How to Italy

Why Marmite is my secret weapon in the Italian classroom

Marmite is a regular in my classroom.

It's the most effective weapon there is in keeping everyone - from lively kids to gossiping adults - disciplined.

Because they know that whenever the noise rises to an unacceptable level or they're not focusing on the English task in hand, I take the Marmite out of my bag (dubbed the Mary Poppins bag because no one is ever quite sure what's going to emerge next), place it on my desk and unscrew the top.

The effect is instant silence without me having to say anything. And that's not because I put the fear of God into them (though my CELTA teachers might disagree - I was once nicknamed Sergeant Emma or some other Army-esque term. But, hey, that was six years ago). It's because the brownstuff puts the fear of God into them.

They know that if they choose to snog their classmates (yes, that really has happened), apply their lippy or continue to gossip in Italian, I'll place the open jar of Marmite on their desks.

C, who has regularly been on the receiving end of the M-treatment, even begged me to give her some so she could use the same technique at home when her six-year-old twin boys misbehaved.

Is this a sign that Italians are finally beginning to appreciate the salty brown gloop?

An Ice cream a day...

An ice-cream a day.

That's one of the most common antidotes to the long, hot summers in Sardinia. And who am I to disagree with Italian experts who clearly know more about the subject than me?

Eating gelato, as ice cream is called over here, has been a popular pastime in Italy for hundreds of years. Even the ancient Romans enjoyed a scoop or two of snow and ice mixed with fruit, wine and honey.

It's not difficult to see why:

(photo credit: yud)

But if all those mouthwatering flavours don't tickle your tastebuds, maybe these will:

(photo credit: Lilian33)

And if they don't, there are always these:

(photo credit: Itsamish)

Needless to say, when you're in Sardinia to take part in one of our Absorbing Writing workshops, we'll be finding the time to eat some ice cream.

After six years in Italy, I've finally found my favourite flavour. I wonder what yours will be?

If I carry on drinking red wine, will I get to vote when I'm 101?

After all that recent doom and gloom about Italy being in the doldrums, this story in yesterday's regional paper Il Sardegna brought a smile to my face.

To Efisio Piras and his devoted wife Silvia, it was just another election.

But the crowd who had turned out to see the elderly couple arrive at the polling station to cast their vote on Monday disagreed.

For between them, Efiso and Silvia Piras have clocked up 200 years, making them the oldest couple to vote in Italy.

Efiso, who celebrated his 101st birthday in January, is an intent follower of politics and insisted on going to vote. Consequently, his 99-year-old wife followed suit.

But as strange as it might seem, the couple, who have been married for 76 years, are not that unusual in the village where they live.

Orroli, set in the heart of Sardinia's Barabagia region, boasts a population of 2,540. Of those, 39 are aged 90 or over and 17 are centenarians.

The village was also home to the oldest man in Europe: Giovanni Frau died in 2003 aged 112. 

Longevity in Orroli - and, more generally, Sardinia - is put down to the healthy lifestyle and the red wine produced on the island.

With all the vino rosso I knock back, maybe there is hope for me yet.

   

 

Cost of living and quality of life in Italy

Back in February, I wrote my only post about being back in England and expressed my annoyance at the cost of a cappuccino.

Hannah, who lives in Viareggio, picked up on a similar posting from October 2007 and asked an interesting question about quality of life in Italy versus England.

I understand her plight. Lots of people think that by moving to Italy, everyone is going to be living la dolce vita happily every after. But, unless you live in a sprawling castello in Tuscany and already have pots of money, life in Italy isn't quite as idyllic as it is made out to be. And the facts are there to back this up.

A few days ago, OECD published, among other things, its factbook into industrial development. Given Italy's current political and economic climate, I don't think anyone is really surprised to find the country ranked last among industrial countries for its productivity.

As I've mentioned before, salaries are low and housing costs, whether you're renting or have a mortgage to pay, are comparably high, especially if you live in a big city or tourist area. Lots of Italian families don't make it to the end of the month and it's also one of the reasons so many young people live with their families until they get married.

House prices is one of the first things I notice in England. Prices in Dorset, where my parents live, are high. Prices are also high in the Gallura region of Sardinia, where Mario and I live. If we were living in England, our incomes would be higher (in Mario's case nearly double what he earns now), yet house prices aren't double what they are here. Consequently, we would be able to afford a much larger property than the one we move into in September. If you're reading this in the US or the north of England, then you'll probably notice an even bigger disparity.

Then again, the plus side of Italy is that ICI, the property tax, is low. We pay slightly more than Eur250 per year, compared to more than that amount per month in England. And, because we're in Sardinia and don't have central heating, our gas bills are low, too. That's my situation, though. If you're living in northern Italy, then your heating bills are going to amount to a big chunk of your outgoings.

If you send your children to state school in Italy, then you have to pay a school fee (it's nominal, but you still have to pay), plus buy all the books they need each academic year. And you can't necessarily hand them down because different years will use different books or updated versions of the books. When you have two or more children going through the system, that soon adds up. They also don't have school uniform which means the classroom becomes a junior catwalk for the likes of Versace, Christian Dior and D&G.

As for eating out, Mario and I go to dinner in restaurants two or three times a week without it making too much of a dent in our wallets. But that's in Sardinia. Whenever we're on the continente (the Italian mainland), we're horrified by how much lunch or dinner comes to. Again, though, it's all relative. Wages are lower in Sardinia than they are in Italy.

To assess quality of life properly, the best thing to do is to make a list of your monthly income and expenditure, right down to the last apple or gelato. You need to do it for life in Italy and life in your home country.

I'd be interested to know what conclusions you come to, especially from those of you already living in Italy.

 

 

 

 

New Year Italian style

Wow.

What a way to start the New Year.

No, I'm not talking about the humungous fact that yesterday our book Starting a Business in Italy was at number 9 in the Bestsellers on Amazon in the starting a biz category. Though, needless to say, that put a smile on my face.

I'm talking about the celebrations for l'ultimo dell'anno which saw Mario and I cut the party short to go to bed at 5am. I'm still recovering now.

It wasn't the sheer amount of food and drink that made me stop and gasp. After six years in Italy, I'm used to 10-course meals washed down with never-ending jugs of red wine.

Neither was it the cacophony of noise coming from our table alone and the babies sleeping quietly through it - even mums who had given birth the week before had brought the newborns along for the occasion.

No, it was the mass singalong. Forget the linking of arms to Auld lang Syne. Every single person in the room bar me (I don't know the words) was singing their lungs out to songs about making love everywhere in Italy and about a policewoman only interested in chatting up the men rather than doing her job.

No wonder Italians enjoy life.

A warning about translations

She Read Potatoes.

Do you know what type of potatoes they are?

No, I didn't either.

Mario and I stopped off at a roadside restaurant yesterday evening for a bite to eat (or, in his case, being Italian, a seafood salad, a plate of pasta, kebabs and oven-roasted vegetables - where does he put it all?) and that's what was written on the menu.

To enlighten you and give you a crash course in Italian: She Read Potatoes are actually boiled potatoes. The Italian is patate lesse. Lesse is also the third person singular of the verb 'leggere' (to read) in the past historic tense. Which is why, for someone translating word by word, the potates are no longer boiled but read by a girl or a woman.

Well, it made me laugh over my glass of red wine.

Eating and drinking in Sardinia

My shiny red pomegranate.

That's what I was given unexpectedly by Dr Ampex as I walked out of his restaurant and into the narrow street of Via San Giacomo in Cagliari's centro storico at just gone midnight on Saturday.

But it didn't feel strange. Just right. After all, we'd been sat in what seemed like the dining room in his house for the past three hours eating dish after dish after dish of mouthwatering delicacies, washed down by two caraffes of his home-made wine.

Every time he brought over another plate of fried zucchini flowers or snails stewed in tomato sauce, he would explain where he'd picked the vegetables and why and (not for the squeemish), how he'd used the clamp in his garage to get the snails out of their shells before slowing cooking them.

I didn't even know Dr Ampex existed but I'm sure glad Maureen, an American who is going to move to Sardinia in the next couple of years and bring with her a novel business concept, and her Italian fidanzato did. The restaurant is so well hidden that even my Sardinian friends who have lived in Cagliari since they were born hadn't heard of it.

Oh and if you're wondering where the name comes from: Dr Ampex studied medicine but gave it all up to run his restaurant. I'm pleased he did. That was the best eating experience I've ever had in Sardinia.

Some cost comparisons between life in England and life in Italy

It was a welcome relief getting back to Sardinia yesterday. Everything is so damn cheap. Every time I went to buy something in the UK, I was converting into Euros and thinking 'this is such a bad deal'. Oh my goodness, how much do I moan? Feel free to tell me to shut up.

But it's true. Here's a quick breakdown in costs in the UK and Italy:

Bus ticket: UK - £3.70 for eight miles. Italy - Eur3 for 50km

Plate of pasta in restaurant: UK - £8. Italy - Eur4

Pint of beer in restaurant: UK - £2.50. Italy - Eur1.60

1 litre bottle of mineral water in restaurant: UK -(I don't know, I had tap water). Italy - Eur1.20 (I don't drink tapwater here. Neither would you when it sometimes comes out a rather disturbing muddy brown or sand-coloured).

Cappuccino: UK - £1.75. Italy - Eur1.20

Ok, so there are a few flaws in my non-scientific comparison. I admit that.

One, Sardinia is a fairly cheap region of Italy and my prices aren't taken from the Costa Smeralda - apart from the cappuccino at Olbia airport yesterday when I arrived. Had I been in Milan, Rome or Florence the prices would have been much higher.

Two, I did eat the pasta in an expensive UK restaurant. It probably would have cost less elsewhere.

Three, I'm only basing it on one price rather than average of lots of different prices which would have been more acccurate.

But, still, gives you an idea as to how far your Euro will stretch in Italy. 

Doing business the Italian way

I love eating, drinking, meeting people, talking and making friends, though not necessarily in that order. Actually, as some people will tell you, talking comes rather high on my list.

Anyway, luckily for me, I managed to do all five this weekend. Sally, who I will profile in full at a later date, had booked a two hour consultation with M & I. Since she and her boyfriend were driving to our home for the consult from the other side of Sardinia, I thought it would be a lovely idea to have lunch altogether.

It was a really warm day which meant we could sit outside on the patio. Yay! The lunch was fab (of course, I'm going to say that. I made it) and the conversation flowed as much as the chilled white wine so instead of having just a quick snack, we didn't finish eating till nearly 4pm - even though the consult should have already finished by then. Still, it was a great way to break the ice before getting down to the nitty gritty of setting up a business - and what a business it is, as you'll find out when I blog about it.

The whole day was an example of Italian business at its best:

1) Food and drink is integral to the proceedings but working lunches do not exist. Lunch and dinner are to be enjoyed for what they are, rather than trying to cram in business and food at the same time. It's the same for coffee breaks. No Italian would dream of drinking coffee at their desk when they can amble to the local bar and enjoy a swift espresso.

2) Time is not to be followed strictly. Everything will still get done.

3 ) Building up rapport is key to doing successful business.

Italian lessons in authenticity

What's your name? What are you eating? Why are you here?

Those were just some of the questions that the two-year-old at the table next to ours was bombarding us with while we were waiting for our meal to arrive in our favourite restaurant.

Were she in the UK or the US, her parents would probably have tried to sssshhhhsh her up, telling her she shouldn't talk to strangers and that she should be a good girl and clear her plate as quickly as possible.

But, luckily, she wasn't in the UK or the US so her parents were more than happy for her to chat away to us as she slowly spooned her pasta into her mouth, smearing her face with tomato sauce in the process. She was in Italy and already learning the immeasurable pleasure of lingering over dinner, combining fine food with good conversation. And judging by the huge smile on her chubby toddler face, she was having a wonderful time. As were we.

There were no airs or graces. No one trying to be something they weren't. Just acceptance of the situation and people joining in the conversation no matter what their age or status.

But it wasn't a one-off. It's repeated all over Italy. Day in, day out. In every town and every piazza. In fact, it is one of the reasons I fell in love with the country in the first place.

It's no secret that my Italian was rubbish when I first lived in Italy and that my knowledge of the culture was way below par. Nevertheless, I was astounded and comforted at how quickly I was embraced into the fold and made to feel as important as everyone else - no matter that my new-found friends had to concentrate hard to make out what I was saying in Italian in between my stuttering and stammering and bad grammar mistakes.

That scene was played out again just over a year later in Bologna where I was spending my third year of university abroad. Again, I was welcomed and appreciated for being 'me'. 'Me' with the bad grammar. 'Me' from England. 'Me' who couldn't start the day (and still can't) until I'd drunk a strong espresso. 'Me' with the smile on her face. And lots more 'mes' beside. I didn't have to be anyone I wasn't. I was 'me' and it felt great.

Ten years later, I'm still in Italy and that authenticity is as present now as it was then. As far as I like to think, my 'me' shines through into my writing, too. This is how I am. This is my life. And this is how I write. I'm proud of being me and love the life I live so why should I hide it? There are so many blogs in the blogosphere - over 100 milion. So why should I be someone I'm not? After all, if people don't like who I am and the way I write, they can always go elsewhere.

In the meantime, I'll continue to laugh and joke with the little girl who has already learnt the art of authenticity and celebrate being 'me'.

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I've joined Joanna Young's Confident Writing blog as a guest author and this was my contribution to the September theme of writing with authenticity. If you want to write a book on your expat experiences, then check out Joanna's blog for tips and tricks on writing clearly. Oh, and it's peppered with info about her life, too.