#40 Welcome to the South of Italy

The South. 

I had lived and worked in the North of Italy, Turin, for about a year and a half before I first ventured to the south. I had heard about the south in whispers around the dinner table, “but Stefanie”, (Italians love starting their sentences with “but”) “The South isn’t like this. It’s different. Life there is slow. People eat more.”

I decided to see for myself. I headed from Turin directly to Sciacca, a small city in Sicily where I contacted a woman and her boyfriend who live on an organic olive farm where they made soaps and oils. They wanted to start a language school in their small town. It would be the first of its kind.

So I ventured off into the south, expecting… I don’t know what I was expecting. Maybe there was still a little thought that Italy in the south would be like the movies, with the old women furiously sweeping their doorsteps and children playing football in the street.

The first thing I noticed upon arrival at the Palermo airport was the cooperation between people. I had heard that people in the South were hospitable and open, but they are kind and help people with their bags instead of elbowing them to make room. They seem to leave more space.

The second thing I noticed was the traffic. The trip into town from the airport was supposed to take about 40 minutes. It was the closer part of an hour and a half. It’s not that the drivers were crazy, but that there was just a huge amount of cars on the road. I had forgotten that despite Palermo and Turin being the same size, Turin has a metro and wide Roman-style roads to aid with traffic. To my surprise and delight I soon realized that drivers in Palermo don’t furiously honk their horn.

Nevertheless a delay in my flight coupled with the traffic caused me to miss the last bus into Sciacca [traveller’s tip: never make arrangements so you are on the last bus, odds are you will miss it]. It was a really proud moment for me, actually, because I realized that my Italian was good enough to have a conversation about a cheap place to stay. I booked myself into a cute b&b on Via Roma, which ended up being not so much a b&b, but a hotel. A b&b, in my opinion, isn’t just a hotel with the words “b&b” (and they also don’t charge you E5 for breakfast).

But, when in Rome do as the Roman’s do or rather, when in Sicily don’t worry about getting breakfast at the hotel. Italian breakfast is a croissant (brioche) and an espresso so you would be paying E5 for something that costs E2 across the street anyway (and is probably made by someone’s grandma).

That night I explored around to find something to eat. I snuck into the first Italian restaurant I could find on Via Vittorio and, even though the restaurant was almost empty, I was sat down between a family and 2 men. The people beside me briefly looked at me in pity (I was eating by myself, after all) and then they returned to their meal. This is significant because in Turin people stare at you and they don’t look away. Even when you look back at them, many people just carry on looking. It’s uncomfortable sometimes; you can feel their eyes on you all the way down the street.

I ordered the “fish special” – E15. In Turin this would have resulted in a piece of white fish and maybe some vegetables. In Palermo…

Well let’s just say in the south you “mange bene” (eat well).  I was brought course after course of bite-sized pieces: first a plate of octopus, cod, and two other types of fish I had never tried before (but I will remember the melt-in-your-mouth fresh flavor forever). The next was a tuna and fruit salad, more cod, and some shrimp. The next plate was an anchovy ratatouille (for lack of a better description), fish meatball, and anchovy paste. I wasn’t even done at that point! I was brought some fried mashed potatoes and a small slice of chickpea pancake. In Italian all of these dishes have specific names, but I find it easier to describe what they are (sorry my Italian friends).

I asked the woman if the “fish special” was actually supposed to be for just 1 person. She assured me , “infatti” (yes). 

While I was in food heaven, the men next to me started up a conversation. It was very cute because they didn’t come out and directly start talking to me; instead, they started to pepper their conversation with English words. Whenever I would automatically glance over they smiled to themselves and went back to their conversation. It made me laugh, this coyness, this playfulness that I had never experienced before.

We started talking shortly after my last course. One of the men was in his 70’s and had just returned from 30 years living in New York. It was surprising (and adorable) because he spoke very basic English, peppered with bumper sticker phrases in a New York accent: “I went to New York for 30 years. I just come back. New York is like, are you freaking kidding me man? Are you joking me? I go in Canada once, and it was so expensive, like, are freaking serious guy?”

It turns out that he went to Atlantic City 30 years ago and won 2 million dollars at the casino and stayed in New York until the money ran out. He was trying to marry me off to his friend, a younger dentist in his 40’s.  I politely declined.

As soon as they found out I had been living in Turin they told me all about the “real” Italy in the south. To an outsider it may seem strange to have a country with such a competition over where it is from, but you have to consider that Italy (and the Italian language) was only created 150 years ago. Before that, it was a series of autonomous regions that operated with their own dialects, culture, tradition, food, and climate, each very different from the next. It would be like if each province in Canada was like la belle Province (where depending on the year, feel like they either are the real Canada, or not Canada at all). In fact, there are a few autonomous regions in Italy, most of them bordering other countries where the people have had long histories of changing hands and now consider the country they officially belong to like the changing weather (Valle D’Aosta, Trentino etc.).

When you see Italian food in films and in photos, you generally see Sicilian food. Round loafs of bread sprinkled with sesame seeds piled high on the table, wine, fresh olives and olive oil, risotto, tomatoes that are so fresh that you can eat them like grapes.

You wonder to yourself: how can they live in the land of bread, pasta, and wine and not gain a pound? I’ll let you in on the secrets…

First of all, Italians don’t drink.  It sounds counter intuitive because there is wine on every table, but they just put it out like a condiment. You can have some wine with your lunch just like you can have some olive oil on your bread. Or not.  Because it’s around so often people don’t really use it. It’s kind of like that candy that your grandma always has in her house.

Secondly, Italians don’t snack. We were talking about some Canadian food that I could prepare for an event and I mentioned that I could put some fresh herbs in yogurt with lemon juice and we could cut up some veggies (carrots, cucumber, little tomatoes). Snack foods: that’s where I shine. But in the end, I knew that they wouldn’t be received in the same way.

Snack foods don’t exist in the same way here. People eat proper meals three times a day. If you’re hungry in between meals you can have a yogurt or a piece of fruit. For dinner you can have finger foods like pieces of pizza, bruschetta (pronounced: brusk – etta not brush – etta), crackers with some cream cheese and tomatoes, but you eat salads and vegetables as well. This type of eating is called an aperitivo and it’s like a buffet style of fresh, home made food that can be piled on a small plate (small plate, eh). The other type of eating is a course-style meal where you have a salad and meat with veggies or a small serving of pasta.

Third, people watch their portions (as I’m typing this, I’m making the “in a way” movement with my hands that I’ve grown accustomed to). Let’s qualify that during the week people watch their portions. If you have pasta, you don’t eat anything else. If you have risotto, you don’t eat anything else. If you have meat and vegetables, you have some bread. If you have pasta for lunch you have salad for dinner and vice versa.

People understand what works for their body and they won’t judge you at all for doing what feels right for you. For example, some people love to eat bread with pasta and they won’t eat bread with a meat and vegetable plate. Others will eat bread only in the morning with some Nutella. Some people will eat everything and those people are not called fat slobs. They are called a “buona forchetta” (bwohna – fork- etta). I am, as you can imagine, proud to call myself a “good fork”.

I mentioned weekday eating and weekend eating. This is very important. On the weekend, you can have whatever you want. You can go to a restaurant and have pasta piled high, or a smaller plate of pasta with some vegetables and meat as well. You can go to a pizzeria and have a whole pizza to yourself (with one whole pint of beer!). You can host a party on Sunday afternoon and eat lasagne, and pasta, and meat, and fish, and top it all off with dessert.

But you don’t do all of these things on the same weekend.

I finally arrived in Sciacca and was greeted by the smiling faces of Aga and Alex. They are an adorable Polish-Italian couple that, I soon find out, doesn’t just operate a farm; they have an empire of products and constant mindset of invention.

They say that Rome wasn’t built in a day, but if they had had Aga, it would have been. In just 2 years they have built their soap business, renovated their house, started a school, and built countless projects throughout the house. This couple works really well together; I’ve never seen a couple so focused on their big picture. They may disagree about the way to do something (like why two milk containers are open at the same time), but it’s just because they both want it done right.

Over the last few days the internet hasn't been working and it’s really shown me how difficult it is to keep a business while travelling. Things go wrong. I had this vision of having Skype classes every morning to wake myself up early and make some money for the day, but it seems like that is just wishful thinking. In fact, I’ve had to cancel several due to the spotty connection.

So I decided to put my time to good use and help around the house. They had recently renovated the main floor of the house and there are things covered with dust everywhere. Plus, there is a strong wind that blows dust everywhere. You need to clean every single day. There is always something to do on a farm.

But thankfully, they also believe in siesta in the South!