One of my co-workers is eating an orange. Just now I walked over to the printer, not expecting to smell anything except perhaps the wart remover lately being applied by another co-worker, and passed right through a cloud of olfactory delight. I stopped, staring out the window at the gorgeous sunny day--Portland is gettin' its spring on, albeit temporarily--and that whole Proustian thing about smell and memory kicked in.
Verona, Italy, almost 11 years ago. A morning in late June. I was sitting on a bench in a piazza in the sun--the Italian sun!--with a cup of coffee, some sort of pastry, and an orange. I had bought everything by pointing at it and saying, "Uno, per favore," which was pretty much the extent of my Italian. That and buon giorno, buona sera, and grazie.
The previous evening my traveling companion and I had eaten in what was essentially a cafeteria--you grab a tray, go down a line, and pick out what you want--but it was like, the cafeteria that they would have in Heaven. Everything was beautiful, and fresh, and cheap, and really really good. There was this soup that I wanted to have, but I was a strict vegetarian at the time and I thought there might be meat in it. "Do you speak English?" I asked the signorina with the ladle in her hand. She nodded. "Is there meat in the soup?" A blank stare. "Um. Vous parlez français?" A more vigorous nod this time. "Est-ce qu'il y a de la viande dans la soupe?" A more vigorous blank stare, if that's possible. Ah, well, no soup for me. It's my own fault for going to Italy without knowing any Italian.
A true sign of my dorkiness? When I got home I learned how to ask about meaty soup in Italian: C'é carne nella zuppa? (That may not be exactly right, but it would have gotten the job done.)
This post has no point, except to say that I once ate an orange in Verona. And that I want to go back to Italy. I think I'll go see if I can find a night class in Italian....
March 6, 2007
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