A Real Ragazza

The next morning, very tentatively at first, I began the joyful process of becoming a real girl -- not a tourist, but a real Roman ragazza.


The apartment was quite comfortable when I awoke my first morning here, although I had turned off the electric heater some time during the night. I made myself a cup of instant coffee and read the New York Times online (I told you it was tentative...).  There are two coffee makers in the apartment, one an American drip for which I was unable to find filters, and one of those teeny espresso pots.  I'm sorry, I know this is a significant failure, but I am not an espresso fan, and I don't know how to use those little pots anyway. The instant coffee here is actually very good, so maybe it's a really Roman thing after all.


Broker Mario called to check on me, and was sweetly solicitous and relieved when I told him the apartment had probably just been cold for such a long time it simply needed a night to thaw.  (I have since admitted to myself that it is not quite that simple, and that Mario can be charming and caddish by convenient turns. E 'la vita italiana, no?) I had a couple of questions about the basics for him -- the nearest bank or ATM to get euros, what might be done about the broken mailbox (the solution to the latter being, of course, to make an arrangement with the laundress down the block, duh).  He answered these quickly and unenthusiastically, so I was bracing myself for another brush-off, when he began to wax rapid-fire eloquent about all the really important spots in town.  Our little neighborhood is strollably quaint, full of trattorias, gift shops, gelaterias and pubs, but I was dying for the native lowdown, the insider's guide to real life.

He told me I had to eat -- breakfast, lunch, anything! have the fried rice balls! --at this little pizza place on Via San Francesco a Ripa. Couldn't remember the name, but it was just past Oviesse (I didn't know what that was yet, though I would be particularly pleased to find out).  Oh, and the best supermarket was down below Oviesse, only I wouldn't think it's a supermarket at all, you don't see it from the street, you have to go down some stairs.  

Oh, but also, before you even get to San Francesco a Ripa, on the Piazza San Cosimato, is a big open air market, and that's great, too. But back on San Francesco, on the same side of the block as Oviesse, just a little before it, there's a little shop that sells cheese like you've never tasted before, and Mario lives in Rome and Paris, so he knows his cheese.  Go, get the parmesan. I don't know if you like wine -- do you like wine? So before you're done, at the end of San Francesco, on the corner of Via Trastevere, is Bernabei, the very best place in town to get wine.  Ask for their production of a Prosecco named Bernabei, let them introduce you to the wine's tastes, mmmhmm.

I was transported, totally enthralled, working madly to understand his cascading, accented English well enough to jot all of this down intelligibly. I was trying hard not to think about how impossible it is to find your way around Trastevere --  I was way too jazzed not to make this all happen.  I got dressed quickly in my one outfit, rinsed out overnight.  I threw on my chic big-buttoned maroon plaid coat and matching beret, purchased especially for the trip, grabbed my map, and headed to town.

I had made about two-thirds of the outing to town the crisp, sunny day before, with Alessandro's directions, but, too tired to trust my internal navigator, I had headed back home with cold feet. Today was misty, almost drizzly, but my confidence and determination were high.  I noticed, as I headed up one side of the tossed-spaghetti town layout, that walking on ancient cobblestone is odd and taxing -- you're struggling to regain lost balance with every step, and the streets give no supportive bounce-back the way pavement does.  It's hilly cobblestone, no less, picturesque as all get-out, but my sore glutes were not impressed.

In my combination of atmospheric reverie and map anxiety, I overshot the mark a couple of times and had to double back.  I passed an ancient, mossy staircase leading from the hill of my neighborhood to what I hoped was the valley of town -- perhaps a more direct shortcut to save my having to wend my way through yesterday's hills and turns?  I asked a young woman walking her dogs down below, "Dove San Francesco a Ripa?" and pointed hopefully down in her direction.  "Yeah, well, it's hard to describe," she answered, but did so as well as she could in what sounded like American English. I was too excited and relieved to mind that she so easily assumed I couldn't handle Italian.  We chatted for a while -- she was about my daughter's age, dressed in kind of vintage-y Mary Poppins funk, and was super excited to learn that I was also from New York!  She sounded almost sad, wistful when I asked her if she lived here -- she said no, well, she'd just been here for a couple of years, but that she really loved New York.  She began to give me some tips on local life, but her dogs seemed less interested in stopping to socialize, so we parted with mutual best wishes.


Her directions served perfectly, and I arrived in the bustling, five-corners town.  My first stop was what I hoped to be the rice-ball pizzeria, a place called Panattoni Ai Marmi but nicknamed "l'Obitorio" or "the Morgue" because of its long rows of marble slab tables. I explained my rice ball mission in bits of fractured Itanglish.  Yes, this was the place, but "not today" he apologized.  It was too early for the gorgeous pizza on display, so I asked him where Oviesse was and headed off to shop for well-hidden groceries.  I'd be back for lunch.

Oviesse, much to my luggage-deprived delight, turned out to be a department store!  As I thought back on my guidebook perusals, I vaguely remembered it being described as "cheap," which --Prada jokes notwithstanding --would give me a more sensible bang for Aer Lingus's buck. Right now, though, I was more focused on stocking the fridge, and looked for a sign, a staircase.  "C'è un mercato?" I dubiously asked a young woman who was heading in. She assured me there was but looked a little confused herself.  She said something in Italian and gestured down, and I thanked her and said I would figure it out.  After wandering around through racks of cowl-neck sweaters for a few minutes, I asked a clerk and headed down.

There is something disorientingly, frustratingly dream-like about being in the sort of ordinary place you frequent almost daily, you know and can navigate like the back of your hand, but in a foreign country. Everything is familiar but warped, just out of comprehensible reach. 


I tried to get a shopping cart from the stacked corral, but they were locked, with strange key thingies and something that looked like a coin slot. I grabbed a plastic basket instead.  I hit the produce aisle first -- even their vegetables are different: spiky, alien Romanesco broccoli, needle-like agretti, and a surprising variety of tomatoes in a wide range of colors and shapes.  A clerk, who claimed to know some English, did not know what I meant by "garlic," and I didn't think to try the Spanish cognate I know well.  Not willing to do without this bottom-line staple of Italian cooking, I called out to the other shoppers, "Does anyone know the Italian word for garlic?" A gorgeous nun (a first to me, apart from Julie Andrews' Maria) pitched in with a translation and -- what else? -- a beatific smile. I had to mime an after-dinner face mop to get another clerk to show me where the napkins were, neglected to weigh and price-tape my produce before I got to the register, and held up a testy line of eye-rolling shoppers while I did so.  I trudged off, heavy with packages, but happy with my fearlessly chaotic progress.

The next stop was Antica Caciara, Mario's cheese and salumi store to die for. While I waited my turn, a pretty hale-looking peddler who mistook my eye contact for a soft touch glommed onto me. He breathed winily in my ear that he was hungry (I figured "Ho fame" meant something like "I'm famished"), even stooping down to continue when one of my bags broke and I crouched to gather my groceries.  He finally hightailed it when the counter clerk offered me some help and a new bag, and cheerfully took my order for "un po di parmigiano" and a crusty round loaf of bread.

Ho fame my own self at this point, so I headed back over to "the Morgue" pizza/rice-ball place, which had sadly closed early for New Year's Eve. There was an overflow crowd at a more casual joint a few doors down, so I elbowed my way in. The slices were thin and square, with a variety of toppings, though nothing looked familiar or identifiable, exactly.  The crowd was too formidable and hungry for me to get all American-touristy inquisitive, so I just pointed to one pie with tomato sauce, golden cheese and some delicate yellow-green vegetable on top, and held up two fingers.  I ate them on a little bench on a picturesque side street, and literally had to keep myself from groaning aloud with pleasure  -- I believe it was topped with artichoke and asiago cheese, but whatever it was, it was heaven on a thin, crispy crust.


Finally, I hauled my load back up and around pasta-tossed Trastevere, and put my perishables away.  It was still only 1:00 p.m. Rome time, and Julius would just be getting up for work now.  I met him on Facebook as we had planned, and we chatted, had a cup of coffee together, and read the morning paper.  After he left for work, I straightened up the flat -- so much more delightful than housework usually is.

Eventually I would head back into town, by now breezily sure-footed, for some basil, pajamas and underwear -- a tasty, very Italian combination, as my friend Michael pointed out.  I also bought a few blouses, quickly and unenthusiastically, which it turns out I kind of love.  But even this mundane outing was a riddle wrapped in a learning experience:  no one at the outdoor market knew what "basil" was, though "basilico" finally came to me, from who knows where. Clothing sizes are different, and while you can ask a sales clerk about or try on a blouse, underwear is a tougher nut. Later than evening I made my first home-cooked meal of the trip, a simple pasta with plum tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, basil, and the parmesan, which really was other-worldly.  I had a glass of the Prosecco Bernabei, just as Mario had ordered.  


A day in the life of a real ragazza di Trastevere. Tomorrow, I might just make myself some espresso in the tiny pot. 


Mmmhmm.