Blog/November 2024/Nov 15th

Nov 15th

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We spent almost all this week in Rome, on vacation. Esther’s brother and sister-in-law wanted to meet up with us, but were hesitant to come to Israel at this time; so they suggested Rome instead. Fortunately, it’s a short flight from here. Unfortunately, the flights to there and back were absolutely packed.

The weather was cooperative; no rain, and only cold (for us) in the mornings and late evenings. We walked. A lot. Like seriously: a lot. We had the good sense to have brought walking shoes, but we didn’t appreciate just how hard the “pavement” in Rome is. Just FYI: it’s really really hard and uneven stone, in many of the places we were walking (and walking…).

At least we got (way more than) our 10,000 steps in each day.

Among other things, we saw the Colosseum; which, according to a sign posted there, was funded by the spoils of the “Jewish War” from 70CE. That took the edge off my desire to see more of the Colosseum. To be fair, the fact that we had walked double-time to get there (because of a tour-time), and were completely out of breath by the time we climbed the stairs to the second-floor, probably had more to do with my lack of desire.

Rome is a beautiful city with impressive architecture, though I think they’ve overdone the church-to-citizen ratio. Seriously: there’s a church of some kind on every block, from what we could tell. There’s also a tobacconist's shop on nearly every block, which explains why so many people there smoke, and why those shops sell bus-tickets.

A curious thing is that there were also shops selling souvenirs (hats, mugs, stilettos, etc.) on every block; and the people running them were not native Italians. Nor, in fact, were the people selling phone-chargers and other such things on the street. Everyone actually doing work in Italy (well, Rome, in any case) was not of Italian, but rather Indian, descent. We strained to find Italians doing any sort of work. Perhaps they do, in other cities of Italy; though I wouldn’t bet on it. Based on the uneven and often broken “pavement”, I’m guessing Italians are a lazy lot.

Our experience of Italian cuisine was limited to the kosher varieties thereof, so I can only comment on Jewish Italian cuisine. Mi dispiace tanto, Italy: my wife’s cooking is much more impressive. Nevertheless, we did enjoy good desserts, and the wait-staff (mostly Jewish Italians) were very pleasant and spoke a variety of languages.

Which brings me to my curse: I have a good ear (and vocal-chords) for accents, so when I spoke my few words of Italian, people assumed I was actually Italian. Knowing Spanish helped me to a certain extent in understanding their responses, but Spanish only takes you so far with Italian. After that, you need to navigate the shoals of near-understanding and the depths of mis-understanding. Fortunately, most of them could understand Spanish reasonably well, or spoke English very well, and my communication needs were usually rather simple.

One day I entered a shop selling coffee machines; the sort of Italian percolator variety which I’d had decades ago. Since the machines were reasonably priced, I decided I’d get one and some appropriate coffee. The woman behind the counter turned out to be a Christian Arab Israeli from Nazareth (not Italian!), and we started speaking in Hebrew (because my brother-in-law said something to me in Hebrew, so she picked up on that). As we were chatting away, another customer there became visibly unhappy. As it happens, that lady was a Muslim Arab from Qatar, unhappy a Jew and a Christian were happily speaking Hebrew. She was surprised I knew some Arabic, though I didn’t know how to say, “get stuffed” in Arabic.

That’s it for this week’s blog. We only got back to our home at 04:30 this morning, so we’re quite out of it. This shabbat will be of the “at-home” variety, I’m afraid, and the menu will be previously frozen entrées, mostly.

Until next time,
shabbat shalom! !

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