//i would like an angry penis please
The waitress handled it well. She blinked at me for a moment before recovering and asking in Italian if I realised that it was a spicy dish. I nodded and said I did, stifling a giggle as a I realised that my accent obviously hadn't been quite right.
In Italian, "penne arrabbiata" is a spicy pasta dish, while "pene arrabbiata" is an angry penis, which I'd just ordered in good, but not quite good enough, Italian. The difference is subtle but significant.
Showing posts with label italy - random bits. Show all posts
Showing posts with label italy - random bits. Show all posts
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Monday, June 30, 2008
questo ho imparato
// this, I have learned
- If you can't fix it with duct tape; you can fix it with Betadine.
- If you want an Italian guy to come onto you, learn Italian and speak it with a cute accent, stumbling over your 'r's when you say 'tre'.
- Apparently I look German, Russian, Czech and/or Swedish, but definitely not Australian. It's the pale skin that throws them.
- I speak Italian with a German accent.
- If you want a waiter to stop being an asshole, ask him/her how to say something in their native language; suddenly they see you as an intelligent, thoughful, cultured person instead of a tourist.
- The best travel clothing in the world is made of New Zealand wool by Icebreaker.
- The best walking shoes in the world come from Singapore and cost about 7 dollars.
- The ugliest jewellery in the world is in Italy.
- People will line up for two hours at the Hard Rock cafe, rather than order a pasta dish at the good Italian restaurant next door.
- The French are not that rude.
- The English and the Italians are.
- You don't need a guide book to tell you how to get there, you need it to help you decide where to go.
- Even if you end up buying cat food instead of tuna, supermakets are pretty much the same anywhere and therefore are a great cure for homesickness.
- Siestas rule.
- All the beaches in Europe are pretty shit. Even if you think you have found a nice one, you will change your mind when the fifth plastic bag floats gaily past you and the umbrella man charges you 8 euro for some shade.
- Ozzie Osborne has brought a new song out, and he really shouldn't have.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
che cazzo
// what the f...
The reason the bread in Italy tastes like crap is that there was once a shortage of salt, so they made bread without salt. Then, when salt became readily available again, they just kept making bread the same way, saltless and tasteless. This may be an insight into why Italy is such a 'casino' (a mess) ‑ they don't bother changing things for the better, as though it doesn't occur to them that making an improvement might be...well... an improvement.
The reason the bread in Italy tastes like crap is that there was once a shortage of salt, so they made bread without salt. Then, when salt became readily available again, they just kept making bread the same way, saltless and tasteless. This may be an insight into why Italy is such a 'casino' (a mess) ‑ they don't bother changing things for the better, as though it doesn't occur to them that making an improvement might be...well... an improvement.
Friday, May 23, 2008
per fiore/profume
Bologna is a good city to study Italian in, because the lack of tourists means that the locals still find 'stranieri' interesting and, more importantly, amusing. They make a lot of effort to talk to us, repeating things slowly when necessary and acting as though they are our personal Italian tutors. From people on the bus who make sure that we are able to understand their (apparently not private) conversation, to shop keepers who tell us what we need to pay in English and then repeat the amount slowly in Italian, everybody helps us with our Italian.
Today I bought a basil plant from my local grocery man. An old lady nearby smiled at me, pointed at the plant and said (I thought) "per fiore" which would mean "for the flower?". I replied "no, per mangiare" (to eat) and she laughed, and said, more slowly, "no, proFIUME" (perfume) which meant, basically "can I smell your basil plant". Totally random, but I laughed and said "si, certo". Laughing back at me, she smelt the basil with great relish, then winked at me and tottered away muttering in amusement "per mangiare, ha ha ha!".
These somewhat embarrassing moments are becoming more common because I am speaking more Italian as my confidence grows (and is subsequently shot to pieces!) but they're fun. I like that I make someone laugh at least once a day!
Today I bought a basil plant from my local grocery man. An old lady nearby smiled at me, pointed at the plant and said (I thought) "per fiore" which would mean "for the flower?". I replied "no, per mangiare" (to eat) and she laughed, and said, more slowly, "no, proFIUME" (perfume) which meant, basically "can I smell your basil plant". Totally random, but I laughed and said "si, certo". Laughing back at me, she smelt the basil with great relish, then winked at me and tottered away muttering in amusement "per mangiare, ha ha ha!".
These somewhat embarrassing moments are becoming more common because I am speaking more Italian as my confidence grows (and is subsequently shot to pieces!) but they're fun. I like that I make someone laugh at least once a day!
Thursday, May 22, 2008
san rita
Today is Saint Rita's Day, la festa della San Rita.
Saint Rita worked miracles, especially for the blind. The people pray to her by buying roses and holding them while they ask her for whatever miracle they desire. Today, Piazza Verde in Via Zamboni is full of flower markets and everywhere people are carrying bunches of roses. We visited a nearby church to discover a crowd of people lighting candles and waving their roses around in front of the saint, it was very festive!
Today, after five days of constant drizzle, there is sun. Perhaps San Rita has worked another miracle...
Saint Rita worked miracles, especially for the blind. The people pray to her by buying roses and holding them while they ask her for whatever miracle they desire. Today, Piazza Verde in Via Zamboni is full of flower markets and everywhere people are carrying bunches of roses. We visited a nearby church to discover a crowd of people lighting candles and waving their roses around in front of the saint, it was very festive!
Today, after five days of constant drizzle, there is sun. Perhaps San Rita has worked another miracle...
pezzi d' Italia
//pieces of Italy
Easily my favourite thing about Italy is the aperitivi. Each evening around five, the bars all serve aperitivi, like tapas, for free for as long as you drink alcohol.
As a warm up to dinner (or maybe to tide your stomach over until 9pm when people eat here), you can linger over your 3 euro glass of wine for at least two large plates of food.
It's worth noting that they aren't just any old tapas; they are the kind of things you expect to be served at somebody's wedding. Walking down the street is mouth watering, Each bar has its own style, some are classy, some do salads, some do proscuito with cheeses, others do little mini sandwiches and still others serve pieces of fruit and tiny sandwiches.
Every country has something to offer the world; Italy gave us pizza, but sadly it's keeping the aperitivi to itself.
....
Swimming pools in Italy are not worth the visit. when I asked Giordano for advice on which pool to visit he said "there's one that's 50 metres long but it's only open during the week". Umm, it's NOTEWORTHY that a pool is 50 metres long? At home it's the other way around, we take 50 metres for granted.
Never mind, we went to a 25 metre pool instead, and it was DIRTY. Remember, I am not some prissy little rich girl, I worked in a mine site and consequently I have showered in tiny cubicles that smell of urine and sweat, so when I say a place is dirty, it means something. Maybe to combat all the grunge, they had the chlorine turned up to the max, it practically burned my skin and my eyes nearly fried right in their sockets.
Maybe I would cut the place some slack, but the entry fee for a swim was around ten Australian dollars. For that price, I expect the services of a personal lifeguard, thanks very much.
Just don't swim in northern Italy, head south or visit in winter. No joke.
...
Italians don't make much use of supermarkets, it's far cheaper to buy each item you need at the relevant shop. For meat, the salumeria, for cheese it's the formaggeria, for fish it's the pescheria, for pizza it's the pizzeria and for bread it's the pasticceria. This sounds time consuming and frustrating and at first, it is. However, there's an upside: you make friends with your chosen shopkeepers and suddenly shopping is no longer a chore, but an enjoyable social occasion.
The shop next door to our house is run by a couple of shy Indian guys who speak Italian only marginally better than we do. They sell us our daily (ahem I mean... weekly) bottle of wine. The guy around the corner owns a little grocery shop and he speaks excellent English. He always expresses surprise that I am here because Australia is "troppo lontano" very far away. Everywhere, they greet us with a patient smile and speak to us slowly, repeating and explaining things when we look confused.
In Italy, it's obligatory to make friends with your local shopkeepers. The guy that runs your local bar (bar being coffee shop as well as pub), the guys in the little shop next door, the dude at your closest net cafe, the salumeria, formaggeria, paticceria, pizzeria. The first few times you visit, you are usually ignored, until suddenly you walk in and are met with a wide smile, a 'ciao bella' and, sooner or later, you are greeted by name. It's the best way to get good service and it makes the time consuming affair of shopping in Italy more bearable and even fun. (Living there might not be so fun but for tourists it's fine.)
...
Bologna is a good city to study Italian in, because the lack of tourists means that the locals still find 'stranieri' interesting and, more importantly, amusing. They make a lot of effort to talk to us, repeating things slowly when necessary and acting as though they are our personal Italian tutors. From people on the bus who make sure that we are able to understand their (apparently not private) conversation, to shop keepers who tell us what we need to pay in English and then repeat the amount slowly in Italian, everybody helps us with our Italian.
People always shyly speak English when it gets too confusing, but more and more often I am managing to leave shops without revealing my ignorance of the language.
...
Everybody always talks about how dangerous it is to drive in Italy, and while it is indeed a little hair raising at times, it has nothing on WALKING in Italy!
Every day Maaike and I take our lives gingerly in our hands and cross a particularly scary street on the way to school. At one particular point, the footpath is only about ten centimetres wide, and for some reason the buses and cars all seem to wait until we get to that point before roaring past. If there's a puddle, even better! The rear vision mirrors of the bus seem to miss our ears by only a few centimetres.
At the strisce pedonale (pedestrian stripes, zebra crossings) the cars beep you if you take too long, even when the little walking man is green. Be quick, be wary, and above all appear to be confident!
...
They have one and two cent pieces in Italy. God, I hate those little copper bastards.
...
Easily my favourite thing about Italy is the aperitivi. Each evening around five, the bars all serve aperitivi, like tapas, for free for as long as you drink alcohol.
As a warm up to dinner (or maybe to tide your stomach over until 9pm when people eat here), you can linger over your 3 euro glass of wine for at least two large plates of food.
It's worth noting that they aren't just any old tapas; they are the kind of things you expect to be served at somebody's wedding. Walking down the street is mouth watering, Each bar has its own style, some are classy, some do salads, some do proscuito with cheeses, others do little mini sandwiches and still others serve pieces of fruit and tiny sandwiches.
Every country has something to offer the world; Italy gave us pizza, but sadly it's keeping the aperitivi to itself.
....
Swimming pools in Italy are not worth the visit. when I asked Giordano for advice on which pool to visit he said "there's one that's 50 metres long but it's only open during the week". Umm, it's NOTEWORTHY that a pool is 50 metres long? At home it's the other way around, we take 50 metres for granted.
Never mind, we went to a 25 metre pool instead, and it was DIRTY. Remember, I am not some prissy little rich girl, I worked in a mine site and consequently I have showered in tiny cubicles that smell of urine and sweat, so when I say a place is dirty, it means something. Maybe to combat all the grunge, they had the chlorine turned up to the max, it practically burned my skin and my eyes nearly fried right in their sockets.
Maybe I would cut the place some slack, but the entry fee for a swim was around ten Australian dollars. For that price, I expect the services of a personal lifeguard, thanks very much.
Just don't swim in northern Italy, head south or visit in winter. No joke.
...
Italians don't make much use of supermarkets, it's far cheaper to buy each item you need at the relevant shop. For meat, the salumeria, for cheese it's the formaggeria, for fish it's the pescheria, for pizza it's the pizzeria and for bread it's the pasticceria. This sounds time consuming and frustrating and at first, it is. However, there's an upside: you make friends with your chosen shopkeepers and suddenly shopping is no longer a chore, but an enjoyable social occasion.
The shop next door to our house is run by a couple of shy Indian guys who speak Italian only marginally better than we do. They sell us our daily (ahem I mean... weekly) bottle of wine. The guy around the corner owns a little grocery shop and he speaks excellent English. He always expresses surprise that I am here because Australia is "troppo lontano" very far away. Everywhere, they greet us with a patient smile and speak to us slowly, repeating and explaining things when we look confused.
In Italy, it's obligatory to make friends with your local shopkeepers. The guy that runs your local bar (bar being coffee shop as well as pub), the guys in the little shop next door, the dude at your closest net cafe, the salumeria, formaggeria, paticceria, pizzeria. The first few times you visit, you are usually ignored, until suddenly you walk in and are met with a wide smile, a 'ciao bella' and, sooner or later, you are greeted by name. It's the best way to get good service and it makes the time consuming affair of shopping in Italy more bearable and even fun. (Living there might not be so fun but for tourists it's fine.)
...
Bologna is a good city to study Italian in, because the lack of tourists means that the locals still find 'stranieri' interesting and, more importantly, amusing. They make a lot of effort to talk to us, repeating things slowly when necessary and acting as though they are our personal Italian tutors. From people on the bus who make sure that we are able to understand their (apparently not private) conversation, to shop keepers who tell us what we need to pay in English and then repeat the amount slowly in Italian, everybody helps us with our Italian.
People always shyly speak English when it gets too confusing, but more and more often I am managing to leave shops without revealing my ignorance of the language.
...
Everybody always talks about how dangerous it is to drive in Italy, and while it is indeed a little hair raising at times, it has nothing on WALKING in Italy!
Every day Maaike and I take our lives gingerly in our hands and cross a particularly scary street on the way to school. At one particular point, the footpath is only about ten centimetres wide, and for some reason the buses and cars all seem to wait until we get to that point before roaring past. If there's a puddle, even better! The rear vision mirrors of the bus seem to miss our ears by only a few centimetres.
At the strisce pedonale (pedestrian stripes, zebra crossings) the cars beep you if you take too long, even when the little walking man is green. Be quick, be wary, and above all appear to be confident!
...
They have one and two cent pieces in Italy. God, I hate those little copper bastards.
...
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
idioms ecc
// ecc is Italian for etc
I thought I'd note on here a couple of idioms. They're cute and fun.
1) There's a saying in Italian : e una barba
It's a way of describing something that's boring, such as a book, a subject at school, a film etc. It means "it's a beard" and the idea of it is that it's so boring and takes so long to finish, that you grow a beard while trying to get through it.
Similarly, una barbone is "a bearded one", and it's their word for hobo.
Both seem appropriate, no?
2) costa un occhio della testa
In English we say it costs an arm and a leg, in Italian it's "it costs an eye from the head". I like that the translation from Italian to English rhymes with our own saying, and I like how evocative it is.
3) In bocca al lupo. Crepi il lupo!
Much the same way that we say "break a leg" to wish someone good luck, the Italians say "in the mouth of the wolf". How you respond is important - you must say crepi il lupo. The literal translation is "may the wolf die" but a more accurate translation is "to hell with the wolf". If you say thank you, you will spoil your good luck!
I thought I'd note on here a couple of idioms. They're cute and fun.
1) There's a saying in Italian : e una barba
It's a way of describing something that's boring, such as a book, a subject at school, a film etc. It means "it's a beard" and the idea of it is that it's so boring and takes so long to finish, that you grow a beard while trying to get through it.
Similarly, una barbone is "a bearded one", and it's their word for hobo.
Both seem appropriate, no?
2) costa un occhio della testa
In English we say it costs an arm and a leg, in Italian it's "it costs an eye from the head". I like that the translation from Italian to English rhymes with our own saying, and I like how evocative it is.
3) In bocca al lupo. Crepi il lupo!
Much the same way that we say "break a leg" to wish someone good luck, the Italians say "in the mouth of the wolf". How you respond is important - you must say crepi il lupo. The literal translation is "may the wolf die" but a more accurate translation is "to hell with the wolf". If you say thank you, you will spoil your good luck!
Monday, May 19, 2008
racconti nuovi
// new stories
I've been writing bits and pieces on my phone over the last few days in an attempt to get something on here, so that you know I'm still alive! The next few posts are the results. (There are also some new photos on flickr.)
Quick update on the Questura, I visited between the hours of 9 and 1 as directed. A lady there told me I had to return in two days, at EIGHT to collect a number. I did so, received a number, waited 4 hours and finally went in, to have my fingerprints taken (this had already been done at the other Questura, but hey, it's Italy) and now, finally, after advising the policeman on the cheapest domestic flights in Australia (he's going to visit a friend there soon) I am done! The other policeman there is married to a woman from, of all places, Mount Isa!!
So, finito! Finalmente!
I've been writing bits and pieces on my phone over the last few days in an attempt to get something on here, so that you know I'm still alive! The next few posts are the results. (There are also some new photos on flickr.)
Quick update on the Questura, I visited between the hours of 9 and 1 as directed. A lady there told me I had to return in two days, at EIGHT to collect a number. I did so, received a number, waited 4 hours and finally went in, to have my fingerprints taken (this had already been done at the other Questura, but hey, it's Italy) and now, finally, after advising the policeman on the cheapest domestic flights in Australia (he's going to visit a friend there soon) I am done! The other policeman there is married to a woman from, of all places, Mount Isa!!
So, finito! Finalmente!
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