The 20th anniversary of my blog!

Two decades ago, I sought a method to log the ways Italy had seduced me, and the activities I pursued so that the language of Dante would remain impressed in my mind. And that's how this blog was born. Early posts were about Italian meals Mike had made, rides in the Alfa and wines we bought.

It has evolved over time to become a public diary of my thoughts, my achievements, my passions (often involving Italy or Italian, but not always) and my commitment to fluency in the form of blogposts in Italian, among other activities (movie reviews of Italian films and course endless ruminating about books, too!). Oh and a few mentions of the book-length translation I finally managed to publish (Did I mention it's called This Darkness Will Never End?!).

I'm going to commemorate the 20th anniversary with a series of posts. This is the first. And here I'm going to very simply revisit a few of the posts that have resonated the most with readers. I'd be thrilled if you read some of the posts, and I hope perhaps the blog inspires you to return to your own passions and hobbies with renewed vigor.

Posts I liked:

"Tiny Moments of Exquisite Beauty," or the travelogue from my 2025 visit to Italy: https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2025/08/tiny-moments-of-exquisite-beauty-in.html

*Praise for the film that convinced me to study Italian and changed my life: https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2024/03/an-oscar-winning-film-seen-on-whim.html

Posts readers liked:

*About my fears of how the pandemic could permanently re-shape my life: https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2021/05/what-ive-feared-about-post-pandemic-life.html

*On the reasons I need to hoard (or, my letter to Marie Kondo): https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2017/12/dear-marie-kondo.html

*On the reference to Angelina Jolie in Roberto Saviano's book, Gomorra (note, it's in ITALIAN): https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2008/06/gomorra-angelina-jolie.html

Posts about travel and the glorious Italian language:

*The time Leo learned how to curse in Italian: https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2022/08/italian-lessons.html

*What can you do with a mere 24 hours in Rome? Oh quite a bit

*When I want what I should not want (in Italy): https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-boarding-doors-are-closing-jeanne.html

*How can Milan be this beautiful? https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2020/07/from-archive-italian-diary-may-2017.html

Posts about Leo:

The joys of running -- even just short distances -- with Leo: https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2023/03/running-very-little-very-often.html

Leonardo from Atlanta (not Vinci): https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-little-artist-whose-mother-is.html

A Day in the Life of this American Man at Age 10 (Esquire article re-enactment): https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2023/07/a-day-in-life-of-this-american-man-at.html

Posts about books:

My all-time favorite books, essays and short stories: https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2024/07/literature-ive-loved-after-nyt-list.html

A book list for those looking to read the work of women Holocaust survivors: https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2024/01/women-holocaust-survivors-reading-list.html

My book log for the year I read Le otto montagne by Paolo Cognetti and many other outstanding works: https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2022/12/what-i-read-in-2022-what-i-plan-to-read.html

Women authors have often been overlooked in Italy (in ITALIAN): https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2017/06/dove-sono-finite-le-scrittrici-italiane.html

*

Thanks as always for reading my blog. 

The best gift anyone can give me is to care about Leo in some way. 

But the second best? Read my work.

-30-

Edith Bruck is alive and well!

During our trip to Italy, I was lucky to see many friends I'd known in Florence, but perhaps the most important meeting took place near the Spanish Steps in Rome.

It's the area where Edith Bruck lives -- "my author."

Indeed, Mike even arranged for us to stay near Piazza del Popolo during our visit to Rome so I would be able to to walk to Edith's apartment.

It was our third meeting; the first took place in 2018, shortly after I began translating, "Silvia," one of the signature stories in This Darkness Will Never End.

I spent three glorious hours with Edith this trip. Imagine if your 94-year-old grandmother was a famous writer. Over lunch, she reminisced, she complained, she repeated herself, she smoked! (those thin cigarettes -- the whole time). But she also told me about a story (novel?) she wants to write – but can’t because she’s lost most of her eyesight – and I wish she could write it. It’s called “La Caccia,” and it’s about two journalists who go looking for the last sopravvissuta.

Is that how she feels – like l’ultima sopravvissuta? The last survivor of the Holocaust?

(With only 220,000 survivors left worldwide, according to the Claims Conference, she may well feel that way).

She proudly told me she has a new book coming out this Fall! "L'Amica Tedesca."

She made some very interesting comments, including, “Quando scrivo in Italiano, una parola partorisce un’altra.”  That means: When I write in Italian, one word gives birth to another. She said it to explain that she can’t write now because she can’t see. And since she can’t see, she can’t put down one word and then see where it leads. She said she’s always done her writing by using yellow legal pads propped up on her tummy.

She and Olga (longtime assistant) were very kind and they both told stories about Papa Francesco in great detail. Truly one-of-a-kind to have a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust with such close knowledge of a Catholic Pope! Beautiful friendship. They showed me a special photo book from their visit to Casa Marta, where Pope Francis had lived, that the Vatican created for her (Editor's note: Pope Francis asked to meet Edith Bruck in 2021 to thank her for bearing witness to the Holocaust and to apologize for all the pain she'd suffered).

She told me she thinks about her parents every day -- 80 years after their brutal deaths in Auschwitz (mother) and Dachau (father). She even sang a lullaby in Hungarian that her father used to sing to her!

"Finché vivo, vivono loro ... nei miei libri, nel mio cuore."

As long as I'm alive, she told me, so are they -- in my books, in my heart.

And we spoke of the survivors who rarely if ever break their silence -- like her brother, who witnessed her father's death while they were in the concentration camp and told her what happened but tearfully begged her never to ask again. So she didn't. And she wonders, she told me, what were her father's last words? Was he asking about her? She'll never know.

If your grandmother was a famous writer ... I was spellbound! What a privilege it is to translate another person's words. I sat there combining all of my own identities -- journalist, translator, writer -- and grateful to have entered into a one-of-a-kind relationship with a writer like Edith.

Some of what I blogged about is so frivolous. My memento shrines! Whether the Crazy Drycleaner is still in business (in my old Florentine neighborhood). The barista who said 'Ri-buongiorno.' But this feels momentous.

Yes, there were happy moments, and sad moments during our visit. But mainly proud moments because we were celebrating the publication of "our" new book -- the translation of her first short story collection, This Darkness Will Never End, which has been a milestone for me, and a continuation of the flow of her works into English (three of which have now been published by Paul Dry Books in Philadelphia).

May it continue! I have translated most of her second short story collection, Two Empty Rooms, and even managed to publish an excerpt with Jewish Currents magazine.

My thanks to everyone who has supported this translation! (Including the National Endowment for the Arts). I've been touched by your gestures and interest -- a British colleague of mine at CNN Travel learned about the translation while we were chatting one day over Slack and ordered it from Amazon that day!

I'll continue to talk about the book in the Fall, including a visit to Otterbein College in Ohio where I'll be the guest speaker at a class on Holocaust literature. There will be some other stops, too, which I will detail on the blog and via social media.

The written word, the spoken word, the translated word -- a passport to a world of discovery, understanding and friendship.

-30-

Italy? Still stunning

Of all the ways I've aged, perhaps the one I like best is how easily I am satisfied at times. 

I've written before in this space about the 24 hours I spent in Rome a few years back, and how utterly wonderful they were, no matter the scant time I had to enjoy the Eternal City. Now I come again to say almost any amount of time I spend in Italy is a cure for a life-threatening disease I didn't know I had.

If you read nothing else, let me also say this: We arrived in Italy a week ago and as usual it is both breathtaking and familiar! How lucky can I be that Italy feels familiar? So very lucky indeed. Also: I don't consider myself one to have a bucket list but something that could top it for me? Biking on the ancient Appian Way in Rome.

Pinch me -- maybe my bike tire rolled over a cobblestone once tread on by Julius Caesar's chariot! (Because yes, there are sections of the road with the original cobblestones). You can visit some interesting ruins and of course the catacombs.

That's one of the special things we did in Rome. We also visited (again) the Borghese Gardens and saw the Ara Pacis for the first time. Perhaps most importantly, for me, I visited with "my author" Edith Bruck and she is well (for a 94-year-old woman). I spent three glorious hours with her! She has a new book coming out in the Fall, I am pleased to say. She is not very mobile but as long as she is near a pack of cigarettes, she's OK! (She smoked those tiny thin cigarettes my entire visit).

Also, for the record: Seeing SPQR on every manhole cover in Rome is still cool! (Also cool: knowing it means senatus populusque romanus; the Roman Senate and people)

Oh and you can buy a calendar that features the faces of fresh, young priests every month of the year!

We explored Piazza del Popolo and the area around it (including Via del Corso, site of the nightly passaggiata) quite a bit since we stayed on Via Flaminia, one block outside of the piazza (thus we had to pass through a gorgeous monumental gate each day to enter Piazza del Popolo). It was ground zero for all of the young people visiting Rome last week for the Jubilee youth summit, owing to the fact that one of the churches on the piazza is a pre-requisite for all pilgrims before heading to the Vatican.

Rome was hot, somewhat crowded and still the Eternal City.

Best food so far:

Extra large, extra doughy ciambella (Rome)

Crostini with rabbit ragu

Pinsa with mozzarella di bufala and pomodorini

Fiori di zucca fritti

Verdure fritte miste

My favorite chocolate bar: dark chocolate ('fondente') with whole hazelnuts

Best walks so far

-- Cross the bridge closest to Piazza del Popolo, walk along Tevere to the bridge by Piazza Navona, stumble into the piazza where the Pantheon is located, then Via della Scrofa, which becomes Via di Ripetta until you reach Piazza del Popolo (Rome)

-- Walk along Arno in the town of Onda (mountain town outside of Florence)

I’m in the mountains now – the mountains of Italy – and need I say, it is absolutely beautiful? We visited small, run-of-the-mill towns yesterday and my heart broke from the beauty. It was the Jeanne-small-town variety of beautiful: a rocky stream with multiple small waterfalls ran through the center of town and you could walk along the stream (the towns of Londa and Stia). You could stand on a bridge and look over at the stream, and ogle the buildings that line the stream (including, in Stia, a restaurant where we ate).

At one point, we walked through the town of Stia during lunch hour, and the sound of Italian radio filtered out of a door or a window, much to my delight!

We try to do something different each trip, and this trip we have chosen to stay a few nights at an agriturismo in the mountains east of Florence. Good decision! We have visited mountain towns before but I don’t recall our ever staying overnight at a farmhouse as we are now. So imagine you’re visiting Vermont but all the signage is in Italian, the quirky tavern keeper speaks Italian, the tourists you find at the secret swimming hole are Italian (or German – but of course). Oh and it's somewhat hot.

And then there’s a certain extremity to the matter – the roads we travel to reach this farmhouse are so narrow, no American could possibly consider them fit for two-way traffic. I have visited Vermont many times and probably there are a few roads like this but are the locals going 90 mph around each turn?

While right now I am using my laptop and I have been texting with Italian friends, I am largely offline, content to read my Natalia Ginzburg book (Tutti i nostri ieri) (I've tried to read this novel before but it never appealed to me as much as her other books) and articles in the copy of L’Espresso I bought in Rome.

Right now, as I write: One of the barnyard cats is meowing outside our kitchen window. The silence is so complete, it is loud!

So far in Italy: I have walked – run – swum – biked.

What else? Leo (known as "Leonardo" here) has begun to tease me while I’m talking on the phone here to Italian friends:

I say: “Si,si.” And then he says, “Si,si.”

I say: “Certo.” And then he says, “Certo.”

My mind is not totally 'bifurcated' yet between English and Italian but getting there. 

So to sum up: Italy is still marvelous! And hearing Italian is still marvelous. Wish you were here! Especially some of you -- and you know who you are.

-30-

Stepping Stones Reveal a Path into Italy's Dark History -- for PBS site

Writing stories culled from your travels is a dream assignment. I rarely get paid to do it! But in this case I did, and what's more, the topic is tied to the work I do as a literary translator.

For the PBS website, Next Avenue, I wrote about tiny public memorials to victims of the Holocaust and other targets of the Nazi-Fascist forces. These memorials are copper-plated cobblestones embedded in the streets of Italy, Germany and other countries. I learned about the stepping stones while researching Italian women writers -- and others -- who have borne witness to the Holocaust.

And last summer while I was in Italy, I was able to visit some of these stones in Rome, Milan and Florence. 

The stones in some ways are a paradox: tiny but powerful, open to the public at all hours for free but especially poignant when you're able to do some additional research. Under foot -- which some people object to -- but also in the way, in your face, in a way that supporters like. You can't avoid this historical moment -- it's right under your foot.

(Editor's note: the Next Avenue site has been pared down because of budget shortfalls and many of the stories it once published are no longer hosted on the site. Click on 'Next Avenue' at the top of this post for a PDF of my story).

-30-

The Italian trip memento group photo

How did it start? Why would you do it? Who can say? But as far back as when I lived in Allentown (at least), I've been gathering all the wonderful items I collected during my trips to Italy and snapping a photo of them.

A group photo of my souvenirs.

I even wrote about it for Catapult!

So here's this trip's memento group photo. There's not much that I do that's unique -- there are even other hair-twirlers in the world. There are certainly other pushy, petite broads around (to the Franciscan brother who tried to tell my mother that I was refreshingly outspoken when I arrived at St. Anthony's, my mother said, "She's very pushy!").

But so far I haven't met anyone else who ritually poses her purchases for a group photo after trips abroad.

(I did it when we visited Montreal, too. So foreign souvenirs occupy a special spot in my psyche).

It may stem from a habit I have that's connected with Christmas: I leave the gifts under the tree for as long as possible. That's what we did, growing up. God Bless Pat: she was not one of those mothers who was snatching the wrapping paper from your hands and socking it into a trash bag as you were  still unspooling it from the gift. Nope! You got to revel in opening the gifts and also gaze lovingly at them, day after day during your school holiday.

Similarly, I leave the Memento Shrine (TM) intact for as long as possible. It's an unusual ode to conspicuous consumption for me, not because I am virtuous but simply because I am not a shopper. I still have the lacy jacket-like shirt that I bought in a London thrift store in 1995 as well as the black-and-white scarf my sister, Denise, gave me in high school, because to replace them, I'd have to enter a shop. And not one that sells cutesy Italian paraphernalia. Which brings me back to my point.

Items of interest this trip:

*New Bialetti Moka AND coffee AND mug; I guess the Bialetti company figured they should begin roasting coffee to go with their signature stove-top coffee makers

*Spaghetti definition place mat (it says spaghetti is something you must never go without in your pantry)

*Tins of Callipo tuna

*A picture frame swathed in traditional Florentine paper (and various journals, pencils and notecards -- singlehandedly keeping the Florentine paper industry in business)

*Books, of course, including a back back back issue of Granta Italia, which I had been searching for since on Amazon it costs a zillion dollars

*And the edition of the Corriere della Sera with the headline, "Addio al governo Draghi," which I wrote about already.

I linger over these items because the time in Italy is so precious. And so different. Another Jeanne emerges when I step off the plane. Indeed, all of these purchases reflect the habits of this other person -- going about on foot, making acquisti, collecting mementos (this time: packets of sugar from the coffee bars I visited --- shhh! Don't tell Mike. For some reason, he thinks the house is full of clutter). Oh and also moments. Collecting lots of moments.

It helps that I never have to step inside a big box store. It helps that I don't have to traverse a parking lot to examine the Spaghetti place mat or obsess over the gorgeous paper goods.

Also, that when I am done, I can repair to a bench in a piazza to revel in what I've bought. La dolce vita, in a nut shell.

-30-

In Italy the streets are my lab (Seconda volta)

The first morning in Milan (which is to say the first morning of the trip), I wake at 6:50 a.m. and head out subito -- immediately -- on foot while Leo and Mike sleep. 

Left out of the hotel, and left onto Via Turati (where Mike is delighted to discover the San Carlo potato chip HQ is) to find the perfect caffe for a cappuccino & una ciambellina. I did OK – a small corner job, workman-like but some of the paste (pastries) I bought were still hot! And fancy isn't always the ticket. 

I begin collecting information immediately because in Italy, the street is part of my lab -- language lab, culture lab, architecture lab. The coffee bars, too, and any surface that contains Italian writing. They are my beat.

So I notice the massive macchinetta for the coffee is giving the barista trouble and the building that houses the American embassy is also home to Radio Monte Carlo (the station name, when I read or say it quietly to myself, is broadcast in my head in the original Italian that you would hear on the radio).

I also notice, much to my chagrin, that English is everywhere – everywhere. But for different audiences. In some cases, it's there to communicate to people born speaking English. In other cases, it's an absurd flourish (or whatever the opposite of flourish is) to an otherwise Italian-only public service message or advertisement (Trenitalia, I am looking at you!).

Morning #2, I go to Il Chiosco Manin, an outdoor coffee counter in Milan, just to the left of an entrance to the public gardens. A customer beside me ordered, “Un caffe per cortesia.” (‘A coffee, please,’ except that he used the form of please that includes the word ‘courtesy’ – and the order feels extra courtly. Also, for those of you playing along at home, un caffe = an espresso. If you want a cappuccino -- and I do -- you have to say cappuccino).

Another man bikes up to get his coffee. “Ciao Salvatore,” he says to the barman.

While I have my cappuccino at the tiny bancone that sits on the street, the radio is on, and it’s perfection.

Another woman arrives at Il Chiosco and the barista says, “Ciao Lorena.” It's like I'm gatecrashing a party where everyone else knows each other, but no one minds I am there.

I eye the oranges that are used for smoothies – tempting. Meanwhile someone calls out, “Buon di!” Then the garbage truck arrives – and the sanitation workers get out of the truck to have their coffees, too.

I am observing. And when I am done observing while standing still, I say my goodbyes to the barista and begin walking again to observe some more. I feel like I could walk all day and only then would I be sated, happy, fully on vacation. 

Vacation for Jeanne = walking in Italy (while someone speaks behind me, next to me, near me in Italian -- and yes, Heather D-R from St. Anthony's, also when someone speaks Italian directly to me, but I didn't want to get greedy. Those first few days, I am almost struck speechless by how thorough the change of scenery is from America to Italy).

Now I am walking through a stone gate that’s part of the old walls of the city – next to the fancy shopping street Via della Spiga – and the sidewalk ducks under a portico (do we have porticos in America? We should). 

Internal courtyards abound in Milan and the portoni (front doors/main entrances of buildings) to them reveal oases of greenery and sometimes sculpture.

I’ve struggled to find an open giornalaio in Milan – even the concierge at our hotel shrugged his shoulders. Victims of the pandemic, which is heartbreaking because newsstands are Italian mom-and-pop stores that double as mini-piazzas. A place for an exchange. (They also sell Pokemon cards! Ask me how I know!)

But Mike manages to buy for me at Milano Centrale:

-La Settimana Enigmistica (weekly puzzle magazine)

-Bell’Italia (most beautiful travel magazine you've ever seen)

-La Cucina Italiana (food mag)

Doing the frontpage crossword in the puzzle mag ('Settimana Enigmistica' -- you can see the word 'enigma' in there), I learn, or re-learn, that 'musicare' is a verb (clue: “Musicò Tosca.”)

I am collecting information about 1,000 tiny moments, 1,000 tiny encounters between myself and Italy. Later in Rome, I trip over myself to snap a photo of the perfect graffiti spotted as we entered the Villa Borghese from Piazza del Popolo: ‘Sei bella come Roma’ = You're as beautiful as Rome. Not sure there is a way to top that, other than -- maybe -- you're as beautiful as the Taj Mahal or a hologram of your face should be beamed permanently from the sky.

Everything that has words draws my attention (as I may have, ahem, mentioned). I walk the streets each morning silently repeating phrases from ads, billboards, shop windows ("Idraulico, giorno e notte" = Plumber available all hours; "Traslochi/sgomberi" = relocations, junk removal; "Saldi" = sales).  I am shopping a lot but mainly my kind of acquisti, like anything sold at the giornalaio (newsstand). Yesterday I bought La Gazzetta dello Sport just so Leo could see Italy’s pink sports newspaper (he marveled that there seemed to be 35 pages about soccer and 1 page about car racing and maybe 1 page about volleyball and that’s it). I told him that anywhere in Italy, when you see someone across the bar or piazza holding a pink newspaper, you know at a glance he or she (OR HE!) is reading the national sports newspaper.

What I bought so far:

*Il Corriere della Sera (2X)

*L’Espresso (magazine)

*Panorama (magazine)

*A new red Moka coffee pot from Bialetti (yes I now have probably 10 Mokas of various sizes)

*La Gazzetta dello Sport (see above)

*A lightweight plastic basketball for Leo (dal giornalaio!)

*A kitchen towel

*A place mat with the “definition” of Spaghetti

*A bare midriff shirt (ma sei matta? Am shopping around now for a new lifestyle so I can actually wear it)

*A green wool sweater from Benetton like the brown one I've had for more years than I care to admit

*10 or so books (including two by Edith Bruck; when Leo saw another copy of Andremo in Città, he said, ‘Mommy, you have that one already!’ I suppose seeing it around the house for a few years will do that.)

I am no different than all the other tourists snapping photos. Except I snap photos of the 'Missing dog' flyers on utility poles and the tree stumps some cracker jack street artist has transformed into sculpture, not to mention compelling graffiti and street signs of particular relevance (I will always take a photo of  the sign for Via della Vigna Vecchia anytime I visit Florence -- it was once my home).

We are taking trams in Milan and some of them are “antiques.” The #1 tram line that we took to Castello Sforzesco is just such a model. Wooden bench seats line the walls of the tram. There’s a shimmy and shake to its accelerations. Like a mobile museum that allows a step back in time in addition to a method of transportation.

One of the major streets in Milan is Via Alessandro Manzoni and that tickles me for some reason. Like, where in New York is the F. Scott Fitzgerald Boulevard?!

Italy is basically just one big Tickle-me Elmo doll. Every damn thing -- good or bad -- intrigues me.

That's all for now from Il Belpaese.

-30- 

Ritual ciambellina photo (so fresh!)

We did go to the Coliseum while we were in Italy, I will have you know, since the boy wanted to go there, and we also showed him St. Peter's; while in Milan, we visited the Castello Sforzesco, which I had somehow missed multiple times on previous visits to the city.

But I was in Italy for the ciambelline.

You know that!

(Also there for the overheard chatter at caffe counters and in the street, as you also know).

And wow they were good.

OK, no I wasn't able to share with Leo a massive ciambellina fresh out of the oven as I did last visit to Italy on the final morning of the trip when we stumbled out of the hotel and across the street of tiny Focene into a nondescript coffee bar shortly before our flight home. But that's possibly a once-in-a-life-time ciambellina event, as ciambelline aficionados know (ahem!). (It was nearly the size of a dinner plate and did you hear me? Fresh out of the oven!)

So yes, I had lots of good ciambelline during our trip this summer to Italy, including the one above in Rome. Actually, this time around I had some ciambelle (what I would call ciambelline) and some ciambelline (li'l baby-sized numbers), if I follow the nomenclature of the bariste. 

I also had some cornetti, including some fresh out of the oven (thanks to Caffe Portofino on Via Cola di Rienzo in Rome). (Cornetti caldi makes me think of the Jovanotti song "Gente della Notte," in which he sings about staying out all night and having breakfast at the crack of dawn feasting on cornetti caldi, hot croissant-like pastries).

Sometimes I bought them "da portare via" and we would eat them back at the apartment we were renting, or the hotel in Milan. But when I could, I lingered at the bar to watch the busy bariste at their craft. Or I saved mine for a scenic spot.

I often had to hunt around for ciambelline, going street to street and bar to bar, since the pastry cases aren't packed with them -- which is odd, because I believe they are gobbled up first since if I arrived too late there were sometimes none or only a few left (not a scientific claim, however, since I have never witnessed an Italian ordering a ciambellina but I have seen them order cornetti and other pastries like bomboloni in droves).

Anyhoo ritual ciambellina photo & ritual ciambellina blog post now in the books!

Oh before I go, any favorite Italian pastries/favorite Italian pasticcerie anyone wants to mention? (Or other favorite dishes?) I tried to branch out a bit this trip -- though I will always be a ciambellina-lover.

Yours truly,

Miss Ciambellina

-30-

Best photos/Italy: Has anyone seen this dog?

Tea Vela, an English setter, is missing! And some tricky commenters have weighed in on whether Tea Vela is alive (I cut out of the frame the rather pessimistic guy who doesn't think the dog is alive).

Spotted in Rome, in the Prati neighborhood. Reward? A whopping 1,500 euros! That's some kind of reward. Must be some very sad, worried pet owners behind this flyer.

Also missing: Turbo the Cat.

Couldn't resist snapping a photo!

-30-

In Italy for the banner hed: "Addio al governo Draghi"

I go to Italy to reconnect with the old Jeanne, the one who wasn't able to resist the siren call of il Bel Paese after her college graduation. The Jeanne who hadn't yet become a newspaper reporter or an NPR station producer or a contract editor for CNN.

But as much as I am retracing my ex-pat steps, during this most recent trip I was still the journalist I had become post-Italy. And I swooned when I saw this headline: "Addio al governo Draghi."

While I slept, the Italian government had fallen (the headline can be translated as: Goodbye to the Draghi administration). As often happens, the coalition of political parties that make up the administration could not hold.

It wasn't totally unexpected, except that when I went to bed the night before, it appeared a deal had been reached to keep the current administration/coalition in power. (Plus, the prime minister in question is a serious economist named Mario Draghi who's the country's only hope at navigating the post-pandemic financial woes.)

When I went to the newsstand the next morning, I immediately realized that deal had failed.

It's not like the time that Mike went to Italy and the Pope died (!) but still, a government collapse is pretty darn big news, and for a journo like me, it quickens the pulse.

I also love this photo:

Not all that often is an American president shown (i.e. photographed) downing a quickie coffee as the world unravels around him.

There are headlines that you will never forget. I happen to have another Italian headline that I will always recall -- tied to my semester abroad in Siena: 'L'Italia è desta.' Show of hands who remembers that one! But it's a story for another day. For now, I am merely mulling over the political fortunes of my adopted country.

-30-

Best photos/Italy trip: Our little Roman gladiator!

At the approach from Piazza del Popolo to the Villa Borghese park, these two jump out, offering to confer official status on Leo. 

If my name isn't gullible -- I actually thought they worked for the park! Yep, until part of their schtick involved some weird move by which they passed the (fake) swords near Leo's privates -- I began to suspect then. And of course when it was over, they begged (rather aggressively!) for a king's ransom. But what a photo!

-30-

In Italy, the streets are my lab

OK let's back up a moment. I've told you that I want to buy everything in Italy -- even maybe the air. I've tempted you with some of the dishes I've been scarfing up. Now I want to return to the first sensations of my trip, once the long flight was over and I was reunited with Italy.

The first morning in Milan (which is to say the first morning of the trip), I wake at 6:50a and head out subito (immediately) on foot while Leo and Mike sleep. 

Left out of the hotel, left onto Via Turati (where Mike is delighted to discover the San Carlo potato chip HQ is) to find the perfect caffe/coffee bar for a cappuccino & una ciambellina. I did OK – a small corner job, workman-like but some of the paste (pastries) I bought were still hot! And fancy isn't always the ticket.

I begin collecting information immediately because in Italy, the street is part of my lab -- language lab, culture lab, architecture lab. The coffee bars, too, and any surface that contains Italian writing. They are my beat.

So I notice the massive macchinetta for the coffee is giving the barista trouble and the building that houses the American embassy is also home to Radio Monte Carlo (the station name, when I read or say it quietly to myself, is broadcast in my head in the original Italian that you would hear on the radio).

I also notice, much to my chagrin, that English is everywhere – everywhere. But for different audiences. In some cases, it's there to communicate to people born speaking English. In other cases, it's an absurd flourish (or whatever the opposite of flourish is) to an otherwise Italian-only public service message or advertisement (Trenitalia, I am looking at you!).

Morning #2, I go to Il Chiosco Manin, an outdoor coffee counter in Milan, just to the left of an entrance to the public gardens. A customer beside me ordered, “Un caffe per cortesia.” (‘A coffee, please,’ except that he used the form of please that includes the word ‘courtesy’ – and the order feels extra courtly. Also, for those of you playing along at home, un caffe = an espresso. If you want a cappuccino -- and I do -- you have to say cappuccino).

Another man bikes up to get his coffee. “Ciao Salvatore,” he says to the barman.

While I have my cappuccino at the tiny bancone that sits on the street, the radio is on, and it’s perfection.

Another woman arrives at Il Chiosco and the barista says, “Ciao Lorena.” It's like I'm gatecrashing a party where everyone else knows each other, but no one minds I am there.

I eye the oranges that are used for smoothies – tempting. Meanwhile someone calls out, “Buon di!” And then the garbage truck arrives – and the sanitation workers get out of the truck to have their coffees, too.

I am observing. And when I am done observing while standing still, I say my goodbyes to the barista and begin walking again to observe some more. I feel like I could walk all day and only then would I be sated, happy, fully on vacation. 

Vacation for Jeanne = walking in Italy (while someone speaks behind me, next to me, near me in Italian).

Now I am walking through a stone gate that’s part of the old walls of the city – next to the fancy shopping street Via della Spiga – and the sidewalk ducks under a portico (do we have porticos in America? We should). 

Courtyards abound in Milan and the portoni (front doors/main entrances of buildings) to them reveal oases of greenery and sometimes sculpture.

I’ve struggled to find an open giornalaio in Milan – even the concierge at our hotel shrugged his shoulders. Victims of the pandemic, which is heartbreaking because newsstands are Italian mom-and-pop stores that double as mini-piazzas. A place for an exchange. (They also sell Pokemon cards! Ask me how I know!)

But Mike manages to buy for me at Milano Centrale:

-La Settimana Enigmistica (weekly puzzle magazine)

-Bell’Italia (most beautiful travel magazine you've ever seen)

-La Cucina Italiana (food mag)

Doing the frontpage crossword in the puzzle mag ('Settimana Enigmistica' -- you can see the word 'enigma' in there), I learn, or re-learn, that 'musicare' is a verb (clue: “Musicò Tosca.”)

I am collecting information about 1,000 tiny moments, 1,000 tiny encounters between myself and Italy. Later in Rome, I trip over myself to snap a photo of the perfect graffiti spotted as we entered the Villa Borghese from Piazza del Popolo: ‘Sei bella come Roma’ = You're as beautiful as Rome. Not sure there is a way to top that, other than -- maybe -- you're as beautiful as the Taj Mahal or a hologram of your face should be beamed permanently from the sky.

Everything that has words draws my attention (as I may have, ahem, mentioned). I walk the streets each morning silently repeating phrases from ads, billboards, shop windows (Idraulico, giorno e notte = Plumber available all hours; Traslochi/sgomberi = relocations, junk removal; Saldi = sales).  I am shopping a lot but mainly my kind of acquisti, like anything sold at the giornalaio (newsstand). Yesterday I bought La Gazzetta dello Sport just so Leo could see Italy’s pink sports newspaper (he marveled that there seemed to be 35 pages about soccer and 1 page about car racing and maybe 1 page about volleyball and that’s it). I told him that anywhere in Italy, when you see someone across the bar or piazza holding a pink newspaper, you know at a glance he or she (OR HE!) is reading the national sports newspaper.

What I bought so far:

Il Corriere della Sera (2X)

L’Espresso (magazine)

Panorama (magazine)

A new red Moka coffee pot from Bialetti (yes I now have probably 10 Mokas of various sizes)

La Gazzetta dello Sport (see above)

A lightweight plastic basketball for Leo (dal giornalaio!)

A kitchen towel

A place mat with the “definition” of Spaghetti

A bare midriff shirt (ma sei matta? Am shopping around now for a new lifestyle so I can actually wear it)

A green wool sweater from Benetton like the brown one I've had for more years than I care to admit

10 or so books (including two by Edith Bruck; when Leo saw another copy of Andremo in Città, he said, ‘Mommy you have that one already!’ I suppose seeing it around the house for a few years will do that.)

*

I am no different than all the other tourists snapping photos. Except I snap photos of the 'Missing dog' flyers on utility poles and the tree stumps some cracker jack street artist has transformed into sculpture, not to mention compelling graffiti and street signs of particular relevance (I will always take photo of  the sign for Via della Vigna Vecchia anytime I visit Florence -- it was once my home).

We are taking trams in Milan and some of them are “antiques.” The #1 tram line that we took to Castello Sforzesco is just such a model. Wooden bench seats line the walls of the tram. There’s a shimmy and shake to its accelerations. Like a museum that allows a step back in time in addition to a method of transportation.

One of the major streets in Milan is Via Alessandro Manzoni and that tickles me for some reason. Like, where in New York is the F. Scott Fitzgerald Boulevard?!

Italy is basically just one big Tickle-me Elmo doll. Every damn thing -- good or bad -- intrigues me.

That's all for now from Il Belpaese!

-30- 

Greatest compliment ever? (In Rome)

"Sei bella come Roma."

I'm available if anyone wants to say this about me ("You're as beautiful as Rome"). 

Spotted on the approach to the Villa Borghese.

Hard to think of a better way to woo a woman. Men, take note!

-30-

24 hours in Rome (part two)

(Read part one here) The day I arrived in Rome in May of 2015, the weather was warm, but, of course, the Roman taxi driver wasn’t using the air conditioning. He offered to turn it on when I climbed aboard, but I said no. I wanted Rome to be Rome. Driving along the highway, I spotted those tall evergreens I only ever see in Rome. Once we’d cleared the city’s periphery, we began conducting an impromptu tour of the sights. Soon, I was staring at the back of Piazza Venezia, where there are steps up to the Campidoglio, and visually bookmarking shops I wanted to visit later. 

As I gazed out at the city from the back of the taxi, I had that feeling again. I get it every time I see Rome. I don’t know how to express it properly. It’s manifested in me as a slight nod, and a phrase I half-mumble to myself, like, “Oh right.” It’s almost as though the human brain, my human brain, simply cannot spend all of its time computing how fantastic Rome is. Each time I visit, I remember why it’s the Eternal City. Eternally enchanting. Eternally beguiling. Eternally mine – if only I can find the time to catch a plane and get here. Because when I do, I realize that I’ve been living in a bubble. Only in Italy am I truly alive.

I’d booked a room in a tiny hotel nestled in a tangle of cobblestoned streets not far from the Campidoglio. I settled into the room quickly – it was miniscule but who cared? I began digesting what I was seeing and feeling – a mental version of pinch-me. I was really and truly in Italy, I thought, as I sat in the window sill of my room in Rome, looking out over the street below through the spaces of the ‘H’ and the ‘O’ in the vertical hotel sign on the side of the building. Below a shopkeeper watched as her toddler navigated the narrow street on a tiny tricycle. When the boy had traveled a little ways down the street, he called out to her, “Mamma, vieni qui!”

A short while later, I descended to the streets. Wandering into that minor piazza with the father kicking a soccer ball around with his son and the used bookseller, I actually thought, “It’s enough already. I’m satiated. I’m overwhelmed. Italy, you win.” I’d been on the ground about two hours.

As I walked around Rome, I took photos, recorded snippets of conversation on my phone, and breathed in my beloved tiny, white, gelsomina flowers, which spilled over walls, and climbed up the sides of buildings, unleashing a powerful memory agent for me. It was the scent of my first trip to Italy, the study abroad experience in Siena that launched my so-called Italian life. I’m not even entirely sure where it was that I first detected the sweet, potent aura of the gelsomina – from the tenacity of its scent and the journey it sends me on, I’m compelled to think it must have grown in wild bunches on the backyard fence of my closest friends’ ground-floor flat, where I had my share of boozy lunches. Ticking off an item on my personal itinerary, I lingered over the well-tended floral displays adorning terraces, window sills and the outdoor seating areas of trattorias tucked into vicoli.

I was taking the temperature of the city, eavesdropping on conversations, watching the interactions between the barista and the regulars at the coffee bar. At one point as I stood on the street, gaping up at the Campidoglio, I jotted down in my notebook: I’m in super computer mode. It may sound like a mad dash of a decidedly modern manner; multi-tasking and documenting, without really soaking anything in. Not so. Instead, every corner, every image, every word I saw assumed triple its value. After eight long years, I knew the value of everything that I was seeing. I suppose it helped that I’d become a mom during my exile from Italy. Responding to the seemingly constant needs of a baby, I’d learned the value of five minutes. In fact, my 24 hours in Rome were really two dozen different iterations of 60 minutes.

And besides I had the luxury, in most cases, of having visited whatever incredible monument I was passing (multiple times, in some cases). I was able to indulge in what’s perhaps the most luxurious tourism of all: cultural immersion (or re-immersion in my case). Forget queueing up for an audience with the Pope or fretting about the weather. What matters more on a trip like this is the confluence of images, scents, tastes and conversations conducted or overheard.

I had about an hour before I needed to pack up my hotel room and make my way to the train station for Florence. I spent the time strolling from monument to monument, on the lookout for signs of life, symbols of the Roman personality. My objective was to breathe in the Eternal City so that when I returned to America, a part of it would linger on long after I walked away from the banks of the Tiber.

Let’s say mission accomplished. Nuns and priests, who hailed from all over the world, were cupping cellphones to their ears and laughing. I peered in shop windows (the only way I like to shop unless the item is books), including even those of the pharmacies, hoping to see the house shoes I used to wear when I lived in Italy. I flocked once again to floral displays on balconies. Indeed, the flowers I saw on tiny balconies entranced me. I took photo after photo in an effort to spirit away some of the beauty I spied on those decks. Then I watched as a man disappeared into a majestic arch that led to a sunny courtyard. The two photos I snapped of him create a mystery. Who was he and where was he going? What do they do inside of that partially-revealed courtyard, one of many around Rome? (Also: how can this stately lemon yellow palazzo be just one of hundreds if not thousands of similarly gorgeous buildings in this city?) I even took pictures of Italian words, often something as banal as the sign for Bar del Fico (Fig Coffee Bar) chiseled into the wall across from my hotel; nothing can diminish how lovely they appear to my eyes.

Nostalgia comes so naturally to me that while wandering around Rome on that first morning back in Italy, I stumbled into a tiny piazza and stumbled back nearly 20 years to a weekend getaway to the Eternal City. It was my first trip with my partner, Mike. I looked up at the street sign – Piazza San Pantaleo – and my mind, photographic for things like street names and addresses and dates – recalled instantly that we had stayed two nights at a small pensione on the piazza. (Pensione Primavera. It’s still there. I checked).

As my 24 hours slowly elapsed, I had a feeling of déjà vu, as clichéd as that might sound. This is normal, I thought. I’m traveling by foot, I’m stopping to look at the books at a bancarella. A father is kicking around a soccer ball. A nun sails by on a bike. The barman is kvetching with a regular about soccer. For a moment, I was nonplussed, almost bored. 

And then I realized it will never be anything short of amazing for me that I know Italian, that I can blend into Italy, can even take it for granted. I was privy in those short 24 hours to everyday life in Italy and I was seamlessly fitting back in, even though I was alone. I’d left my partner and my son back in the States, and I only know one person on Rome. But I wasn’t lonely. I won’t ever be lonely in Italy.

I suddenly thought of all the arguments over the years with my father where he’d fished out his favorite saying, “You can’t go home again.” He was particularly adamant whenever I planned to return to Italy. I suppose he wanted to save me from disappointment. Once you move on, things can never be the same. I wonder now, Did someone say that to him as a child? Did someone haunt him with those words? For a long time, I believed him.

 But something clicked while I was in Rome, and I concluded that knowing a foreign language confers a special kind of passport. I can’t go home again? Sure I can. I’m ‘home’ whenever I speak Italian. Whenever I hear it or read it. Whenever a man in a fishing vest walks into a bar, juts out his chin and shouts “O!” Wherever the radio announcer shouts “gol” and a taxi driver wordlessly exhorts me to pump my fist in solidarity. I’m home then.

Twenty-four hours in the Eternal City? It felt like a lifetime to me.

-30-

 

24 Hours in Rome

What can you possibly do in Rome if you only have 24 hours?

That was all the time I’d given myself there during a quickie trip to Italy in 2015. 

I arrived in the Eternal City around noon on a Wednesday, and was booked on the 11:50 a.m. Frecciarossa to Florence the next day.

I’d arranged a night’s layover in Rome really as a buffer for jet lag; it would be my first solo trip abroad after becoming a mom – an older mom, at that – and my first visit to Italy in eight years. I assumed I would barely be able to take in the sights, much less enjoy them, on a few hours of airplane sleep. Plus, I was giving short shrift to Rome because I'd told myself the real trip would begin after I reached Florence. When my 24 hours in Rome were up, I would be heading to the city where I once lived to retrace my steps. There I would meet up with friends and begin the real work of immersing myself once again in Italy, the objective of a trip I dubbed the Nostalgia Package Tour. I wanted to relive the days when I worked as a teacher in Florence, when I fell in love in Florence (with the city and a man). I wanted to practice my heavily Florentine-accented Italian.

Rome was just a quick detour. Or was it?

Well, it was, until I see a Roman man walking into a café near the Campidoglio. He’s carrying a motorcycle helmet and wearing a tan, fisherman’s vest, popular among men in Italy. It’s clear from the first second, the way he walks in, the way he surveys the bar and the way he nods at the bartender, that he’s a regular. As I watch, he exchanges one look with the barista that wordlessly conveys, “Do you see what I’m saying?” and “Can you believe that?” Where both parties know exactly what “that” refers to. 

The barman, for his part, shoots him a glance that says, “Where have you been?” and “Can you believe the day we’re having?” All without uttering a word, but aided by a few helpful Italian hand gestures, the jutting out of the chin, and an “O!” or two. Part theater, part afternoon chronicle.

Then I stroll into some minor piazza where there’s a glorious breeze and a man selling books from a bancarella. Behind me as I browse the book selection, a father kicks around a soccer ball with his young son. I walk a few blocks and peer in the window of one of Italy’s largest bookstore chains, drinking in the book titles and calculating and recalculating how many I can reasonably fit into my suitcase.

That evening, I visit a friend for dinner, and in the taxi on the way back to the hotel, the older driver is listening to the Juventus game. At one point, La Juve scores, and I look up to see the driver staring at me in the rear view mirror as he pumps his fist. Clearly, he thinks this is a moment we should share. “Forza Juve,” I say, smiling, almost gratefully. Thank you, Italy, for being Italy.

The next morning, I dash out to re-introduce myself to as many important sights as I can walk to. Approaching the Campo dei Fiori only to find vendors setting up the morning produce and flower market, I feel as though I am walking onto a film set labeled, “Rome, morning.” It would appear no one’s told every other visitor to Rome that this is the thing to do – an early morning walk through the city’s best squares. It is largely just me and the vendors and a few stray figures sailing by on bikes.

Now imagine all of these episodes happening within 24 hours, which, as it turned out, was plenty of time. 

You can do so much even if all you do is walk and look, if your main activity is savoring the tiny moments. If the kind of trip you’re pursuing has little to do with itineraries. A different brand of tourism. I suppose you could call it cultural tourism or maybe personal tourism. 

What I’m calling nostalgia tourism – for when your trip is really a long journey back. 

When you’ve already toured the city, and you’re coming back really just to tour your memories (against an enchanted backdrop), and find out how they make you feel now. Rome is the perfect city for this kind of trip.

(Versions of this story have appeared in various places on this blog, and other venues)