to make generalisations about the Italian healthcare system. For one thing it's run at a regional level and an experience in Bolzano will be entirely different from an experience in Sicily. Now that I've experienced the trifecta of childbirth, open heart surgery and a major allergy attack at Roman public hospitals I do feel more qualified than most to comment on the system in Rome at least.

At first glance, Rome's public hospitals are pretty forbidding places. It's not uncommon to turn up for your appointment to find no information desk, no signs and have no idea where to go for your appointment, as has happenned to me a few times at various places. In this situation, it's customary to poke your head into office doors and accost people passing by in white coats in order to finally make it to the correct place (often late - in which case you'll usually find that your doctor has left to treat patients in his/her private practice). Doesn't seem like the most logical system but somehow this seems logical to many Italian hospital administrators. In addition, I've learnt the hard way that you need to get to the hospital much earlier than your appointment time so that you can pay your 'ticket' (a wildly varying fee you need to pay for health visits and tests) ahead of time.

The hospitals also have a forbidding air due to the fact that they are usually run down, depressing places, with peeling paint, broken chairs, dirty bathrooms (toilet paper and soap are both rare) and a general feeling of decay. At the hospital where I had my open heart surgery, someone had written things like floor numbers and directions to the mammogram clinic on the wall in felt tip pen as (I assume) getting a proper sign made would have been too expensive. This type of thing does not give the nervous patient a feeling of calm.

However, I found that when I was really, really sick, the hospital was there for me. I had a great team of cardiologists treating me at the public hospital and had life saving surgery by skilled surgeons (so i assume - on the other hand it may have been dumb luck!) When I was in intensive care and semi intensive care it was pretty similar to what you'd probably experience in other Western countries (caveat - I've never been in hospital anywhere but Rome).

Where things fell down was when I was feeling a lot better but was still in hospital (say week 3-4 of my 7 week stay) when I was moved to a tiny 6 person room with dirty bathroom down the hall, shared by 18 people plus visitors, and cleaned only once a day. Sharing a room with that many other women (no curtains), many of whom were suffering from dementia or Alzheimer's, I learnt a lot - but not all of it things I really want to know already in my 30s (I'll spare my readers the details). It was very hard to sleep and the 'healthier' patients spent a lot of time keeping tabs on the 'less healthy' patients (I'm thinking particularly of a woman with profound memory loss/dementia who kept trying to climb out of bed to 'go upstairs').

It was ok for me by this stage as I was feeling a bit better after my surgery but there was a young woman with advanced breast cancer on the next bed to mine for several weeks who was unable to sleep because of the racket these women made day and night. I'm no expert but I'm sure that this was not good for a person fighting advanced cancer and, in fact, she looked worse and worse (and more tired) as the days wore on. I'd also like to know the rates of post-op infection at Roman hospitals as those bathrooms were filthy, there was no soap and the nurses weren't available to help us bathe (apart from the occasional quick bidet).

I've also heard lots of heart wrenching stories about giving birth in Rome. Most of it seems to be due to lack of organisation but also lack of caring about a woman giving birth feeling excessive pain or discomfort. I was lucky when I gave birth because the hospital I chose offered rooming-in with the baby post birth, had an anaesthesiologogist available when I wanted an epidural and has a relatively low rate of c-sections (around 40% rather than 80% of births as at some private clinics in Rome). I did a lot of research ahead of time to find a hospital which offered (more or less) what I wanted. Well actually I would have liked a water birth but since that's not available at any Rome hospital I gave up on that idea and worked with what was available.

Many Italians say "the hospitals here aren't very 'bello' but the doctors are great." I'd agree with that assessment with one caveat. The fact that the hospitals are run down and underfunded is indeed largely an aesthetic problem but when it comes to lack of toilet paper, soap or clenliness it's actually very serious. Hospitals must (at the very least) be clean and there must be soap in the bathroom.

Cheese splurge

2009-11-15T15:24:00.003+01:00

Hmmmm....smelly cheese stinking up the fridge. Normally we buy all our cheese at he cheapo supermarket. My Dutch husband consumes so much that we have to buy in bulk. But yesterday we went for a walk in a rather swanky neighbourhood near us and I came across a little cheese shop which sold (wonder of wonders!) English cheddar (spelled "cedar" like the tree on the little sign on top of the cheese), artisinal gorgonzola (my favourite cheese of all time - lucky I live in Italy I guess!) and other smelly delights.

In the end, I got a bit carried away and spent 17 euro on cheese. The cheddar was 36 euro a kilo. Ouch! I'd better go make some macaroni cheese and cheese right now as, at that price, I don't want it drying out in the fridge.

Birthing Centre in Ostia

2009-11-05T11:16:00.002+01:00

My pregnant friend who lives in Ostia was telling me that a brand new state of the art birthing centre has just been completed next door to Ostia Grassi Hospital complete with birthing tubs, private rooms with beds for the dads to stay in after the birth, midwife led birth and birthing chairs and balls - all of which are unheard of here in Rome except in the very fancy and expensive private clinics (the new birthing centre in Ostia is public). My friend was so excited that she would be able to give birth at this new centre as she had her first baby at the same public hospital in Rome where I gave birth. It was ok but no birthing tubs and no private rooms. After the birth the fathers had to go home and they were only allowed to see the baby (and mother) for a couple of hours a day in a shared room.

Well, apparently this brand new birthing centre (paid for with our tax euros) is now empty and idle because funding has been cut for the salaries of the midwives who work there (and I suppose other staff). The midwives are continuing to work there on an unpaid volunteer basis but they are now only doing 4 births a month so it's unlikely my friend will be able to get in.

I was so happy to hear that progressive things like stand alone birthing centres, birthing tubs and private rooms which allow the fathers to stay with the mother had finally come to the public system here in the Rome region. But it sounds like a typically Italian bureaucratic snafu is now preventing this brand new (and I assume expensive for us taxpayers) facility from being used. What a shame! And what a waste!

Roman rainbow

2009-10-13T22:29:00.002+02:00

Last night after a rainstorm we went out on our balcony to take this photo:

Bedtime!

2009-06-21T12:17:00.002+02:00

My blog seems to be getting more and more baby focused. Oh well, I guess that just reflects my life at the moment.

Anyway I was wondering if anyone had any input re the bedtime issue. Astrid (who is almost 1) goes to bed at 9pm (used to be 9.30 but we pushed it back) and gets up around 7.30. She usually naps for around 3 hours a day. I figure 13 hours of sleep a day is ok but then talking to some Dutch and American B&B guests and surfing the web I realise that bedtimes in other countries - or at least the Netherlands and the US -tend to be extremely early. The Dutch seem to put their kids to bed at around 7.30 and one American told me that the kids she babysits go to bed at around 6!!

So are we denying our baby the sleep she needs? A sometimes wakes up at 5.30 and won't go back to sleep so I'm always afraid to put her to sleep earlier. But I've been told that these kids who go to bed at 7.30 sleep 12 hours a night. Are different kids just different or is there some secret to an early bedtime.

The only issue is that I get home from work at 6.30 at the earliest so if the baby went to bed at 7.30 I'd hardly see her and there wouldn't be time for a breastfeed, dinner and maybe a bath before bed. But I guess working hours are earlier in Northern Europe as well.

Being off work sick in Italy

2009-06-06T13:23:00.004+02:00

Just a little vent while the baby is happily chewing on things. This is one of those perennial expat blog complaints like the post office. :(

So my sciatica has come back. I had to be wheeled out of work into a waiting taxi in a wheelchair. I was unable to walk or move for several days and now I can walk only with difficulty. Lifting the baby causes lots off pain. I kind of look like a 1 year old just learning how to walk.

Since I've been off work for more than one day I had to get a doctor's note and post it via registered post to INPS, a big Italian bureaucracy, within 48 hours. Sounds simple, but remember I can hardly walk, even into a taxi and certainly not up all the stairs at my doctor's office. I imagine anyone who is off work for several days is pretty sick by definition. Doctors here don't email or fax things so this would have meant a trip to the doctor to get the note then a trip to the post office (standing or sitting in a long queue to top it off) to send it off. Not really what the doctor ordered. When I called my doctor's receptionist she asked "so how long do you plan to be off work sick?" How on earth am I meant to know how long it will take for me to get better ahead of time? Last time it took almost 2 weeks, this time I'm feeling a lot better after only a few days but I can't predict exactly what day I'll be well enough to go to work and I imagine that would be difficult with any illness.

Luckily my husband's work is flexible (although he's insanely busy) so he went to the doctor and the PO for me (of course getting to the PO a bit more than an hour before it closed and being told that they're not giving out any more numbers for sending things registered post so we've missed the 48 hour deadline). But how on earth does someone who is very sick but has no relatives nearby manage? One person said "just ask a friend" but I really wonder how my friends' bosses would react if they said "I have to take a morning off work to do the INPS paperwork for a sick friend."

Breastfeeding in Italy

2009-05-19T11:06:00.006+02:00

OK I admit it I've spent much of my maternity leave becoming addicted to reality TV. As I wrote a few weeks ago I've become a huge Trinny and Susannah fan (from What Not to Wear) but having a kid and all I've also watched a bit of Supernanny - both the American and Italian (SOS Tata) versions.

The American and Italian versions of Supernanny are pretty similar. Chaotic families with hellion children and no schedule are whipped into shape by a very bossy visiting nanny. By the end of the show, all is resolved and children and parents are happily eating around the table with the TV turned OFF.

But one cultural difference really stands out to me. On the Italian show I've seen several episodes where a young toddler (say 12 months up to 2 years old) is 'still' breastfeeding. The Supertata shakes her head disapprovingly and manacing music plays as the toddler is shown nursing happily before bed. "The child is too old to still breastfeed" the supernanny says authoritatively to the mother who looks kind of sheepish and guilty, "she's using it as a crutch". Supertata advises weaning subito by subsituting other things for nursing sessions (ice cream cones, juice in a bottle, a cuddle).

I read somewhere that only 9 percent of Italian women are still exclusively breastfeeding at 6 months and the attitude I've encountered here seems to be 'breast is best' but we're not going to help you at all with it in the hospital or when you return home so if you have problems you're on your own. And if you do chose to breastfeed you have to go on a crazy almost impossible to stick to diet (at the hospital I was told by the paediatrician that if I chose to breastfeed I had to avoid cow's milk dairy products, cauliflour, cabbage, broccoli, onions, garlic, chillis, strawberries, peaches, melons, peanuts, chocolate, fried foods etc etc.) and you should defitely wean when the baby is around 4 months old or at least before s/he grows any teeth. In addition, when you start solid foods at 4-6 months (I followed the Australian guidelines and started at 6 months) you should quickly start the 'svezzamento' (ie weaning) of the baby off breastmilk. By month 7-8 you should only be breastfeeding once or twice a day.

I completely ignore my paediatrician's wacky recommendations re breastfeeding and diet. She's the one who wanted me to put Astrid on a diet at 3 months (ie breastfeed only once every 4 hours) because she was 'too fat' and pretty much only feed her meat, carrot broth and rice cereal now that she's eating solids. But when she asks I tell her the truth so when she asked how many times a day Astrid breastfeeds and I said "4" she nearly fell out of her chair. It seems that most Italians have this reaction to breastfeeding past a certain age. I even had one older woman say that babies have to be weaned at 6 months because breastmilk becomes 'harmful' after that.

I will wean eventually. Astrid won't still be breastfeeding when she goes to kindergarten. But considering the reaction I get from people to breastfeeding a 10 month old it doesn't surprise me at all that so few Italian women breastfeed long term despite their generous maternity leaves and the World Health Organization's recommendations that women breastfeed for "at least 12 months and thereafter as long as mutually desired".

Baby uggs

2009-05-14T18:58:00.004+02:00

Our Dutch/Australian/American baby already owns a pair of Dutch clogs. To add to her shoe wardrobe, her grandma recently gave her a pair of Australian baby uggs:

Now all we need are a pair of cowboy boots to complete her shoe wardrobe.

Things I'm still waiting for in the post

2009-04-30T11:18:00.004+02:00

I think I, along with pretty much every expat blogger in Italy, have already written about how much I hate Poste Italiane. It's always been bad but seems to be getting worse. Apparently, it's well known that postal employees here open packages and steal what they fancy (I've been told they sell anything valuable on ebay). They've even been caught doing this on security video -with no consequences. And the rest of the stuff - well, they just can't be bothered delivering it -too much work when you're a state employee with a job guaranteed for life I guess. And then there's customs, postal fees, VAT etc - which are slapped on pretty much every package which manages to arrive from outside the EU including those which are clearly marked "gift" or "used items" (one person I know had to pay customs, postal fees and VAT on a package containing only documents). When my mother sent me a DVD worth Euro20 from Australia which was clearly marked "gift" - I had to pay Euro 12 in customs, VAT and mysterious "postal processing fees" (I guess to pay for the person to calculate the customs fees?) And of course there's no recourse - you pay up, however unjust, or you don't get your package.

This situation makes living here really difficult particularly when you have a baby and your overseas friends send you baby gifts (I warn anyone who asks not to send me anything or to send it to Rene's sisters in Holland- but many nice friends sent surprise gifts - which didn't turn up). In the past, things sent from within the EU tended to show up - but not any more. I guess I just need to give up on using the mail or doing any online shopping.

Things I'm (still) waiting for in the post

-beautiful Parisian newborn baby clothes sent by my French friends in June, 2008 a month before Astrid's birth
-2 separate packages of cloth diapers and covers ordered from a UK website in October, 2008
-1 book about childbirth ordered from Amazon.co.uk during pregnancy - so around March, 2008
-newborn baby clothes from my friends in Australia - July, 2008
-baby books in English sent by friends from the US - July, 2008
-a package of clothes ordered from Boden in the UK - February, 2009
-several issues of the Economist and the New York Review of books (I've been given subscriptions to both)

Sometimes when I'm feeling down I imagine some postal employee giving my newborn baby clothes to a pregnant friend as a baby gift - although it's probably more likely they were sold on ebay.

Cloth diapering/nappying in Italy

2009-04-18T11:02:00.010+02:00

Cloth diapering has recently been enjoying a renaissance in the richer parts of the world: Europe, North America and Australasia, after a period of about 20 years during which almost all parents switched to disposables. According to an Indian friend, cloth nappies never went out of style in the developing world - pretty much everyone in India uses them and I suspect that the situation may be similar in other parts of the globe where Proctor and Gamble et al have yet to make inroads and most people wouldn't be able to afford disposable nappies anyway.

Like breastfeeding, cloth nappying is inexpensive, easy, simple and old fashioned. Needless to say, it's also environmentally friendly - especially in a country like Italy awash in overflowing landfills and piles of festering/burning waste. As with breastfeeding, however, the big multinationals have a strong vested interest in persuading parents to abandon age-old parenting practices in favour of their more expensive "modern" products -disposable diapers and baby formula, although, of course, these products do have their place. Baby formula, for one, is a wonderful food for babies who, for whatever reason, cannot be breastfed and disposable diapers are a great convenience for travelling.

In Italy, unfortunately, it seems that a huge proportion of parents use disposable nappies. I think that the main hurdle is that the ubiquity of disposable diapers and the endless advertising have persuaded many parents and potential parents that cloth diapering is a huge amount of work, akin to washing your clothes at the village water pump with only cold water, a washboard and some marsiglia soap, and a bit 'schifoso' (gross). I've had many, many people assume that I'm some kind of supermum (and/or completely crazy) because I use cloth on Astrid. While I was pregnant and collecting cloth nappies a lot of experienced parents assured me that I'd give up and start using disposables within 3 weeks as cloth diapers are "just soooo hard." In fact, I'm extremely lazy and about as far from supermum as is possible. It actually really isn't that much more work using cloth than using disposables and it's a hell of a lot better for the environment, your pocketbook and your baby's bum.

Disposable diapers are extremely expensive in Italy - probably twice as much as in the US on average although I haven't studied this in detail. If you'd like to do a quick calculation of the amount of money you'll save using cloth use this calculator Remember when crunching the numbers that disposable diapers are more expensive here as is electricity but that we tend not to use dryers making washing the diapers slightly more economical after everything is totalled up.

I started out while pregnant reading a US based website for cloth diaper users called the Diaper Pin. The site can be quite overwhelming as there are so many different kinds of cloth diapers available these days and so many different opinions. There were certain cloth diaper addicted mothers on that site who kind of scared me (no it's not necessary to spend $50 on a handknitted wool cover for your cloth diapers!) Another useful site for things like diaper folds and washing techniques is Diaper Hyena. To make life easier for anyone considering cloth nappies here's a summary of the different categories of cloth diaper available these days:

1) All in Ones or AIOs - these diapers are, as the name suggests, one piece nappies which include an absorbent part and a waterproof part similar to a disposable. I read on the Diaper Pin site that these diapers take a very long time to dry and since we don't have a dryer I decided to skip these.

2) Pocket Diapers - these are a great innovation especially for the parent looking for a disposable-like nappy. It consists of a two layer piece which either snaps or velcros around the baby's rear - waterproof on the outside and soft and water wicking on the inside (usually fleece). Inside there's a pocket where you can insert an absorbent layer - either microfiber (quick drying - I recommend it), cotton or bamboo (bamboo takes a long time to dry but it absorbs a lot so good for outings). I have several bumgenius, fuzzibunz and peapods (an Australian brand which I wouldn't recommend as they came apart in the wash) pocket nappies. The bumgeniuses are my favourites as they 'one size' so there's no need to buy more as the baby grows. The downsides are the cost (compared to option 3) and the fact that you've got to be careful with how you wash them and keep them away from diaper creams. I've found that they wash fine on hot with normal detergent, though, and I just use a fleece liner if I'm using diaper cream.

3) Absorbent cotton flat diaper plus waterproof cover - this is the workhorse of our diaper stash along with little pieces of thin fleece (called pile in Italian - buy it at any fabric store and cut into pieces) as liners. We use Indian Prefolds which I got on ebay. In the UK terry cloth squares seem to be the norm (I've never tried these). The big advantages are: they're cheap so you can buy lots - this is especially great during the newborn stage, they indestructible in the wash and they also make great burp cloths. We use PUL covers - mostly bummis (which are Canadian) and imse vimses (a Swedish brand). Disadvantages are -need to use snappis or pins (I like snappis better - they're flexible rubber grips), need for a cover, need for a fleece liner, slightly steeper learning curve for those who've never cloth nappied before.

4) Fitted diapers - such as the British Tots Bots, the Canadian Motherease nappies and the American kissiluvs. I haven't tried these but I've heard they're great for containing newborn poop (sorry, but this is a post about diapers!) The big disadvantage is that they cost more than the flat diapers and babies constantly grow out of them so you need to buy more. These diapers also require a waterproof cover.

We aren't cloth diaper zealots and we do use disposables sometimes: when travelling out of town, at night and sometimes when we're out. Especially during the newborn stage I noticed that we got a lot more huge leaks when using disposables (usually while I was nursing the baby so all over my skirt or trousers - yuk!) Maybe it was just our baby, but disposables just didn't seem to be able to cut it in the poo containment arena.

Cloth diapers are slowly making their way onto the Italian scene. Here are list of Italian and European stockists (if you're in Italy it's best to order from within Europe rather than the US as you won't need to pay customs.)

Italian sources
Babynatura
Ecobaby
NewBabyBerry
Bimbomarket
La Casa dei Bimbi

European sources
Imse vimse UK
Twinkle Twinkle nappies UK

I've also seen Poppolino cloth pocket diapers for sale at Natura Si if you'd like to check them out in person. They also sell handy flushable diaper liners.

Washing methods
A lot of the American cloth diaper sites recommend special detergents. These aren't available in Italy, unfortunately, but I've never had problems using regular detergents from the supermarket. Just keep away from anything containing enzymes or brighteners. The cheap stuff is best. For these instructions I'm assuming the use of a front-loader.

My tried and tested washing method for prefolds, PUL covers, pocket diapers (bumgenius and fuzzibunz) and fleece liners is as follows:

-flush poo down toilet after changing baby (you should be doing this with disposable diapers as well as it's not a good idea to put human waste into the garbage)
-store dirty diapers in a big plastic bin on the balcony. It really doesn't smell at all if you wash frequently - if smell is a problem there's plenty of advice on the sites I linked to above.
-when it's time to wash, remove inserts from pocket nappies and attach velcro to tabs on pocket nappy 'covers' and PUL covers. Dump everything in the washing machine. Rinse diapers - on my machine this function is called "riscaquo & centrifuga". After rinsing the diapers add about a third of the amount of detergent recommended on the bottle, the recommended amount of calgon and a few teaspoons of Napisan to the detergent dispenser. Wash on 60 degrees.
-Hang diapers to dry on clotheshorse. If there are any stains hang them in the sun which will bleach out stains in no time.

Cross posted on my other blog, Rome for Children.

What not to wear

2009-04-06T18:15:00.006+02:00

I guess everyone has their shameful TV addiction. Mine is "What Not to Wear" - the reality show where they pluck clueless fashion disasters off the street, throw out and make fun of their entire wardrobes, give the victim a large amount of cash to go shopping for new clothes and voila! complete makeover. I'm not sure that I agree with the premise of these shows- that fashion really can change your life -but when you see how some of the fashion disasters dress before the makeover you wonder how they ever managed to get a job, be promoted, find a mate, find friends, find a place to live etc. We're talking overweight 60 year olds in micro miniskirts, a man who wears stained bright pink suits all the time - you get the picture.

When I lived in the US, I used to watch the American version with Stacey and Clinton, more recently I've watched the UK version with Trinny and Susannah on BBC Prime. And I've just discovered the Italian version "Ma Come Ti Vesti?" with Carla and Enzo. I have to say my favourite version is the original British one. I love Trinny (Susannah is just OK although she's a good straight woman to Trinny).

So what US-UK-Italy cultural differences have a gleaned from my addiction to the various versions of this show? All three shows feature two well-heeled, perfectly groomed hosts who educate the fashion disasters in hem length, heel height and colour. In the Italian and US show it's a (seemingly) gay man paired with a skirt wearing ultra-feminine woman but while the man on the US show generally wears taseful sweater-vests over button down shirts, Enzo on the Italian version wears things like checked Mr Toad suits and cravats so it's a bit hard to take his fashion edicts seriously.

The British show has a strong social class theme, not surprisingly I guess. In some promotions Trinny and Susannah are described as "sloaney" and the majority of their victims seem to be (based on accent and job) decidedly not sloaney and I guess that's part of the dynamic. Mr Higgins takes Eliza and instead of changing her accent gets her a whole new tasteful wardrobe. Although bad taste is definitely not a class thing and they do have a few victims with similar accents to their own. I have noticed that they tend not to force the more upper class victims (who also, as it happens, seem to be older) to strip to their undies in the dreaded 360 degree mirror whereas the other victims are not spared.

I've just discovered the Italian show (Ma Come Ti Vesti?) and it's a lot of fun. I guess in keeping with Italian salaries the fashion disaster victims are given a smaller amount of money than on the US and UK shows. They tend to use less colour and more black and they include sexy, non-practical, non-supportive lingerie as a wardrobe item to be bought. And participants are always clothed in their horrible "before" outfits when looking in the 360 degree mirror. No need for a literal "brutta figura" ie. 360 degrees of sagging, middle aged flesh under TV lights clothed only in droopy underwear.

I really am becoming an Italian

2009-03-26T11:18:00.002+01:00

Last night we had dinner at our favourite trattoria. Lovely meal but I couldn't help being horrified by this overheard exchange from the table next to us which was occupied by a large party of international tourists and a guy who appeared to be their tour guide:

Tour guide: "Now this is your typical Roman trattoria so they have all the traditional Roman dishes..." [he then explained the usual Roman pasta dishes: carbonara, amatriciana, cacio e pepe, griscia, ravioli etc. and the whole first course, second course thing]
Australian girl: "that sounds great. I think I'll have the amatriciana [traditional pasta dish from Amatrice involving bucatini, pancetta, tomato, chilli and pecorino cheese] but I'd like mushrooms in it."
Tour guide [looking uncomfortable]: "well, they take their food very seriously here. You can't put things together which aren't traditional. For example, one time someone in my group ordered a pasta dish with seafood and wanted parmesan cheese on it [a BIG no-no in Italy]. The cook stormed out of the kitchen and said "it would be an insult to my cooking to put parmesan cheese on a seafood dish!"
Australian girl: "well if it isn't INSULTING, ha ha, I'd like you to ask them to put mushrooms in my amatriciana."

I was just cringing as I listened to this. I guess it is true that back in Australia (I've seriusly repressed the memory) you can have whatever you want in whatever combination on your pasta. But this is the most genuine of old-fashioned traditional Roman trattorias. Oh, the culture clash!

Since the baby was getting grizzly we made a quick exist so I never got to see the cook storm out of the kitchen to tell the Australian girl that mushrooms in amatriciana would be an abomination and to get the hell out of her trattoria but I was inwardly seething at the thought of their beautiful amatriciana being ruined in this way.

Why I hate Dr Sears

2009-03-23T22:53:00.004+01:00

A friend in New York just emailed me this article.

Dr Sears is the Rick Steves of childcare. Like Steves, he dishes out highly opinionated somewhat random advice which appeals to vulnerable, unconfident people embarking on an overwhelming new experience (new mothers in the case of Sears, first time travellers in the case of Steves).

Like the author of the article, I believed Sears when I read him while pregnant and started out cosleeping with Astrid, breastfeeding on demand and picking her up at the slightest peep. His argument that babies need to be literally attached to their mothers 24/7 seemed to make sense - afterall Astrid had been inside my body only a few weeks before- and responding to her slightest cry felt like the least I could do. After a mini nervous breakdown at around month three, however, I realised that I will never be that kind of mother no matter what I do at least without a full frontal lobotomy - and to be honest I'm not sure if the nurturing earthmother who never wants time away from her baby really exists outside of Dr Sears' books.

As it is, like most parents, we've ended up doing a combination of childrearing practices which Dr Sears would approve of and those which he maintains will permanently scar our child. So I continue to breastfeed Astrid frequently at 8 months and have no plans to wean and Rene often 'wears' Astrid in a baby carrier while we're out with her but we moved Astrid into her own room at 6 months (or rather she stayed put and we moved into the other bedroom), we did some non-hardcore cry it out, we rarely 'wear' her in the house (and I hate to think about the state of my back if I did!) and I prefer the stroller to the baby carrier.

Bike sharing discontinued in Rome

2009-03-13T11:13:00.004+01:00

Here's a link to my husband's blog article about the discontinuation of the bike sharing programme in Rome. What a shame - bike sharing worked so well in Paris and several other cities. I wonder why it was discontinued here. Just yesterday I saw the bike sharing stand outside the Metropolitan Cinema near Piazza del Popolo. I wonder if they'll take it down now.

New blog: Rome for Children

2009-03-11T10:37:00.005+01:00

Living with a baby in central Rome and interacting daily with guests at the Chaplin and Little Italy Bed and Breakfasts, I've learnt many tips and tricks for both living and travelling in Rome with children. I've therefore started a new blog, Rome for Children, where I will share the insights I've gained which make both travelling and living in Rome with kids a smoother and more enjoyable experience.

I will continue to blog here about my own experiences in Rome and whatever more general topics strike my fancy. I know I've been a bad blogger lately but I've resolved to turn over a new leaf and blog more regularly now that Astrid is no longer a newborn.

Very Roman trattoria

2009-01-29T18:21:00.008+01:00

Since we moved to our corner of Esquilino, we've been slowly getting to know the local scene: food shops, bars, the food markets, assorted other things (dry cleaners, stationery shops, hairdressers) and, most importantly, trattorie. Of course no trattoria will ever replace our favourite Roman trattoria, complete with worn linoleum floors, 1950s era kitchen and decor, antlers on the wall, the whole family yelling at each other and, of course, an unopened bottle of finance police amaro displayed in a prominent place in the restaurant. Rene has been going there for 10 years and we went there on our first date so it has a special place in our hearts. Besides, their carbonara and ravioli simply cannot be beat. (as an aside - for any single female readers of this blog of a certain age - this trattoria is bachelor/divorced guy of a certain age central- let me know if you'd like to come to dinner with us one night and maybe I can hook you up.)

In fact, I'd hardly noticed this other little place nearby with a big "trattoria' sign outside and 1950s decor inside very similar to but not exactly the same as that that of our Favourite Trattoria. I was therefore kind of excited when our Italian friend, Marco, invited us to have lunch there one day earlier this month. We arranged to meet Marco at the restaurant at 1 so I strapped Astrid into her front carrier and headed over at the appointed hour.

I walked in at around 1.10 to an empty restaurant. The fat, red faced owner rushed out to meet me and said a bit flustered: "you can't have a table. The restaurant is full." Ummm...I looked around -only one table was occupied. I pointed this out to the owner. He looked awkward and said "oh but it will fill up. You've got to have a reservation."

As I was walking out dejectedly with 9 kilos of baby on my front, I ran into Marco and Rene who were just arriving. The owner hugged Marco and was introduced to Rene, Astrid and me. Marco explained that he'd gone to primary school with the owner. We were given a table and proceeded to enjoy a pretty good meal -not as good as the food at our Favourite Trattoria but not bad. All the while, Marco, the owner and Rene proceeded to talk Italian football.

At the end of the meal the owner came by and said "you understand that I only allow people I know to eat here. I didn't know you before so I couldn't let you in, you understand? I don't want any hassles. But since you're a friend of Marco's, you're welcome anytime. Please come back." I guess that was his apology. Well, it was good to know that it wasn't because I'm a 'straniera' (foreigner).

So now I'm in possession of the secret handshake - we know the guy now and can eat there anytime. I interpret this to mean that we've been initiated as real members of the neighbourhood if not as real Romans (finally after 20 years in Rome in the case of my husband!)

But to be really honest I'm not dying to go back to that restaurant. Marco seems to love it but I wonder if the real appeal is being part of the 'in' group, a secret club. And possibly, the fact that the many immigrants who live in Esquilino are, for the most part, excluded. If my theory is true, I guess I'm just not Roman enough to appreciate the exclusivity and family feel of the trattoria. In fact, I think I'd really rather go to the Indian Restaurant around the corner where they're always open, always very friendly and the food is delicious. But is this 'globalisation'? Am I failing to appreciate a part of Italian (or at least Roman) culture by failing to appreciate this exclusive trattoria?

Solids!

2009-01-09T17:37:00.008+01:00

Babyroma is now almost 6 months old and we've just started solids. I've been really amazed at the how different the first baby foods are which Italian and Australian (American etc.) cultures recommend. I had no idea! I guess everyone grows up fine in the end but I feel far more comfortable sticking with the rice cereal mixed with breastmilk, mashed banana as well as home made pureed fruits and veggies which are the usual first foods in Australia than venturing into the (IMO) weird and wacky things which Italians seem to feed their kids. What I find strange about Italian baby food is that so much of it seems to be stuff that Italians themselves would never deign to eat - pureed processed rabbit in a jar? Beet broth? Yuk!

Here is a quick summary of the two approaches:

Italian approach-(or at least my paediatrician's approach)

My paediatrician recommended to start off right away at 5 months with 2 meals a day consisting of: vegetable broth made from only carrots and beets (because of my history of allergies) beets and carrots removed before feeding to the baby, cereal or mini pasta with olive oil and "homogenized" (ie pureed) rabbit meat from a jar. After 4-5 days of this rather odd diet we allowed to start pureed apple and pear preferably from a jar. We are not to give the baby any veggies until month 8. Meanwhile I'm meant to switch suddenly from breastfeeding Astrid 7-8 times a day to only 3 times a day.

There is no way I'm following this plan. I can't imagine weaning Astrid from the breast in such a drastic way at only 6 months (I haven't told the paediatrician this but I plan to keep breastfeeding as long as Astrid continues to want to breastfeed so long as we don't have any problems) and there is no way I'd chose to dine on either pureed rabbit in a jar or beet and carrot broth, so why should she?

Australian approach (from Baby Love by Robyn Barker)

Around 6 months start giving one meal a day (beginning with just a teaspoon or two and increasing the amount as the baby starts getting used to eating) of either rice cereal mixed with breastmilk/formula, mashed banana, pureed apple or pear, mashed avocado, fruit gels (homemade with fruit juice and gelatin), full fat plain yoghurt (with or without fruit puree mixed in), cooked pureed veggies such as carrots, pumpkins, potatoes or spinach or chicken soup/broth. Keep breastfeeding as many times a day as you and the baby would like - Barket recommends 4-7 times a day. Slowly build up to two and then three meals a day of the foods previously mentioned. In months 7-9 start adding pureed versions of what the adults are eating - meat, fish, tofu, egg yolks and special foods with more protein such as meats, fish, egg yolks, tofu etc. Only give the baby wheat products at month 8-9 (here they recommend mini pasta from the beginning) if allergies are a concern. Puree appropriate adult foods with a hand blender or mouli.

I feel way more comfortable continuing to breastfeed often rather than suddenly weaning and like the idea of introducing solids gradually. I don't want to feed my baby processed foods from a jar unless we're travelling. And most of these are foods I'd actually like to eat!

Here are some photos I took yesterday at the supermarket down the street:

Pureed ostrich, rabbit and horse for babies!

More appetising Italian baby food:

Baby extra virgin olive oil- yum (although I'm not sure how it differs from the adult variety except that it's more expensive.)

Madonna/whore complex - alive and well

2008-11-14T15:16:00.005+01:00

Although I never thought this would happen, becoming a mother has changed me fundamentally. Not just the usual bodily changes but also a complete mental change. It's hard to explain but I feel like a little piece of me is sleeping in the crib while I write this post. Every morning I wake up sometime before 6.30 (unthinkable just 4 short months ago) in a puddle of milk about 5 minutes before the baby wakes up to eat. My body seems to know somehow that she is about to wake up. I guess this feeling will change as she grows up and asserts her separateness (and of course when she weans).

However, I'm also the same person in many ways- both inside and on the surface. Looking at recent photos of myself I look tired and my roots are showing (haven't been to the hairdresser in more than 6 months!) but I'm serioulsy not THAT different. I weigh exactly the same as I did when I got pregnant despite no effort on my part- my body just seems 'set' at that point. Although I'm obsessed with all things 'baby' I also still read the same things, talk the same, think the same most of the time.

But everyone around me here in Rome treats me entirely differently now that I'm a mum. When I first moved here I was constantly harassed and stared at by gross Italian (and other) men. I hated it. I stopped wearing shorts in the summer and walked with a slouch. Now I'm a mum I move around the city, baby in tow, wearing whatever I like in complete peace. The icky men give me not so much as a glance. I love it and despite the 8 kilos of wriggling baby strapped to me I feel incredibly comfortable. I'm much more positive about both Italians and Italy now that I don't have to deal with one of Italy's uglier sides day to day. In fact, now that I've got a baby everyone constantly calls me the respectful "signora", helps me with the carriage and coos over the baby. Previously unfriendly, unsmiling people are suddenly all smiles - our next door neighbours, the bar owners across the street etc.

As far as the friendly neighbours and bar owners - I guess they just find Astrid charming and want to talk to her lucky mother. But I think it's very interesting that as soon as I got pregnant I went from "whore" to "madonna" in the eyes of many of the men around me. Before they were out to humiliate, harass and follow the foreign girl - now they give up their seats and smile at the baby of the foreign 'signora'.

This stark whore/madonna contrast in people's behaviour towards me appears to be a very Italian thing as I've never been harassed to the extent that I used to be harassed in daily life in any other city where I've lived (and I've lived in many countries being a bit of a nomad). But of course I haven't been a mother anywhere else either. Have other mums had this experience? Italian expat mums? Is the madonna/whore complex this stark in other parts of the world or is it an Italian (or possibly Roman) thing?

Motherhood update

2008-10-23T12:59:00.008+02:00

While I was pregnant everyone said things like "enjoy your free time now because you won't have any once the baby is born." I thought I understood what they meant as I still remember late nights with a screaming baby when my sister (11 years younger than me) was little. However, now that we actually have the baby I have to say its completely different from what I expected.

Firstly, Astrid is (generally) a great sleeper. She's 'slept through the night' from 9-12 ish until around 7-8 since around 6 weeks. We had a few bad nights in the very beginning but nothing like the colicky hell which others had prepared me for.

On the other hand, I still found the first 10 weeks or so very difficult mainly because she grizzled and cried more or less all bloody day! It was hard watching this little creature be so miserable. Oh and she wouldn't nap and ended up a crying hysterical heap every evening often until midnight or so (after which she'd sleep through til the morning so I shouldn't compain - but still!) Newborns seem to have a difficult time adjusting to breathing, sleeping, eating and pooing. Every morning she'd wake up and immediately start grunting and grizzling- I'm sure it was intestinal pain but since she can't talk I couldn't ask. Then suddently at around 10 weeks it all got better. Now she wakes up in the morning and gives me a huge smile. She only grizzles or cries when she's hungry, tired or has a wet nappy. She loves just hanging out on the floor on a towel or in her baby chair watching me do the washing up. She still has a hard time napping but that's improving too. I no longer think people who have more than one kid are crazy.

Some piccies:

Segregation in Italian schools

2008-10-19T17:09:00.005+02:00

It's been a while since I posted but I guess looking after a 3 month old baby is a good excuse. I don't normally post photos of myself, but I just can't resist. Here is a photo of the three of us back in August outside our favourite Indian restaurant:

I've been moved to post after my long hiatus by the news that a bill put forward by the Northern League to racially segregate Italian public school classes has passed in the lower house. Since our daugher is not entitled to Italian citizenship, despite being born here in Rome, I guess she'll have to do this test too and if she fails she'll be excluded from classes with her Italian peers. Note that the Northern League are not simply proposing Italian as a second language classes for students who need help with their Italian (which I think would be a good move)- rather they wish to test all non-Italian children and then completely segregate those who fail the test into separate classes not just for Italian but for all subjects. I've heard several Italian parents complain that immigrant kids 'hold their children back' (no doubt their kids would be getting straight As without those pesky foreign children in their class-eyeroll!). So I assume that this is a response to this common complaint. All I can say is that if Alessandra Mussolini objects to your plan as racist you're in real trouble.

I guess this is yet another reason for us to leave Italy before Astrid starts school (sigh).

Babyroma

2008-08-22T14:46:00.003+02:00

Astrid is here!!!

2008-07-16T14:50:00.003+02:00

Astrid Jean was born at 11.43 am on Saturday, July 12, 2008. She weighed 4150 grams (9lbs 1oz) at birth and was 51 centimeters long.

With the help of my wonderful midwife, I gave birth at a large public hospital in Rome and avoided both an induction and a c-section.

We're both doing really well and she's taken to breastfeeding with great gusto.

Fruit and vegetables which tan!

2008-07-09T12:48:00.006+02:00

Opened up Italian Yahoo today to find this headline under "Yahoo Health Italy":

Fruit and vegetables which tan: Here's the top ten

"Consumare carote, insalate, cicoria, lattughe, meloni, peperoni, pomodori, albicocche, fragole o ciliegie serve a stare in salute, a combattere l'obesità e le altre malattie dell'alimentazione, ma anche a preparare l'abbronzatura estiva. E' la Coldiretti a stilare con l'arrivo dell'estate la speciale classifica della frutta e verdura che abbronzano sulla base del contenuto in vitamina A dei diversi alimenti che favorisce la produzione nell'epidermide del pigmento melanina per donare la classica tintarella alla pelle."

[Translation - Eating carrots, salads, chicory, lettuce, melons, capsicums, tomatoes, apricots, strawberries and cherries keeps you in good health, combats obesity and other diseases linked to diet, but also prepares for a summer tan. With the arrival of summer, the National Farmers' Federation has drawn up a special classification for fruit and vegetables which [promote] tanning thanks to their vitamin A content and other nutrients which favour the production of melanin pigments in the skin, causing the classic sun tan.]

I guess the "tanning salad" which Shelley blogged about last summer flew off the shelves and now the market gardeners of the Italian Farmers' Federation want in on the act. And I'm sure they'll do well too as they've skillfully combined three of the strongest elements of Italian culture: food, tanning and a belief that "doctor knows best."

Bad parenting

2008-07-07T11:03:00.003+02:00

Some birds - not sure what kind but definitely not pigeons - have built a nest above our kitchen window. A few weeks ago I saw that an egg had fallen from the nest and broken on our window sill. I cleaned it away but today two more broken eggs were lying there.

I hope this doesn't foreshadow anything about our parenting skills.

Obviously, I'm still pregnant and at home. I'm hoping not to go into labour today as there is a massive 24 hour public transport strike here in Rome causing chaos on the roads.

Due date

2008-07-05T14:44:00.002+02:00

Well, today is my due date - 0 days to go! I wonder what will happen to the baby counter on my blog tomorrow - will it say "you have -1 days to go"?

People have been calling all day wondering if the baby is here yet. I'm feeling a bit of pressure. I found out from my mum and Rene's mum that both of us were 2 weeks late so I'm not holding out too much hope that the babe will arrive soon. Unfortunately, my doctor wants to induce me if I'm still pregnant on Friday (6 days after her due date) due to my blood clotting disorder. I really don't want to be induced so have been scoffing pineapple, herbal tea, hot curries etc.

The best things in life aren't free (at least not in Italy)

2008-07-03T15:00:00.002+02:00

Since I moved to Italy I've been amazed at the ways in which certain crafty Italians manage to extract money from other Italians for things which I've always thought of as free by their very nature.

Some examples:

1) lying on the sand at the beach. Or even better, lying on a beach chair under a beach umbrella while reading a book at the beach. While I've been told that public beaches do exist somewhere in Italy, most beaches are rented out by the local municipality to "stabilimenti" which, in addition to running a small bar at the sand's edge, provide beachgoers with beach umbrellas and beach chairs evenly spaced on the sand around 1.5 metres apart. Do not even think of bringing your own beach umbrella to an Italian beach or just sitting on the sand as this will catch the attention of an irate, deeply tanned man in a banana hammock who will march over to you and demand in thick romanesco that you pay 10-12 euro and sit under one of the stabilimento's beach umbrellas. For this fee you're provided with a beach umbrella and seat for the day as well as (sometimes) raucous beach entertainment to distract you from your seaside reverie (animazione). Sometimes hot showers (another thing usually provided for free at Australian beaches) are also thrown in.

2) water. While Rome water is perfectly drinkable if a bit hard, most Italians prefer to drink bottled mineral water especially at restaurants where ordering tapwater will elicit a surprised gasp from the waiter. Luckily, bottled water is generally cheap here (30-60 cents for a large bottle at the supermarket) but the environmental damage is huge. I wonder how much of that Naples garbage consists of empty mineral water bottles.

3) Public healthcare for pregnant women. I'm still a bit confused by this. Despite being told numerous times that public healthcare is "free" for pregnant women, I've had to pay fees of between 3 euro and 92 euro for every blood test, doctor's visit at the public hospital and other test which I've done during my pregnancy. It all adds up to around 150 euro a month which is not insignificant if you look at the amount of tax we pay to support this supposedly free prenatal healthcare system. I realise I'd probably pay something for public prenatal healthcare in Australia too but surely not this much. And no one there claims that prenatal healthcare is free.

4) receiving packages by post. I recently received a baby gift from a friend in the United States. 3 baby books, a bib and a nice card. The post office left a notice in my letterbox saying "come to post office X to pick up the package and pay Euro 6.52." I paid the money and saw that because my friend had written "gift" on the package I was not required to pay customs (hooray - as I've had to pay customs fees of at least 10 euro for just about every other gift I've received here). However the post office still charged me 6 euros for "spese postale" (postal expenses) and IVA (VAT). This is in addition to the US$25 which my friend paid in postage. Is there any other postal system in the world where both the sender and receiver must pay postal expenses?

It's probably clear from this post that I come from frugal (we prefer "thrifty") Scottish/Australian and Scandinavian stock! However, I'm amazed that Italians put up with paying hard earned euros for things which, in my book at least, should be free and which are generally free elsewhere.

Beached whale

2008-06-23T17:58:00.002+02:00

Pregnant women (or women who've been pregnant) always describe the last few weeks as "uncomfortable." Until now, I was pretty smug - I flew through pregnancy feeling pretty good apart from the fact that it was harder and harder for me to go out of the bed/the couch without help and a bit of bad heartburn.

But after an unseasobaly cool early June it suddenly got hot about 2 days ago and it's hit me hard. Nothing feels comfortable in this heat - sitting up, lying down, walking, shuffling. I went to my prenatal yoga class this morning and on the way home in the sweaty bus I thought I was going to die despite the fact that someone gave me his seat. The only thing which sounds good right now is going for a swim but there are no public pools in central Rome and I'm not up for a long trek on public transport to the pools outside Rome or the beach.

If I have another kid, s/he will be a winter baby!

Eurocup II

2008-06-21T11:31:00.003+02:00

If Holland wins the 2008 European cup, Rene has promised to wear his Dutch clogs for a whole day around Rome. Hup Holland hup! (sp?)

Tonight Holland plays Russia in the quarterfinals but poor Rene has some guests arriving at his B&B during the match. This form of torture surely must be banned under the European Convention on Human Rights.

European Cup 2008

2008-06-15T09:51:00.003+02:00

While everyone else in Italy is going around with long faces, the Dutch, including Rene and I (well, I'm married to a Dutch guy and I'm about to have a half Dutch baby - she even owns a pair of clogs!) have been euphoric over the Netherlands' 3-0 victory over Italy and 4-1 victory over the French. For once, the Dutch national team is playing brilliantly. As Rene's best friend back in Holland said "it's all a bit unreal..." Fingers crossed for the next round!

Father and daughter clogs

2008-06-01T19:12:00.003+02:00

Italian bloggers in Australia

2008-05-26T17:13:00.007+02:00

If you surf some of the blogs in my side-bar you'll see that a group of us English-language bloggers living in Italy have formed a nice little "blog community". I've met only a couple of these bloggers but I feel like I know them so well that I have to remind myself sometimes that these are only cyber-relationships and who knows? That 60 year old British woman with a blog about gardening and Italian cooking who retired to Abruzzo after 40 years working at the post-office in Slough could in fact be a 14 year old Indian boy who goes to international school in Bombay.

A lot of what us expat bloggers do is compare (not always favourably - we love to whinge!) Italy to our home countries, waxing nostalgic about things such as functioning post offices, not having to make multiple trips to clinics and hospitals in order to get prenatal tests done and reasonable drivers. Our main whinging topic? BUREAUCRACY!

As my husband and I (can't help thinking to myself "meeei husband end eeeiii" a la the Queen when I say that!) contemplate possibly relocating in a few years time back to one of our home countries (or possibly to some other exotic location), it's been interesting for me to discover a few Italian bloggers living in Australia who are, obviously, making comparisons in the other direction. It kind of reminds me of reading a travel guide to your hometown- a lot of things which just seem really 'normal' are exotic to Italians living in Australia: touch footy, the jacaranda tree in the University of Sydney quadrangle, rabbits and mixamatosis, food courts, the word "mate", the "spend the kids inheritance" movement (how incredibly un-Italian!). One of my favourite posts is from Christian in Sydney's blog, in which he describes being stopped by a police officer on the highway. After handing over his license, the officer said "Hi Christian, my name is Michael, can you please, hand me your car registration?" It seemed completely normal when I lived in Australia to use first names at all times but in Italy I find myself enquiring before making a phone call whether I should address the person as "Dottore", "Dottoressa" (these are used for anyone with a degree), "Avvocato" (lawyer), "Ingeniere" (engineer), "Maestro" (teacher or musician) or "Maresciallo" (Marshall, I think - often used for police) (and of course introducing myself on the phone at work as "Avvocato [my last name]".) Calling a police officer by his first name here in Italy would probably get you arrested just for being cheeky.

For the most part these Italian bloggers are really positive about Australia. Maybe that's because Australia really is that great (which I like to believe) or, possibly, they're just being polite and following the Italian saying (which I find really irritating BTW- if all the Italians I know are whinging about our new fascist mayor or mail being stolen at the post office why can't I? I deal with it too): "don't spit in the plate from which you eat."

Trilingualism?

2008-05-14T22:41:00.004+02:00

One of my great regrets is that despite being half Swedish I never learnt to speak Swedish from my dad. Back in the 70s the theory was that children would not learn the primary language properly if they spoke more than one language at home. And I've noticed, also, that kids tend not to learn a second language if their dad rather than their mum is the foreign parent.

Nowadays the pendulum has swung in the other direction and multilingualism is encouraged. I've even heard of people speaking a second language, which was not either of the parents' native language or the host country language, to their child just so that s/he could become bilingual.

So, as Australian-Dutch parents to a child who will be born in Italy, we are toying with the idea of attempting to bring our child up trilingual. She'll speak English with me, Dutch with my husband and Italian at school and outside the house. I assume she'll get more exposure to English than Dutch, though, since Rene and I speak English with eachother at home.

Bilingualism seems to work well for most kids but what about trilingualism? Are we being overly pushy? Will our child have a nervous breakdown in kindergarten? The poor little thing will have to learn three words for every one word her Italian classmates will learn.

Any thoughts? Experiences? Anyone else doing the trilingual thing with their child?

Reason # 82,398 that the birth rate is so low in Italy or how I'm turning into a true Roman

2008-05-10T10:13:00.007+02:00

I never thought I'd say something like this but I really miss going to the doctor and doing blood tests, urine tests, other tests right there in the doctor's office. I fondly remember the doctor handing me a pee cup and saying "the bathroom is down the hall, just give the cup to the nurse when you return." Then the nurse would either call me with the results or they'd send me my results a week or so later. This seems like a miracle now.

Why is something this simple not done in Italy? (or at least in Rome?) Here, (as I wrote about in a previous post) I go to the gynaecologist every month, he prescribes a huge list of blood tests, urine tests and other tests (last month the "other" extra-challenging to get done test was an electrocardiogram, this month it's a glucose tests for prenatal diabetes) and I need to go to my GP for the prescriptions for each test (impegnative). Then I need to go to different places all over Rome for the various tests, make appointments or lining up at 8am for each of my tests and of course taking time off work. For urine tests I need to go to a pharmacy and buy my own pee cup before going to ASL. Around 2 weeks later, I go back to each place, take a number and wait in line again to pick up my results (although lately I've been clutching my stomach and saying "I'm pregnant" while cutting the line!) I understand that because of the terrible post here, they can't send the results to me - but in a country with a serious unemployment problem, why can't they hire someone to call in my results by phone or send a fax to my doctor? And why do I (or my husband) need to go back to my GP every 12 days for a new prescription for the heparin injections I need to do every day for the next 6 weeks or so? I guess I need to learn to stop asking "why" about Italian bureaucracy.

Despite the fortitude, map reading skills, precise organisation and sheer physical exercion expected of pregnant women dealing with all of this medical bureaucracy and running all over town every month on public transport, we are at the same time, rather paradoxically, considered 'sick', fragile people who really shouldn't be leaving the house or doing anything for ourselves. Thus, Italian law presumes that all pregnant women will go on maternity leave a full two months before their due date. And if you want to go on leave one month before instead, the onus is on you, the pregnant woman, to prove that you're healthy enough to do it. Forget working until one or two weeks before your due date in order to maximise maternity leave as most of my overseas friends have done! 2 months it is, unless you can jump the bureaucratic hurdles to be "allowed" to work until one month before your due date.

I'm at 7 months now and I knew that in order to work for one more month I had to get a note from my doctor saying that I was healthy enough to work until one month before my due date and take it to INPS, the pensions and maternity leave bureaucracy. So I called my doctor in mid-April and he said that I needed to do a sonogram first but he'd be happy to write the note. I scheduled my sonogram privately for April 30th. Meanwhile, I called the INPS hotline and the person who answered told me I only needed a doctor's note in order to get the permission and "don't worry, there's no deadline and lots of flexibility about getting the paperwork in." So, after the sonogram, I called my doctor again who said he'd be glad to give me the note on the evening of Monday May 5th when he was at the hospital (it was the May 1st "bridge" long weekend). I took the metro, bus and tram to the hospital after work and picked up the note.

The next morning, May 6th, I went to INPS, note in hand (as everyone who lives in Italy knows, bureaucratic offices are only open here in the mornings). When my number was called, I went to the counter:

me: "here is my doctor's note saying that I can work until June 5th (one month before my due date, July 5th).
bureaucrat: "You're going to have to stop working today. This paperwork is one day late and there is absolutely no way we can process it. You should have gotten it in yesterday, May 5th, two months before your due date. Since it's May 6th today it's too late."

My heart sank - I had so much to do before going on maternity leave! Apart from anything else, we were meant to move offices the following day and my desk is piled high with urgent things needing my attention. Also, I'd like to spend most of my maternity leave with my baby rather than sitting at home bored eating bonbons with occasional bureaucratic interludes.

I tried everything - I told them that INPS had misinformed me (he said "everyone knows that the INPS hotline doesn't know anything - they just give out phone numbers!") I burst into tears. I spoke to the manager. Nothing.

They also said I needed a note from my employer stating that the workplace would pose no danger to me or the fetus. Of course they hadn't bothered to tell me this over the phone and HR at my workplace didn't know about it either when I asked them.

So, I did what any Roman would do when faced with this situation. I called my doctor and asked him to write me a new note saying that my due date is July 7th rather than July 5th, thereby giving me another day to go back to INPS with the new doctors note and my employer's statement in hand.

I nervously returned to INPS the next day (May 7) with the new note. No one batted an eyelid and my paperwork was processed.

Reflecting on it, I realise now why Italian pregnant women routinely leave work 2 months before their due date, even without any medical reason to stay home or health problems. It's because it's impossible to work full time and deal with all the medical bureaucracy you have to deal with as a pregnant lady in Italy.
So what are Italian women doing with their 2 months of maternity leave before the baby is born? Spending the time on buses and trains going to hospitals all over Rome to do medical tests, spending hours on hold with medical centers to ask if they perform those tests and if they take appointments, going to the ob/gyn, the GP and the hospital twice every month, going back to the GP for drug prescriptions every 12 days and gathering the huge list of things they need to bring to the hospital for the birth (my list from a large public hospital in Rome includes toilet paper, giant sanitary pads, medical grade gauze squares, baby outfits and nightgowns).

5 things no one tells you about pregnancy

2008-05-08T21:33:00.004+02:00

1) That your whole body changes, not just your uterus. I get nose bleeds now and I never used to get them, my hair is thicker and my husband tells me that I even snore "differently."
2) That if you have an innie belly button it almost becomes an outie while you're pregnant. Good bye belly button fluff.
3) That feeling the baby kick is not always a pleasant sensation.
4) That you grow a downy layer of hair over your belly (at least I have - please tell me I'm not a freak!)
5) That not everyone gets morning sickness. I'm one of the lucky ones who didn't.

Liberation Day

2008-05-01T11:04:00.006+02:00

I know I'm going to offend some people with this post (and I realise that I'm waaay over simplifying) but so be it...

Bleeding Espresso's recent post on Liberation Day in Italy (April 25, which also just happens to be ANZAC day in Australia) got me thinking. As we all learnt at school and from numerous movies and books, Germany, Italy and Japan formed the Axis alliance during World War Two. They fought AGAINST the Allies (Britain, France, the Soviet Union, the US etc.) eventually losing, much to the relief to Europe's Jews, Poles, Gypsies and others, not to mention the Chinese and many smaller Pacific nations.

Well, I realise that that's the (very) potted version but you get the gist.

So, after WWII, from what I understand, Germany went through a period of "denazification": many Nazi war criminals were tried and hanged/imprisoned, democracy/communism was imposed from above, West German school curricula spent lots of time on fascism and Nazi atrocities and fascism was essentially made illegal- which is how it should be as far as I'm concerned.

In Japan, from what I gather (correct me if I'm wrong!), the Japanese role in initiating WWII in the Pacific, Japanese war crimes and aggression towards other nations was pretty much ignored in school curricula, leading to recent protests in China, a lack of government acknowledgement even 60 years later of wartime atrocities (such as the officially condoned kidnapping and rape by Japanese soldiers of "comfort women" from neighbouring countries) and general ignorance about the war in Japan. I met a young Japanese woman a while back who told me that Australia did not fight in World War Two. I realise Australia is a small, insignificant nation but you'd think they'd at least mention the bombing of Darwin, the Kokoda Trail or the Japanese submarine attacks on Sydney in Japanese schools. If that's what they learn about Australia, then I wonder what they learn about the Rape of Nanking.

Of course everyone twists history in their own way. For example, Americans and Australians don't learn much about the 20-40 million war dead in the Soviet Union and just how crucial Soviet participation was to the Allied victory (basically it wouldn't have happenned without them and Soviet battles such as Stalingrad were much more pivotal to WWII than the more famous in the West Allied landing at Normandy). However, there is remembering things your way on the one hand and there is completely twisting the truth on the other.

So, in my first year in Italy I was intrigued to learn that April 25 is "Liberation Day" in Italy. For a moment there, I was under the impression that maybe, like Holland or France, Italy had actually been on the Allies side at first and, after a brief but brave (in the case of Holland very brief once the Germans flattenned Rotterdam)- stand off with the fascists had surrendered.

But no - that's not true- Italy WAS fascist until 1943 when they were defeated by the Allies and surrendered. In fact Italy under Mussolini virtually invented Fascism (where do you think the Nazis got those shiny boots, bravado and futuristic slogans?) and the Italians were the eager allies of the Nazis during World War Two (and yes, they changed sides at the end when they lost militarily but that doesn't really count, does it?)

So World War Two was a colossal defeat for Italy - the Italians weren't such hot stuff militarily despite their bravado so the defeat came earlier to the Italians than to the Germans and Japanese (1943) but that does not change the fact that Mussolini and fascism were extremely popular in Italy and thousands of Italians died fighting for the fascist, expansionist cause in North Africa, Europe and elsewhere.

So what is there to celebrate on April 25th? Oh yes, the PARTISANS! They were the REAL Italians - not the fascist soluting supporters of Mussolini. Wooops - I forgot - everyone here was always a Partisan, no one fell under Mussolini's spell and all Italians supported the Allies when they came in and "liberated" Italy. So, as has been explained to me many times, April 25 is the day Italians' grandparents were "liberated" from fascism by the Partisans and Allied soldiers.

Sometimes this twisting and turning logic reminds me of my Soviet history studies ten years ago.

So, what happens when a country fails to deal with or acknowledge its past, twisting the truth to cast themselves as winners and heroes? Unfortunately, this is what happens.

Playing the pregnancy card

2008-04-23T22:08:00.003+02:00

Being pregnant in Italy means being special. There are very few children here and therefore very few pregnant women. But motherhood is sacred - so as soon as you start to show people start making a fuss of you. Apparently there's even a law on the books here in Italy which says that pregnant women get to jump the queue - not only at medical clinics (where, believe me, the queues can be looong) but also at the supermarket, bank, IKEA etc. I've been telling Rene that he should bring me along whenever he needs to run an errand.

After my wallet was stolen last month I received my new credit card but not my bankomat (debit card) so I went over to the bank on my day off last week to find out what was going on. After jumping the queue (seriously, I didn't ask for this but everyone in the queue waved me ahead), I went up to speak to one of the tellers:

me: I'm here because I never received my bankomat after my wallet was stolen last month.
him: did you receive your PIN number?
me: I think so - I got something from the bank although it might have been the PIN for my credit card
him: (searching through envelopes) Oh, here it is. Your card is here but I can't give it to you as you haven't received your PIN.
me: but I just said I had received my PIN!!!
him: but you said it might be for your credit card - you weren't sure - so I can't give it to you and we'll have to issue another card.
me: (vainly trying to play pregnancy card) but I'm 7 months pregnant and i don't live near the bank - I have to take the bus to get here which is difficult being so heavily with child...
him: well, that's just our policy, maam.

At that moment an older female bank employee came by to speak to the teller and she witnessed the last part of our conversation. She grabbed the envelope and took me over to her desk where she proceeded to give me the card saying "I have two kids - I know what it's like being pregnant. Anything else I can do?"

So a brief and refreshing reprieve from the usual Italian bureaucratic bloody mindedness due to my huge belly. Well, at least it's something.

Obama, the Third Culture Kid

2008-03-23T15:07:00.008+01:00

As Peggy Orenstein points out in today's New York Times, America now has, for the first time, a serious biracial presidential candidate reflecting an increasing percentage of biracial Americans in the country as a whole.

Apart from his biracialism, however, what strikes me about Sen. Barack Obama is that he is also a Third Culture Kid, perhaps because I'm one too. He didn't grow up simply biracial in America or black in America. It's more complex than that. He spent ages 6-10 attending local schools in Indonesia and his mother remained in Indonesia after he was 10 married to an Indonesian man. This was an experience which no doubt shaped him and made him feel different from the other kids in his class when he moved back to the U.S. to live with his grandparents.

Growing up, I always knew that I could not run for office (not that I'd want to!) in either Australia or the U.S. due to my funny accent, funny name and murky nationality. In both places, it's ok to have immigrant parents but you have to have a strong American or Australian accent to be accepted as "American" or "Australian" enough to hold high office. And that's one thing which Obama does have - his accent sounds bland and 100% American.

But what Obama does not have is a straight line, easy to explain cultural or national life story like "I'm African American and grew up in Chicago" or "my parents are Italian and I'm from Brooklyn." It takes a while to explain Sen. Obama's white mother, Kenyan father and half Indonesian half sister (with a Chinese-Canadian husband). However, despite this Americans seem willing to listen and take the time to understand. And, whether or not they support him, they seem accept him as an American qualified to run for president.

Now that's a nice thing for a fellow TCK (and future mother of another TCK) to see!

Six types of foreigners in Italy

2008-03-22T12:55:00.010+01:00

Since moving to Italy in 2005, I've met lots of foreigners living here or foreigners who aspire to live here. From Bed and Breakfast guests who wish they could stay (or who do stay), to people who, like me, are here for relationship reasons, to Italian-Americans and Italian-Australians who want to "get back to their roots" to plain old Italophiles. So at the risk of grossly stereotyping, here's my typology of the different groups of foreigners living in Italy which I've encountered:

1) The "huddled masses yearning to be free" Especially where I live in Rome's Esquilino, you meet foreigners who have come to Italy from all around the world to escape poverty, war or political oppression back home. The ones who've been here a while (mainly Polish, Romanian, Albanian, Moroccan, Somalian and Ethiopian) have settled in and put down roots, many have taken Italian names (like Giovanni, our landlord's Polish handyman) and learnt fluent Italian. Most are working the badly paid, menial jobs which Italians no longer want to do - cleaning houses, looking after old people and children, picking tomatoes in the south and washing dishes in a restaurant. Unfortunately, many Italians don't seem to appreciate all the hard work which the immigrants do and the asset they are for the country as a whole. Any ancestral memories of the difficulties encountered by Italians in new lands during the 19th and 20th century large scale Italian emigration seem to have been erased. Racism, unfortunately, is common against the HMYTBF foreigners in Italy.

2) The "Under the Tuscan Sun"/"Eat, Pray, Live"/"A Room with a View" etc etc. expats Mainly single women over 35 they move here after coming here on holiday thinking that living in Italy is a permanent holiday/jarred tomato sauce ad. They want to escape the reality of living in the modern world back in their home country (job, mortgage, traffic, rat race) and think Italians spend their time eating and drinking in restaurants in Tuscan hill towns, sleeping until 11, laughing and enjoying themselves. Some of them think that a gorgeous, rich but sensitive Italian man will fall at their feet. However, they fail to notice the fine print of Italian life: that the average age of moving out of one's parents' home is now 34, that Italy has one of the lowest birthrates in the world and that a larger and larger proportion of Italians are hustling each month just to put food on the table. Italians also live in the 21st century just like everyone else. I've met foreigners who were incredulous that Italian women work, that large Italian families of the past have pretty much died out and that Italian kids like hip hop and eating at McDonalds.In fact, work can be even more of a rat race here than in countries with better economies as salaries are so low.

If you're tempted to go the UTTS expat route, remember that the book's author (apparently) did not need to earn a living and that Italians are not a bunch of charming, friendly, smiling, but slightly simple villagers straight from central casting. If you need to work to support yourself in Italy several things are essential: a valid work visa or EU passport, an acceptance of the fact that, even if you learn fluent Italiain and are lucky enough to find a job in your field, you'll be paid peanuts (1000 euros a month is a standard salary for a full time job for a university educated person in Rome - rents also run at about 1000 euros a month for a one bedroom - you do the math!) and that you may be forced to go back to cost saving methods which you haven't practiced since you were a uni student: cooking yourself spaghetti with olive oil and garlic and eating lots of beans, never going out, living with flatmates in grotty flats, taking public transport because you can't afford a car or gas. And the bureaucracy has to be experienced to be believed. Getting a drivers licence, or even converting an EU license (as my husband is currently finding out) involves the kind of red tape you've only encountered before in the novels of Kafka. These kinds of foreigners don't usually last long in Italy when confronted with these realities. Which is good as I find them particularly irritating. :)

3) The Italian-Americans/Italian-Australians etc. with a strong desire to get back to their "roots"
From what I've seen, this can go both ways. I've met some Italian-Americans who bore a resemblance to the "Under the Tuscan Sun" expats, with the same idealised view of Italy stuck somewhere around the decade their grandparents left their poverty stricken southern Italian village (but conveniently excluding the bit about the poverty which drove their ancestors to emigrate). Like the UTTS expats, these ones don't last long when confronted with a complex modern society such as Italy in 2008. But I know several others who fall into this category who are realistic and whose love of Italy encompasses the modern Italy too. They're willing to live with flatmates, eat only spaghetti and beans and drink 2 euro wine (which does exist here - one of the better points about living in Italy) if it means that they get to live here. This doesn't mean that they don't whinge (complain) but it gets them through the rough financial and bureaucratic realities of life here.

4) The ones (like me) who move here for Love
As with the Italian-Americans, this can go both ways. I have several girlfriends who are living here happily married to their Italian men. I know several others whose Italian husbands are completely sick of Italy as are they and who have or will move with their Italian husbands to their home country. But I've also seen quite a few nasty intercultural divorce cases, especially when I worked at an Italian law firm. Things can get especially nasty when a foreign woman has a child here and wants to bring him/her up a non-Italian way (ie. not next door to her parents in law!)

5) People who just love Italy but are realistic about it I know several of these and good for them!

6) Everyone else This category includes my husband who moved here for no apparent reason, apart from the fact that he could always find work here since being multilingual is a rare skill, around 18 years ago. I've met similar oddballs here and there, there are a few of them out there. They're from rich countries so no economic incentive to move here, they don't particularly love Italy (in fact it drives them batty a lot of the time), they never had any romantic notions about the Italian lifestyle and they're not of Italian background. Yet through cooincidence and circumstance they ended up in Italy and stayed.

So, which category are you?

Pickpocketed again

2008-03-16T22:22:00.003+01:00

Feeling pretty low as I was just pickpocketed for the second time in a year. I guess I'm just not as attentive as I should be. Also, since both my husband and I look like Northern European tourists we're obvious targets. After 18 years here, Rene has developed a pickpocket radar but I have yet to develop this.

We were walking home at about 3.30 after a delicious Indian lunch when I saw a gypsy girl (probably about 14 years old) walk past us. I moved my bag to the front (sadly, I've started racially stereotyping the gypsies after having had them try to steal from me so many times) and the girl looked at us and walked past.

Only an hour ago I realised that my wallet was missing from my bag. I lost some cash (70 euro or so) and my monthly metro ticket and a credit card (which I cancelled) but, even worse, my carta d'identita and tessera sanitaria. Now I'm going to have to take the morning off work to deal with the bureaucracy of getting these things replaced.

Any advice for avoiding being pickpocketed in the future? I'm thinking about putting a little padlock on my handbag and not carrying a credit card. Part of the problem is that I can't wear my handbag on the front of my body anymore because of my growing pregnant belly.

Pregnancy in Italy part II - why is the caesarian section rate so high?

2008-03-02T10:59:00.010+01:00

Following on from last post's discussion of over-medicalised Italian pregnancy, this week it's over-medicalised Italian birth!

Before I became pregnant I'd heard that the Italian cesarian section rate is through the roof, and birth here incredibly over-medicalised, especially at private hospitals, but I didn't quite appreciate the extent to which this is true.

Just to give you an idea, here is a chart with the C-section rates at various Rome hospitals in 2006. If you don't read Italian, the second last column "percentuale di cesarei" contains the percentage of babies born via c-section at that hospital. As you can see, at some of the more fancy private hospitals in Rome the rate is over 80%! I plan to go to a public hospital for birth (partly because I don't have private insurance and partly because I'd like to avoid a cesarian) but the two public hospitals I'm considering have cesarian rates of 46.2 and 41.1% respectively. Better than the private hospitals but still not good.

The World Health Organisation has advised that C-section rates in industrialised countries should not exceed 10-15%. In the U.K. the current cesarian rate is 20%, in Australia it is around 30 percent and in the United States the rate it is also around 30%. In the Netherlands, the cesarean rate is only slightly more than 10%. The cesarian rates in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom are obviously too high, but none match the ridiculous cesarean rates in Italy which have surpassed 35% over the whole of Italy but in some parts of the South exceeds 45%. In Campania the cesarean rate in 2000 was 53%, in Sicily 42.5% and in Puglia and Basilicata around 40% of births.

I've been researching cesareans in Italy online and have found that many Italian women are just as scared as I am by these forbidding statistics. One Sicilian poster on an online message board said that as she awaited her scheduled C-section (the reason given by the doctor for the cesarean was that the baby was "too small") with a group of other women, she felt like a "lamb to the slaughter." She was determined to find a doctor in Sicily for her current pregnancy who would perform a VBAC (Vaginal Birth after Cesarean.)

For my part, I'm determined to avoid an unnecessary C-section. At first I thought I wouldn't mind an epidural but after researching more and seeing the Italian statistics, I'm now leaning towards trying for a natural birth which is as intervention-free as possible. My current plan is to hire an ostetrica (midwife) to assist me in a public hospital.

I also can't help thinking that the high caesarian rate is in some way related to the extreme hypochondria of Italian doctors when dealing with pregnancy. As I detailed in my last post, I'm perfectly healthy, but have been told by my Italian doctor (who is actually less extreme in his pregnancy paranoia than my previous doctor who told me to completely give up eating fresh vegetables in order to avoid toxoplasmosis!) to give blood and urine samples every month which are then tested for just about everything under the sun. I've had 3 ultrasounds so far at 22 weeks (many Dutch women only have one ultrasound throughout their entire pregnancy) and friends who have gone to private clinics have had one per month. Logically, when doctors start checking an otherwise healthy pregnancy this closely and frequently they'll inevitably find some kind of problem and the chances of a medicalised birth and possibly a C-section would seem much greater.

In addition, caesareans are more convenient for doctors - as one study has shown the majority of C-sections in Italy (including non-scheduled Cs) take place on weekday mornings.

So, can anyone share experiences giving birth in Italy? Any experiences with cesareans in Italy or thouhts about why the rate is so high here? Any tips for avoiding an unnecessary C? And Rome hospital, doctor or ostetrica recommendations are also very welcome.

Pregnancy in Italy really is a full time job!

2008-02-24T15:16:00.005+01:00

Just had our 20 week ultrasound last week. Everything is fine in there and the news is that it's a GIRL! Before the ultrasound, I was 95% certain that it was a boy - I guess this just shows that the famed "women's intuition" is complete bunk.

In general, I haven't found being pregnant here to be so bad. It's a bit weird, yes, since you never see other pregnant women in Rome(Italy has one of the lowest birth rates in the world) and people really stare at your stomach as if you had an odd deformity- but bad, no. I was expecting far worse from some of the stories I've heard from both Italian and foreign women. The hospital I'm going to for my visits seems OK, well better than my other public hospital experiences at any rate. The doctor seems fine too. Yes, he has told me to do some pretty outlandish things, for example avoid eating all raw fruit and vegetables because of the risk of toxoplasmosis, go to the pharmacy to take my own blood pressure once a week (no doubt so he could save time during appointments by dispensing with taking my blood pressure himself!) and not eat chillis (is he kidding? We put chillis in everything! How does he think Indian and Thai women manage to have healthy babies?) But medically he seems fine.

But one thing which I find really hard, however, is the ever-present Italian inefficiency/bureaucracy combined with hypochondria about pregnancy which results in ridiculous demands on the pregnant woman's time and energy. Being pregnant is hard work in itself and I'm tired all the time. I find holding down a full time job plus doing basic household tasks (dressing myself, eating healthy food etc.) to be demanding enough. But even the healthy pregnant woman in Italy is also expected to constantly run all over town dealing with the kind of medical bureaucracy and constant testing of everything which doesn't exist in, say, Australia. And for some reason prenatal classes all seem to be scheduled during working hours. I'm beginning to have sympathy for those Italian women who go on maternity leave the minute they find out they're pregnant with a fake note from the doctor.

For example, every month I have to get a whole list of blood and urine tests, including a toxoplasmosis test (I guess they want to know if, by some fluke after years of outside cat ownership, I've managed to contract toxoplasmosis that month from an unwashed apple), an analysis of the colour my urine, blood protein and white and red blood cell counts etc. From talking to my Australian friends and Rene's Dutch family, most of these tests are not done in those countries but here, unfortunately, pregnancy is most definitely seen as an illness.

Here's what I have to do every month:

-go to gynaecologist and get a list of the tests which are needed for next month
-call my general practitioner and tell her the tests I need so that she can write up an impegnativa (prescription) on special impegnativa paper
-go to general practitioner during my lunch break and pick up the necessary impegnative (25 minute walk from work so it takes up my entire break)
-go to pharmacy and buy a pee cup
-pee in cup early in the morning and then go to the public clinic at 7 am or so and line up for an hour to get my blood drawn and hand over the pee cup. Inevitably I'm told that that clinic does not do one of the tests I've been told to do so I'm sent on a wild goose chase to another clinic across town to do that test on another day
-return to public clinic on allotted day to pay for the tests (don't let anyone tell you being pregnant in Italy is "free" under the public system - it's not) and pick up the results. Often they're lost or not ready so I have to walk back there yet another time at a later date
-call hospital to make an appointment with gynaecologist - keep calling until the machine answers and then wait 20 minutes on hold before I can make the appointment
-take the afternoon off work to go to gynaecologist
-rinse and repeat the following month

No wonder Italian women only have one child, being pregnant is just too much work!

Naples

2008-02-16T09:17:00.004+01:00

My sister is visiting at the moment and we're planning a trip to Naples next weekend. If anyone can recommend a place to stay, things to do or places to eat in Naples please leave me a comment. We're definitely planning to go to the archaeology museum - but other Naples recs would be most welcome.

I've passed through Naples twice and find it fascinating. It's one of those cities, like New York, which you either love or hate. Romans all seem to fall into one of those two categories: many have warned me to stay away but many others have told me how much they love the city. Actually, a lot of what people in Rome say about Naples seems to be the pot calling the kettle black. From what I've seen, the drivers in Naples are on about the same craziness level as Roman drivers but no worse (but Roman drivers are pretty bad so that's not saying a lot). The taxi drivers try to rip you off here and they try to rip you off there. I'm sure that there are plenty of scams but people have tried to scam me so many times in Rome that I've learnt to count my change and hold on to my purse.

The one thing I don't get about Naples, though, is the Naples garbage crisis. The Guardian gives a pretty good summary, but I still find myself scratching my head. Is it really the camorra controlling the protests we see on TV or are people in the towns around Naples such NIMBYs that they don't care how much garbage piles up, how much it stinks or what kind of diseases spread - they don't want a dump in their town.

And it mentions in the Guardian article, the last cholera outbreak in Naples occurred in the 1970s! Surely, that's one of the Guardian's famous typos - they must mean the 1870s?

Out of the closet downunder

2008-01-12T16:35:00.001+01:00

I'm writing this blog post from my mum's house in Sydney, Australia where the time is 2.41 am (arrrgh!) We're here on holiday although my failure to get over my jetlag is seriously impairing the relaxing aspects of being here. We're also getting married this Saturday in a very small registry office wedding. It's been fun showing Rene around my other hometown but I just wish I could beat this jetlag.

So now it's time for me to come out of the closet - like just about every other female expat in Italy, I'm pregnant! I'm at 15 weeks, feeling fine (apart from aforementioned jetlag) and expecting the bub on July 5th.

Happy Holidays!

2007-12-26T12:06:00.000+01:00

Rene just returned from the Netherlands where he encountered a train conductor with lots of Christmas spirit:

Kevin '07

2007-12-22T18:43:00.000+01:00

Both my mother and sister sent me birthday packages via airmail before my birthday in October. Mum's package turned up 10 days ago. It was a DVD worth about 20 Euro which was clearly marked "gift." The Italian post office held my package hostage until I forked over Euro 12.30 for "customs", "postal fees" and VAT. Apparently, despite rules to the contrary, Italian customs routinely charges fees on non-commercial goods including gifts sent from abroad. I wonder who's pocketing the money.

Having read numerous horror stories on the blogs of my fellow Italian expats about packages turning up months later or not at all, I didn't hold out much hope for my sister's birthday package. I was therefore thrilled a few days ago to find the package waiting for me - and no customs fees!

The package contained:

A Kevin Rudd campaign t-shirt and a bag of Keven 07 balloons for me to blow up on election night! One tiny problem, though, the Australian federal election took place on November 24th. Kevin Rudd is now the Prime Minister of Australia.

Happy Tanksiving!

2007-11-27T19:37:00.000+01:00

The headline says: "Tanksiving Day in Usa - Shreck on parade, turkey on the plate."

I usually ignore Thanksgiving when I'm outside the U.S. for the holiday. This year, though, I wanted to break in our brand new oven so I made pumpkin pie and apple crumble and invited some guests over for afternoon tea and pie on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo of the pie before everyone had taken a slice. Notice the gleaming stove in the background.

Yaaaaayyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!!!

2007-11-25T08:57:00.000+01:00

Labor won!!!!!

How Holland and Italy are different

2007-11-22T12:59:00.000+01:00

Recently, some Dutch guests at the Bed and Breakfast told me that they are building a new driver-less bus line from Eindhoven airport (the main Ryanair airport in the Netherlands) to central Eindhoven. The bus will be driven by a computer. OK, I've ridden on the driver-less metro line on the Paris metro and I understand the concept. But a bus? How's that going to work in traffic?

I asked the Dutch guests "so how are they going to make sure cars and bicycles stay out of the path of the driverless bus?" and they replied "oh, it won't be dangerous, there will be red lights for the cars and bikes so they'll stay out of the path of the bus."

It didn't even occur to them that someone might run the red light.

I think that just about sums it up.

Rene the "foto modello"

2007-11-03T17:02:00.000+01:00

Today, Rene and I went down the the Colosseum for a photo shoot. A Dutch magazine called Zin is interviewing a Dutch person who lives near each of the Seven Modern Wonders of the World for its January issue. Since the Little Italy Bed and Breakfast is a mere ten minute stroll to the Colosseum, Rene was a perfect candidate. He completed his interview with the magazine a few weeks ago and today it was time to take a photo of Rene (or Rene and me) with the Colosseum to accompany the article.

Our photographer, Mario, told us he normally works for Ansa, the Italian news agency, but he was moonlighting for the Dutch magazine shoot. Rene learned how hard it is to be model as Mario ordered him to smile, stop sqinting, turn this way and that way.

I hope that we the magazine allows us to have some of the photos. If so, I'll post them here.

'Appy 'Alloween!

2007-11-01T21:30:00.000+01:00

Two days ago, a woman with two little girls who I had never seen before let me into the building with her key. I said "grazie", she said "prego" and then she said rather abruptly: "do you know this holiday called 'Alloween?" and proceeded to explain that the kids dress up as scary things and go door to door and people in the building give them candy. She was more or less right - but left out the "trick or treat?" part (although how the hell you'd translate "trick or treat?" I have no idea) particularly the fact that the kids can "trick" you if you don't give them candy - but it was a pretty good summary all the same. She then told me that her girls would be dressed as "stregette" (little witches) tomorrow night and if they came to my door, could I give them some candy? She then reached into her purse and pulled out a couple of candy bars to give me for the girls.

I was kind of touched that this ordinary Italian family was planning to celebrate my favourite holiday (Halloween is not usually celebrated here) and I thought it was really cute that she'd gone to the trouble of giving me a little anthropology lesson. I told her to keep her candy bars and that it would be my pleasure to buy my own candy to hand out to the stregette when the came around.

So I bought 4 candy bars and waited at home for the girls to turn up. I thought maybe I'd missed them because I was late when I heard shrieking children running up the stairs. I opened the door about about 10 kids were standing outside holding out big bags and saying "candy, candy!!!" I distributed my 4 candy bars as fairly as possible (adding a couple of packets of smarties which we had in the house) but one little girl with purple lips and a witches hat kept screaming "more candy, more candy!"

Then the whole coven of little witches plus assorted ghouls started shrieking again and ran down the stairs. A tall rather flustered looking guy (probably the dad) in a witches hat thanked me and that was that - my first Italian 'Alloween.

Australian citizenship test

2007-10-14T19:09:00.000+02:00

Much has changed in Australia since I left in 2000 and, like immigrants everywhere, my view of my home country is increasingly outdated. When I start a sentence: "in Australia..." I'm talking about the Australia of 7 years ago not the Australia of today. I'm aware that the gap between my memory of the country and its current reality will only become worse the longer I'm away. If I'm still here thirty years from now I'll probably become the equivalent of one of those old Greek or Italian immigrants when I was a teenager in Sydney who wouldn't let their daughters go out unchaperoned or move out of home before getting married, saying things like: "in Italy, unmarried girls wear long skirts, and married women wear black headscarves" or "in Italy, there is no divorce and there are no gay people, unlike in this godless country..." when that hasn't been the reality in most of Italy since the 1950s or 60s (or in the case of divorce, the 70s and in the case of "no gay people" probably never).

So, it came as a bit of a shock to hear that the Howard government has just introduced a citizenship test, which all prospective Australian citizens must pass before being presented with their passports. I assume the test serves a dual purpose: to test the immigrants' English and to see if they have any idea who Don Bradman is. Maybe it's a good idea - when I was at school in an Italian neighbourhood in Sydney a lot of the older Italians could not speak more than a smattering of English and whenever I called one of my high school friends, her parents would call one of my friend's siblings to tell me that she was not home. Moreover, I can't imagine how any new immigrant could participate in trivia night at the local pub without knowing the basics of bodyline and cricket.

So, I had a quick squiz at the sample test online and it was pretty disappointing. Who cares about wattle, the national anthem or the Westminster system? We need a citizenship test which tests whether immigrants have REALLY absorbed "Australian values."

So, here it is...

2007 AUSTRALIAN CITIZENSHIP TEST

1. Do you understand the meaning, but are unable to explain the origin of, the term 'died in the arse'?

2. What is a "bloody little beauty"?

3. Are these terms related: chuck a sickie; chuck a spaz; chuck a U-ey?

4. Explain the following passage: 'In the arvo last Chrissy the relos rocked up for a barbie, some bevvies and a few snags. After a bit of a Bex and a lie down we opened the pressies, scoffed all the chockies, bickies and lollies. Then we drained a few tinnies and Mum did her block after Dad and Steve had a barney and a bit of biffo.'

5. Macca, Chook and Johnno are driving to Margarets in their Torana. If they are travelling at 100 km/h while listening to Barnsey, Farnsey and Acca Dacca, how many slabs will each person on average consume between flashing a brown eye and having a slash?

6. Complete the following sentences: a) 'If the van's rockin' don't bother .......? b) You're going home in the back of a .....? c) Fair crack of the ......?

7. I've had a gutful and I can't be fagged. Discuss

8. Have you ever been on the giving or receiving end of a wedgie?

9. Do you have a friend or relative who has a car in their front yard 'up on blocks'? Is his name Bruce and does he have a wife called Cheryl?

10. Does your family regularly eat a dish involving mincemeat, cabbage, curry powder and a packet of chicken noodle soup called either chow mein, chop suey or kai see ming?

11. What are the ingredients in a rissole?

12. Demonstrate the correct procedure for eating a Tim Tam.

13. Do you have an Aunty Irene who smokes 30 cigarettes a day and sounds like a bloke?

14. In any two-hour period have you ever eaten three-bean salad, a chop and two serves of pav washed down with someone else's beer that has been flogged from a bath full of ice?

15. When you go to a bring-your-own-meat barbie can you eat other people's meat or are you only allowed to eat your own?

16. What purple root vegetable beginning with the letter 'b' is required by law to be included in a hamburger with the lot?

17. Do you own or have you ever owned a lawn mower, a pair of thongs, an Esky or Ugg boots?

18. Is it possible to 'prang a car' while doing 'circle work'?

19. Who would you like to crack on to?

20. Who is the most Australian: Kevin 'Bloody' Wilson, John 'True Blue' Williamson, Kylie Minogue or Warnie?

21. Is there someone you are only mates with because they own a trailer or have a pool?

22. What does "sinkin piss at a mate's joint" and "getten para" mean?

(NB - useful reference text: Australian slang dictionary)

Wedding in Paris

2007-10-08T13:29:00.000+02:00

Just got back from my friends' Indian-French wedding in Paris. Had a wonderful time: gorged myself on French food (although I was happy to see that it was not a gluttony-fest like at an Italian wedding), drank lots of champagne and danced until 4. The wedding was held at a Catholic church in central Paris (the Jain groom had to complete a course in Catholicism to have a Catholic wedding) and the reception at this amazing chateau just outside Paris:

Both bride and groom were radiant:

And I had lots of fun hanging out with old friends from New York and the brides' friends who I met in London at her "hen's night."

Basta!

2007-10-04T20:17:00.000+02:00

I thought I'd escaped the recent spate of negativity about this country which has infected the Italian expat blogs I read and the country as a whole thanks to Beppe Grillo. Yes, Italy has its problems but my life is OK - I like my job, I'm happy in my relationship, Rene's B&Bs are going well and it's not like I'm stuck here forever. Hell, I've even found some things I like about Rome: the Piazza Vittorio markets, the city walls in San Lorenzo, ancient cobblestones streets, some nice bars and restaurants, nice people, the food, the ease of travelling in Europe. Although I, of course, agree wholeheartedly that Italy has huge problems with corruption, waste, inefficiency, stagnation and generally selfish behaviour this really doesn't affect my everyday life apart from the occasional scooter nearly running me over and people being inconsiderate on the metro.

But then, Italy came and bit me on the ass.

I made an appointment with a specialist at a Rome hospital through CUP (the central line where you make medical appointments) some weeks ago. Having heard so many bad things about the slowness of getting specialist appointments here, I was pleasantly surprised to be told "you have an appointment at 3.45 pm on October 4th" a mere 4 weeks into the future.

So, I travelled for an hour on public transport to get to the hospital in time for my appoinment. First, I went in the front door of the hospital - no one was around, no signs, no sportelli apart from one with its blinds down and a handwritten sign saying "no information given." Ohhhkey. So, I asked a guy wearing a white coat who was passing by and he told me to go to the 2nd floor, turn right and then left. I did as instructed but it was cardiology, not the specialty I needed. So, then I went downstairs again and asked two women smoking outside. They told me I needed to go to the "ambulatorio" out onto the street again, right, through a courtyard and up some stairs. Again, I did as instructed but the woman there very apologetically said "you've got the wrong place. You need to go out on the street again, go to number 73, take the lift to the 1st floor and go to room 11." So, I went to room 11 as told but there was no one there. No sign, no doctor. I knocked on the door, nothing. I waited 20 minutes, no sign of a doctor. I asked some passing nurses - "yes, this is the right room."

I went downstairs to the ground floor were there were some sportelli for people to make appointments. I took a number and waited. When it was my turn:

Me: "I'm looking for ____ and went to room 11 on the 1st floor. Is that right?"
Her: "Yep, room 11."
Me: "But there was no one there - no doctor, no nurse and the door was locked."
Her: " I guess the doctor isn't there."
Me: "So, where is he?"
Her: "I see your appointment here in the computer, but the doctor must not be there. " [turning to her colleague] "you haven't seen Dr. Rossi have you, Luigi?"
Luigi: "No, hasn't been around all afternoon."
Me: "Well, can you call him?"
Her: [tapping computer keys] "Nope, he didn't leave his phone number in the system."
Me:"this is completely unprofessional. I took the afternoon off work and travelled for an hour."
Her: "That's not my fault. I can make you another appointment if you like. How about December 15th?"

OK - now I'm livid. You have to understand that we pay A LOT of tax here. And the doctor can't even be bothered to show up to my appointment and the hospital can't be bothered putting up signs re where the sections are, having some kind of reception to tell patients where to go, remodelling post-1953 or cleaning the bathrooms (where there was no toilet paper or soap I'm sorry to report.)

On the way home, I remembered something which a Russian friend said to me when I lived in Moscow about expat Americans living in Russia. She thought that lots of Americans liked living in Russia as drinking a lot is just part of the culture there. By living in Russia they could be alcoholics without social stigma. I know a lot of long term expats here in Italy who have similar reasons for staying here. Here, it's socially ok, even a positive, to be selfish, unprofessional, break the law and drive like a maniac. Sadly, I know a few expats who seem to enjoy this aspect of Italy a little too much. I hope I never become one of them!

Basta pasta!

2007-09-23T13:56:00.000+02:00

I'm off to my friends' wedding in Paris in two weeks time. I'm really looking forward to it and it's all coming together - plane ticket is bought, hotel room is booked, wedding gift is organised.

But as every woman knows, going to a wedding is not all fun and games. There is also the ordeal of finding something to wear which fits, matches and is the correct level of formality for the wedding. None of us want to end up like one poor soul I met at a wedding a few years ago who was wearing her extremely 80s taffeta prom dress (in 2003) because, as she said, "why spend the money on new formal clothes, when I only go to a few weddings and formal events a year?"

So, yesterday, after much procrastination, I finally got out all my fancy wedding clothes (4 dresses which I wear to weddings none of which date back to the 80s) and tried them on in front of Rene. I was aware that I'd gained a few kilos since moving to Itlay (3.5 to be precise - so really not that much!) but had no idea that this meant I would be unable to fit into any of my "wedding" dresses.

Some of the dresses were merely extremely tight but for one of them, I literally could not zip it up (to be fair that dress was always a pretty tight squeeze.)

So it seems that too much pasta, pizza and red wine have been bad for my waistline. I mentioned this to an Italian friend and she assured me that the Italian diet "is the healthiest in the world" and that I could not possibly have gained weight after moving from the US to Italy as the Italian diet "as everyone knows" is, by definition, a million times healthier than all those McDonalds hamburgers I was surely eating every day when I lived in the States (I didn't have the heart to tell her about the lovely salads I used to make myself in the US with veggies from the farmer's market). Although telling an Italian that pasta may in fact be bad for you is like hurling a particularly lewd insult at their mother, I refuse to believe that eating large quantities of white, refined wheat flour every day in the form of pasta, white bread and pizza is good for you.

Any normal person in this situation would just go shopping for a new dress, but, as I've posted before, Italian shops simply don't carry dresses which fit my 5'10", US size 10 frame. So it seems that the only option is a crazy 2 week crash diet and exercise program between now and the wedding.

Wish me luck!

Chocolate cereal?

2007-09-09T17:11:00.000+02:00

One morning a few months ago, I opened a new cornflakes packet and blearily filled my cereal bowl (I'm not a morning person.) As I poured, I was hit by a sickly waft of fake chocolate smell and looked down to see that the flakes were brown. Written on the packet: "chocolate cornflakes." Arrgh - it's happenned again!

I'd already run afoul of chocolate flavoured muesli and learned the hard way to avoid buying cheerios in Italy (too sweet!) I'd heard of frosted flakes but chocolate cornflakes??!!

Since that fateful day, I've also seen chocolate bran flakes and chocolate Special K at the supermarket:

As a cereal eater who can't stand sweet things in the morning, my breakfast choices here have reduced to corn flakes (regular kind), non-chocolate muesli and Special K (somewhat sweet but OK). Non-sweetened, somewhat nutritious cereals such as regular cheerios, kashi, raisin bran, nutrigrain, weetbix, all bran and grapenuts - simply don't exist here.

Any other frustrated Italian cereal eaters out there? And can anyone explain why Italian breakfast cereal is so sweet?

*this post was inspired by michellenea's gruel-ing.

Travels in Tuscany

2007-09-08T11:10:00.000+02:00

I spent the last weekend in August with my mum in Siena and Arezzo (where her conference was held). Arezzo is quite nice although filthy rich. I'm not quite sure where all the money comes from, but I just couldn't believe the number of kids in bugaboo strollers with well fed looking parents and their nannies I saw on our half day in Arezzo. I felt like I'd been suddenly teleported out of Italy into Park Slope, Brooklyn. And it was all so amazingly and un-Italianly clean and organized, even in the suburban area where our hotel was located. Nothing in Rome is that clean - not even Parioli.

Siena was also incredibly clean but it's a tourist town so I figure that's a big part of it. I have seen many, many churches in Italy and I have to say Siena Cathedral really took the cake as far as I was concerned. I loved the inlaid floors, the intricately inlaid wooden seats behind the pulpit and the room full of medieval scrolls off to the side. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera so I can't post any pictures.

Over the weekend while I was in Tuscany, everyone else came back to Rome and started work. It's amazing how abruptly things go back to normal. I'm in two minds about it. While I enjoyed how quiet it was in Rome during August, it's nice to be able to finally buy that stove we've been meaning to buy and go to the doctor.

Safety in the Home

2007-08-28T21:36:00.000+02:00

A thick pamphlet arrived in our mailbox today entitled "Safely in the Home: A Guide to the Prevention of Domestic Accidents" published by the Esquilino branch of the Rome city government "Progetto Mediazione Sociale". Probably in a nod to Esquilino's multiculturalism, the pamphlet was published not only in Italian but also in Chinese, Bengali and English. This is the first time in all my dealings with Italian bureaucracy (including the dreaded immigration office outside Rome where I had to go to get my Carta di Soggiorno despite my EU citizenship) that I've seen an Italian government form or publication in any language other than Italian.

Curious, I turned to the English section as I ascended the lift. Here is a sample of what I read:

"Do not run by the stairs, avoiding going up or down carrying objects that don't let you watching your steps."

"Don't use inadequate objects for home duties."

"The steam ironic has to be used with caution, the plug has to be removed before filling it with water and remember to don't coil the plug on the warm steam ironic."

"Don't let the bulb holder without a lamp on it."

"When filling a container, it doesn't have to be left unattended under an open water faucet."

"When using a hairdryer or others household appliances, it is safe not to have wet hands or foots."

"Don't place the television near combustible furnishings and not embed it inside a piece of furniture: his overheating or a short circuit may prime fire."

Edited to add - I wanted to add a link to the website listed on the back of the pamphlet, http://www.mediazionosociale.org/ but it doesn't work. Our tax euros at work?

Capri

2007-08-13T21:26:00.000+02:00

Last weekend, I escaped deserted Rome to spent the weekend on Capri where my dad (and his girlfriend) are enjoying three weeks at Villa San Michele, the Swedish Institute founded by Axel Munthe in Anacapri. Next weekend, Rene will take a couple of very rare days off and we'll both go back there.

If I was wondering where everyone in Rome had gone, I got my answer. They're all on Capri! Hordes of tourists everywhere. Still, the view from the villa was beautiful:

And it was wonderful to swim in the ocean with the locals at the public swimming hole.

I much prefered the concrete public "beach" to the usual Italian beach experience where you have to pay for your place in the sand and beach umbrella and put up with loud beach entertainment (animatori.) The unpretentiousness of it reminded me of certain beaches in Sydney (Clovelly maybe?) Anyway, I got back to Rome feeling refreshed and relaxed.

London

2007-08-04T14:30:00.000+02:00

I've been shamefully neglecting my blog lately. My excuse is that I spent the weekend in London and then Rene's sister stayed for several days. It's nice to be back in Rome, though, especially since August is gearing up so the place is emptying out and cars and crowds are disappearing. I love August, when we have the place more or less to ourselves - in fact, it's my favourite time of the year to be here.

My 3 day trip to London was one of those trips where I savoured every single moment and came back completely refreshed. I was there for my friend Sandrine's hen's night (aka bachelorette party in American or addio al nubilato in Italian- literally "goodbye to spinsterhood.") Sandrine was one of my best girlfriends in New York. She and her Indian boyfriend, now future husband, could always be counted on to go out and sample the amazing New York nightlife with me despite their exhausing and stressful day jobs. They were the perfect New York couple - she French, he Indian - fun-loving, hard-working, open-minded people - always up for exploring the city. They've moved to London now - which is also a fantastic multicultural city - but apart from being close to Sandrine's parents in Paris and (for him) the joy of discussing cricket with people at work, I can tell that they both miss NY.

First, us "hens"had high tea at the Landmark Hotel:

Unfortunately, it was slightly disappointing. The clotted cream was, as usual, yum but the scones slightly stale and the cucumber sandwiches had cream cheese on them. I like them much better with just butter and fresh cukes.

Then we went dancing at a club, followed by Indian food on Brick Lane at 2.30 am. The next day was a day of intensive shopping for much needed work wear for me. I literally can't buy clothes or shoes in my size in Italy -so the only option is to shop when abroad.

It was great to see old friends, speak English and shop. London was sunny and a perfect 20 degrees C. All in all, the perfect quick break.

Amaro

2007-07-21T14:01:00.000+02:00

Amaro means "bitter" in Italian but it is also the name of a common after-dinner drink which is supposed to "aid digestion" (I may have to check with my doctor about that one!) I'm not a sweet tooth and find limoncello, the other common after dinner drink here just too sickly sweet. So ,when I'm in the mood for a post-meal drink, I usually order an amaro. Apparently I'm a bit confused though as, according to many, limoncello is for girls and amaro for boys.

At our favorite neighbourhood trattoria a few nights ago there were two unusual brands of amaro on offer:

Abruzzo "punch" with bambi and her mother on the label- but it wasn't really punch, it was amaro. Very confusing.

Finance police amaro. Displayed in a prominent position in the restaurant, the owners told me it was a recent gift from the finance police. Well, I guess it's better that than a tax audit! They looked nervous as I took the photo and laughed about it only after checking that no finanzieri were eating in the restaurant at that moment. I wonder if finance police amaro is our tax euros hard at work. If so, good job! Too bad the restaurant owners are too afraid to open the bottle and drink it.

Being a "Third Culture Kid"

2007-07-16T19:03:00.001+02:00

Most of my life I've felt a bit weird about my rather murky national identity. Just to give you the potted version, I'm half Australian (mother), half Swedish (father) and grew up in New York and Sydney with plenty of interludes in the UK and other parts of Australia along the way. When I finished high school, I calculated that I had been to 9 different schools - most of these when my mum was on sabbatical (she's an academic) in various places around the world.

I've met people along the way who are a bit like me. One guy I met recently said "I'm just one of those people who grew up all over the place" and left it at that when someone asked him where he was from. I liked that and am going to start doing that too - although, inevitably people want to "place" you by hearing the whole story. However, I still feel uneasy when people ask "where are you from?" I know they just want me to pick one country but once they get a hint that I'm not all I seem (usually via my weird accent) will want to hear the whole entire story. This can get a bit tiresome the 10,000th time you repeat it (I usually tell them what I said above in paragraph 1.) And I often wish I could just fit in with groups of Americans or Australians without having to prove myself as one of their co-nationals. When people ask me "where are you from?" maybe I should just reply "I'm Auswedican" as one ex suggested.

I was reading Deirdre Straughan's interesting blog entry on being a third culture kid recently and realised that maybe I should just embrace my lack of national identity and stop feeling awkward about it. And it's actually possible that my third culture kid background is what has enabled me to Rome to live with my Dutch boyfriend - both psychologically and practically (one of the advantages of being a TCK is that I have three passports!)

At 35, I am probably one of the pioneer TCKs (except for kids of missionaries and military brats)- but now I see younger TCKs popping up everywhere -especially in Europe where living in another country is so easy.

Any other TCKs out there?

Summer in the city

2007-07-15T16:10:00.000+02:00

It's hot in the city again. Not hot enough that you could fry an egg on the bonnet of your car as in Naples a few weeks ago (there was a bit on the nightly news where a woman in Naples actually fried a very messy looking egg on her car!) but definitely pretty darned hot. Thank God we now have air conditioning. For most Italians the heat means one thing - "gotta get out of the city and go to the beach!" And somehow, despite their €1000/month salaries they all seem to have access to a beach house.

However, being weird foreigners with two bed and breakfasts to run, we stay in the city throughout the summer. Mad dogs and English men and all that. In fact, I plan to work all through August with only a couple of days off (and weekends of course) to visit dad at Villa Michele on Capri where he will be resident for the month.

However, there is also a positive side to staying in Rome during the summer. Last August, I remember walking down the middle of Via delle Quattro Fontane on the way to work without worrying about scooters or cars - because there weren't any! Although it's only July, Rome is already becoming a ghost town on weekends. It's great having the place to myself.

But the other wonderful thing about a Roman summer is the tradition of outdoor concerts and events. There are outdoor concerts in Villa Ada and many other places and in our local piazza, Piazza Vittorio, giant screens are installed and a film festival is held every year. This year there are all kinds of films showing, including Babel, Little Miss Sunshine and Il Diavolo Veste Prada ("The Devil Wears Prada" but I think that sounds better in Italian.)

Turning Italian!

2007-07-10T19:53:00.000+02:00

September marks the two year anniversary of my move to Rome. There have been ups and downs - at the beginning particularly downs - but as I've been here longer more ups. I realised today that part of the reason things are getting better for me here is that, inevitably, I'm soaking in the culture around me and becoming just a little bit Italian. For example:

1) When I first got here, the crazy Roman drivers used to drive me insane. I remember bursting into tears when a taxi made me jump out of the way or a motorino failed to stop at a zebra crossing. It might make for funny stories to tell your friends back home if you're on holiday but when you live here permanently- it all just seems so wrong, selfish and downright dangerous. I still think Roman drivers are terrible but I've learned to live with it - as a pedestrian only though. If I ever get a car I may have to go through the adjustment process all over again!

2) I've become more picky about food. Italian food is generally very good (with some notable exceptions such as red meat and breakfast foods) and the standard is high. Italians spend a lot of time thinking about food and they just won't settle for mealy apples or overcooked fish. I remember on my first trip to Italy I spent the day with some French tourists in Florence who skipped the museums and instead, spent several hours locating the perfect place for lunch. At that time I would have been happy with a piece of pizza or a sandwich and resented wasting time looking for a lunch spot which was up to their standards. Now this behaviour seems normal and when I eat not-so-good food it seems inedible. For example the mensa (canteen) at my workplace has really bad food. Two years ago I might have eaten it anyway but now I pack my own lunch.

3) I've started dressing more casually for work. What? you say - Italians dress casually??? Well, actually the rule here is that men dress formally for work in impeccable suits and knotted ties but the women - well, anything goes. As an Italian colleague recently observed, many of our (female) colleagues look they're dressing for the beach on the average workday. Some of the things which I've seen Italian women wear to work alongside the suit wearing men: hot pink t-shirt with rhinestones, flip flops, low cut tank tops, white jean capri pants, yoga pants, well, you get the idea. My mum, who has succeeded in a male dominated field always tells me to dress as formally (or more formally) than the men in order to be taken seriously at work. But "dress for success" doesn't exist here in Italy, at least for women. Maybe this reflects the fact that Italy has one of the largest pay gaps between men and women in Europe and, along with Portugal, boasts the fewest female CEOs of any country in the E.U..

4) I've become cleaner. Rene will laugh but I actually used to be more of a grot before I moved to housework obsessed Italy. Now I get out the Cif con candeggina once a week to scrub the bathroom and floors are mopped semi-regularly. In the past, I lived happily amidst the dust-bunnies and unwashed plates. In fact, I never even noticed.

5) I'm more laid back (and cynical) about lateness, little mistakes and little lies.

Culture shock is a funny thing. When you're in the throes of it, everyone says "you'll get over it" and you don't believe it. But then, slowly, you just do and in doing so you become (to some extent) one of "them" - the people of your host country. Scary!

Bed and Breakfast bounty!

2007-07-01T17:52:00.000+02:00

As I mentioned in this post last week, one of the little known perks of running a Bed and Breakfast is that you hardly ever need to buy toiletries. Well, actually, scratch that because for some strange reason our bed and breakfast guests always seem to either leave things which we don't need (bottles and bottles of dandruff shampoo and I don't have dandruff), things which aren't to our tastes (very sweet spumante) or things which are just downright weird. We feel bad throwing things away so our bathroom cupboard is full of little bottles which we never use. I should probably clean it out and give all those bottles to the homeless shelter. And, despite the ridiculous number of toiletries in our cupboard, we still end up having to buy basics like toothpaste and conditioner as no one ever leaves the things we really need.

But just occasionally, I have scored some really great things which guests have left behind. For example, a very nice, very pale American couple (who, strangely enough were here in January) left this giant bottle of SPF 45 baby sunscreen. It can be hard to find high powered sunscreen in the land of the deep tan so this stuff has come in very handy on various beach trips.

And just recently, some Finnish guests left a big tub of tart red berries which, being half Swedish, I quickly identified as the Swedish/Finnish national berry - the lingonberry! I wasn't sure how to eat them fresh (they are very, very sour), so I whipped up a batch of lingonsylt (ie. lingonberry jam) the traditional accompaniment to Swedish meatballs, Swedish minipancakes (plettar) and just about every other Swedish dish.

But some of the things guests have left behind are just downright weird. For example, this "deodorising shampoo":

On the front of the bottle, it says (translated from Italian): "reinforce your hair and keep it clean and more perfumed/fragrant for longer." On the back it says (in English): "the new formula deodorizing shampoo for Damaged Hair L'Angelica neutralizes unpleasant odors, leaving a long lasting fragrance." Maybe it's just me - but I never thought of shampoo as a deodorizing device for my hair before - cleaning it seems more important - but maybe my hair is not as smelly as some.

Another recent acquisition in our "left toiletries cupboard" is this attractively packaged but still puzzling bottle of "room spray":

The picture is a bit fuzzy, but it says "Nancy Boy, Room Spray, Citrus." Can anyone tell me what I'm meant to do with it? It smells quite nice.

Pad Thai

2007-06-28T20:38:00.001+02:00

I made pad thai for dinner tonight. It came out pretty well, don't you think?

There are few (if not no) Thai restaurants here, so I'm trying to learn to cook the food myself. I bought all the ingredients at the Chinese grocery store around the corner. The only thing I couldn't find was limes, so I used lemons instead.

La metro

2007-06-26T21:01:00.000+02:00

Riding the subway is definitely not one of the things I miss about living in New York (although having a decent public transport system is - but that is for another post.) In fact, my mum likes to say that the biggest reason she decided to leave New York and return to her native Australia when I was a teenager was that she just couldn't handle her subway commute anymore (for the NYers - the commute was from Morningside Heights to the East 20s - so she had to take the shuttle at rush hour, never fun.) And I agree with her.

However, spending my childhood in NYC, there were certain things which were drummed into me from babyhood. One was the subway fold, a method for reading the New York Times in a crowded subway car which Mr. Pantazonis taught us in fifth grade. Another was not walking to the end of the platform (and hence away from the eagle eyed protection of the token booth attendant) when taking the subway late at night. The third and most important rule was always move in upon entering a subway car so that other people can fit - DON'T BLOCK THE DOOR! When I lived in New York I often saw clueless tourists getting yelled at by NYers (what the fuck do ya think ya doin?) for not heeding this rule.

So here in Rome, a city of around 4 million there are only two metro lines - line A and line B. Pathetic really - but the excuse is always "ahhh but we have all these antiquities underground so it's very hard to build a metro here." Which seems to make sense until you realise that those antiquities only go 11 metres or so down - below that Rome is just like any other city. In fact, they're just too cheap to build a really deep subway here like in swampy St Petersburg for example (say what you want about Stalin, he got those metro lines built no matter what!) To cope with this lack of decent public transport, most Romans travel the city by scooter or car leading to heavy pollution, congestion and smog but people getting to work in less than 3 hours. This is, in fact, is a microcosm of Italian life - the perfect Italian solution to everything. The public administation takes your taxes, steals them and does not provide the service you paid for - so you find privately owned means for surviving.

But there are also some poor schmucks, like me, who actually take the metro to work every day- and for a former New Yorker this is a form of torture. No one on the Rome metro has the slightest clue about those basic subway rules which I absorbed with my breastmilk. Newspapers are not folded, let alone subway folded, so they jut out into the personal space of the person sitting next to the reader. The subway doesn't run late at night and there are no token booths so rule number two is moot. But flagrant infractions of the most sacred rule - thou shalt MOVE IN to the center of the metro car and NOT BLOCK THE DOORS- happen constantly. Today, it was so bad that a little girl was getting crushed next to the door while there was tons of space further into the car. I ended up losing my cool and telling a group of startled Italians to "move into the car!!!" (in Italian of course) And, surprisingly, unlike New Yorkers who would have told me to "shut the fuck up" - they actually did it. Maybe all that Italian metro riders need is some basic instruction in the rules?

Everything you've always wanted to know about running a Bed & Breakfast but were afraid to ask

2007-06-23T15:16:00.000+02:00

I read an article in the International Herald Tribune last week about the latest trend in vacations in the U.S. - paying good money to spend your vacation rising at 7.30 to make beds, pour coffee and clean at someone else's Bed and Breakfast. Imagine that! Some people out there - who obviously have more money than sense - are willing to pay top dollar to be allowed the privilege of performing the tasks which Rene and I either do ourselves or pay someone else to do on a daily basis. I never saw talking to guests, cleaning floors and washing towels as glamorous before- but hey - waddaya know - other people out there do. I was not surprised that the crafty B&B owner profiled in the IHT article was one of those ever furbo and reluctant to pay "real" wages Italians! And my hat's off to him. Now Rene and I need to get in contact with some travel agents in the U.S. so that we can start our own B&B "internship" program (just kidding!)

This article got me thinking though- apart from the enticing possibility of having other people pay us to do our work for us- there seems to be a lot of curiosity out there in the 9 to 5 world about the glamorous business of running a Bed and Breakfast. In fact several of our guests have asked Rene questions about the day to day running of the B&B and have expressed an interest in starting one themselves. So, to satisfy the curiosity of my blog readership, who I'm sure have been wondering about the ins and outs of this whole bed and breakfast business themselves, here are some interesting Bed & Breakfast running facts:

1) I hate to break people's bubbles but I'd better get it over with. Running a Bed and Breakfast is hard yakka. Rene gets up at 7.00 am seven days a week to buy fresh bread at the bakery and get breakfast ready. And it never really stops - people arrive, leave, have questions, things get delivered, emails must be responded to, website must be fixed, breakfast food and cleaning products must be bought all day every day. Weekends and public holidays? The same as regular days only busier. And yes, it's a full time job. Rene does not have another job on the side.

2) As with any customer service job, you have to be good with people. Rene is great at putting people at ease, making visitors feel at home and answering questions about Rome - and he speaks seven European languages fluently (Dutch, English, Italian, German, Spanish, French and Danish) so can usually speak to his guests in their own language (OK, unless their native language is Finnish or Urdu or something...)

3) Very rarely but sometimes you have to deal with "bad" guests - and we do have some stories. Like the young American women who burned cigarette holes in the brand new bed covers, the Russian guys who got drunk and sang songs in the middle of the night and the Italian girls who snuck their boyfriends in without paying and then insisted that they had just come by early in the morning to pay a visit and just happened to have fallen asleep in their beds. But this is rare - most of Rene's B&B guests are truly lovely people.

4) Yes, we do have several "regulars" who have become good friends over the years. There is the American retired academic couple who come to Italy to escape from their snow covered college town every January, the garrulous German Latin teacher who comes to Rome 4-5 times a year and sends the B&B lots of German schoolteachers and the Australian woman who booked for a month but ended up staying several months as she took a year off and travelled around the world after retiring from her job at the tax office.

5) When people leave things behind, we usually keep them. For example, if you leave a half finished bottle of shampoo, we will either use it ourselves or give it to one of our cleaning staff. If you leave booze or food we will eat it or drink it. If you leave us a tip, we'll go out to dinner and spend it (and people do leave tips sometimes.)

6) Which brings me to my last point. It is Murphy's Bed and Breakfast law that people will leave things behind which aren't to your tastes. For example some lovely guests last week left us these two bottles of wine:

A very nice thought - but too bad neither of us cares for sweet, sparkling rose wine!

Too hot to post

2007-06-21T21:02:00.000+02:00

It's been over 35 degrees C for several days and Rome has turned into a big, soupy bowl of pollution and haze. It was so hot yesterday that I couldn't even bear to turn the stove on so we had salad for dinner. Today at lunch I went for a walk near my office and groups of sunburnt Northern European tourists were huddling in the shade of various monuments wondering how to survive long enough in the heat to get back to their hotels.

Everyone predicted that this summer would be one of the hottest on record but if this is June I'm not looking forward to August!

What's wrong with this menu?

2007-06-12T21:23:00.003+02:00

Here's the English menu from our favourite pizza place in Rome. Can you spot the mistranslation?

Food shopping

2007-06-09T14:02:00.001+02:00

Since I was complaining about the lack of joy in shopping for clothes and shoes in Rome in my last post, I thought I'd balance things out a bit by pointing out that food shopping here is great fun. I live close to a huge, fabulous multicultural market, the Nuovo Mercato Esquilino (formerly known as the Piazza Vittorio markets), where you can buy both locally grown Italian products and exotic ingredients from the East like freshly made tofu, halva, Indian spices, fresh coriander and peanut butter. :)

Here is some of fresh fruit and veg I bought at the markets this morning for a couple of euros (the tomatoes, for example, were 2 kilos for 1 euro!) From left to right, it's rughetta (rocket), spring onions, red capsicums, small rock melons, cucumbers, string beans and tomatoes for making tomato sauce. I plan to make a big vat of tomato sauce this afternoon to freeze for when tomatoes go out of season.

It's exciting going to markets at this time of year as so many yummy things are coming into season: asparagus, rockmelon, cherries, string beans, tomatoes...and they're all so good. I try to avoid the imported products (too perfect looking fruit, bananas from Africa etc) and go for the fruit and veg grown here in Lazio.

And here is the Salad Nicoise I made for lunch from some of my market finds. Unfortunately the egg was soft boiled rather than hard boiled but otherwise it was yummy.

I got the Salad Nicoise recipe from my mum who makes it all the time. I think the recipe may have originally come from Elizabeth David's French Country Cooking.

Salad Nicoise

Ingredients

Tomatoes

Lettuce

Red onions or spring onions

Black olives, kalamata are very good but just about any kind will do so long as they are good quality

Anchovies from a jar or tin in oil

Fresh, young string beans

Good quality tinned tuna in oil (just about all Italian tuna is good quality but if you don't live in Italy you may have to hunt around a bit for a good brand)

2-4 hard boiled eggs

1-2 cloves garlic

Olive oil

Balsamic or Red Wine Vinegar

Salt and pepper

Dijon Mustard

Assembly

Boil string beans and eggs and put in cold water to cool when done (boil beans until quite soft - they should not be at all crunchy). Meanwhile mix lettuce, tomatoes, olives, tuna, anchovies and onions in a salad bowl. Add chopped eggs and beans.

For the dressing - crush garlic with salt, put into a jar (with a lid) along with a grind or two of pepper and a tiny bit of mustard (about a quarter teaspoon). Add one part vinegar to three parts oil (slightly more vinegar if using Balsamic), put on jar lid and shake. Pour over salad and toss.

Serve with bread.

A case of the Mondays (well, Thursday actually) and shopping in Rome

2007-06-07T21:36:00.000+02:00

I was having a blah day at work today, so I thought "I know what I'll do to cheer myself up - I'll go shopping at lunch!" I have a bit of a weakness for clothes, especially when they're on sale, and back in the days when I worked in a skyscraper in midtown Manhattan, many a blah day at work was resurrected by a quick shopping trip at lunch to the sale racks at JCrew or Lord & Taylor.

But then I remembered-I'm in Italy - shopping here is not going to make me feel any better. In fact, most likely, it will make me feel even more "blah." That's because, for a bargain hunter like me, there's no fun in Italian shopping. Italians don't seem to have any decent markdowns except during the two alloted "sale periods" every year (July and January) and even those aren't that great. And regular prices are ridiculously high for anything of half way decent quality. Moreover, even if I find clothes I like, they won't fit me as I'm a humungous US size 10/Australian size 12 and am 5'10". That's considered a "plus size" here.

If I'd moved to, say, Japan, I would have expected to be a giant in a crowd of midgets - but, even though I didn't expect this here, in fact, Italians are, generally, tiny people with small builds. When I take the metro to work in the morning, I find myself a good head taller than everyone else in the carriage, including the men. So, shopping, rather than making me feel better, will just make me feel even more like an abnormal overweight giant.

When I first came to live in Italy in 2005, I felt like I had taken some kind of vow of poverty in which I had to give up all my vices. I gave up TV, which I don't watch anymore, even though I understand most of it now, as it's just soooo unbelievably bad - endless game shows, variety shows featuring half naked women and American shows dubbed badly into Italian. I gave up my language - now I can't chit chat with people thoughtlessly, but instead have to worry about verb conjugations and the congiuntivo. And I gave up shopping for the reasons described above.

So, was it all worth it? Well, I still have the internet, which is primarily in English and Rene's enormous library of English language books. It was probably good for me to give up watching TV in favour of reading. And certainly, despite my lower pay here, it's easier to save when I'm not constantly buying myself new clothes during my lunch breaks.

So, how did I cheer myself up at lunch today? I went by my former office and had lunch with my old coworkers. It was nice to see them and it made me feel a lot better.

Age

2007-06-04T19:17:00.000+02:00

I don't normally write about personal things on my blog, but I've been thinking lately about age - specifically my age and Rene's age and how that affects us as a couple.

Rene is significantly older than me - 9.5 years older to be exact (no, not 95, 9 point 5!). He just turned 45 a couple of days ago and I'm 35 -and will be 36 in October. I'm not one of those women who has always dated men who are older than me and I it never crossed my mind that I would end up with an older man. Until Rene, the oldest man I'd ever dated was a mere 4 years older than me, which seemed like a lot when I was in my early 20s. The youngest was 6 years younger than me and I met him when he was only 19 and I was 25 which seemed to shock a lot of otherwise unshockable people.

I hate to admit this but in the past I may have been a tad judgmental of older man/younger woman couples. It used to especially irritate me when well meaning people would say "you need an older man" or (when I was dating the boyfriend who was 6 years younger) "it would be ok if he were the older one but it's not natural for a younger man to date an older woman."

I guess what I've learnt from this experience is that while age does matter in some ways - for example Rene's dad had his first heart attack at 45 which makes him turning 45 rather scary - it does not matter when we're talking about two individual people and how they relate to eachother.

...until you realise that when your boyfriend was in high school, platform shoes were in vogue and the bee gees were all the rage!

Robbed!

2007-05-28T20:52:00.000+02:00

Well, it had to happen sooner or later...I had the quintessential Rome tourist experience: I was pickpocketed! Actually it was sheer hubris on my part. After warning oodles of bed and breakfast guests about the hazards of the Rome metro, while secretly thinking "I, on the other had, am way too smart for those Roman pickpockets - I'm from NEW YORK", a Roman pickpocket got me. Actually s/he did not just get me - s/he managed to pick my bag up from next to my feet at a table in a Trastevere bar on a Saturday night (I'd only had one cocktail, I swear!), pick my cell phone and wallet from amongst the junk in my messy bag and then dump the bag back at my feet, without me noticing a thing except that the bag seemed to shift slightly. It generally takes me several minutes to locate my ringing cell phone in all that stuff (bag contained - jean jacket, newspaper, various papers, lipstick, a pair of socks, keys, paperback, agenda and assorted furry female sanitary products in addition to the cell phone and wallet which went missing) in that big bag. So my hat's off to whoever pickpocketed me. Bravo/a!

Sunday in the Park with George

2007-05-21T20:55:00.000+02:00

Yesterday we went to the Colle Oppio, the park near our apartment, and had a beer.

Owwww

2007-05-20T11:29:00.000+02:00

Last week, I had a doctor's appointment and did my usual New York walk from work over to the doctor's surgery. I was charging down Via delle Quattro Fontane so fast, however, that I failed to notice a piece of plastic cord on the street which had somehow wrapped itself around my ankles. On the next step, I went flying.

As I fell, I thought "oh, no I'm going to break something! Lucky I'm on my way to see the doctor." but miraculously I didn't. I just skinned my hands and badly bruised my knees. Several people on the street stopped and helped me up, asking "tutt'OK?"

But the most amazing thing - I was wearing some Givenchy tights which I had bought at Century 21 on my last trip to New York - and despite my bruised and bloody knees, they didn't ladder or break. In fact, they're as good as new - not a fibre out of place. So maybe it's worth spending $10 on tights afterall. They may have even protected my poor knees from worse damage.

Fassi Palazzo dei Freddo

2007-05-16T22:50:00.000+02:00

"Telegelato Giuseppina - has crossed the borders of Italy!"

Like many platitudes, it is somewhat true that Italians tend to hold on to traditions and avoid change for as long as they possibly can. This is one of the reasons the food is so good here, although it's also at the root of many of Italy's frustrations.

One of the nicest things about my Rome neighbourhood, Esquilino, is the Giovanni Fassi Palazzo del Freddo. The name is very hard to translate- the best I can come up with is "Palace of Cold" which sounds a little weird in English - it is, in fact, an old fashioned ice cream parlour. As they will proudly tell you, Fassi was founded in 1880 and it is both the oldest and largest gelateria in Rome. The walls are covered in old posters proudly boasting the refrigeration technology which must have been absolutely state of the art in the late nineteenth century. Now, however, rather than sleek modernity, the gelateria's charm is its unchanged and very old fashioned ice cream parlour feel.

Unfortunately for my waistline, the gelato is also very good and it is right near my apartment. I especially recommend the "creme caramel" flavour.

Roses

2007-05-13T16:11:00.000+02:00

Being a no nonsense Dutch guy, Rene is not normally the flower giving type. So, you can imagine my surprise when I came home late one night, after letting in some B&B guests to find:

Here they are in front of Rene's CD collection:

Family Day

2007-05-13T12:29:00.000+02:00

Yesterday, Rene finally had the time off for us to go to IKEA and buy a few much needed things for the B&B and home. Unfortunately, for us non-car owning Romans going to IKEA involves a schlep on the metro to Anagnina followed by a short bus ride.

So on the way to IKEA on the metro, there were millions and millions of people looking uneasy on public transport. Rene even pointed out one couple who were having problems figuring out how to get on the escalator - obviously they'd never seen one before! Rene understands these things having once been a burrino (country bumpkin) himself. Then at Anagnina a huge crowd had formed while they were being loaded onto big airconditioned buses. The people were all holding flyers which said "family day" as well as banners and signs saying "Pavia" or "Bari" or the names of other Italian towns and cities. There were also signs all over Rome saying things like "the National Alliance supports family day" with a little cartoon family - a mother, a father and two kids -a boy and a girl of course. Initially I thought it must be some kind of political protest against gay marriage or something - but there were no political banners or signs. And in English, of course, "family day" (it was in English) connotes something more like a special day when women and kids are invited to the golf course or the race track- not a huge protest/demonstration with people travelling from all over Italy holding banners.

But what exactly were they demonstrating about? Motherhood and apple pie? They must have felt pretty strongly about whatever it was to travel from all over Italy come to Rome?

And, most puzzlingly, why use English for the name of this thing, whatever it was? Why force all these Italians to contort their mouths in order to say the difficult English words "fameelee daaaiiii" when "giorno della famiglia" would have done just fine?

Tale from the Condominio

2007-05-05T19:38:00.000+02:00

Update - The condominium meeting was held last night in the entranceway. We stumbled into it when we went over at 10pm to organise breakfast at the B&B the next day. There was lots of arguing and shouting. A fat woman was shouting and gesticulating in heated conversation with a young man. V was there (afterall he now owns an apartment in the building) looking pale. Our neighbour told us that it seemed like they were going to fire V and take away the apartment where he lives as part of his salary and then hire a non livein doorman to work part time. This morning Rene got an update from V who said that there was going to be another meeting as for technical reasons no conclusion was reached. Drama, drama! Aparently the meeting continued until 2am last night.

A few weeks ago on a Sunday we saw our doorman, V, heaving several huge boxes of leatherbound books into the trash. Pained by the sight of beautiful books going to waste, but not pained enough to fish them out from amongst the rotting garbage in the big garbage bins, Rene asked V why he was chucking them out. V, looking around, said "don't tell anyone, but I have the opportunity to buy an apartment in the building at a very low price" and gave us a very Neapolitan conspiritorial wink. And, he said "I may rent it to you to use as a B&B!"

A few weeks later, he was in possession of the apartment but came round one day to tell us "sorry but we've decided not to rent it to you. My brother in law from Naples is out of a job, so we're going to let him run the B&B." Since they had no experience with these things, Rene went around one night to tell them how to it's done. He came back shaking his head. Apparently the brother in law (and V) hardly speaks Italian (just Naples dialect), let alone any foreign languages. Might be a problem when they start getting emails in English from foreign guests wanting to book.

Everything seemed to be going ok for V and his brother in law. We saw them moving mattresses and furniture into the apartment and they got the documentation together to apply for the license. We wondered, however, where a doorman, with a non-working wife and child to support, managed to come up with the €400K+ to buy a 3 bedroom aparment in our neighbourhood.

Interesting rumours started flying around the building. Huddles of apartment dwellers were seen discussing things and stopping as we approached. Our landlord called and said that a group of people in the building want to fire V from his doorman job! Rene asked why and he said "probably because they're jealous because now he has an apartment."

Then V came around again a few days ago and apologised: "I'm sorry I lied to you. I didn't buy the apartment. I inherited it from an old man who passed away and had no family. But now the other people in the building are so jealous that they want to fire me from my job!" Poor V! The condomium meeting to decide on V's fate is in a few week's time.

Does jealousy have no bounds? Why is everyone in the building so angry that V inherited the apartment? From what people are saying, I almost get the idea that several people in the building were buttering up the old man hoping to get the apartment and V won. There has been talk of challenging the validity of the will and a group of people in our building even went so far as to track down the old man's relatives in a town in Campania to tell them that he had died and left the apartment to V - and urge them to file a lawsuit.

Ugh

2007-04-28T09:12:00.000+02:00

Sometimes, I wish that I'd never suggested that Rene start doing more to help around the house:

So sad

2007-04-18T21:35:00.000+02:00

I've been spending a lot of time gardening on my balcony - basil, parsley, rosemary, lilies, jasmine and bulbs. Things were coming along nicely - for the first time in my life I've been managing to actually grow things rather than just kill them. I've been reading gardening websites and following the instructions to the letter - taking my basil plants inside when it gets too cold, giving them special plant food, talking to them. Then yesterday, after a week of golden spring weather, a freak hailstorm hit Rome and in one fell swoop killed my beautiful basil plants and seriously injured the parsley.

Oh, the humanity!!!! (or in this case herbality):

New fertility laws in Italy

2007-04-14T16:50:00.000+02:00

I'm very angry about the new Italian laws on fertility. Yet another example of the Catholic church imposing their antiqated views on Italian society.

I'm especially annoyed that under the new law single women and gay couples are barred from using artificial insemination and that couples are denied pre-implantation genetic screening of embryos even if they have a family history of genetic defects. Who exactly are these new laws supposed to help?

Ugh.

My balcony garden!

2007-04-08T18:26:00.000+02:00

Now that we have a balcony, I've started gardening.

Here's a photo - I'm quite proud!

That's basil (top left), rosemary and parsley (too small to be visible). Below it's calla lilies and lemons.

Italy vs the rest of Europe

2007-04-07T19:34:00.000+02:00

For anyone thinking about visiting me here - this is compulsory viewing before getting on the plane.

Italy vs. the rest of Europe:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOo36FnSTqQ

Hippety hoppity...

2007-04-07T18:50:00.000+02:00

Warning - whinge ahead.

It's gorgeous spring weather out and last night on the news there was a story about how a huge proportion of Italians are heading away from home for the Easter holidays - either to eat roast lamb with mamma in their hometown or for a holiday in the mountains - and some even overseas (or coming to Rome to stay in our B&B!).

Meanwhile, as usual, Rene is working his ass off over the holidays (and I am too!). It's great being busy as it means that the money is flowing in and maybe we won't have to work this hard forever. But meanwhile it's kind of sad looking wistfully at people enjoying the spring weather as we rush around making breakfasts, waiting for guests, buying supplies etc.

Happy April Fools

2007-04-01T15:02:00.000+02:00

I started my new job two weeks ago and even though I now work a mere 40 hours a week I've been too exhausted after work to post anything on the blog. So far - the job seems really great but learning so many new things every day is tiring.

My bit of good news is that both of my parents are coming from opposite ends of the globe to visit me in Italy this August! I'm really excited to see both of them.

Mum is going to a conference in Arezzo in late August and Dad, who is a Swedish academic, has (lucky devil!) managed to pull some strings in order to spend 3 weeks at the Swedish cultural academy on Capri, the Villa San Michele. Rene is actually going to take a few days off work (hallelujah!) and we are going to go there together to stay in dad's spare room and enjoy at least part of the summer. Maybe Rene will finally get to take the new swimming trunks I bought for him last summer out for a test dip.

It seems we're not welcome here

2007-03-17T17:51:00.000+01:00

This morning as I left my apartment to meet one of my English students I heard megaphones and drums. Around the corner from my apartment there was some kind of demonstration going on. As I got closer I saw that they were holding up banner which said "Esquilino is Catholic" (Esquilino is my neighbourhood which I love because as a foreigner I feel completely at home here - it is the most multicultural neighbourhood in Rome) and "Alleanza Nazionale" (the party which used to be called the Fascist party but changed it's name, if not it's political platform, a few years ago) and a man was shouting into a megaphone "foreigners out of Esquilino!" I stood watching for a minute and started talking to the Chinese-Italian man next to me. The man with the megaphone stared at us and shouted again "foreigners out of Esquilino!"

Wow - way to make me feel welcome.

As I walked through Piazza Vittorio - groups of Chinese, Bangladeshi and Italian kids running around pretending to be Francesco Totti whilst speaking perfect Romanesco Italian - I actually felt slightly sorry for those racist demonstrators. How hard it must be to live in fabulous, multicultural Esquilino but hate foreigners. Every time you walk down the street you have to glare at 2/3 of the people you see. If you run a coffee bar you have to be rude to most of your customers. Poor them!

But I also thought of a racent experience in the coffee bar across the street from our apartment. Rene goes there every day for a caffe d'orzo (barley coffee - he's stopped drinking caffeine) and a croissant and he's a pretty friendly guy who always chats with bar owners, waiters etc. Last week, I went with Rene to the coffee bar, we went up to the bar where the owner was filling the display case with pastries. She ignored us for a full 10 minutes while she finished filling the case. It was only after she had finished filling the case that she unsmilingly served us. Rene tells me that he has heard them say racist things about the Chinese who live in our neighbourhood - but it seems they don't like Dutch or Australians either.

As a white person, it is very strange to experience this type of racism for the first time. I guess I'd better get used to it though.

Our new apartment

2007-03-11T16:37:00.000+01:00

We finally moved into our new apartment two weeks ago. It was probably the most traumatic move I've ever done even though our new place is only a few blocks from the old place. In one weekend - we moved, Rene had stomach flu and Rene's sister and her new boyfriend came to visit from Holland. Thank God one of Rene's friends helped us out with his car.

It's taken a few weeks but we are finally starting to settle in. We bought a humungous American-sized fridge as well as the the biggest TV I've ever owned. I've made one trip to IKEA and Rene has started the laborious process of moving his thousands of books and CDs via suitcase (we don't have a car!)

The new apartment is a "mansard" apartment -this translates roughly as "penthouse" but without the luxury connotations. The apartments is incredibly sunny and has a balcony. The downside is that it will be very hot this summer (which everyone tells me promises to be the hottest on record). Thank God we have air conditioning - although I anticipate some battles with the AC hating Rene over whether to turn it on as the days swelter.

Here are some photos:

The view from our kitchen window:

Our state of the art 1950s kitchen:

Just a very small part of Rene's CD collection:

5 things I miss about New York

2007-02-20T20:21:00.000+01:00

Inspired by some other recent blog entries in the Italian expat blog community, here are five things I miss about New York. There are many others but these are the things which come to mind first. And to be really cheesy for a moment, of course I've leaving out the most important thing I miss about New York - friends and family.

1) Asian Food
I'm afraid that the insipid Italian Chinese food doesn't quite cut it for me. Whenever the waitress in a Chinese restaurant asks you "and what do you want for your antipasto?", you know you're at an Italo-Chinese restaurant. The dishes even sound Italianised: spaghetti di riso, ravioli al vapore. I would probably kill for some dim sim (yum cha for the Australians).

I've heard that there is a decent Thai restaurant somewhere in Rome but have not yet had the energy to go there (it involves 2 buses). I'm glad we can get good Indian food here at Piazza Vittorio but I haven't seen Thai or Vietnamese.

2) A bouyant job market
In New York, so long as you had an education, worked hard and had a bit of luck it seemed that there were all kinds of job possibilities open to you. And no, you don't need to do a two year unpaid "internship" (while living with your parents) first or be the cousin of one of the founders.

3) The Sunday New York Times
I read it online now, but I really miss reading it while eating bagels and drinking coffee on a Sunday morning.

4) Central Park
I live near Colle Oppio in Rome so I really shouldn't complain but Central Park gives me a different feeling. Relaxing, beautiful but at the same time full of the energy of the city.

5) Children
When I moved here, I had a feeling that there was something missing from the picture but could not quite put my finger on it. Then when I was in Paris last month it dawned on me - there are almost no children in Rome. It's an almost entirely adult world here - few playgrounds, no space to push a pram between cars parked across pedestrian crossing, no toy shops - probably because the Italian birth rate is one of the lowest in the world. Even at the fabulous ice cream shop around the corner from us, it's mostly adults licking the cones. In fact, this may even explain my preference from Central Park over Colle Oppio - in Central Park there are numerous playgrounds, kids playing baseball, having picnics and birthday parties in the park - at Colle Oppio it's old people sitting on benches and not a single playground.

Nice handbag and corsage!

2007-02-20T20:09:00.000+01:00

Here is an ancient frieze from the Louvre - notice anything unusual about him?

OK - here's a closeup:

Paris

2007-02-09T21:43:00.000+01:00

One of the perks of my mum's glamorous, international scentific career is that it often involves travel to exotic places. Last week, a Finnish university paid for her to travel all the way from Sydney to Helsinki to examine a PhD student on his dissertation. Since I wanted to see my mum while she was in Europe but didn't much relish the idea of the total darkness and freezing cold of Finland in January, we decided to meet not in Helsinki but in Paris for a long weekend after mum had finished in Finland. It turned out to be a great idea.

Well, I have to say Paris really surprised me. All of the stereotypes about rude Parisians are untrue - everyone was incredibly nice to us while speaking perfect English - and being in Paris was a modern, progressive breath of fresh air after living in musty, old Rome, which, although beautiful, can sometimes seem a bit stifling with all that history and tradition crowding in. Dare I say it, it was even nice to have a break from pasta and Italian wine and scoff down some delicious French tarts, snails and foie gras (ok, I didn't order the foie gras out of sympathy for those poor ducks/geese but I would have if I had been more ignorant about how foie gras is made).

Mum in Paris with Moliere.

Our hotel, the Hotel Chopin, was an old fashioned place at the end of a nineteenth century "Passage" similar to the Strand Arcade in Sydney but less chic and more run-down - full of funny little philately shops, cafes and even a gay sauna. Apparently these arcades were the upscale shopping malls of their day but these days have fallen on hard times. We thought the passage was charming though - especially the yummy pattisserie next door to the hotel.

Yummy Parisian cakes next door to our hotel (many of which found their way into my stomach):

Tragedy at Piazza Vittorio

2007-01-21T12:14:00.000+01:00

A week ago, one of our neighbours told Rene in the lift that a woman and her child had died during a fire the night before in a building right around the corner from our apartment, near Piazza Vittorio Emanuele in Rome. Apparently the mother and child, Mary and Hasib Begum, lived in an overcrowded apartment full of Bangladeshi immigrants on Via Buonnarrotti, right above the Nigerian corner shop where we go at least once a day to buy supplies and which serves as something of a community center for our neighbourhood. Because there was no fire escape (something which I've never seen here in Rome despite the predominance of multistory apartment buildings), the woman was forced to jump from the fifth floor with her baby to escape the fire and died.

This caused a media furore centered on overcrowding in immigrant apartments near Piazza Vittorio. The Bangadeshi community also came out in force to protest lack of services for immigrants. Strangely, I didn't see anyone advocating New York style fire escapes - but I guess they are not known here.

Meanwhile the pile of flowers outside the apartment building where they died has been growing.

A Christmas Miracle!

2007-01-01T14:44:00.000+01:00

One very weird thing I noticed on Christmas Day here in Rome is that all the drivers suddenly became courteous and even downright considerate of pedestrians. As I approached the zebra crossing on the morning of the 25th, lo and behold, a car stopped to let me pass! At the traffic lights, miracle of miracles, no one tried to speed through after it had turned red! But, alas, Christmas comes but once a year. All was back to normal on December 26th.

So, why is this? Could it be that drivers actually take the Christmas sermon to heart (at least for one day) about humility and loving thy neighbours? Or is it some special kind of sin to run over a pedestrian on Christmas? Whatever it was - it was lovely - if only for one day.

Sport, sport and more sport! (when too much sport is never enough!)

2006-12-25T15:40:00.000+01:00

My life in Rome seems to revolve around sport, especially if all you go by is my blog. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth (my life actually revolves around food)- although I will say that I've become more of a sports fan since meeting Rene (his bad influence) and sports player since realising that, at 35, I've only got a few good years left before most sports (apart from maybe lawn bowls) are beyond me.

Anyway I was really happy with Rene's sport related Christmas gift to me this year - a tennis racket and some tennis balls (and a few other little things). He bought himself a racket as well - so we can start playing tennis together and getting fit.

But my other little gift from Rene, last week, was tickets to see the Lazio-Inter soccer match at the Stadio Olimpico. Rene is a recovering Lazio fan (now becoming more of a romanista) - but I think the main reason he got these tickets is that it was not a very important match so the Italian soccer hooligans would not be out in force and we could watch the match in peace.

Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera to record the event for posterity and my blog- but I was fun seeing little specks running around the stadium and knowing that they were some of the most famous soccer players in the world. I was also very impressed by the Mussolini era mosaic floors which said things like "il Duce" in mosaic and the fascist sculptures of naked men hurling discuses outside the stadium. No wonder so many of Rene's gay bed and breakfast guests love the Stadio Olimpico!

The thing which was kind of sad, though, is that the Inter supporters were all sitting in one block one one side of the stadium closed off with big plexiglass partitions. At the end of the match a voice came on the loudspeaker saying:"Inter fans, please stay in your seats until the Lazio fans have left, your buses will be waiting outside". It is sad that they had to do this but apparently there have been too many incidents of the fans of different teams attacking eachother as they leave the stadium.

Going Dutch - Part 2

2006-12-14T23:21:00.000+01:00

We also spent a couple of days hanging out in Raamsdonksveer and making quick day trips to Breda, the capital of Brabant and the main town close to Rene's home village. Rene wanted to go book and record shopping in Breda, of course, but I also managed to drag him off to take in some "cultcha": the Breda cathedral which turned out to be really beautiful and well worth a visit.

Fresco of the Annunciation of the Virgin from Breda Cathedral (left)

One of Rene's ancestors (below) - memento mori.

After taking in all this beauty we badly needed refreshment. And what could be better than a steaming hot plate of chips with mayonnaise? Mmmmm....

Luckily for our arteries, we did not follow the rest of the chip shop patrons and grab something to accompany our fries from the automat:

Going Dutch - part 1

2006-12-08T21:56:00.000+01:00

We just arrived back via bumpy Ryanair flight from a 9 day trip to Rene's native Holland. The Netherlands is one of the most densely populated countries on earth and you can definitely feel that when you're there (in fact, it's kind of the anti-Australia which is one of the least densely populated nations on earth but is around the same size in population). Everywhere you look there are more houses and more people. So, although if you ask Rene where he is from, he will tell you that he's from a tiny, provincial little village (where fuzzy moustaches never went out of style), in fact, it often feels like more of a suburb of the larger cities in Holland. I mean, how "provincial" can you be when Amsterdam is only an hour away?

The upside to this is that even though we were based at Rene's sister's flat in the village of Raamsdonksveer, we were very easily able to take advantage of Holland's incredibly efficient public transport network to take day trips to Antwerp, Rotterdam, Utrecht, Breda and Tilburg.

Here are some photos of our day trips:

The Hague

Main town square, the Hague

Modern art, the Hague (this photo strikes me as deeply post modern on some level- not sure how really)

Rotterdam

Renzo Piano building in Rotterdam (it's a Dutch christmas carol about sinta klaas on the moving neon sign - Rene and his sister sang along)

Driving vs Walking in Italy

2006-11-25T16:11:00.000+01:00

I walk to work every day. It's a nice walk - taking me past Santa Maria Maggiore, Via Nazionale and the Irish pub at Piazza Esquilino. However, I'm normally in a rush so I do my "New York walk" while wearing my ipod. This extremely peculiar behaviour elicits stares (as I zip past in a streak) and is difficult to execute when the average Italian walking pace is that of a snail. Even worse, large groups of Italians in work clothes mosey slowly down narrow sidewalks gossiping, completely oblivious to the fact that they are blocking the footpath and certain people (ie me) are trying to get to work on time.

I attributed all of this to the slow pace of Italian life, la Dolce Vita, the need to stop and smell the roses, take frequent coffee breaks and avoid being on time for work as much as possible. But then, a few days ago, I had a revelation as I hitched a ride on the back of my boss' scooter on the way to a business meeting in Rome traffic. From the back of the scooter, my whole perspective changed - Italians aren't a bunch of relaxed, blissed out, slowpokes. Scooters (including ours) were zipping back and forth between speeding cars, traffic lights changed to red but scooters and cars sped up to make it through in the few seconds after they had changed, at one point I even saw a scooter drive onto the footpath to make it past a car which was signalling to turn left on a narrow street, no doubt shaving 30 seconds off his morning commute. In fact, if judged by their driving, Italians are the most harried, stressed out and rushed people on earth. There is no doubt in their minds that it's worth risking life and limb to shave 2 minutes off their trip (and they would think you insane if you questioned this) and get to work or a business meeting all the sooner. They have people to see, things to do, life is busy, you know?

So, I ask, why is there such a strange juxtaposition of sloooow walking and frenetic driving on the average Roman street during rush hour?

Picture of moi!

2006-11-16T19:05:00.000+01:00

Can you see what's reflected in my sunglasses?