Life in Minus Degrees

Heading to work yesterday

There are sentences I never thought I would ever hear myself say – “do you have an extra small in this dress” to a Japanese sales assistant, “no I meant a cola” somewhere in Argentina and “excuse me when's the resurrection?” at the Holy land theme park, Buenos Aires (resurrection every half hour at the weekends.) Two days ago I added another to this list.   It was a bright Friday morning, the sun was out.  At the university J was waiting for me, ready for our Friday outing (teaching in a mineral processing company out in the middle of nowhere which we variously term Wernham Hogg or Button Moon.)  As I got into the car I remarked at how mild the morning was only to look at the temperature gage which read -1.  Mild at -1! By the time we got to the company a howling wind had rendered the temperature to somewhere around -6 – seriously effin cold.  This last week in Treviso temperatures have hovered around the zero or below mark and to my happy at 30 degrees self, life has been tough. It’s not just the temperature that makes life difficult with winds and high humidity it feels like the cold penetrates you so deeply that even when you do get into a warm interior the cold stays with you for ages. 

The waterwheel ices up

I always remember the European February as being a difficult month to get through.  The euphoria of Christmas and New Year long gone, icy streets, winter temps taking a further tilt downwards and living in a Britain that never seemed to be able to get its collective head around the concept that snow in winter is not a freak occurrence.  From memory there really was nothing much you could do, save wait for spring and the rain to start.  I’ve always found the cold difficult and winter does see me hibernating (I maintain that I was meant to be born in a hot country) and after so long in Australia I was seriously unprepared for a European winter.  Everyone said to me that your first Trevisan winter is the hardest and I think I understand why.  Once you’ve frozen your way through your first you’re gonna make sure you’re seriously ready for the second and get yourself kitted out with hats, gloves, scarves, piuminos, boots, thick socks, and jumpers.  When I arrived here at the tail end of last winter I had two coats, my Melbourne winter number and something lighter for the between seasons if you look at my wardrobe today you will now see six – yes six coats all of which serve a purpose at different temperatures (ok I admit the peacoat was an indulgence but in my defence I have wanted one for years.)

    

and for the curious - The resurrection begins

With temperature so low Treviso has been a strange place, the streets are unusually quiet.  Bars are half full and people who do venture out scurry to get themselves to the warmth of wherever they are going.  Bizarrely we haven’t seen any snow the weather forecasters have predicted it and the clouds have threatened it but there's been nothing, bar a few flakes.  While the rest of Europe seemed blanketed in the stuff our little area of Italy, for now remains snow free which doesn’t bother me I always hate it when things grind to a halt as soon as you get a dusting of snow.  There are positives to all of this, I have got through a sizable stack of reading, the weather is perfect to indulge in steaming hot cups of thick, you have to eat with a spoon, hot chocolate and fritelle (balls of deep fried goodness filled with cream or zabaglione that accompany carnival.) It won’t be long till the temperatures start rising but for now I’m in semi hibernation.

      

All in the Hands

There doesn’t seem to be such a thing as a quick trip to the post office here.  After many a fruitless and frustrating hour spent waiting to buy a stamp or pay a bill I have learnt to get my ticket, judge how long the wait is going to be and head off to do something productive like grocery shopping, housework or even give a lesson.   A few days ago I returned to the post office to find my timing almost perfect, one woman at the counter and one man in front of me.  After 20 minutes when the woman was still at the counter my comrade in waiting and I both simultaneously raised our hands in frustration and I realised, not without a little alarm that I am beginning to talk the Italian language of hands.

It’s a well worn cliché that Italians communicate almost as much with their hands as their words and coming from an Anglo Saxon culture that does not gesticulate much here at times it seems as if the locals are comically animated.  Watching Italians talk to each other using a seemingly endless array of hand gestures one could conclude that communication is at least 25% physical (perhaps more.)  Often it’s as if the hands have a life of their own so lively are Italian conversations.  All languages have their gestures from the hello hand wave, the thumbs up, Ok, fancy a drink, the search me shoulder shrug with palms raised upwards and of course the good old the two/one fingered salute.  The Italians have all of these but there is also a world of others that add intensity to what is being said, express frustration, or leave your audience in doubt that you think they are talking rubbish.  I wonder if Italians find telephone communication frustrating as so much of their language is physical.  Observe an Italian on the phone and it sometimes seems as if the gestures become more animated with body movements brought into being – almost as if they are trying to make the person on the other end see it – I bet they can’t wait for holographic phones!  Of course it’s on the road that the language of hand signals comes into its own.  I’ve not driven here but have spent a lot of time on the road with J, driving to lessons or on Sunday adventures and from my passenger side perspective I’ve watched drivers express annoyance at a slow set of traffic lights, their anger at fellow drivers for a real or perceived mistake.  Even J, after five years in Italy speaks in hands.  

As with all languages these signs have a subtly all of their own and it is hard for a foreigner to pick up on.  Use the wrong gesture and you may cause offense.  Because of this and partly because I’m English and we don’t do that kind of thing I have thought it best to leave the whole talking with the hands act alone.  But lately I have come to noticed that I have started to use my hands a lot more in conversation.  It started subtly with the odd palm raised fingers and thumb held together whenever I asked but why? Or WTF? And then it just grew to the point where now I feel I’m gesticulating wildly.  I hardly do it by Italian standards but it still feels weird yet strangely satisfying.  I’m a bit of a bowerbird when it comes to language and seem to talk on characteristics and phrases from wherever I am so I fear that this gesturing is now part of me.  I worry about a return to an Anglo culture and looking like a complete idiot so if I am talking to you one day and make use of a bizarre hand signal I ask you to be understanding.

Intimidating, moi?

They find it intimidating said J.  Funny but I’ve never seen myself as intimidating, kinda pathetically wimpy yes, but how could anyone find my scattered and clumsy self intimidating?  Let me explain.  Having lived in this little place for the best part of a year I’ve become a bit of a local face and the Trevisans are getting curious about me and my life. 

After the usual where are you from, what are you doing here etc comes who do you live with?  I live alone.  Do you cook and clean yourself?  Yes.  And who manages your money?  I do. What happens if you don’t have enough? I budget but if you need money who do you ask?  No one I deal with it.  My colleague J is in much the same position and last Tuesday taking advantage of an early finish for both of us, we mused over the strange reactions we get over a little too much red wine. 

I’ve already recounted in an earlier post the delayed nest leaving here in Italy (http://rajisphere.blogspot.com/2011/10/bamboccioni.html) and now  I'm no longer surprised when Italians tell me that they live at home, get all their meals cooked for them and their washing done.  What is surprising are the many untruths or half truths I've been told about domestic arrangements.  Guys (and I have to say it’s almost exclusively guys) have told me they live with flatmates only for those flatmates to be parents.  Another proudly told me he had moved out and was now finally living alone – he'd moved next door into an apartment bought by his parents thus allowing him to go home for dinner every evening (I bet cleaning duties are left to mother as well.)  When another told me he was living with his girlfriend I had to tell him that I don’t regard driving over to his girlfriends place with a bag of washing every weekend as living with her and yes the rest of the week was spent living with mum and dad.  It doesn't take long for these little half truths to unravel which just serves to make me think you’re a bit of a tool – I mean at least be honest and acknowledge how lucky you are to have parents willing to help you out or even say I like living at home.

      

So, why this bending of facts?  Well according to J, so strange do the locals find our kind of independence and self reliance that they find it intimidating.  Could it be that at some level the average stay at home Italian feels a bit silly to be still at home?  There is mutual incomprehension between the likes of me and the majority of Italians that I meet.  They do not understand how I’m happy to function so independently and I, well I wonder where in hell is it ok to expect your parents to continue funding you into adulthood?  J recounted to me the tale of one of her students, during the lesson she mentioned the use of an ATM card and one of her students commented “I don’t have one”  J made herself clearer, no not a credit card but just a normal bank card “I don’t have one.”  But how do you get money out of your account asked J “I don’t have a bank account.”  But how do you get your money? “My parents give me money.”  This student is not 14 but 25 – how can you be 25 and not have a bank account? How can you be 25 and still expect to get pocket money from your parents?  No wonder they find the likes of us so alien.     

No place like home?

It is Italy?

It’s an old joke (with a hint of truth) among my friends but the mere thought of a place has me excited – mention Mongolia and I’m already looking up the monthly rent for a centrally located, fully furnished yurt. As well as finding travel exciting I also enjoy the challenges of setting up in a new place – of putting myself in a situation where I have no job, no place to live and no friends and getting on with it.  There's always a sense of triumph after a hard few months when I stop and realise that I’ve done it.  But it’s the staying that always proves the problem.  Wherever I have travelled I’ve always tried to imagine what it would be like to live there and what kind of life I would make.  I’m drawn to so many places; I can see myself living on a sleepy Hong Kong island like Cheung Chau and commuting to the main island for work, drinking in the many bars of the mid levels and exploring the down and earthy Mongkok.  In Buenos Aires I’d be living in the bohemian suburbs of Palermo or San Telmo, wondering the many junk yards, frequenting melongas and seeing a therapist (when in Rome and all.)  In Japan I’m split between  Tokyo – where I would choose to make home in the punky Koenji or the small mountain town of Koya San where there isn’t too much to do beyond enjoying the gorgeous mountain surrounds.  There aren’t many places that I have visited that I couldn’t see myself in -Brisbane being the one that comes to mind.  For the last few years life for me has been full of travels to far off and largely wonderful places and as much as I have loved travelling (and still do) now I'm yearning for home, a place to put down some roots. But just what is a home and in my case where the hell is it?  My family are in the UK my closest friends are largely in Australia and I’m now living and working in Italy. 

The Indian term for a mixture of spices used in cooking is masala and in many ways that’s how I see myself, a little of this and a bit of that.  Many of the Italians I meet ask me what am I?  British, Indian, Australian and if I’m honest I’m not sure myself.  I grew up in the UK but have spent all of my adult life in other countries.  The majority of the last twelve years have been in Australia and there is an easy friendliness to Australia that I connect with.  Now I’m living in Italy and even though I love my time here I suspect that I want the world to function a bit too much to be Italian.  While I feel very at home here in Treviso and Melbourne has a big piece of my heart the one place I don’t feel connected to is where I grew up.  Not that it’s a terrible place – it isn’t.  I love to visit the galleries of London, and the Lake District is a gorgeous part of the world, but aside from dearly missed family, I simply don’t feel connected to the place anymore.  Of the things that define who you are very few are British for me:  my favourite bands are Australian, authors are Japanese and American, hell I even consider Vegemite the superior yeast extract.  Last night a Venetian chum pulled my date aside and said “she’s Venetian” (although that could be down to the fact I like a drink.)   

Or is it Australia?

My recent return trip to Melbourne and subsequent return to Treviso has brought all this into focus.  Stepping off the plane into a steamy Melbourne Christmas morning was like walking into the biggest bear hug from a trusted friend.  I realised how emotionally difficult I have found it in Treviso not being able to just go and see an old friend when times have been hard or I’ve needed someone to tell me to get over myself.  Staying in my old local and catching up with much missed friends, eating favourite foods and walking familiar streets brought home to me what a special place Melbourne is and how ridiculously good life there is.  My favourite band, the rather wonderful Blackeyed Susans are just starting their round of summer gigs and I would give anything just to sit in a bar with a coldie listening to Rob Snarski sing those great songs.  I spent a morning on a glorious Sydney beach with two close friends and their little boys.  I first met Lucas and Robbie when they were just hours old and it’s been a joy to watch them grow, develop personalities and explore the world.  In the ten months I’ve been away they’ve grown so much that I’m sad I’ve missed it and I’ve come to realise just how much I love those little guys.  My send off was so bittersweet that I began to wonder if I would ever make such lasting friendships in Italy.  Getting off the plane at Marco Polo airport after 28 hours of transit and breaking the cardinal rule of not getting on a plane after a few drinks I was feeling tired and a bit fragile.  Spaced out and waiting for the bus to I was trying to come to terms with the sudden time and temperature change when I noticed an Italian staring at me.  Just as I was preparing my most withering what’s your problem look I realised it was I who was just back from Xmas adventures himself.  I shepherded me back to Treviso where it was straight off to Ts birthday party and into my Italian life.  Back in the beauty of Italy, in my little apartment, seeing work colleges and friends, and sipping a spritz this place also feels right.     

I really just want to sit on the stoop and talk to Oscar

There is one place I really want to live and know I could call home but seeing as I’ve never found a way to get to Sesame Street I’m going to have to come up with plan b.  I wonder why I find this decision so difficult – I think it is partly because it seems so permanent and  I’m not sure if I believe in permanence anymore, all too often in my life things I have trusted and thought secure have fallen away to reveal themselves to be nothing more than thin air.  The older I get and the more places I see it gets harder to define exactly what home is. Is it a feeling or people rather than a place? With no real commitments or ties the world really is my oyster.   For all of my adult life I have been trying to negotiate this and it’s a long time to feel pulled in different directions, whether it’s just my soul getting a bit weary or maybe I’m tired of floating through the world but now I want to call a place home.

 

Ode to Yum Cha

Yummy ginger pork dumplings

An orgy of food is how I describe it to anyone unfamiliar to the delights of yum cha and it’s one of the things I have missed most during my time in Italy (after lovely friends of course.)  From the moment I booked my ticket I have been dreaming about a yum cha.  For many the big Sunday ritual is the roast dinner but for me the best Sundays were about yum cha.  Getting together with a group like minded people and sitting around a table and eating for hours. 

Originating in China yum cha was first all about tea – in Cantonese it means drink tea.  Just like the English morning or afternoon tea patrons would get together over a pot of tea accompanied by a little food, in this case dim sums (small portions of food, usually steamed or fried dumplings.) Over the years the focus has changed to the food and now yum cha is a full meal of deliciousness. Basically yum cha is a small serving of a variety of Chinese dim sum (anything from steamed or fried dumplings, barbecued pork buns, greens, taro rolls, salt and pepper squid, duck pancakes.........oh the list is endless) that are served from a trolley.  Serves usually come in multiples of three thus making a three or any multiple of the ideal yum cha group (it’s best to avoid the situation where you're fighting over the last ginger prawn dumpling.)  Freed from the tyranny of the menu each table waits for a trolley baring waiter to stop and describe the dishes they have and the diners choose to take them or wait and see what the next person brings.  Once chosen the waiter stamps a docket on your table and at the end the stamps are used to calculate the cost of your meal.  Just as its original incarnation tea is still the preferred beverage at yum cha and I personally find alcohol inappropriate with the meal, although there has been many a time when we have had to have a post yum cha digestive to help with our gluttony.

It’s strange to think of a time before yum cha but my first experience was in the winter of 2000 here in Melbourne’s Dragon Boat Palace.  From the moment I was introduced into this fabulous new world I was hooked.  My friends are split into those who like yum cha and those for whom it’s a gastronomic reason to live.  When I put the word out that I was going to be in Melbourne for Christmas and a yum cha was definitely on the agenda most wrote back with vague agreements these are not the people to go to yum cha with.  A few days into my stay I bumped into R a woman who is as committed to eating as me.  On mentioning the magic words her eyes lit up and suddenly all plans and arrangement for the next day were cancelled – this is the kind of person I want.  Joined by T a yum cha virgin we headed out to the Gold leaf Chinese restaurant out in the hinterlands of Preston. 

Inside the glorious gaudiness of the restaurant with it revolving golden lights was augmented with tinsel and other Christmas paraphernalia.    We waited hungrily until the trolleys started making their rounds.  When yum chaing it’s important not to let greed overtake you.  Go too hard at the start and you risk filling up with the first few dishes.  Control and pacing allow you to eat more.  I have yet to decide if eating breakfast or remaining hungry are the best preparations but I tend to keep myself hungry in readiness.  Watching the dinners it’s easy to spot the other yum cha obsessives we greedily keep an eye on the other trolleys doing the rounds or watch the door to the kitchen waiting for the next delicious morsels to emerge.  When something particularly good emerged a quick look from R had the waiter come straight to our table – this woman is a veteran.  The next couple of hours were a blur of chopsticks, tea, chilli sauce and banter.  With a final visit from the dessert trolley baring mango jelly our stomachs were full as was our docket. 

Every yum cha veteran will have a war story of over indulgence and painfully full stomachs – those morsels look so small and tasty that it’s hard to resist and I at least, never realise how much I have eaten until its too late.  That’s why yum cha is the perfect Sunday event – you really can’t do too much afterwards and nothing involving movement of any kind.  A movie is an ideal activity failing that just lying on the couch digesting is also pretty good.

To me the yum cha mecca is Hong Kong and I have read many tales of the yum cha delights there.  Sadly I have only ever visited Hong Kong alone but one day I hope to be able to eat yum cha in its spiritual home (open invite to all.)  But for now we left the Gold leaf happy with our stomachs full and T’s yum cha cherry most definitely popped.

The Long Haul

My first impressions were – you’re too big, too fat, you’re carrying way too much weight and there’s no way you’re going to move.  No, I wasn’t surveying the damage done by seasonal indulging but looking at the shiny new Qantas A380 that was going to transport me back to Australia for yet more seasonal indulgence.  I’ve made the longest of long haul journeys so many times now to have become almost blasé about the whole thing. Of course there is always a pang of excitement when stepping aboard a plane ready for another adventure.  While there is glamour to traversing the globe in a matter of hours the truth is for those of us consigned to cattle class there isn’t much in the way of glamour.  In fact after the excitement of take off you really need to put your head down and just get through the next 20 odd hours of transit.

Australians are used to the notion of long transits (it takes about 5 hours to fly from one end of the country to the other) and being so far away from anywhere you know that most trips are going to take the best part of a day.  To most of the Europeans I have met the thought of more than four hours in a plane is an unendurable endeavour.   It’s by no means fun but it’s really not that bad if you prepare and after twelve years of travelling between hemispheres I've got this long haul thing down to an art.  What type of book to choose, what clothes to wear, and given that upgrades are as rare as hen’s teeth, where the best spot in the economy cabin is.  In a strange way I actually look forward to the flight as my life is usually so hectic and disorganised that the enforced sitting and doing nothing for twenty hours is a welcome break.  

I have often thought how the act of travelling is a state of mind and atmosphere all of its own.  Over the years I have been through many airports (I think about 30) and the atmosphere in them is always the same.  Once you get past the security check to the airside it feels as if you have already left whichever country you are in and entered the country (or absence of country) of travel.  The transit lounge is full of people waiting wearily for the time to board the aircraft that will take them to an exotic location or back home to familiar surrounds.  Duty free is full of the same bottles of Bombay Sapphire and Chanel No5 that you saw at the point of departure.  There is always the one store stocked full of things that supposedly reflect the culture of the country you have just been in – Harrods in London, Ken Done and boomerangs in Aus, leather and dulce de leche in Argentina, and so on.

Once finally up there in the atmosphere looking down at the world below the clouds I can’t help but imagine that the plane has somehow escaped time.  That by merely taking off and joining the system of invisible airborne highways and byways, that are unmarked save for beacons planted in the middle of nowhere, has taken us out of the earth bound concerns of morning, afternoon and evening; of going to work and what to cook for dinner. Up there all that matters are hours; how many since take off and more importantly how many to your destination.  Watching the oversize plane make its painfully slow progress across the onscreen flight path becomes a small obsession.  The little plane flies over such exotic places as Tashkent and Samarkand that I long to set down in these mysterious places to explore.  At times plane travel seems brutal in picking you up in one place and setting you down on the other side of the world with not a thought to the wonderful places in between.  I’ve long harboured a dream of travelling over land from Spain to China, making the trek from Mediterranean through Central and Eastern Europe across the point where Europe and Asia meet and then over the steppes of central Asia and into South East Asia.  I’m curious to see if I notice the faces, food and cultures changing or if they gradually blend from one into the other – one day perhaps I'll  get round to it.

When at last you do set down in your destination you have to then recover from the flight and the fact that you have gone from one time zone and season to the opposite.  A swim and a shower in my experience is the best way to get over the flight as for jet lag, well that takes a bit of effort.  According to the experts you need to give a day for each hour of difference to come to terms with the new time but for me that’s way too long. The only effective solution I have found is just to force yourself to stay awake until a time deemed reasonable for sleep in your new location.  It’s tough for a couple of days but then you’re right.

    

So very suddenly I am back on the other side of the world in Australia and back in Melbourne.  Back in familiar surrounds where beer comes in pots, people smile and the footy (Aussie Rules of course) is a religion.  There have been reunions aplenty with more yet to do.  As I write this looking out the window at the brilliant sunshine listening to the comforting sound of a tram trundling past I wonder about my funny little life in Treviso half a world away – I wonder if my life in Treviso even exists.   

I give up

It’s a micro climate I’m told, the strange combination of factors that has resulted in this part of the world being meltingly hot in the summer and blisteringly cold in the winter with ridiculous levels of humidity throughout the year.  The hot and humid weather never really bothers me but cold is something I live in fear of.  Get temperatures into single figures and I become the kind of person that lives up to the whinging stereotype that me adopted home holds of British people.  Winter in the Veneto has always been this looming event whose inevitable arrival I have dreaded.  Not just for the cold and humid temperatures that bite through you or the bitter winds that smack you in the face but the knowledge that I can either suffer stoically through the event or start dressing for the weather.  And here lies the problem.

Melbourne gets pretty cold and normally the arrival of the winter months is seen as a opportunity and I look forward to the twice yearly ritual of the wardrobe turnaround when you put wash and put away the t-shirts and summer dresses and pull out the jumpers and thick socks that you haven’t seen for the last five or six months.  I see the cooler months as an opportunity to dress better given that you are required to wear so many more clothes.  When I say Melbourne gets cold I mean Melbourne gets cold for Australia and here with the ever lowering thermometer suddenly my winter clothes look stupidly thin.  Recently everyone seems to be concerned with my preparedness to cope with a Trevisan winter.  I’ve often been asked if I have a warm coat and you know I actually thought I did.  But of late my usual Melbourne winter coat while being ultra stylish in its modern minimalist aesthetic is proving painfully inadequate and I have been forced to consider alternatives. 

When the first signs of cold weather appeared Trevisans en masse (I’m not sure if there is a set date for this or if the Trevisans have some kind of sartorial telepathy) pulled out their puminos.  A pumino is a big puffy, padded coat that while keeping you snug does run the danger of making you look like the Michelin man.  For a while it seemed as if every shop window was full these monster coats.  If like me you don’t particularly like the pumino there is a popular alternative – fur.  Here there doesn’t seem to be any stigma or controversy about wearing animal pelts and I’ve never seen so many women in fur.  Now obviously I’m not going to wear fur so it looks like the pumino is my only option if I’m going to get through the winter.  Unfortunately being short (I make pygmies look tall) and svelte not being an adjective you would use to describe me I look pretty stupid in one of these big puffy numbers.  I also think they’re pretty ugly so the prospect of owning one is quite distressing. 

Winter 2011/2 Big, puffy coat and gumboots

Get one, wear it through the winter and then put it at the back of your wardrobe and forget about it until you need it again was the advice I was given and it was with this in mind that I went out in search of a pumino.  I quickly realised that if I was to be warm I would have to give up any notions of style – these coats just look stupid on me.  They’re not cheap either and when push came to shove I couldn’t face the thought of spending 100+ euros on something that made me look like a cross between the stay puft marshmallow man and a sleeping bag.  I’ve never really thought of myself as a fashonista preferring to dress for comfort and mood rather than the latest trends yet I surprised myself by being prepared to suffer the cold to avoid the marshmallow look.  That was until the temps really started dropping and I soon realised that I am prepared to sacrifice a bit of style to the greater good of being warm.  I was hoping to ride it out until the sales kicked in post Christmas but no luck, it’s just too cold to wait.  Still being tight fisted or prudent enough not to spend my hard earned money on something that will render me a visual joke I’ve borrowed one from M.  Yes it’s super warm and puffy and yes I am giving up on style – for the next few months at least.