Ringraziamento (Thanksgiving In Pienza)

Thanksgiving is a quintessential American holiday.  Here in Italy, most people have heard of it, but they don't what it's all about.

I walked into La Posta, my favorite bar in Pienza, this morning for an espresso just as the Italian version of the Today Show was running a story on preparations for the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade.


I was peppered with questions about why Thanksgiving was such a bid deal, since it was nothing more than a department story promotion for Christmas toy sales.

This, then, is the average Italian's understanding of American Thanksgiving.

This is our first Thanksgiving spent in Pienza, and we decided to invite friends over for a traditional American Thanksgiving dinner.


The local macelleria (butcher shop) does not normally sell whole turkeys.

But Marco was more than happy to special order us one.

The big question was, did we want a tom or a hen?

When the turkey arrived, the tag...the part in English...made it perfectly clear who was going to buy whole turkeys.

From perusing the local grocery store last Spring, we knew cranberries were not available in Pienza.  In fact, in Italian cranberries are called "mirtilli rosso," red blueberries.

So, we brought cranberries with us from Seattle.
(Nobody said this wouldn't take advance planning.)

The big question was whether our tiny oven was big enough to hold the 6.8 kg (15 lb) turkey we purchased.



Had the turkey been one kilogram bigger...there would have been no way.

The apple pie presented another challenge.  Pies are not part of Italian cuisine (The closest thing is a crostata), so a pie plate is impossible to find.

Carol made due with a rectangular baking dish.

Then there's the conversion...pounds to kilograms and degrees fahrenheit to celsius.

Does it matter, since the oven thermometer reads a different temperature than the dial on the oven's controls?

There was considerable risk things wouldn't turn out.

But it all did.

Our guests arrived, perhaps a bit anxious about having a meal with neither pasta nor cheese.

But they soon got into the swing of things....

...like inventing new ways to eat cranberry sauce.

Italians rarely pick up food, other than bread, in their hands to eat.  (For instance, they wrap a cornetto...a croissant...in a napkin before picking it up).

Anna started out trying to eat the drumstick with a knife and fork.  She had to be prodded into eating with her hands.

Eventually, she got into it and thoroughly enjoyed the turkey leg.

We needn't have worried about whether our friends would accept these strange American foods.

All had seconds.  Everybody belonged to the Clean Plate Club, thereby making them eligible for dolce (the apple pie).

So......

If you think uninitiated Italians find the concept of Thanksgiving alien, how did they ever come up with this?

Finally, un Buon Raccolto

The land around the small town of Castelmuzio is blanketed with olive groves.  Over the last four years, these groves...which produce some of the finest olive oil in the world... have had it tough.

Last year, a drought produced so few olives it cost many farmers more to get their olives pressed than the oil was worth.  One friend let the olives rot on his trees rather than lose money on his harvest.

Two of the three years before that, harvests were decimated by the olive fruit fly.

The farmers really needed a good harvest this year...and they finally got one.


There are many varieties of olive trees (from several hundred to two thousand, depending your source).  In Tuscany, two varieties predominate:


Frantoio...which you see on the right.  These trees can produce fruit for hundreds of years, and the fruit tends to yield a spicy-tasting oil, which makes it a favorite among locals.


The other variety is Leccino...whose trees are heartier but produce a less-tasty oil.

These olive trees produce a much smaller fruit than the jumbo eating olives found in American supermarkets.




One olive produces only two or three drops of oil, so it takes a whole lot of olives to make a single bottle.

That being the case, properly laying the nets around the tree is critical to ensure no olives "escape" the harvest.

For the past four years Roger has helped our friends Valerio and Tina bring in their olives.

The trees we harvested were heavily laden with fruit.  Neighbors we spoke with all said their trees were the same.




We were apparently fortunate, because news reports said the olive harvest in Tuscany was spotty...good in some places, poor in others.

Those of us without experience, pick by hand and get only the low-hanging fruit.




Just grab a branch between thumb and forefinger and pull to strip the olives off.

Olives higher up in the tree get harvested with a vibrating pitchfork...which shakes them off their branches.



The first day, we got 120 kg of olives (265 lbs).



The next, 110 kg (242 lbs).












In six days, we harvested 430 kg of olives, just short of 950 lbs.

That translated to 70 liters of oil.

Last year, the drought year, this same grove of trees produced only 6 liters.

All-in-all, un buon raccolto...a good harvest.

Unlike the oil sold in the US, Tuscan do not filter their olive oil... so it is cloudy in appearance.



That simply adds to the taste, though it may shorten the shelf-life.  However, that's not a problem because a bottle of of this extraordinary oil never lasts long enough to go bad.




In some respects, it really doesn't matter whether the olive oil is cloudy or clear.
Working outdoors on a crisp Fall afternoon and watching the sun set over Santa Anna in Comprena is reward in itself.

So You Want To Live In Italy...A Lesson in Bureaucracy

Finally!

This week, we got our documents allowing us to live in Italy.

It only took us two years.

The process is instructive; it taught is a bit about navigating the Italian bureaucracy.

It all started in November 2016...when we applied for...and got...our Codice Fiscale.

A Codice Fiscale is like a financial social security number.  It allows you to open a bank account, and the number is required on virtually any application that involves taxes or a publicly provided service.

That day, we took the bus to Montepulciano and on our third try found the right office.  Twenty minutes later walked out with the document in hand.

We had the system mastered...or so we thought.

Next step...After we returned to Seattle, a trip to the Seattle Police Department to get fingerprinted, so we could submit an application to the FBI for a criminal background check.

Three months later, the FBI reported that neither Carol nor Roger has an arrest record...at least none that had been recorded in the FBI database.

With the background check in hand, we downloaded the application for an Elective Residency Visa from the Italian Consulate in San Francisco.  The website told us we could only apply to the consulate in San Francisco.  If we sent the application any place else, it would be automatically rejected.

However, the San Francisco Consulate's website neglected to provide any instructions about what documents we needed to submit along with the application.

Fortunately, we were able to find those instructions on the website of the Boston consulate.  We had to assume they applied to San Francisco bound applications as well.

It's not as if the required documents were insignificant.  We needed tax returns, bank statements, letters verifying financial liquidity, a copy of the deed to our apartment, and a letter stating why we wanted to live in Italy...more than 40 pages in all.

We sent the documents off along with our passports...and hoped they would be returned before we were scheduled to leave Seattle for Italy in the Spring of 2017.



We got our passports back, just in time, along with our application and a letter of rejection.  The letter contained no explanation for the rejection.  However, an e-mail sent a few days later said the Elective Residency Visa was not a way to skirt the 90-day limit for tourist visits to Italy.  We had assumed  our letters and deed to the apartment would have been sufficient proof we intended to do more than overstay a tourist visa.  Apparently not.

When we returned to Seattle in November, we started the application process all over again...including the fingerprints and the FBI background check.  This time, we made a point of stressing we weren't tourists.  We owned an apartment in Pienza.

One day, out of the blue, we got an envelop in the mail, return address the Italian Consulate in San Francisco.  It contained our passports...and nothing else.  Had we been rejected again?  When we checked inside we found...

Our Elective Residency Visas....

...with an expiration date of March 2019.

Another step done, but more to go...and now with a deadline.





It's now the Spring of 2018.  Carol and Roger return to Pienza, determined to beat the deadline and obtain our Permesso Sogiorno...permission to live in Italy.

The government web site said we had to go to the nearest Questura (Police Headquarters) to apply.  That would be Montepulciano, so there we went.  Wrong Questura.  Had to go to the one in Siena.  The next day, we hopped the 6:30am bus for the two-hour ride to Siena (the only bus that arrives in time for Questura business hours).  We went on what turned out to be the annual "Police Appreciation Day," a public holiday.  The Questura was closed.  A few days later, we endured the two-hour bus ride again only to be told they couldn't help us at that Questura. We needed to go to a different Questura, the Ufficio Immigrazione... which happened not to be open the day of the week we were there.

A day later, after yet another 2 hour bus ride to Siena, we finally arrived at the right Questura, on a day they were actually open for business.  We waited our turn, only to be asked why we had come there, when we hadn't filled out the proper paperwork yet.  That paperwork was available at our local Post Office in Pienza.

We returned to Pienza, went to the Post Office, and asked for the application.  The postal clerk checked to make sure we had all the necessary supporting documents, told us to go home, fill out the application, and get the requisite €50 tax stamp.

A stamp.  We get that right here the Post Office, right?

No. The Post Office doesn't sell stamps.  The place you buy stamps is...the local Tabac (tobacco shop).

We got the stamps, filled out the forms (with a good deal of help figuring out the instructions), and returned to the Post Office.  On top of the tax stamp, we had to pay another €30 filing fee...for each application.  The clerk's computer then spit out a non-negotiable appointment time when we were required to show up at the Siena Uffucio Immigrazione.

Another 2-hour bus ride from Pienza to Siena.

On the appointed day, we showed up at the Uffucio Immigrazione, stood in what passed for a line, submitted our forms (being sure to show the tax stamps), got our fingerprints taken...and then were then we needed to go back to the other Questura to have yet another set of fingerprints taken.

The finger prints were electronic, but the Immigration Office said they could not share our prints with the Polizia di Stato.  Off we went to the other Questura, had our prints recorded, and were told to return to the Immigration Police.
There, the Immigration Police told us everything was in order, and we should expect approval of our applications in about six weeks.

Eight weeks passed. We heard nothing.  It was time for us to return to Seattle.  We could only hope to pick up the pieces in the Fall.



When we finally returned to Italy In October, we immediately went to the Questura Ufficio Immigrazione, and asked the status of our application.  We were told we needed to purchase yet another tax stamp (Remember, the previous Spring they had told us everything was in order).  Back to the Tabac.  Purchased another tax stamp.  Back to the Post Office where they processed the stamp.

That done, we hopped the bus from Pienza to Siena, returned to the Questura...and were told, again, everything was in order and our ID cards should be available in two weeks.

A month passed, and still no word on the status of our documenti.  Carol again endured the two-hour bus ride to Siena, returned to the Questura...fourth visit...to check on the status of our application.  The documents had been mailed from the government office in Rome and should arrive any day.

Two days later, we get a text message saying our documents are in...and we have to return to Siena in less than a week for another computer-generated appointment time.

Finally, after two years...

The permesso sogggiorno are ours!

Later that day, I told an Italian friend what we had to go through to get our documents, expecting some expression of sympathy.  Instead, his response was, "You think that was bad?  You should try getting a driver's license."

Amitrice

As Carol and Roger returned from their days watching the Giro d'Italia, their route took them right through the heart of earthquake country.

We imagined things couldn't be much worse than what we had seen in Norcia (see "Terremoto" from May 14, 2018).

The hamlet of Spelonga disabused us of that assumption.  Of the half-dozen buildings in town, not one was undamaged.

In the small village of Grisciano, things were even worse.  The entire village had been leveled...save one building.

There was a small cafe housed in a prefabricated modular building, where a number of other people stopped...along with us...for a cup of coffee and a jaw-dropping peek at how a whole community just disappeared.

Across from the cafe was a large banner that said, "We will rebuild and return to the place of our hearts."

As we got closer to Amitrice, we saw a road sign for the town...and the road wasn't closed.  So we took it.



Amitrice is nestled in a valley below the snow-capped peaks of the Appenine mountains.  The natural setting is very pretty.

Courtesy: Wikipedia

Remember this photo from our previous blog post?



This is what the main street of Amitrice looked like before the earthquake.

This is what that same main street looks like 22 months after the earthquake.

Before the disaster, the town of Amitrice was half-again as big as Pienza...still pretty small by current standards.

Most of the town is a "red zone," too  dangerous to allow people in.  The Italian military constantly patrols to keep rubberneckers (like us) from getting themselves into trouble.

Almost two years later, the amount of rubble that remains to be cleared away is staggering.

Only a geologist...or perhaps an architect...could understand why one house would collapse into a heap while the one next to it remained standing.

There are a handful of buildings scattered around that engineers believed can be saved...with proper reinforcement.


Meanwhile, the buildings will wait, wrapped in their scaffolding, until reconstruction of the town can begin.

Just beyond the far end of town... outside the red zone...the government has erected two small villages of prefabricated buildings.

This one is home to the six restaurants that existed in town before the earthquake.

A similar village houses the grocery, bank, and other businesses that used to line the main street.

It brings a few jobs to town.  But with most homes destroyed and people living elsewhere, the community is on economic life support.

 Amitrice is famous for one dish, served in all six of the restaurants... pasta all'Amitriciana.

We, of course, stopped for lunch and ordered their signature dish.  Carol describes it a slightly spicy with white wine, olive oil, pepper, and pancetta.

As we were leaving town to return to Pienza, we saw a sign for where the restaurant and hotel used to be before the earthquake.  We turned into the parking lot and saw...