I’m such a farm girl. We’ve spent three full days in fashionable,
tourist-thick Rome, but I’m itching to get into the countryside.
We’re on a train heading north to Milano. We’re passing paddocks of
bright sunflowers and tall stands of corn. I’ve seen one dairy herd of sheep,
but no cattle yet – and certainly no pigs. The soil is a light brown, fawn
colour and lumpy.
In Rome we stayed in an apartment in the suburb of Lazio owned by an
architect. When visitors book in, she packs her bag and stays with her boyfriend
– a clever income-booster. It was a good spot, not touristy, and we think we
got a little taste of day-to-day life in the Italian capital.
On the first afternoon we discovered a corner shop with a big fridge
of cheese and a slightly smaller shelf of charcuterie. We thought the shop was
shutting - the lights were all off – but we realised later the shopkeeper was
waking up from his siesta, with the help of a coffee shot. We bought
prosciutto, parmigiano reggiano, bread, and wine – of course. I made the
shopkeeper laugh when I tried to explain I was a pig farmer by pushing my nose
up and snorting. As we left the shop, Bronwyn suggested we really should work
on how to say, “I am a pig farmer” in Italian, to avoid embarrassment.
We did some sweaty sightseeing – the Colosseum, the Spanish Steps,
and the Vatican. The number of tourists was phenomenal, and so was the price of
gelatos from the food wagons parked conveniently outside the historic spots,
but it was hot, and we had to have one.
We visited two markets: the first was the Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele.
It gave us a look at the multi-cultural side of Rome, with lots of stalls
selling lentils, spices, Asian vegetables, and halal meat. In a way I was a bit
disappointed, because each vegetable stall seemed to have exactly the same
selection of products, and I wondered who the farmers really were.
At one of the meat stalls, a keen-to-sell English-speaking
stallholder told me all the beef was imported, and that 80 per cent of it came
from Australia, and the rest from different parts of Europe. The meat was
really cheap – the most expensive cuts were only 5 or 6 Euros a kilo. He told
me Italian meat was only for the rich.
The second market we went to was Campo de Fiori. There were stalls
selling fruit (juicy ripe apricots, and flat, doughnut-like peaches), pasta,
and truffle-infused condiments. The highlight though, was the discovery of Antica Norcineria Viola, a
butchery that has been going for four generations. The youngest generation
butcher was very good looking, of course, and spoke English. He told me they
make more than 20 different types of salami, and that people come from Spain to
buy them. There was also pork jerky, cooked pork skin ready for pizza,
mortadella, an olive and vinegar salad with pig’s head, and a roof hung full of
air-dried hams. The hams were not refrigerated, and I could see the fat
glistening in the 30-degree heat.
We’ve had some baggage issues – as in, our baggage still has not
arrived and we’ve been here four nights. Talking to the baggage claim office
has been a bit like talking to Australia’s main telecommunications company –
but far worse. I like to think that we’re proving it’s possible to travel
Europe with just a school bag and a sunhat. But we are a bit sick of wearing
plane clothes.
More photos at flickr.
Next blog… ”If I can drive a European tractor, I can drive a bambino
Fiat on the wrong side of the road. Surely.”
