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Castelli Romani: The “Castles” of Rome

Guides, Italy, Where I've Been No Responses »

Jul 052012

I don’t know how to begin– I don’t know how to describe my feelings clearly– I also don’t know how to end. I will treat this dedication to the Castelli Romani like a toast at a wedding: awkward, but hopefully the meaning is understood in the end.

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for every one

The communes surrounding Rome are home to the most generous people in the entire world. I have spent the past 4 weeks eating food so good I have no words to articulate the taste, having my haircut for free because I was told cutting a visitor’s hair was a pleasure, learning new Italian words from children, eating Cheetos with a fork and knife to make monolingual Italian speakers laugh, being taken to countless breathtaking and awe-inspiring panoramas, and feeling guilty for offending others by NOT staying in their homes.

I have cried like an asshole when separated from people that I only met two weeks before. Yes, I know this often happens to people who are thrown together for a short amount of time, but I am also convinced that many of them will remain in my heart forever, and I know that I will do everything I can to see them again and again.

Grottaferrata: you have the most adorable children in the world. They are rambunctious, but it’s because they have personality. There are some artists in there, there are some future free-loving hippies. There are some accountants as well, I am sure. You also have some damn good Gelato. I think it’s a bit of a hidden gem. The jasmine flowers lining your streets made me dizzy with happiness every time I caught their aroma.

Frascati: ooooh Frascati. The views, the wine, the parks with toys that would certainly be outlawed in the United States (and that really shouldn’t be played on under the influence of alcohol). The old men playing classic Italian songs outside of Fraschetta’s without a desire for tips. Every moment was unforgettable. The 3 Euro water-bottles-filled-with-wine weren’t very tasty, but the 5 Euro glass bottles were better than good.

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Rocca di Papa: I didn’t spend much time visiting properly, but I did stare at you every night as I ate dinner and again from my balcony right before bed. My ears pop like crazy when I reach high altitudes, but I don’t mind it, and even if I did, I would ignore it just for you.

Rocca di Papa

Marino: I hereby promise that I will come back next October for the wine festival. Am I really talking about wine again? I want to drink wine out of a public fountain, thank you very much. I hope you understand why I can’t come this year. Thanks for the football game, it was great.

Ariccia: I’m sorry I didn’t fall in love at first, but I wasn’t over the Grottaferrata thing yet. The views are great, but the stupid nets on the bridge kept getting in the way of my photos. I don’t know why anyone ever wanted to commit suicide while in such a beautiful place. Thank you for Porchetta, and for just existing in general.

Ariccia

Genzano di Roma: you have some really well-behaved kids who speak phenomenal English. I hate to tell you that this means they will probably all leave when they are old enough to do so. Nevertheless, I had fun watching the final game of the Euro Cup in your streets, and I will always treasure the orphaned Italian flag I found (someone must have been really mad that their country lost).

Lanuvio: There are some really embarrassing videos of me singing on stage during your music festival floating around. Thanks for putting up with that, and for cheering “brava!” and “encore!” despite how terrible myself and my friends sounded. Over 93% of you were breathtakingly gorgeous. I want to rename you “Hottie Town Italia”, but I probably don’t have that authority.

I have been beaten into submission. I have learned to kiss both cheeks as a greeting rather than go in for a hug. I know now that visiting Rome is not enough; you have truly missed out if you skip the Castelli.

Small Town America, USA: Stoughton, Wi and Syttende Mai

Wisconsin No Responses »

May 202012

A Southerner (or probably a flat-out East Coaster) moving to the Midwest is faced with many subtle cultural differences, but when said Southerner (or ECer) moves to a large city in the Midwest, the differences are not always as pronounced: grocery stores don’t sell pimento cheese, no biscuits sold at Hardee’s after 10AM, no one understands that “did you get up with (insert name)?” means on the phone, ya’ll is “cute”. All things that could be considered minor oddities, many of which can be solved in your own kitchen or by laughing off the differences.

This weekend, I had the pleasure of visiting small town Wisconsin at its finest: Stoughton, Wisconsin, population 12,611, with native Stoughtoner and my co-worker and friend Lucas as my guide.

What makes Stoughton so special besides the fact that its downtown seems to be thriving? Not to spoil the answer to this rhetorical question that I intend to answer eventually, but really, despite there being a festival, nary a store window had a “for lease” sign. In such a small town, every building was occupied with book stores, cafes, bars, restaurants, a movie theater, children’s stores, a cheese store– it was impressive!

Our reason for venturing to Stoughton was to check out its Syttende Mai festival. Syttende Mai is the Norwegian Constitution Day, and Stoughton has something uncommon to most small towns I have visited in the colonially-muddled cities of the East Coast (from which I am proud to come, we have our own history, don’t get me wrong!): a strong Norwegian heritage in almost every single resident.

Velkommen til Stoughton! We all practically speak Norwegian. Really! Some do!

Check out that mural over their river! In my hometown, I think we are all British. If we do stuff like that, we just put it in some old English script, or what we think is how the English colonists spelled things. But then that’s even weird. And some of us are a little German, French, or other heritage, but even my German ancestor fought in the Civil War. Been here a long time, we have.

The first thing we saw was the “Sonner Av Norge” house, which seemed to be something like a Moose Lodge but for Norwegian-heritage Stoughtonites.

We continued to walk down the main street, where we stopped and ate a ton of delicious, deep-fried cheese curds. Notice that the word cheese curds is a different color; it is a link. Cheese curds are hard to explain, please read if you are curious!

With Lucas as our guide, we made our way to the middle school where the Norwegian dancers (this is a club you can join if you go to high school in Stoughton) were performing traditional dance. It was really neat, but I couldn’t get a good picture. This is the only photo I stole from online, and I got it here.

At some point, we wandered into the “Nordic Nook”, a local store for Scandinavian gifts and apparel. This was not thrown up for the festival, this store is here year-round. You can buy all the Uff Da stuff you ever wanted here. Uff Da means, roughly, “ahhh”, or “overwhelming!”. It is of Norwegian origin and is used frequently by Wisconsinites of Norwegian heritage.

After watching the dancers for a bit, we made our way back down Main Street, where we again saw several women rushing by in traditional Norwegian outfits. I became determined to get my photo taken with one, but was at the same time terrified of asking. As we neared Lucas’ car, I ducked into the Sonner av Norge house to see if I could find a nice lady who would be in a photo. To my surprise, the one nice lady led me to two more, and a man even, and they all started speaking to each other in NORWEGIAN, which turned this quaint heritage festival into a “WAIT– this is recent, you guys are from Norway!! You guys speak Norwegian!!” at which point I told them in my slow, terribly pronounced, 2nd semester Swedish that I spoke a bit of, well, Swedish.

Turns out that many of the elderly folk in Stoughton were born in Norway, and reared their children speaking Norwegian. The older woman in the picture with me fits that bill. The rest of them flew over from Norway the Saturday before to visit their now-American relatives and participate in the festival. Who coulda known?

Ireland will live up to all expectations.

Where I've Been No Responses »

May 142012

If you ever work for an American company while living abroad, you will find yourself fearing the apocalypse on those mornings that you wake up not knowing it is a holiday in your country of residence. You still have to work, of course, but the streets will be empty as you walk to your tram/bus/metro stop. No lights will be on, businesses will be boarded up. No chocolate croissant for you this morning. The realization that it is a holiday will kick in: you will realize you should have checked the tram/bus/metro schedule, as it won’t be running at its usual times today. You’ll have a pretty good feeling it’s just a holiday, but you’ll keep checking over your shoulder for zombies, protesters, or the coming lord.

The plus side, of course, is that you get arbitrary American holidays off when everyone else in your country of residence has to work. One of those holidays is MLK day. You can then book a nice 3- or 4-day vacation while everyone else is sitting at their desks, and so we did, a few friends and I, and merrily flew to Ireland to take in its beauty despite the bitter and wet cold.

Like any good travelers arriving late, we stopped in a bar after settling into our (very green) hostel and had a Guinness.

Our hostel was somewhere behind here... where I'm pointing or something.

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The next day, we visited the Christ Church Cathedral and the Trinity College campus, all of which were beautiful but as it was raining and we were shuttling around in the cold, I didn’t get many good photos. What I did manage to capture, however, was the Brewbaker Cafe, where you can probably get the best coffee in Dublin:

My friend Jon and I insisted that we go see Oscar Wilde’s statue, and that we did.

Let’s stop and think about what a wonderful fella this guy is. If you aren’t sure, read his Wikipedia page and then check out a copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray from your local library. Then we can reconvene later.

We ventured, did some shopping, drank far too much Guinness, and sat along the river. We danced at the Temple Bar, we danced at Whelan’s, and we drunkenly ate cheeseburgers. We then walked home and stumbled upon a Tower Records, which I worked at in Virginia up until its sad, sad demise in 2006.

RIP. Glad to see some success remains.

Although Ireland is fun for drinking and dancing, what often comes to mind when you think of Ireland is rolling hills in vibrant shades of green with grazing sheep and nestled stone buildings. Or rocky cliffs jutting out into the ocean. Am I right?

We rented a car and drove up to Northern Ireland, had a pit stop in Belfast, and made our way to our ultimate destination: Giant’s Causeway. This is my attempt at showing you how breathtaking it was, but photos do no justice:

They say the Irish are a friendly bunch, and this expectation is also filled. A friendly, middle-aged Irish woman approached us with a thermos filled with hot chocolate. She distributed mugs of it and gave us each a tea biscuit. Where did she come from? What did she want? I have no idea because the light-headed feeling I got in my head, the endorphins that make your brain feel all fuzzy, completely took over. Actually, she might have explained herself, but it’s been a while. I should have kept a journal. The endorphin thing did happen though.

I also made one of those crappy videos you always make when you go on vacation. You hope it’s going to capture the beauty and excitement, but you can’t fit it all into the frame. I’ll share it with you anyway (make sure your volume isn’t up too high– it was windy and I don’t want to kill your precious ears):

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