Labyrinth

Spring is glorious in Tuscany, with blue iris and red poppies dotting the luscious green landscape,  thyme's pale lavender blossoms in the garden, and wisteria's purple pendulums swaying over the pergola.  I renewed my crush on the country this spring. 

Like most crushes, reality is different from the rosy way we see things at first. My crush came face-to-face with reality when I tried to pay our trash bill. That should have been easy enough, right?  

Instead, I experienced a combination of what could have inspired Fellini films, Dante's Inferno and Joseph Heller's Catch-22.  Come with me on this labyrinth journey:

1.  Before leaving for Italy I had received an email saying we had a trash bill at the local Comune (town hall).  It was agreed that I would take care of it when I arrived in early May.  

2.  I went to the Comune to pick up the bills from a vivacious blond I had not met before. She leapt from her desk, hugged me, and told me she had seen me on Facebook and wanted to be my friend. 

3.  She presented four years (!) of trash bills with explanations that were too complex for my Italian to understand. She assured me she could also speak French.  That didn't help me.  I explained I would bring an English-speaking Italian friend to translate so there would be no misunderstandings.  She reminded me that I had to pay by Thursday or there would be an interest charge. She also reminded me to friend her on Facebook.

4.  My English-speaking friend agreed to meet me at the Comune the next day to wade through the complexities. "Of course you don't understand, Christina. Italians don't understand, either,"  she said reassuringly.  We set an appointment for 9:30 am with the blond at the Comune.

5.  We arrived at the Comune at 9:30 am on the dot. The entrance was guarded by a young man who told us we could not go upstairs until 10 am. We told him we had an appointment  at 9:30 am. He told us he could not let us in until 10 am because that was the rule.  We gave up and went next door for a cappuccino.

6.  At 10 am, we were permitted upstairs at the Comune to meet the blond for our 9:30 appointment. She kissed me hardily on both cheeks and thanked me for friending her on Facebook. She asked if I had seen her comments. I told her I had. We agreed that she would write to me in English and I would write to her in Italian.

7.  The three of us proceeded to discuss IMU taxes, garbage charges, how far the trash cans are from our house, the commercialista to whom we pay various taxes, and other things that are basically incomprehensible to foreigners and, it turns out, Italians alike. I wanted to know why we had not received notice of these bills before. I was told they had been mailed out. To whom and where, I asked, not unreasonably. "No one knows," was the answer.

8.  Okay, just let me pay the bills, I said. After more discussion, in which we touched upon the fresh smell of my cologne, it was determined I could transfer payment from our bank to the Comune's.  My friend and I said farewell to the blond with more heartfelt embraces and reminders to write to her on Facebook. We made our way to the bank to resolve the matter once and for all.

9.  The bespectacled, round-faced bank cashier, who was unsmiling but accommodating, told us that since we are foreign residents, there would be a big transfer fee. It would be better, he said, to take the cash and pay it at the post office, where many Italian bills are paid. We agreed. Sounds easy, right?

10. The cashier discovered that our account was bloccato (blocked) because we had not yet signed the new anti-Mafia banking laws. Okay, let me sign it. No,  I could not sign it in our village because our account had been opened at another branch in a nearby town.  Note: they are branches of the same bank.

11. The cashier told me I should transfer our account to the local branch.  Note:  I asked to do this a year ago and was told it was not necessary because they are branches of the same bank.

12. My friend and I agreed to meet the next morning at the branch in the nearby town at 9:30 am to talk to the bank manager there. 

13. The branch bank manager was young, friendly, and rocking a  Buddy Holly look with a high pompadour and horn-rimmed glasses.  He was knowledgeable and accommodating.  He said we could easily transfer the funds from our account to that of the Comune for a tiny fee.  He said he would inform the cashier in our village that even though we are foreign residents, the transfer was within Italy so the fee was low. He told us the cashier didn't know these things because we are his only foreign clients.

14. When he found out to which bank we were making the transfer, he paused dramatically.  His pompadour stood more erect.  He would not recommend doing it.  Why?  Because it was not a "precise" bank. He worried that if we transferred the money we would not be fully credited with paying our bill.  He suggested we take the money from our account and pay at the post office, where we would receive receipts of payment.

15.  I signed the anti-Mafia document and our account was unblocked. Buddy Holly gave me the money and my friend and I walked to the local post office and paid the bill.

It took fifteen steps and three days, but our trash bill was finally current.

In retrospect, this incident is amusing.  It is the kind of story that charms foreigners who are there because they love the country but live most of their lives someplace else. Frances Mayes wrote often of such encounters in Under the Tuscan Sun.

Our Italian friends say this experience is the norm of life in Italy.  There are a few rules and regulations that can be creatively circumvented, but sometimes there is no way out of the labyrinth. You have to follow the rules, and hope the person enforcing them knows what s/he is doing.

Then let go of the frustration and go out and partake of all the things about the country you still cherish. Like the people you love, there are flaws but nothing you can't overlook because the pros outweigh the cons.

The Ambassador Scramble

It's the beginning of a new administration, which means there are a lot of people scrambling to secure an ambassadorial post. We were once one of them, so I can give you a firsthand account of how it plays out.

Ambassadors are chosen from three categories: 1) Foreign Service officers who are trained to represent the United States all over the world and hope to eventually be promoted to ambassadorial rank; 2) People who have raised big bucks for the president; and 3) Those who have worked on campaigns, in government, or other institutions relevant to the country or post they hope to be assigned to.

We fell into category three.

Many plum posts, like France, Italy, Great Britain, China, much to the rightful chagrin of highly trained Foreign Service officers, almost always go to the big bucks people. In all cases, though, the number two positions in the embassies are filled by Foreign Service officers. They guide the newly appointed ambassador and try to make sure he or she avoids a serious faux pas.  They usually, but not always, succeed.

If you are a contender for a post, the scramble to secure a position goes like this:

1. You will be asked for a list of what you want. This is not like applying for college where you have a "reach" and a "safety." They are all reaches. The competition is fierce. For example, I am told reliably that today in Los Angeles alone there are seventeen people who think they are entitled to an ambassadorial post.

2. You need to know someone in a position of power to send your name and choices to the State Department.

3. You will wait to hear something. And wait some more.  In the meantime, mysterious people will be vetting you. Make sure you paid your nanny's social security. Divest of anything that might be considered a conflict of interest. Hope that you have made no enemies in the State Department who are in a position to derail you.

4. If you are lucky, you will hear that your name and position have been cleared out of the State Department and sent to the White House.

5. You might wait for an interminable amount of time. Someone in White House personnel, whose name you will forget three months later, will become  the most important person in your world. Hope that you have no enemies in the WH who can derail you.

6. There will be moments when it looks like the whole thing is going down the drain. We were on track for a multilateral position in Vienna until we received a fateful call from our best friend in White House personnel. Things could go sideways for us. Why? Because "The Sound of Music" had just been shown on network TV, leading to "a new surge of interest in Austria."

I kid you not.

7. If you survive a serious threat like that, your name will clear the White House and be sent to the Senate for confirmation.

8. You will wait to be scheduled for a confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And wait some more.

9. Your hearing will take place. Hope that you have not made any enemies in the Senate who are in a position to derail you.

10. The Senate will vote to confirm you as ambassador. You breathe a sigh of relief.

What comes next is "ambassador school." More on that next time.

Arrivederci London

Tomorrow, after nineteen years abroad, twelve of them in London, we are going back home. We are excited about a new beginning and being physically close to our families and good friends, but endings are bittersweet. You look around at everything you took for granted and wonder if it is the last time you will ever see this or that, him or her.

Our years in London have been mostly enjoyable, but it has not been an easy relationship for me (see "A Foggy Decade," March 10, 2010). I know I will look back on our time here with fondness, though. We have been extraordinarily lucky to have lived in this vibrant city for so long.

Every day now people ask me, "What will you miss about London?" I should say I will miss the fabulous museums, venerable galleries, and access to wonderful theater. That's true, but they are not the first things that come to mind. These things do, one for every year, in no particular order:

1.  Black cabs and drivers who know where they are going.

2.  Being able to walk everywhere on streets full of imposing buildings in a city steeped in history. We haven't owned a car for 12 years.
     
3.  Marylebone High Street, which has everything you need on it.

4.   Frequent visits from our friend Simon via Eurostar from Brussels.
   
5.  Alyson, Jami, Justin and Marcy.
    
6.  British pageantry.

7.  Wonderful architecture and beautiful parks, especially Regent's Park. 

8.  Easy access to other European countries.
   
9.  Everyman Cinema on Baker Street. How many cinemas serve cappuccino, fresh cakes and wine as well as popcorn and Coca Cola in small glass bottles?

     
10. Waitrose grocery stores, the food hall at Marks and Spencer's on Oxford Street, and Boots pharmacy.

       

11. Hatchards and Daunt book stores.

12. Orange cake at the Orangerie on the grounds of Kensington Palace.

I have not had a great love affair with London or the UK, it's true. I have that with Italy, and I'm a one-country woman (though I've had a few flings with some cities). 

But London and I have had some good times together. My feelings about it are best summed up with the lyrics from an Emmylou Harris song: "No, it's not love, but it's not bad."

Down the Chimney

It is olive-harvesting time in Tuscany, so we arrived at our place yesterday to observe the pickers and the pressing of new oil.  We like to come here at this time of year. The foliage is red and gold, the days are crisp, and the are nights cold, perfect for building a fire in the camino (chimney).

Anticipating that cozy picture, we began to prepare the hearth. We have learned the hard way to make sure the canna fumaria (flue) is open before lighting the kindling. Haven't we all experienced the moment, as smoke begins to form layers in the room and are eyes start to sting, when we realize the flue is still closed?

This flue usually opens easily by releasing a chain attached to the wall. We pulled. Nothing happened. We tugged. No movement. We jiggled the chain. Nada. I said if we worked on it we could surely coax the thing to open. Then we noticed a small pile of dirt at the back of the hearth. Were our eyes playing tricks or was that pile of dirt moving?

I've posted before about the learning curve of city people like us having to deal with creatures encountered in the country (wild boars, snakes). We are used to the occasional sound of pine martens on the tile roof at night, when it seems like a roomful of furniture is being  moved above our heads. We recognize pheasants strolling along the road. I used to scream upon sight of a tiny bat outside in the twilight hours, but once assured they were not vampires, I now barely notice them.  We were not prepared, however, for what we discovered in the hearth.

NOTE:  If you are squeamish you should skip over the next part.

Our eyes were not playing tricks. The little collection of dirt was teeming with tiny white larvae.  You could call them larvae if want to shield yourself from the truth, but I think they were, dare I say it aloud? Maggots. The larvae of flies.  John was stoic. I screamed. Then gagged.

We shoveled them into a heavy plastic bag, sealed it and took it outside. Then we sprayed the hearth and sealed it off. I sent an emergency text to Ivo, our savior who looks after the property.

If anyone tells you that Italian workers are unreliable about showing up or repairing things, let us talk to them. Ivo arrived bright and early this morning with a team of workers who are coincidentally constructing a new fence for us. All of their energies were focused, however, on the stuck chimney flue and why there had been live larvae in our hearth.

Since we had not built a fire in the hearth for one year, they surmised that a dead bird may have been trapped in the chimney. Thus the larvae. They also thought there might be a nest on top of the flue.  They did not find any dead animals, but they did find a nest as big as a briefcase. Calabroni (hornets). Huge ones.

They sprayed it with insecticide and then used the flexible chimney equivalent of a roto-rooter that pushed the nest down the chimney. Fortunately, the hearth was well-sealed in plastic because in releasing the nest, they also released hundreds of gassed hornets, all trying to get out. We watched in horrified fascination. Eventually they all died.

The workers cleaned up the mess and went back to building the fence.

We built a fire and speculated that if we had persisted in our efforts to open the flue last night, we might   not have lived to tell the story. We learned that if one hornet is attacked, it emits a chemical that signals to all the others in the nest to attack. While we might have survived the bite of a few hornets, the swarms that would have descended on us might have been too much to survive.

We're looking it as just another chapter in our never-ending country education.

The Pasta Dilemma

The person who started the Farmer's Markets in London was a young American woman, Nina Planck. She is also a friend of ours who now lives in New York City with her cheesemonger husband (Murray's Cheese), and three children.

Several years ago, as a single woman working for the American ambassador to Great Britain, Nina, a farmer's daughter, was appalled by the quality of produce she found in London supermarkets. Ever pro-active, she got together with local farmers and put together the thriving and extremely popular Farmer's Markets that are dotted around London on weekends.

Our local market in Marylebone is packed on Sunday mornings with shoppers looking for fresh eggs, pork, chicken, vegetables, jams, plants, flowers, pies, cakes, cheese, butter. We try to get there early or things sell out.

Nina's philosophy on food is to eat locally, know the source of your food, and eat things in season. She is a passionate believer in eating traditional foods like beef, butter and eggs, cheese, and raw milk. Her two meticulously researched and well-reviewed books, Real Food and Real Food for Mother and Baby, explain why those foods are good for us while debunking the myths surrounding them. We actually need fats, she writes, as long as they are the right kinds of fat.

We met Nina seventeen years ago when she arrived on our doorstep in Vienna, a visit arranged by a mutual friend. At that time she was a vegetarian and consumed large quantities of homemade bread (I was on a bread making kick). She ran every morning and was a pleasant guest in what was then a houseful of guests.  She describes herself as overweight during that period but I can assure you she was not.

Vegetarianism didn't work for her. She says she felt moody, out-of-sorts, and was often ill. That was the beginning of her search for healthier eating. Now, all these years later, and as an avowed meat and dairy eater, she is a lean, fit, lovely woman with energy that makes me sleepy to write about.

So where am I going with this?  Nina is not a fan of carbs. As in baguettes. As in warm, fragrant homemade loaves. As in crispy French fries and creamy mashed potatoes. As in, dare I say it, the world's most popular food, the ultimate comfort dish, the delectable and versatile pasta.

Though Nina does not push her ideas for eating on her friends, I once gave her then year old son Julian a piece of wholewheat bread to chew on. Out of my sight (or thought she was), Nina snatched it from him and threw it out.

I am mindful of Nina's guidelines for real food, but pasta is off her table and we live a part of the year in Italy. No matter where we are,  pasta is my default answer to "what's for dinner?" Nina's three kids have their own ideas about what they want to eat now, so I asked if she ever fed them pasta, the perennial kids favorite. Did she eat it herself? Had she grown up eating it?

She answered, "I never eat the stuff, but ate plenty as a child and feed my children plenty. They also get brown rice. My mother made lots, always white as I recall (red sauce, and mac and cheese, and tuna in white sauce!), though she was a whole wheat fiend for bread, cookies, etc. I believe she stopped making pasta completely when we left.

"Young children need not merely fat and protein but plenty of carbs so they don't spend all their energy just to move around and stay warm; the carbs spare the protein and fat for growth and development.

"Good bread serves a similar purpose in our house (e.g., morning toast and 'dessert' after meals).

"As for whole wheat pasta, it is now so much better than it was that I make it 8/10 times; white is now a treat." 

We are not children and probably don't need as many carbs, but if whole wheat pasta is better for us, there is a middle ground solution to the pasta dilemma. Serve whole wheat when it works with the sauce, and save the white for things like fettucine alfredo, lasagna, spaghetti carbonara, linguine alle vongole, fettucine al limone.

No matter how I serve it, I like to remind myself of Sophia Loren's line, "All you see I owe to spaghetti."

A Snake in the Pool

In my previous post, "Wild Boars Don't Jump," (8/15/12), I mentioned that having a place in the Tuscan countryside forces us to become familiar with creatures not on our radar screen as city dwellers. Boars, which ruined our grass on an almost nightly basis, are now kept out by a fence. Our lawn looks better, but that has consequences. The countryside has snakes. Boars eat snakes. If boars are kept out, a snake or two can slither in.

I'm guessing many of you reacted to the last sentence the way any sane person would: a muffled scream, a serious shudder, and an involuntary lifting of your feet. Me too.

We have had our home here for sixteen years, and have been visiting friends nearby for much longer than that, but we have never personally encountered a snake until this year.

I was sitting on the terrace swing, thinking deep summer thoughts like, should I paint my toenails a more vibrant, Italian color?, when Alyssa came screaming up the hill,

"Mom! Mom! There's a snake in the pool!"

I was cool under stress. "Just catch it in the skimmer net and toss it as far as you can down the hill."

She bravely did so. The problem dealt with, we both lost our superficial calm and began to imagine what might have happened. Okay, we aren't talking about a King Cobra here, but you get the picture. She described it as nine inches long, black with yellow markings, and a round head. We googled it. A harmless grass snake. But still.

Ivo, a Tuscan country man who works our property, confirmed our findings. The snake's round head was a clue to its benign nature. However, if we encountered one with an angular head, it was la vipera (a viper), whose bite was poisonous. He nonchalantly added that if bitten, we should tie off the area and go to the pronto soccorso (emergency room).  He drew us pictures of the two types of snake heads.

Seeing the looks of horror on our city faces, he explained that snakes are a part of the countryside and they do not attack. They are more afraid of us than we are of them. They are only dangerous when startled. He said we were in the middle of what was called a "Caligula" heat wave, and there had been no rain for six weeks, which had probably dried up snake water sources. 

After that, we carefully scanned the pool before jumping in. 

The heat wave continued with no sign of rain. Late in August John and I found a small dead snake on the parched ground. It had an angular head. We had been aware of a few human snakes wriggling through John's professional life for a few months and somehow the fate of that poisonous snake seemed like an appealing metaphor.

Wild Boars Don't Jump

We are city people so it seems strange to be writing about boar habits. When you are lucky enough to have a place in the Tuscan countryside, however, you have to learn about them. Bear with me for a brief boar lesson. I will try not to bore

you.

Wild boars, part of the pig family, are plentiful in this part of the world. In the fall, when hunting season begins, their numbers fall dramatically as the cacciatore (hunters) shoot them and take them home for dinner. Cinghiale (wild boar) is historically an important part of the Tuscan diet and remains so today. It shows up as sausage, salami, ragu sauce. How does it taste? Like pork, but gamier.

For several years we had a boar problem at our place. Never seen during the day, they used to invade our property at night. On occasion we thought we heard boar snorts outside our window. If accused of snoring, we had an alibi: "It wasn't me. It must have been a boar."

These creatures are geniuses at sniffing out food sources, and they dig ferociously for roots, tearing up the grass in the process. Ivo, who works the property, was tearing out his hair with frustration as he seeded and re-seeded the lawn. We had been opposed to a fence, but we finally relented. It was either that or lose Ivo.

He constructed a fence of almost-invisible wire around all the places a boar might enter. I asked him why he didn't bring it further up the hill, to include a ledge. "Cinghiali non saltare" (boars don't jump), he explained.

We have encountered a boar on a few occasions, always at night, and thankfully while in a car. It is dangerous to be between a mother boar and her offspring, so we were nervous when we saw a baby boar wandering on the dirt track leading to our place. Fortunately, it moved off the road before the mother could ram our Fiat Panda.

On another evening, as we drove down the winding road to the local village, a boar the size of a cow leapt in front of the car and appeared to JUMP up the hill on the other side of the road. Our daughter Alyssa called it the Famous Tuscan Jumping Boar. You haven't heard of it?

We haven't seen it since, but sometimes at night we think we hear a boar snort close to the house, inside the fence. 

Or maybe it is just someone snoring inside the house.