Mailbag

Here's where I will respond to the comments at the top of the page:

"I could hear your voice as I read your coments. How is the transportation? What do you do in your free time? Take care :)" 

I read literally everything other people write in their voices, which I find amusing.  The simple things in life, eh?  Just to be philosophical for a moment here, Marcel Proust wrote that people have different voices (i.e. lexicon, diction, etc.) when they write versus when they speak, and one of his characters was friends with a famous writer and himself wrote some articles for Le Figaro or something and adopted this writer's speaking voice instead of the writing voice as you would expect.  I sort of feel like my writing voice is generally much more intelligent than my spoken voice, so maybe I can ride my own coattails a bit.

Transportation is pretty convenient here actually.  Going long distances is much easier than in the U.S., as you can take a train from Bologna to Milan, Venice, or Rome without much hassle.  Local transport is a bit more expensive I think - the bus is 1,50 € for 75 minutes of travel, but you can also get bus passes that make it cheaper to use it a lot.  Mostly I just walk, because Bologna, like many European cities, I imagine, is very pedestrian friendly, especially in centro.

In my free time I mostly do shopping or head out.  There are like ten zillion restaurants, bars, cafés, etc. per square kilometer here, so there is no shortage of places to go.  Bologna is a quite bustling city

"Alex you do make me laugh! It sounds like you're having fun."

Thanks, Marm! I am indeed having a good time.  Everything is molto bene.


"I think the name of the blog is awesome, complete with a matching picture. It's very interesting to read about the differences between AMURIKA and Italy. Only wish I had enough monies to fly myself over there and visit you during spring break or something. Ah, well. I shall await your return in June (or was is July?)!"

Conveniently I had a picture to name the blog after! I guess bits and blogs would be a more punny name, but so be it.  The main difference I notice is that the people here aren't really in a rush to do anything.  I might even go so far as to call them apathetic about most things.  Hence the political system is completely screwed up despite the people being generally intelligent and hardly the sort of people "evil" enough to be Fascist (though it's been some 70 years since then).  

Perhaps if you spend enough time at Dunkin' Donuts this semester, you will have enough specie to pay for a ticket :P 'twould be well worth it I assure you

Also, heads up America, the hope of the states returns June 5th - my dad's [29th] birthday!

"BACON SAUCE...How do we NOT have BACON SAUCE here in the States?" 
Honestly, this befuddles me. What could be more American than the aptly and simply named bacon sauce. No gimmicks, just bacon in sauce form. I guess we'll have to make due with baconnaise until Heinz gets its priorities in order

For the record

Earlier this week I went to a record store here in Bologna (specifically the Ricordi Media Store on Via Ugo Bassi), which was a very enlightening experience, giving me a good opportunity to talk about the kind of music Italians seem to listen to.

One thing that may be a bit surprising is the fact that Italian radio stations play as much English/American music as Italian music, so there's really a mix of both varieties here.  Of course, many don't know what the words to songs by the likes of Maroon 5 and Taylor Swift mean (they don't know what they're missing), but this doesn't seem to hinder their enjoyment too much.

To them, every song is the macarena

Why is this? I'm not quite sure - there are plenty of Italian pop singers, but maybe the sheer volume of English and American imports creates a market for itself.

While one would think that the inability of most Italians to understand English music would decrease the quality of the music that was popular here.  After all, the difference between 2 Chainz and Kanye West, for instance, would be almost non-existent.  Surprisingly, though, Italy is not just a land where catchy American music thrives. Indeed, the record store I went into had a bafflingly random and respectable selection.

Generally, it's broken up into a few sections - there's a pretty large opera section, an Italian music section with the likes of Afterhours and Vasco Rossi, and a section filled with English music.  The contents of this last section are as follows:
 - Typical older music: Michael Jackson, Bob Dylan, Rolling Stones, and David Bowie, but...
 - No Beatles, The Who, or Led Zeppelin
 - An oddly large variety of options from The Pet Shop Boys, of whose songs I can name none
 - Even greater selection of Iggy Pop, who seems to be very popular here in Italy.  They had multiple copies of Raw Power as well as solo albums like The Idiot and Lust for Life, and multiple people that I've met here in Italy are fans.  Granted, he's fairly well liked in the U.S. as well, but it's not like you ever hear "No Fun" or "Nightclubbing" on the radio

Among the ranks of these artists was also a large selection of '90's and 2000's British music (most of the music there actually), which is a score for me.  Here's what I found:
 - Multiple copies of Oasis' (What's the Story) Morning Glory? and a couple copies of Heathen Chemistry.  I almost bought a copy of the latter, but considering it's the album where they jumped the shark in trying to be like The Beatles, I thought I'd wait till I had a copy of the more deserving Be Here Now before getting it, because Oasis cares what order I buy their albums in
 - Every single Coldplay album
 - Radiohead and, shockingly, Kasabian albums
 - Massive Attack, because Italy evidently has very eclectic taste in music
 - and The Verve's Urban Hymns, which I bought (it's pretty solid - more similar to A Storm in Heaven on first listen than I expected)
 - Then in the vinyl section they had Primal Scream's Screamadelica and Pulp's Different Class, although the vinyl section tends to be more out there - in Providence I went to a record store that had a vinyl copy of Slowdive's impossible to find last album, Pygmalion

Basically, Italians listen to American music but are also apparently all about that recent British alternative.  I've got to admit, I'm kind of impressed and amused by their taste.

Italian Food for People Who Don't Know How to Make Italian Food but Also Don't Have Time for Restaurants

So yeah, shopping.  Now, of course you have those classic fresh Italian ingredients that you can buy from the local market - on Via Ugo Bassi there's a pretty big one with fish stalls and butchers in addition to fruit and vegetable vendors - but if you need large corporations to do your cooking more or less for you, like I do, there are also some American style supermarkets in Italy.  In fact, we were the country that introduced them to the peninsula just after World War II, as I learned from this article that I read sophomore year.

Of course, things didn't go smoothly at first, because Italians thought carrying shopping bags made them look poor, but eventually they learned American ways, and now have their own spin on the beloved institution.

This is an advertisement for Italy's oldest supermarket - clearly they've taken things too far

Here in Bologna, there are a few different supermarkets.  Probably the best known is Coop - there are a bunch of them in the city.  There's also a pretty large Pam supermarket across the city from where I live which is the only one open on Sunday afternoons, and some Carrefour Express mini-supermarkets scattered around.  Esselunga is also pretty famous, but they seem to be mostly in the suburbs.

Now, before we begin, let's try not to judge them for being different.  Sometimes different is good! Here is a far from exhaustive list of what is different:

1) Eggs are not located next to the milk as they are in the U.S., and are instead unrefrigerated on their own space of shelf.  This confuses me every single time.  After 5 minutes of looking confusedly a different kinds of cheese, I give up and ask someone

2) The largest milk container available is 1 L (as far as I've seen).  As someone who consumes an ungodly amount of milk, this saddens me, because I have to buy a new bottle every two days instead of working on a gallon for a few days. For reference, here is the largest container of milk available, next to a normal sized glass:

NOT ENOUGH!!!

3) You can buy mayonnaise in a tube:

"That's one small step for man..."

4) As I've noted previously, they only have two kinds of soda, but make up for that by having blood orange juice alongside regular orange juice - I would have taken a photo, but going on my own to a store and taking a photo of their produce seems like a weird thing to do

Now, here's are some random things I've bought at the supermarket:

1) This flan (pannacotta) that comes in a pudding cup that you open upside down so that it stays on the cover:

Also, that mark on the table is where the caramel dripped off because I opened it badly

2) This soppressata that is so, so tasty

Stop being immature

3) These whoopee pies that are peach on the outside and chocolate on the inside - they are as weird as they sound

Photographic evidence

Of course, there are a lot of other minor differences, but those were some of the ones that I noticed and felt like taking a picture of

So good.  Gets me every time

Also, if you want, sign up for my RSS feed, because I think that's a thing that exists and does things related to this blog

I'm Lovin' It

Italy's great, for sure.  The people, the cities, the food, all of it.  But let's say you get sort of tired of part of it.  Maybe, after one week of eating nothing but pasta and dried meat, you want some of that good old American cuisine to refresh your palate.

errday

Well, lucky for you, Italy's got your back.  There's a McDonald's in every major city center and every major train station, so you can get your grease on whenever you want.

This McDonald's is right next to the cathedral in Ferrara

But what are you going to order? Getting Italian McDonald's must be so confusing - the names are probably all different and stuff.

Well, true, but different in a good way, because the names are all English and just as explanatory as American burger names.  If you're me, there's really only one option, however:

Crispy McBacon, or, as it says on the box, His Crispiness

Because seriously, who sees a name like that and thinks, "ehh, I'll pass"?  And it is indeed good.  Just like mother used to make, assuming she was an associate at McDonald's.  More accurately, just like your high school friends used to make before they quit.  The only difference is that instead of using ketchup, they use what seems to be Thousand Island dressing, which kind of surprises me because I would have assumed that if Italy was swapping out ketchup, it would be for tomato sauce.

Also, for those curious, here's the text on the box:
"'Crispy' means this is something else: tasty bovine meat [Editor's note: hell yes], two slices of crispy bacon [I'm still not positive that bacon and pancetta are the same thing, but close enough]..."

Wait a second - the next phrase is "deliziosa salsa bacon"... does that mean the sauce is not Thousand Island, but BACON SAUCE???? What I thought was relish was actually bacon? Why is this sandwich not in America? McDonald's, wake up!

Continued: "... delicious bacon sauce and a strong and unmistakable personality.  The true classics never fade away."  Amen, Crispy McBacon box, amen.

-------------

Italian McDonald's is in general a bit different from the American original (and I'm going to say better). I've never gotten McDonald's to go in the U.S. unless it was drive-thru, so I was somewhat surprised by the bag they gave me

This bag is super sized

It was large enough for my food and a drink carrier thing.  They also could have put in another few combos of food, but I'm not complaining.

Also, the McDonald's in the Bologna city center is pretty busy and has two floors.  They actually have an usher who finds you a seat.  I didn't know this the first time and went looking around for a table before a guy came to help me.  He also threw out my left over food for me.  Ospitalità, I say.

The main thing that struck me, however, is the augmented selection in some areas while in others its severely limited.  There is not much drink selection.  There are 4 options: Coke, Diet Coke, Fanta Aranciata (I'll cover what this is in a later post), and Water, and these are pretty much the same limited options that you'll find in a supermarket.  This Dr. Pepper drinking blogger is somewhat saddened by the situation.

Other things, however, provide a much greater range of choices.  There are various things you can get instead of fries, including a wedge of parmesan cheese (they were sold out when I went, so I guess it's popular).  Also available is gelato, which I came very, very close to getting, I assure you.  Granted, gelato in this case probably only means soft-serve, but it is probably pretty good in any case.  I mean, who doesn't like ice cream?  I'll do a post one this when I try out Burger King (the only other American fast food chain I've seen.  Where's the Sbarro's?), but there were 5 or 6 flavors, including Coffee, Caramel, and "Forest Fruit" (mixed berry I think).  So yeah, I will certainly be going to check that out.  Actually, there's no way I'm not going back now that I've realized that the sandwich I ate had bacon sauce on it.  Mi piace.

Using the Bathroom

There are some things that America just does the best.  Examples: fried food, freedom, soft drinks, SUVs, and liberty.  Also, democracy. Also, bathrooms are one of those things.

Here is a selfie of me in a bathroom

Now I'm not pointing any fingers here, 

Actually, I lied.  I totally am.  My bad.

but some countries could stand to learn a few things from America, and one of those is Italy.  Now, Italy's great: the people are awesome, the food is awesome, even their terrible president is more amusing than ours

I have the intelligence of George W. Bush combined with the licentiousness of Bill Clinton!

Unfortunately, the bathrooms (which they call the "toilette", from French I think) are somewhat confusing and, I might also say, worse.  I think that's a bit harsh - we can all deal with things like this - but still.  Here's my reasoning:

1. Bidet: this is a fixture (not an appliance really, is it?) that for me has no application whatsoever.  It just sits there taking up space.

sup

What it looks like is a combination sink/urinal, but in actuality it is used for "washing the genetalia, inner buttocks, and anus".  

umm... 

Okay, actually I'm starting to feel bad for it now.  That's a terrible, terrible job.  I guess you can stay.

2. Washing machine:  The washing machine is actually alright - it's kind of confusing, but has a function where you can set it to run after a few hours so you can wash your clothes while you're at work or something, which is pretty cool.  The downside is that they heavily outnumber the dryers, which means you have to hangdry your clothes.  In the summer, that's great.  That fresh scent will lift your spirits day after day.  In the winter, however, you have to hang them on these racks

which actually do a fairly decent job.  The one problem is that it's pretty cold in my room, so the clothes that don't go on the rack (like socks, for instance) will take much longer to dry.  That is to say, they are still moist after 2 days.

It's not all bad, though.  The toilets here are more environmentally friendly, since you can stop the flush if you don't need to wash that much down, and they also use less water in general.  Actually, everything would be perfect if they just swapped the bidet out for a dryer.  That's all I'm saying really.

Ciao!!

Ciao amici.  Soon I will hopefully have some content, which may be interesting to you Americans curious to see how different life is overseas.  It will range from various food products to aspects of daily living.  Hopefully I will be able to keep things fresh and interesting.  If not, :/

A presto,
Alex