A Blundering Gelato N00b

Escape From IV: Extreme Edition

“Straciatella and melone?!” Unwittingly I had mixed Stracciatella (which is basically fancy chocolate chip) and melon gelatos. Or at least I tried to. After two waitresses, five bystanders and a good friend had laughed at me, I was informed that it was a cardinal sin to mix fruit and crème based gelatos. Embarrassed, I managed to pull myself together in time to order melon and lemon gelatos. For days afterward, every time I ordered gelato, my friend Michele (not pronounced like Michelle) felt the need to explain to everyone what I had done. I would have no idea until I heard the words melone and stracciatella in Italian, at which point everyone would turn to laugh at me and my gelato ignorance. This courtesy extended to anyone, waiters, family members, people on the street, everyone felt the need to laugh, point and inform me not to do that again.

This trend continued later in the week while we were in Rome. I had barely picked up my menu when the waiter came by to demand what kind of pizza I wanted. In a panic, I went for something safe, something with familiar ingredients, four-cheese pizza. Without knowing it, once again I had made an ass of myself. My companions informed me that the waiter’s shirt translated into something like “I like my pizza just like I like my women,” which according my preference was boring. Note to self: next time in Italy, think before you order.

There are all kinds of lessons to be learned from the Italians. One is that we should install water fountains on every corner. This is an amazing and unforeseen aspect of Rome. There are water faucets everywhere, some just sticking out of the sidewalk, others built craftily into tourist attractions like the Trevi Fountain. Unlike in the US where something like this would be vandalized immediately and fall into disrepair, they all were clean, well-kept and even cold!

Italy is an absolutely beautiful and romantic place; you feel this particularly when exploring the streets with one of your best guy friends while your girlfriend sits more than six thousand miles away. There is nothing that says romance like sitting on the banks of the river eating a kebab, sipping a beer and listening to horrible music in the shadow of Castle San Angelo and being the only two people in sight that aren’t on a date. Yeah, note to self: next time, bring a girl along.

Despite all the lessons, the most striking aspect of Italian culture would have to be how kind and warm everyone was to the dumb American. Italians haven’t exactly had it easy over the last few years. Last year I watched my friend struggle with the fact that the government was falling apart while he sat in the states. Political turmoil is nothing new, and goes back to even before Italy was unified under Garibaldi almost 150 years ago. While in Ferrara, a city in Northern Italy, I went to a buskers festival where all different types of street performers got together in the core of the city. Hundreds of buskers and thousands of people turned out. Amongst the magicians, fire twirlers and singers, we stumbled across a group playing songs that had whipped the crowd into a frenzy. After about ten minutes, Michele explained to me that the band was playing old folk songs about fascism. The crowd sang along at the top of their lungs singing about a boy as he bid farewell to his girlfriend as he went off to his death against the fascists.

This more than anything characterized the Italians for me. Despite their rough history and hugely dysfunctional state, they can all come together in the street to sing and dance their troubles away even in the face of their turbulent past. Men, women and children together in the street spinning and singing at a hundred miles an hour, all coming together to make me appreciate the subtle beauty of Italy. It is more than delicious food, harsh waiters and romance; it is a culture that has taught us lessons since before we can remember, and should continue to remind us what community really means.

Daily Nexus columnist Jimmy Fremgen yelled, “My name is gladiator!” when he entered the Coliseum. Apparently that war cry is not as powerful now as it used to be.