Websites in Italian

I can't really say how frustrating it is to use my browser when I'm in Italy sometimes. My browser, the application that runs the most on my computer. My computer, my dear friend. It's a betrayal and an example of what you can versus what you should do in terms of applying technology.

The technology I'm talking about is determining a browser user's location. In my two-years as an expat I feel like more and more website I go to open up in Italian on me. Often with no way of turning it off or switching back to English.

Just now I went to Macy's website. Granted, I googled it first, though I could have guessed the URL. So I deserved to be sent to the .IT version of the site, with blown up "WE SHIP TO ITALY NOW" covering the whole site. I quickly changed the URL to the standard www.macys.com and saw the normal american-aimed site that I wanted. From there, found a link to the info I sought. Only to be hit again the moment I clicked it "WE SHIP TO ITALY NOW". Give it up, Macys, I'm so not interested.

Even earlier today, I went to my AdWords account to see why the ads are gone from my blog (robbing my of those potential pennies in case anyone were to click them!). I log in and it's in Italian. I'm logged in! Google knows me. Google probably knows me better than my mother. So I google (ha) how to change your language preference in AdWords Dashboard and navigate through the Italian to find the setting, but it is already English. It mush be a setting for the language of the Ads, but looking at the "Inglese" sure felt ironic. Yes, I get by in Italian, but these are setting panels, it brings me to the level of a 70-year old blind women.

Speaking of Google. I have tried everything to get my browser search bar to default to google.com, rather than google.it. If I put google.com in the navigation bar while in Italy, it forwards to google.it. The only way to get to google.com is to use iGoogle-- somehow that knows I'm me, American, and not to give me all Italian language search results. Just the normal wikipedia first then everything else, that I expect. But iGoogle is being phased out by Google and will be turned off November 2013. So I guess I'll have to get better at reading Italian and wean off wikipedia.

Now I'm not saying all websites should always be in English, I'm saying that if you are going to offer multiple language versions of your website, which is great, you should do that, let the user choose to change it after you maybe pick the default based on location. Don't assume every person in any location prefers one language. Like half the people in Italy at any given time are tourists (I think I read that in a Rick Steves once, I can't back up those numbers), so it's not that safe a bet as you might think that a person here wants to speak Italian. Plus we already can't get to Hulu, Netflix, Pandora, Spotify, NBC.com, or even the pirate bay. Also the fastest internet you can get is DSL but most people use "internet keys" which is cell phone tethering. And no, there is no 4G, lots of places have Edge or even no data coverage. So, don't kick dirt in the wound by making inaccessible websites. It's just mean.

Whoops

I haven't posted about any of my travels in over 6-months! Whoops!

So here's what happened. I went to Istanbul last April and literally took over 1,000 pictures. Now I shoot with a Nikon D90 in camera Raw and like to post process my pictures, choose the best, add captions, put them in an album online. At the same time, write about my adventures in a blog post (90% for my own prosperity, but 10% in case anyone else enjoys it) and add a few of the photos relevant to the travel story.

I was so overwhelmed with the idea of processing those 1000 Istanbul photos that everything stopped. I still haven't started with those 1000 pictures from Turkey, but I'm going to move past this block. Starting now I'll write about and upload pictures from trips as I take them and try to back fill the last 6-months when I can.

In the next few days (weeks?) I'll fill in recent adventures like the weekend Daniele and I just spent in Umbria with his cousins there. Also Ferragusto just past, August 15 is a holiday that Italians all take off from work and picnic-- so fun! And we're going to Umbria again next weekend; probably to Perugia where I expect to eat lots of chocolate. Daniele and I also recently went through lots of paperwork and I finally mailed in my petition to sponsor his fiance visa, so we can get married in the US. That's a bit of a different kind of adventure, but I think I'll record our experiences with it here just the same.

Cheers!

Umbria with Daniele's Cousins

Daniele's mother is from Umbria, the region east of Lazio (were Rome is). Her sister never left and still lives in the house where they grew up. She has three sons a bit older than Daniele and his brother that are each married. The oldest two each have a daughter about 15 and a son about 7 years old. I met this whole side of the family last year and adored them! Unfortunately they are about two hours away from us in Rome.

We've been trying for a while to organize a day with Daniele's cousin Massimo, his wife Catia, and their children Sara and Diego. It is hard because everyone involved works shifts (Daniele is a nurse, Massimo a factory manager, and Catia a police officer) so it's not like we can just pick a weekend, or even the first weekend Daniele has off. This day worked out because they were on vacation. In the summer most Italians take vacation. They were spending theirs between Catia's family beach house, which coincidentally is right by Daniele's parent's beach house, and her family house were she grew up in Volperino. The latter is where we met up with them.

Cousins Daniele, Sara, and Diego

Their house in Volperino is a lovely large independent house on a large lot. Dare I say “villa”? The town is up in the mountains and a beautiful place to escape the heat of Rome. It is a such a nice place. Everyone in town knows each other. In fact the neighbors stopped by randomly throughout our two day stay there.

The town itself was damaged significantly by the 1997 earthquake. Italian houses are built differently than ours, from stone, and are expensive and time consuming to repair. It can take decades to build a house and obviously these people can not stay homeless that time. Most moved away, some have RVs on their property. 15 years later it is still a town under construction and the population is much lower, especially in the winter.

Only one wall is left from this house.

When we first got there, the kids were still sleeping because they had been out dancing till 2am the night before. Everyone in town goes to the bar (coffee shop) every night. We went later that night.

Catia made us lunch. After we lounged under almond trees to pass the afternoon heat. Daniele and I went to Nocera Umbra before dinner and when we came back his aunt and uncle were there, too. As well as some other people I was never introduced to (Italians do not automatically introduce everyone present). After dinner, we all walked to the town bar (coffee shop) where everyone in town was there hanging out all night long. The younger kids played hide and seek, the older ones foosball and ping pong, the elderly played cards, some adults played bocce ball, and everyone else just hung out.

Almond tree at Catia and Massimo's house

Monday Daniele and I had the best of intentions to take a morning hike with Massimo, but just didn't wake up early enough. So we took an easier walk with Sara and Diego that was more eating road-side blackberries than it was hiking. We hung out for the morning and early afternoon before setting off to Spoleto and home.

Sara knew all the best blackberries

Blackberry bush

Sunday we saw smoke in the distance that appeared to be a wild fire. It was just behind the rolling hills, so we could not see the flames to be sure. After a while there were helicopters and planes that dropped water, it was out the next morning. Catia said there have been a lot of them. Sure enough, Monday we saw another in the other direction. Daniele and I saw it closer up on the way home, but we also saw lots of other burnt patches of hillside. I hadn't known wildfires were such a problem. Apparently it is always an issue in dry forest areas in Italy, especially this year with the droughts.

Wild fire near Trevi, Umbria

While we were out in Umbria, Daniele and I made some trips to see some new places. Sunday we went to the little town of Nocera Umbra. Fun thing about Nocera Umbra is it sounds a lot like “No c'era ombra” or more correctly “Non c'era ombra” which means “There was no shade”. The translation has nothing to do with the name of the town, but it did confuse the heck out of me when I was first hearing it.

The town was cute and small. They were also still reconstructing from the damage of the 1997 earthquake. Most of the places we saw in the area were, with large cranes propped up to the mountain top towns. They had a museum of torture, which I was interested in, but not enough to pay the 5 euro (or 10 for Daniele and I) entrance fee. As we were leaving we saw part of a Ballet Recital going on in the square by the door to the city. It was adorable!

View from the top of Nocera Umbra

Monday we stopped at Spoleto on our way back to Rome. Spoleto is a much bigger city and features a castle / former prison on top and a 13th century bridge. Speleto is a perfect example of the medium sized town that I love in Italy. Not the big city like Rome or Florence, which are already big and constantly getting bigger as more people flock there for work. Not the tiny hill town that is almost abandoned as the houses crumble and young people flee to where they can get jobs or worse towns only being supported by tourism. This is a city with a large working class who mostly live just outside the city walls and a small tourism business to boot. Catia works in Spoleto and gave us great advice, to park by the escalators, take them all the way up (like 5 escalators), then walk down the city. The city offered a lot to see.

Rocca di Spoleto

Ponte delle Torri. The Bridge of Spoleto. Built in 13th century.

Photo album from these two days is online here:
https://picasaweb.google.com/111221349198606775660/20120819UmbriaCousins

Sauce versus Gravy

There are some Italian-American's out there who have a thing for correcting people who say “sauce” and telling them it's called “gravy”. It's often accompanied by a (an even more grating) statement about how they say it that way because their family is Italian.

Before I get too ranty about this pet peeve of mine, I want to give a disclaimer. I understand how third (or so) generation Italian-Americans cling really heavily to their/our heritage. I myself have gone so far as to spend years re-learning the language forgotten in the generations in between and even re-emigrated back to the motherland. When our Italian ancestors first moved to America they were eager to become American and embraced the local culture, unfortunately not leaving much of the cool old stuff for the next generations.

Now, as for “Italians say gravy”. This is an absolutely preposterous statement. Italians speak Italian, not English. They say neither “sauce” nor “gravy” when referring to such things. If you are curious, the Italian word “sugo” translates closest. This word would be used for a tomato based sauce and anything of similar texture. Also for juice. There is also the word “salsa” which describes pestos and other thick sauces which you may want to add a little pasta water. Something like a pasta fagoli is actually considered a soup (zuppa) and the non-pasta elements are not distinguished with a different descriptor than the pasta, which should be a small shape (like a mini farfalla), by the way. Besides adding to the “soup” texture of the dish, the small pasta cooks faster which is important because it should be cooked in the rest of the soup. This process takes longer than cooking in boiling water. But I digress.

If you were to ask an actual Italian from Italy whether it is “sauce” or “gravy” they would be dumbfounded. Non-native speakers look to us native speakers for clarity on such acute differences. It would be like an Italian asking you which is the most American of two Italian words that mean almost the same thing.

So, is it “gravy” or is it “sauce”? I tend to agree with Merriam-Webster, Oxford's British and American Dictionaries. But I think Julia Child put it best, “A gravy without meat is just a sauce.” Which makes “Red Gravy” just “sauce” and is why I get annoyed when someone corrects my calling it “sauce” with, “we say gravy, we're Italian.” No, actually, it really is sauce.

If anyone guilty of this habit happens to be reading, I petition you to cease and desist. Besides having already established it is annoying, the claim of “Italian-ness” is unfounded, and the term is technically incorrect, I'll present another reason. Our Italian ancestors came to America without speaking English and had to learn quickly with likely little resources. It is understandable they did not learn the language perfectly, maybe not even the correct term for something as everyday for an Italian immigrant as 'sauce'. But it is a little more strange that their native-English speaking children would continue this mistake rather than learn the correct term. Then for these children or their children to take it further by insisting the wrong term is actually “how Italians say it”-- that takes some coglioni (the expression works better with fegato / liver, but I didn't think anyone would understand that). Therefore you should stop with this whole “Italians say gravy” thing because it pronounces your (and your ancestor's) ignorance more than your Italian-ness also someday you and I may be at a dinner party together and you don't want to unleash this rant in person.

End of Istanbul Trip

Istanbul post three of three

Daniele and I went to Istanbul back in 2012. I took 1,221 photos during the trip, which were so overwhelming I kept putting off dealing with them. But we finally tackled them and got the album down to the best 366 images. This is the last of three posts from this trip.

On our fourth full day, we got up early and walked to Fatih Mosque, in the Western District. This was the first great imperial mosque built after the conquest by Mehmet the Conqueror in 1470. It was rebuilt in 1766 after an earthquake, again 1782 after a fire and no longer has the same plan. We also saw the tombs of Mehmet and his wife.

Being once the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, Istanbul has aqueducts. Unfortunately, Istanbul does not seem to hold its historical wonders in very much reverence. These stunning structures were marred with piles of garbage beneath the arches.

The Basilica Cistern I visited alone as well. It was built in 532 by Roman Emperor Justinian. It served as the water supply for the Great Palace (now gone) and the surrounding buildings. It was out of use and forgotten before the conquest by the Turks.

The Cistern is impressive at 65m wide, 143m long, and containing 336 columns (taken from ruined buildings). It once held 80,000 cubic meters of water delivered via 20km of aqueducts from a reservoir near the black sea.

It is dark inside and water drips on your head. People crowd the few interesting things to see: a few particular decorative columns, and a glass serpent structure brought in from Venice.

The Cistern was forgotten until it was rediscovered in 1545 by Petrus Gullius who was researching Byzantine antiquities. Locals said they could get water, and even fish, by lowering buckets in their basement floors (in fact there were some big fish down there). He asked around until he found a house were he accessed the Cistern through the basement. After rediscovered, the Turks used the cistern for a dumping ground for garbage and even bodies. It was eventually restored in 1955 and 1960 and 1985. In 1963, “James Bond: From Russia With Love” was filmed here. And finally in 1987 the city opened it to the public.

We then went to The Bazaar. I looked at some scarves and ceramic goods, but didn't buy.

And then it was time to start our journey back home. We checked out of hotel, took the tram and ferry to Kadakoy. Walked around with our bags, through the local market, had a late lunch. I got some jasmine tea balls that open to flowers in how water and we got some pistachio soap for Daniele's mother. We took the bus to airport, where we were delayed again. But we finally made it back home to Italy. Ready for Easter tomorrow!

Pictures from the whole trip (only the best 366): https://plus.google.com/photos/+KaitlynHanrahanIsidori/albums/5975883683758142577

Istanbul Continued

Istanbul post two of three

Daniele and I went to Istanbul back in 2012. I took 1,221 photos during the trip, which were so overwhelming I kept putting off dealing with them. But we finally tackled them and got the album down to the best 366 images. This is the second of three posts from this trip.

Our first full day in Istanbul we started with the Topkapi Palace, which took the whole morning. The complex of buildings is separated into different courts, each with more restricted access then the previous. All of the buildings are ornate, mostly decorated with tiles.

There are a lot of street vendors in Istanbul, many serve food. Grilled corn is common, in fact Italians sometimes call corn “grano turko” or Turkish Grain. Also snack breads, we tried some of these for a fast lunch today. One somewhat pretzel-like covered in sesame seeds and another that was bread-y like a bagel, but airy like a doughnut.

For the afternoon we crossed the Galata Bridge and went exploring through Karakoy. We saw the Galata Tower and this side of the “Golden Horn”. This area has almost no tourists compared to Sultanahmet.

We stopped at an outdoor cafe and I tried a Turkish coffee. My parent's had described to me how the coffee in Greece was thick, something you could as easily chew as drink. I expected this could be similar, possibly pretty gross, but definitely worth trying. I also thought I remembered a Turkish friend describing that Turkish coffee is made by adding powder to hot water directly, like we make instant coffee, but it's not like instant coffee, it's good, if you like it. At first is seemed like a slightly grainy espresso; it was served in an espresso sized cup. When I reached the end, I reached all the coffee grains in a thick mush. Now, I didn't know the etiquette of what to do here, or if I had not taken the coffee correctly up to this point to arrive here (it was not served with a spoon). Was I supposed to stir and distribute the grains throughout the drink? However, I did try to drink a bit of the mush. It tasted fine, like the coffee before it, except for the texture. The texture was a mouth-full of coffee grains and I couldn't finish the tiny cup. Daniele continued to make fun of me for trying it, since there is clearly no coffee better than Italian.

[Edit: I followed up later and asked a Turk: you are not supposed to drink/eat the grains. Oh, well.]

We went to Tunnel Square for dinner, to a restaurant recommended in the Lonely Planet Book. They had different maze plates, which I love. Even though Daniele picked it, once he got there he decided he didn't like it and refused to eat with me. I did not take kindly to this.

After we decided to walk home, which was pretty far, back across the bridge and everything. Probably should have taken the tram, my feet are killing me today!

Observation, Istanbul has lots of cats. Everywhere.

On Tuesday we started in the Blue Mosque. The mosque is divided into a tourist part, a lady part in the back, and the main center area for men to pray. Anyone entering had to take off their shoes and women have to cover their heads.

Aya Sophia is just across from the Blue Mosque. Daniele had already seen it so I went in alone (it is paid admission). This was a Catholic cathedral in Roman times that was converted to a mosque, and is now a museum. The original structure was very Byzantine in style, only the mosaics had been painted over in black (which made me want to cry) and there was large wood disks of Muslim symbols from the time it was a mosque.

After we walked North to the Spice Market where we bought tea. Then up the hill by the University and Suleymaniye Mosque near Beyzit Square and Mosque. We also stopped by Theodosius Forum, Little Aya Sophia, and finally the Hippodrome, where about 20 people offered to clean Daniele's shoes.

Pictures from the whole trip (only the best 366): https://plus.google.com/photos/+KaitlynHanrahanIsidori/albums/5975883683758142577

Leaving for Istanbul

Istanbul post one of three

Daniele and I went to Istanbul back in 2012. I took 1,221 photos during the trip, which were so overwhelming I kept putting off dealing with them. But we finally tackled them and got the album down to the best 366 images. This is the first of three posts from this trip.

Yesterday Daniele and I went out with his parents and their friends to Tor San Lorenzo for the birthday of Sergio, or the the 'New Pasquino'. He writes poems in strict roman dialect using this pen name. Pasquino was a 'talking' statue in Rome long ago.

The town is on the beach and there is a fish restaurant they go to there. The owner is a fisherman and used to just sell the fish, but then started to cook them up, too. We stayed here together last Easter and ate until we had to be rolled out. Sergio's father has a house near here, which is perfect for lethargic after-lunch activities.

That night I stayed with the Isidori's and Daniele worked a night shift. We left first thing for the airport. Unfortunately our fight was incredibly delayed. When we finally got on the plane, there was a problem with its computer and we had to wait longer on the runway for it to be fixed.

We arrived, gathered our things, and headed for Istanbul's city center. From this airport, we had to take a bus, to a ferry, to a tram. As we entered the ferry it started to rain, and was pouring the whole time-- in the stings your face way. So not the picturesque boat ride I hoped for.

Didn't get to do anything the first day because of rain and the late hour. We did go get some dinner and I had some very yummy hummus and felafel. We also bought a mix of baklava flavors (pistachio, nut, chocolate) from “Baklavaci Muhamed SAID”.

Pictures from the whole trip (only the best 366): https://plus.google.com/photos/+KaitlynHanrahanIsidori/albums/5975883683758142577