A Year in Review

I was looking for the photo I wanted to use to change my header for this blog, and I suddenly found myself perusing all my photographs from the last year. It stuns me to think about where I’ve been since August 2009: I visited Costa Rica for two weeks, moved to Turkey and lived there for ten months, visited Egypt for ten days, moved to Italy in June 2010, then went back home to visit the United States in August. What a ride!

I feel so enormously blessed for all the incredible things I’ve had a chance to see, and find myself wishing that I’d been even more grateful for and curious about the places I stayed while I was there, instead of in retrospect. Yesterday I had a great conversation with my godfather, Bert. When I told him about my life in Italy and my thoughts on relocating here, he said I sounded like I was in a pretty good space with my life, that I had a healthy perspective on the situation. I answered: “Right this minute I do, anyway,” remembering my near-breakdown earlier this week. And he replied, “Well, that’s all we ever have anyway, right? This minute!”

The Marocchino–An Orgasm in a Cup

There are two kinds of people in the world, coffee drinkers and tea drinkers. I am definitely in the tea drinking camp. If you asked me to describe one of my favorite pleasures, I would say: Drinking a cup of tea–black with milk and honey in the morning and mint or rooibos in the afternoon and evening. Add a rainy day, a fantastic novel, snuggling on the couch, or chatting with friends, and I’m as happy as a Milanese woman with a new Furla purse.

The problem is, no one really drinks tea in Italy. This is the land of espresso. But it’s not like I pictured it would be: people sitting around in cafes, chatting as they savored their cappuccinos and lattes. Oh no. That’s France. In Italy, people drink coffee like they drive–friggin’ fast. A typical Italian walks into a bar during her morning break, orders an espresso, then stands at the counter and kicks the coffee back like a shot of whiskey. She’ll chat with her work friends for a few moments, finish off her brioche (croissant) then head back to work. There is no lingering.

Soup-Inspired Longing for Home

I miss my dad. This time of year my dad and I both really love cooking and planning our big family gatherings like Christmas and Thanksgiving. Now that I’m in Italy, we’ll have to plan our separate menus over the phone. Living in Italy is really wonderful, but I can’t lie–being away from my family during the holidays hurts.

One dish my dad and I love to prepare this time of year is squash soup. It was a tough decision in the past, because he and I were the only ones who really enjoyed it. Growing up, my brothers were so much younger (by six and nine years) that the flavor didn’t appeal to them. My mom wasn’t crazy about eating a sweet soup either. In her mind, soup should be savory–like the gumbo she grew up with in the south–and squash soup was a strange anomaly that rebelled against her philosophy and taste. Squash soup was right up there with tapioca, or fish eyes and glue, as she used to call it.

From the Inferno to Paradiso–or Dances with Prosciutto

Yesterday Guido and I went to the questura, which is the Italian word for “hell” (okay, it’s what they call the local police station). I’m in the process of finishing the fabulously labyrinthine process for my permesso di soggiorno, which is sort of like my green card/identity card for my next year in Italy. Anyway, we had an appointment slip for 8:16am and thought that we’d walk right up to the window at the ever so exact time printed on the paper. I mean, why else would they say 8:16am, unless that time slot was specifically for us?

Italian Granita

Guido and I went to Rome recently, and while reacquainting myself with the city I saw so many years ago as a teenager, he decided to take me to the famous Piazza Navona, sight of the Tre Fontane (The Three Fountains). I went to Piazza Novana sixteen years ago on a tour in high school, and vaguely remembered savoring a delicious gelato while sitting next to one of the Tre Fontane at night.

Well, it wasn’t night this time; it was the hottest part of the day. Guido and I were wilting in the heat, so much so that we stuck our feet in one of the fountains (like everyone else, in our defense) and ended up getting yelled at by the carabinieri (the police).

We finally managed to drag our sweaty selves to Tre Scalini, a famous gelateria, to salivate over their tasty gelati. I don’t know why, but we decided to skip their most famous dessert: divino tartufo, a heavenly chocolate concoction (wait, why did we skip it again?). Instead, we dipped our plastic spoons into an over-priced but mouth-puckeringly delicious lemon granita. Our moods improved immediately.

Slow Food Festival

a href=”http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_AouzfrheOig/TCerdxBzfKI/AAAAAAAAF2g/SonP-wNHqKY/s1600/Fruits+from+Caglio.jpg” onblur=”try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}”>Today Guido and I went to Caglio, a small town super close to the Swiss border (which explains why I had “The Sound of Music” in my head). A friend of Guido’s told him about a Slow Food festival in this little mountain village, and Guido, being the amazing boyfriend that he is, knew that we had to go.

Tucked into the foothills of the Italian alps about ninety minutes north of Milan, Caglio was the perfect location to display locally handcrafted foods from the province. (You can see a fun blog about Caglio here--but the photos are taken in winter.)

There were so many sweet things to see. First we had buckwheat polenta (recipe for that later), followed by the most amazing gelato I’ve ever had (it was some of the best Guido has ever had too, and since he’s Italian, that’s saying something). The three flavors we tried: mandorle di Noto, almonds from Noto, a Sicilian city famous for its almonds; riccota and amaretti (a type of cookie); and zucchini (!). They were all amazing, but I have to say that the ricotta and amaretti gelato was totally orgasmico.

A couple other fun things we got in the city: salami di capra, or goat salami (mostly for G); a deep amber mixed-flower honey (from the display pictured); a hard goat cheese; and best of all, the gift that keeps on giving: plants! We bought four aromatic herbs for the balcony, a pungent mint, pineapple sage (love it!), lemon balm, and rosemary. All four were grown in the mountains, and the man who cultivated them lectured us for almost half an hour (maybe more) on how to care for and use each one. I’ll never forget his shock white hair and bright blue eyes as he explained everything with so much passion.

Finally, if you’re wondering how I plan to stay slim enough to fit into my skinny jeans this fall, that’s a darn good question…

Last Days in Turkey

Here are some pictures from my last few weeks in Turkey. So much happened and I saw so many people, that it’s difficult to capture it all. But hopefully this gives you a sense of the end of my time there, as well as the very beginning of my new life in Italy.

This will be my last post on Turkey on this blog.

Ciao!

Whirling Dervish video

Yes, it’s a little sacrilegious, but I took some video of the Whirling Dervish ceremony…like EVERYONE else who was there. This performance was incredibly moving for me for a couple reasons. The first reason was because it was my last weekend in Turkey, and I was in Konya, which is where Rumi is buried, who is a great spiritual teacher for me. The other major reason was because there were two really young dervishes–one that looked about eight years old, tops. His faith and devotion at such a young age really moved me.

I included some footage here of him whirling in the first clip, and then a really lovely clip of the final set of whirling, which is the “divine marriage (with God)” set.

Finally, there is a clip of what I’ll call a Sema Blooper. If you look carefully, you’ll see the two younger dervishes resting near the border of the stage, and behind them, you’ll see a woman in a burqua, spinning on the edge of the stage, which is definitely not supposed to happen! The guards finally came and got her–she clearly has some issues–but it was so surprising to see in the middle of a sacred sema ceremony!

I hope you can feel at least some of the beauty of the sacred dance from these clips that I felt.

Amazing Turkish Dancing

Here are three cool dancing clips from a really popular dance troupe called The Fire of Antolia that played at our school for International Week (they were incredible!). The first one is a bit like Turkish river dancing, and the second two are really, really amazing, I think. Enjoy!

The Ottoman Empire

The Ottomans were initially nomads who migrated from the central Asian steppe to the Anatolian region and practiced a primitive shamanistic tradition. As they came into contact with more developed Islamic cultures, the Ottomans eventually converted to Islam as well.

As the Selcuk empire fell, Turkish Anatolia was divided into a collection of emirates (lands ruled by an emir, an Islamic ruler), called the Ghazi emirates. One of these emirates was led by Osman I, from which the name Ottoman is derived, and he extended the frontiers of Ottoman settlements towards the borders of the Byzantine Empire.

At this point, the Byzantine Empire was on the verge of collapse. The Byzantines were begging the Pope in Rome for help, but he refused aid unless the Eastern Orthodox religion reunited with the See of Rome. Though a reunion was considered, Eastern Orthodox clerics were too bitter about the reunion to allow it, and the Byzantine Empire continued to flounder. Osman I moved the capitol of the burgeoning Ottoman Empire to Bursa–a stone’s throw from Constantinople–and continually loomed over the Byzantines, waiting for the right moment to attack. As the Ottoman Empire began to expand into the Mediterranean and Balkans, the Ottomans took over almost all of the Byzantine lands in Anatolia, except Constantinople.

In 1453, Mehmet II (later known as Mehmet the Conqueror) reorganized a flailing military and state and made major history when he breached Constantinople’s walls on May 29th. He established the city as the new capitol of the Ottoman Empire and is considered one of the great heroes in Turkey–his name is still one of the most popular male names in the country. The Hagia Sophia–one of the most popular tourist detinations in Turkey–was instantly converted from a cathedral into a mosque, and all the religious instruments removed and mosaics painted over. Constantinople’s name was changed to Istanbul, and a new era began.

The conquest of Constantinople established the Ottoman Empire as the preeminent powers in the Mediterranean and southeastern Europe. While there’s too much to say about the Ottomans for a simple blog post, I’ll share some highlights about the Ottomans here:

• The Ottomans were ruled by a Sultanate until the fall of the Empire in 1922. 
• The Ottomans were able to acquire enormous wealth and power partly because they controlled many of the most used trade routes (most notably the spice trade routes and the Silk Road) as you can see from this map (Silk Road in red, spice routes in blue). The Ottomans charged a huge amount in taxes for passage through their lands.

• The Ottomans were quite tolerant of all religious groups living within their borders, including Byzantine Greeks, Armenians, Jews, and Assyrians, and allowed them to practice their own religions and maintain their own legal practices alongside those of the Ottoman empire.
• The Ottomans conquered the Greeks in 1456, and Serbia, Bosnia, and several other territories were under Ottoman rule by 1478. The Turks commanded the Black Sea and the Aegean trade routes, and even threatened Italy and besieged Vienna in 1529. The siege was unsuccessful, and the Turks retreated out of the region. Basically the Ottomans struck fear into most of Europe until the end of the 16th century and beginning of the 17th, when Europeans began to win battles against the Ottomans as internal struggles in the empire weakened their prowess.  

• The Ottomans developed a rich culture over its reign, making contributions to poetry, architecture, calligraphy, carpet weaving, jewelry, music, dance, and minature paintings. Here is a miniature of miniaturists.
• They also developed a rich cuisine during this period, consisting of drinks and food that are still popular today: Turkish delight (lokum), Turkish coffee, salep (a milky drink made of orchid flour), baklava, shish kepab, doner (a popular meat dish cut from cones of rotating meat, see picture), raki alcohol, and ayran, a yogurt drink. 

• Some reasons why the Ottomans were so successful were because of their state-run education and judicial systems; their centralization of power; a transferrence of ruling power that transferred to one person, not two people; unity through Islamic ideology; a pragmatism that took what was best from other cultures and integrated it into their own; unity through the Islamic warrior code, which increased Muslim lands through jihad; a very strong military (primarily based on slaves); and alliances created across many different ethnic and religious groups. 

You can read a nice, concise history about the Ottoman Empire here, on a BBC website. Finally, we’ll answer another very important question: Why did the Ottoman Empire fall?