Vignettes of Perugia

A Lazy Friday Afternoon - Fri 4 Nov

Kumi and I had lunch in town, and then walked in the streets, window shopping. We explored more nooks and corners, and more precipitous slopes, allowing ourselves to get lost. It is Friday, we have time - her class has ended and I don’t even have class on Fridays.

Every corner of Perugia has some history, gallery, museum, statues and monuments; the whole city is a photo opportunity. I see busy tourists armed with maps, guidebooks and cameras snapping away and I tell myself how lucky I am to be living in this place, unlike a hurried tourist. I was in no hurry to catch the exhibits or fight with the opening and closing hours.

We reached Piazza Italia and admired the beautiful panorama in front of us. ‘’I must take a photo – I am Japanese,’’ she joked. She took out her Japanese Sony cell phone and tried to take a picture of the two of us.

A girl saw us and offered to help. We exchanged greetings. Expectedly, she is also a language student from the same uni, from Azerbaijan. ‘’You know where is this?’’ she asked. ‘’Er, yes,’’ I said, not knowing what else to say. Azerbaijan is something you read in the papers and see on CNN; I have never dreamed of meeting someone from this country, nor of having to converse in Italian with its citizen.

A Humourous Blend
Kumi wanted to see the room I had rented from Franca and followed me home. We gave Franca a surprise and she rewarded us with a hot cup of coffee.

Then Franca’s friend, Roland, visited. It was funny listening to him. He blends French words and phrases so naturally into his Italian that, had I not known French, would not have detected it.

He is French and married to an Italian and had moved from his hometown (somewhere between Paris and Lyons – I could not catch the name) to Perugia many years ago.

I just found it fascinating listening to him and Franca talk. ‘’Si, dans la meme strada, il y a….’’ and then he continued in Italian… and back he switched to an entire French sentence, ‘’demain matin je vais…’’ and then Franca would say, ‘’come, non ho capito?’’ And Roland would have to repeat himself in complete Italian.

When Franca answered a long phone call, Roland and I started to converse in French. It felt great for me, to be able to complete a few full sentences at one go – I have forgotten a lot of my French; still, it sure is more fluent than my Italian.

Soon Roland left and Franca and I watched some TV. There was a trailer for a Jackie Chan movie – ‘’Jackie Chan’s First Strike’’. Maybe one day I will just be a star and speak many languages, without having to learn it. It sure was funny to see Jackie Chan ‘’speak’’ Italian on TV.

A Leisurely Saturday Morning - Sat 5 Nov
I got out of bed, and saw my little tazzina (coffee cup) laid out on my tray on the dining table, comme d’habitude. The clock ticked loudly. I looked up – 9 am. I ambled into the kitchen – my little pot of coffee has already been set on the stove, waiting for me to heat it up. Mmmm…. Strong Italian coffee in little cups – perfect for someone like me who can never finish a full cup of any drink back home!

I looked out of the window – it was cloudy and gloomy. Franca confirmed it would rain, ‘’ma tutto va b-e-n-e, b-e-n-e …! ‘’ she sang cheerfully. I promised to myself I would try hard to cheer up in this cold and miserable weather, for her sake.

La Fiera dei Morti
This is an annual fair held to commemorate All Saints Day, from 1 – 5 Nov. At Franca’s suggestion, I took a bus from Piazza Italia to ‘’Lo Stadio’’, where the fair was held.

After missing the stop (even though the driver promised to tell me when to alight!) and having to take a bus back from the opposite direction, I finally made it to the fair.

It was a glorious display of food, and more food. There were many knick knacks on sale, from jewellery to clothing to home décor items, but I was most attracted to the food.

Italy is not a place for dieters, non-meat or small eaters. At the cafeteria people were eating heartily – huge portions, meat and carbo laden. To think I had to struggle to finish my piadina (like a ‘’wrap’’ in Singapore fast food joints)! There were many piadina, porchetta (roast pork), cheese, prosciutto, sausages, pizza and olive stalls. Most attractive of all were the beautiful dolci (dessert) stalls, selling famous sweets from Sicily, like pasta di mandorla pistacchio. There was a stall selling all kinds of olives and preserved fruits and vegetables like tomatoes. Beautiful. The friendly guy invited me to try his olives and when I wanted to take a picture he hurriedly took out three scoops to pick up three types of olives to pose for me. ‘’You have to take me at work,’’ he said.

It seems only locals visit the fair. I was the only foreigner and tourist with a camera. The stall holders were curious about me and made way for my camera clicking.

A stall was promoting some peanut sweets (il croccante alle arachidi). All you had to do was tear out the coupon from the flyer they handed out. I gave the young chap my coupon and he cheerfully gave me the sweet, and even said, with a big smile, ‘’prego, buon passaggiata’’ as I left.

Finding my way out of this giant fair and maze to go back to the bus stop was a major challenge for a ‘’direction-challenged’’ person like me.

I gave up finding after going in circles and went to another bus stop instead, and had to take a different route and change bus. Throughout this wild goose chase of buses and routes in il tempo brutto (it was pouring rain), I met all kinds of people – rude, sullen, unhelpful, friendly, sympathetic, proactively helpful…

Since my arrival barely a week ago, I have not been able to (not that I want to!) ‘’stereotype’’ or generalise the Italians. I could not say, ‘’Italians are arrogant, unhelpful, nasty’’, because there have been many nice ones. Neither could I say they are ‘’all very warm and nice’’ (which is what many friends like to say and compare against the French and the English), because I have already come across unpleasant ones, and I have also come across many lovely French and English people, contrary to the experiences of my friends.

I guess my main point is – never generalise, and appreciate each person as he or she is.

Counting Cappelletti - Sun 6 Nov
Every Sunday Franca joins her daughter Marinda and the latter’s family for lunch. It is an occasion she looks forward to. She would prepare lots of food to take over to the house to heat up.

Marinda came over on Saturday evening to pick up some of the food, and invited me over. ‘’Especially when you eat so little, it makes no difference for us,’’ she joked. (Franca has been spreading my ‘’reputation’’ of eating little.)

She picked us up in her car, with more food Franca had taken out of the fridge, to go to her big and beautiful house in the country side.

Her husband Leo was already busy preparing starters. Marinda looked at the huge bag of cappilletti and counted the number of cappilletto for each of us. There would be 8 of us for lunch, and she decided to give each of us 15 cappilletti. These are hat-shaped (il cappello – hat) pasta filled with meat, a speciality of the region.

‘’What do you do on Sundays? Prepare big lunches like us? For us, we love to eat, and on Sundays this is a ritual,’’ she told me.

‘’She hardly eats nor cooks. So far all I see her prepare and eat is bread,’’ Franca commented.

A Hearty Family Lunch
Soon Marinda’s 2 grown-up children – Michele and Beatrice - showed up. I could tell they love their nonna Franca very much. They hugged and kissed so affectionately. Michele is already 29 and Beatrice 23, but Franca actually gave Michele some money!

Leo’s sister (Daniela) and brother in law (Stefano) then showed up, and soon lunch began. We started with antipasto – prosciutto on cheese bread.

Then came nonna’s hand-made cappilletti. They looked and tasted like won-ton soup back home. Beatrice gave me a small portion and said, ‘’they say you eat little but you can have more later if you like it.’’

Next came some cooked meat and vegetables, of which I took a little (have never liked meat!). But there was more after this! I could not believe it – roast meat, potatoes and salad. I had to give the roast meat a miss and took some salad and sampled a small piece of potato, just to be polite.

I was about to explode when they brought out cheese bread, cake, tarts, croccanti alle arachidi, grapes and satsuma for desserts. As Michele served Spumante (sparkling Italian dessert wine) we started toasting one another – ‘’auguri’’ !

Conversations centred around their daily life, plus lots of questions about me and what I do. It took me some time to ‘’warm up’’ into fluent Italian. One of the first questions Stefano asked was if it was my first time in Italy. All I could manage was a ‘’no’’. Franca was surprised and I could not continue what I wanted to say, ie, that I’d been to Italy many years ago as a tourist. Michele teased, ‘’no… e poi?’’

I could not remember why the question of age cropped up and Stefano asked how old I was. No one believed it and it caused quite a murmur at the table when I told them. ‘’Da vero?’’ he asked. ‘’No, piu meno, piu meno,’’ Beatrice insisted.

While Franca washed up and Marinda made coffee, I started chatting with Stefano, who seemed pretty curious about me and Singapore. He had brought some lovely orchids for Marinda and asked if there are orchids in Singapore, and asked about the weather, etc.

Then he asked something I didn’t quite expect; maybe he thought of it because he is a doctor: ‘’Are you on a diet?’’ I was surprised: ‘’Me? No, why do you ask?’’. ‘’Because you eat so little and are so thin,’’ he replied.

‘’Me, thin? (How flattering, I thought) In Singapore there are lots of women much thinner than me, ‘’ I told him. ‘’Perche?’’ he asked. Sigh – every time I succeeded in saying something coherent, I get asked a question I do not know how to elaborate in Italian. I merely shrugged and smiled, ‘’Singapore girls are thin.’’