Starting the third year of our "year in Italy:" favorite slang, Halloween, and more school

A day trip to Perugia, Seattle's sister city, to see
our friend Germano (center) one of the Seattle delegates

October marked the second anniversary of our temporary move to Italy, so we are now a month into our third year.  We just had our third Halloween in Italy, not that Halloween is a big day here, although today is a holiday for working folk because it is All Souls Day.  That always reminds  me of spending our day off school running in and out of the church to save souls from purgatory. The rule was that you could say a prescribed prayer and release a poor soul from suffering, but only one per visit, so we would sit in the pew closest to the side exit, rush through the prayer, then run out and come back in the front entrance (for some reason we thought it wouldn't count if we came back in the same door).  I saved thousands of souls during my 8 years in catholic grade school so my bets are hedged.  If it turns out that I am wrong and there is a heaven/purgatory/hell, there should be a lot of folks on my side since I saved them untold years of suffering.

But back to Halloween in Italy.  Even though it isn't really celebrated much here, there were decorations in some of the shops along Corso Italia, even a few jack o'lanterns in some windows on our block.  We saw 20 somethings in costume heading to a bar for appertivo and heard a lot of them returning from their celebrations around 3 a.m.  Some things are universal.

There are a couple of towns in Italy that make a bigger deal of Halloween. Cornaldo, a medieval walled town near Ancona in the le Marches area, calls itself the Italian capital of Halloween.  There is a festa di Halloween, also called the festa delle streghe (festival of witches) the last week of Halloween. According to their website:

Giochi e scherzi per bambini di tutte le età, virtual orror experiences, ritratti fotografici deliranti, torri delle trasformazioni, alchimie, taverne, dolcetti e scherzetti, notti di follia e delirio. C’è un granello di verità che si nasconde in ogni delirio. La Strega lo sa!

(games and tricks for children of all ages, a virtual horror experience, delusional portraits (not sure what those are), transformed towers, alchemy, taverns, sweets and tricks, nights of madness and delirium. There is a grain of truth hidden in every madness.  The witch knows!)

Triora in Liguria also claims to be the Halloween capital of Italy, with perhaps slightly more basis as it is famous for its witch trials during the inquisition. Triora features concerts "even lasting past midnight" along with decorations and games.

Stylish Italian trick or treaters

E

grocery stores and magazines
getting into the act with recipe ideas

We spent October taking Italian classes at a local Italian language school because we seem to have trouble retaining the rules of grammar and wanted a refresher.   I did realize that I have finally  mastered some common Italian expressions, not discussed at our Dante Alighieri classes, which was nice to discover.  These include: 

Che palle!  (what balls!)  Can't find a parking place?  Che palle!  The people behind you at the cinema keep talking?  Che palle!  Burned the toast.....

Che figata!  Che figo!(literally what a fig!  but means Cool!).  Don't swap an a for the o at the end or you will be making a vulgar reference to female anatomy.

Piove catinelle (it's raining sinks) is the equivalent of our 'raining cats and dogs'

Fa un freddo cane (it's dog cold) for 'it is really cold.'

Vestirsi a cipolla (to dress like an onion) means to wear layers because it is cold

Che schifo! (how icky or disgusting) and Mi fa cagare!  (literally, it makes me poop) Disgusting!

Fa senso!  really disgusting!  He cut his hand off and bled all over the floor!  Fa senso!  But, "There is dog do on my shoe? "  That is 'Che schifo!'

Magari!  means almost anything, but most often used for a sarcastic 'yeah, right' or a more hopeful, "I wish!"  "I hope" or "if only..."

Figurati!  Don't worry about it!  Can be sincere or a bit sarcastic.  "You broke my favorite dish, figurati!"

Dai!  The second person singular for "dare" (to give) but used constantly in the sense of "come on" or "tell me."  can also mean "stop it" as in,your husband is snitching your last bit of gelato?  "Dai!"

Meno male.  Literally, "less bad" but used in the sense of "thank god!"  Your son recovered from his accident?  "Meno male!"

Vai via!  "Go away" but not an especially polite way to say it--often used on the ubiquitous street vendors who want to sell you fazzoletti (kleenex) or umbrellas. And along the same lines, basta!  (enough), although basta isn't necessarily rude. At the bar, for example, you might say, '2 beers and a pizza, basta,' so they know you are done with your order.  But "basta!" shouted out the window at noisy neighbors means, shut up!

and finally, "E successo un 48" (a 48 happened), which I haven't heard much, but I like it because it is so odd.  It means, chaos ensued, or "un casino vero" as in this context casino means confusion, disorder.  Casino also means brothel, so this is another word to be careful with.

 Pictures from optional class trip to nearby Poppi, on the piazza with castle in back (above) and inside the castle (right)

class photo, last class of the month.  left to right:  Vera, (Brasil),  Nashia,(Kuwait)
( Bernadetta (student teacher) Claudio (teacher--even cuter in real life),
Hannah (California), Nancy, Tom, Thomas (Switzerland), and Manuela (Portugal)

Four hours of class and a couple of hours of studying everyday did improve our language skills but by the end of the month we were more than ready for our trip to Puglia.  We leave tomorrow for a 3 week tour starting in Bari, then to Matera, Cesternino,  Alberobello (trulli country),and  many small towns along the way, ending up in Brindisi for the flight back.  Four days later, home to Seattle for the holidays, beginning with il giorno di ringraziamento.  Arrividerci Arezzo, salute Seattle!  

Umbria Jazz Festival 2015 with Paolo Conte and Lady GaGa AND the Italian Super Bowl in Milano

Another catch up post on our two trips to the Umbrian Jazz Festival in Perugia. It is just an hour train ride to Perugia, but the concerts ended at 11:30 so we couldn't get a train back and stayed overnight in Perugia, which allowed us to hear some late night jazz on the free concert stage and to attempt to eat at our favorite Perugia  restaurant, Ubu Re (they were excited to see us and we were chatting for about 10 minutes with the waitress/co-owner when suddenly her husband, the cook, suffered a detached retina and had to rush to the hospital!  We were the only guests, so they apologized profusely and closed the restaurant.  Fortunately he has recovered and is back at work.)

Paolo Conte is a former bankruptcy attorney turned jazz singer/songwriter and is hugely popular in Italy.  The crowd at that concert was mostly 50+ year old Italians (except for the dour German couple seated next to us who smoked the whole time and complained that he didn't sing any songs in English or German!)  Paolo Conte is 78 and going strong, he did a 90 minute set without any breaks.  His big hit in Italy (and used in a commercial in the U.S.) is "Via Con Me" (Come with me). He brought the house down with that song.  Here is a link to a You Tube ricording of Paolo Conte singing Via Con Me with Fred & Ginger dancing, it works surprisingly well:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0o_rGhcBgME  (just copy and paste into your browser).

Paolo Conte singing Via Con Me

Lady GaGa and Tony Bennett the following week attracted a different crowd--an average age of around 30, with lots of teens and 20 somethings, despite the high cost of the tickets (105 euros for the cheapest seats).  I wondered if the teens knew this would be a jazz performance, but they seemed to know the song she recorded with Bennett and burst into applause every time she appeared in a new costume--there were at least a dozen costume changes for her, Tony managed to make it through in the same dinner jacket.

Singing La Vie en Rose

Encore of The Lady is a Tramp

As if the jazz festival wasn't excitement enough, we also went to the Italian Super Bowl--yes, Italy has american football. We saw both the semi-final and the final game at the bicycle stadium in Milan, where there was also an "American Festival" for the Fourth of July.  The American Festival seemed to be a mechanical bull and hamburgers, plus Coors beer.  We opted for Moretti, an italian brand.  The teams were tiny compared to US teams, and the age range for one team was from 17 to 50!  All but 2 of the players were Italian, one team (the winners) had an American quarterback and American receiver.  Surprisingly, the kicking game was horrible--I had expected that kicking would be decent given they probably all grew up playing soccer.  But no, the kickers were so bad both teams always went for it on fourth down and nobody made a field goal.  Still, it was fun to watch football (American) in Italy, and the burgers weren't bad.  Plus. they had a female ref which I liked.  She was apparently was the first female to be a ref in the NBA and was imported for the game.  We sat next to a couple of Milanese who had never seen a game so we had an opportunity to practice speaking Italian while explaining the game.  All of the football terms are in English (kickoff, first down, touchdown, etc.), which made it easy.  Now we can say we have been to a superbowl game.

only about 150-200 people in the stands, we were the only Americans as far
as we could tell

halftime show, one singer and the middle-high school age cheerleaders

Viva il football americano!

Calendimaggio di Assisi, an ancient small town festa with games, singing, and a queen of the May

Although we lived in Perugia for three months, 20 minutes from Assisi, and years earlier had spent a month touring Umbria, we had never been to Assisi, probably a reaction on my part to too many years of hearing the  nuns talk about St. Francis.  After  hearing  many rave reviews from friends, we dedided that Calendimaggio di Assisi was a good reason to make the trip.  Calendimaggio is a four day competition/festa that has been going on since medieval times, pitting "Parte di sopra" against "Parte di Sotto,"  the hill town against the valley dwellers below.  The origins of the festival have been "lost in the annals of time" according to the official website, but it is basically a celebration of the return of la primavera, spring.  The festa includes competitions of strength, singing competitions, and a lot of ceremonial processions in medieval costume, with many princesses and attendants , kings and queens, and pretty much everybody interested in dressing up, parading through the street to the piazza along with their courtiers and drum and bugle corps.  Parte di Sotto won for the third time in a row this year, meaning their princess was crownded queen of the may.

Marching into the piazza.  Both teams had their own drum
and bugle corps

The royal court processes to piazza 

The royal court for parte di sopra

Childrens band for Parte di Sotto

Even the horses (and kids)
dress up!

marching into the piazza

There was dancing in the streets

One of the 'feats of strength" involved men in tights pulling sledges

Unfortunately we could not stay for the crowning of the queen on the fourth day as we needed to head to Florence to meet a friend coming for a Tuscany tour, but we did have time to explore the town as well as attend the festa.  Assisi is, as reported by many, a beautiful little medieval town and, offseason, it wasn't too filled with tourists.  In fact, if you want to see a traditional festival but don't want to brave the crowds at the Palio in Sienna, Candlemaggio is an excellent choice.  No problem getting seats in the stands, mostly Italians watching the event and cheering on their team, and 4 euro porchetta and birra at the team canteen.  Perfetto!

Lots of narrow streets to explore

A view of the umbrian hills

Of course, the cathedral which is truly magnificent

If you are planning a tour of Umbria, include Assisi on your itinerary (unless it is July or August, the locals said you can't walk down the streets then because there are so many tourists).  I am proof that even an atheist can appreciate the home of San Francesco.

A week with friends in Lago di Garda and Chioggia

September is a great time to visit Lago di Garda--thanks Gaby, Gunter and Gerda for letting us share your vacation at the lake!  While there were still lots of tourists, it was about half the crowd they get in July and August according to the locals.  The weather was perfect, warm (25-28 degrees) but not too hot.  We had a small studio apartment with a great view of the lake from our balcony, a pool with an adjacent bar, and a tiny rocky beach right across the street, a great bargain at only 65 euros a night!

We stayed in Torri del Benaco (Benaco is another name for Lago di Garda), a charming small town, packed with restaurants, bars, buskers, and lounge acts, and even joined in with a group of Dutch tourists singing an Elvis tune.  It was strange to hear more German and Dutch than Italian, and to be addressed in German by the hotel and restaurant staff.  We  got a great response when we answered in Italian, however, and even scored some perks (like a reduced price on a recommended wine at the local store).

typical windowboxes (above)

at dinner our first night in Torri

Gabi relaxing by the pool with a
cappucino--AFTER 11 am!!!

We toured the lake by car, checking out different  towns and scenery which is quite different at the north and south ends of the lake.

windsurfers at the north end of the lake

Tom admires the view from the panoramic parking lot

A ferry trip to Sirmione was one of the highlights, although unfortunately I failed to check the schedule to see if the castle was open--it wasn't.  However, we saw the outside of the castle and walked all through the town for an afternoon, stopping for cold beverages as needed, of course.

Gunter waves to his public (left)
'art installation' on beach at Sirmione (above)

Apertivi time!

 

Views of the castle at Sirmioine

Remains of what is believed to be a house and baths owned by Catullus (above)

We also visited a market in a nearby town one morning, where they were selling everything from ducks, turkeys, and chicken, to salami, to clothing.  Gabi wanted to buy a duck and set it free on the lake but the duck sellers had gone by the time we got back to their stand.

Entry to market left
Gabi demonstrates how to eat calamari (above)

 

sunset from the ferry

After enjoying Lago di Garda we headed back to Chioggia, our first home in Italy, to visit our friend Franca and got a bonus surprise as her daughter Luisa was also there. They posed for pictures on the beach after a delicious fish lunch.

Franca and Luisa

Tom and Susie

Back to Arezzo to stay for awhile, until we head to Seattle for the holiday season and a visit with Kelly.  October will be spent in an intensive Italian course here in Arezzo as we are rapidly forgetting what little grammar we managed to learn in Perugia.  Ci vediamo in Settembre!