Finally winter has arrived in Rome!
Today it has poured with rain. The puddles are several inches deep around Trastevere, and also over on the Via del Corso, where I went today for a meet up with my new languge exchange buddy, Mario.
We met for an hour and a half in the Feltrinelli bookshop cafe (Feltrinelli are the largest chain of bookstores in Italy) and it was challenging and fun. Although it is a bit daunting to meet a total stranger and mangle their language in front of them, I found Mario a genuinely nice person who was very easy to talk with. And of course, like most Roman X- and Y-gens, his english is near perfect.
We have agreed to meet up once a week over coffee and split the conversation between italian and english. This is great for learning in an equitable environment; there is more of a balance when both parties are learning (as opposed to a teaching situation, where the balance is always towards the teacher). I'm hoping I can continue to talk with native speakers via Skype when back home.
Above is the Piazza Navona, photographed from under my umbrella as I walked over to the scuola after my meet-up.
School today was fun - we are currently working in the future tense, with some inventive 'In the future [classmate] will...'. Stories ranged from become a famous actress, play professional soccer, become a prima ballerina, speak italian better than the italians...
I really love my new class, and my classmates are a great bunch of people. Some of them have come to Rome to live, some are here only briefly, and some have a few months like me. New people come and go all the time, and today an Australian guy joined our group. We both got some pleasure out of hearing each others accent and have arranged to hook up at some stage for a drink (something we do better than any other race, we think).
Yesterday I missed my class as I'd previously booked a Context tour before switching to afternoons. The tour took us through some of the food highlights of Rome.
First stop was in the Jewish Ghetto to taste some olive oil from a Tuscan producer, who has opened a small farmshop in the city. The oil was grassy, slightly cloudy, fresh and delicious.
Next stop, for a range of cheese tasting and wine, was at Beppe e i Suoi Formaggi. An absolute standout was the gorgonzola, paired with nebbiolo wine. As Beppe, the owner, has married a frenchwoman the store showcases italian and french products. The shelves were stacked with cassoulet, duck confit, foie gras, dried pasta, chocolates and wine. And the smell of cheeses, when walking in, was pungent and heavenly.
As we walked, our guide explained the eating culture in Rome, and particularly the adherence to the traditional four pastas of Rome - carbonara, amatriciana, cacio e pepe and gricia. Gricia deviates only slightly from the amatriciana in that there are no tomatoes in the sauce. This hails back to when the italians were highly mistrustful of the tomato (related as it is to deadly nightshade).
We continued on over to Rosciolis in the Campo de' Fiori area to taste Rome's best pizza and watch the enormous slabs of dough being worked, prior to going into the oven. A few minutes later the dough has transformed into golden and crispy pizza bianca. The pizza chef was a natural showman :-)
Onward into the Campo de' Fiori piazza and to the Norcereria, to taste salame, prosciutto and other cured meats. One salami was studded with black truffle - it was really something to taste AND smell.
By now the rain had really set in, and dripping under our umbrellas, we headed to an artisanal gelateria on the Corso Vittorio Emanuele for gelato. Vice is a relatively new gelateria in Rome, and has already made a name for itself. The gelateria uses single-sourced producers for their flavours - sicilian mandarins, lemons from Amalfi, pistachios from Bronte, hazelnuts from Alba. And the chocolate is made from Valrhona. The good news is, there's only 4% butterfat in their gelato. That's better than yoghurt!
Our last stop was to see the coffee roasters at Sant' Eustachio, one of the best and most famous cafes in Rome. By now our group was ready for the restorative power of espresso (although it was interesting to learn that coffee was banned by the christian church a few hundred years ago, until one particular member of the papacy relented).
After our tour finished, I joined one of my fellow travellers to see the presepe (nativity scene) in the church opposite the cafe, before it is dismantled until next Christmas. This one is fantastic in its tiny detail, including the faithful reproduction of the buildings of the Piazza San' Eustachio. Even the tiny bakery has a glowing wood oven! As the festive season is now officially over, the Christmas lights are beginning to come down, and it'll be quite bare along the Roman streets when the last ones are taken away.
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