Oh How I have neglected you, blog!

Happy Almost 2010! I have been slacking off since Thanksgiving, at least as far as blogging goes, but I promise to be better in the New Year. Lots going on, but the most important is that training for the Bavisela on May 2nd is a go! If you haven't run this race yet and you live in Trieste, get cracking, people! If you want to run the full marathon, this is your week to get started, as it's 18 weeks from the BIG DAY. If you're interested in doing the Half Marathon (great distance, lots of fun!), try to give yourself at least 12 weeks of training time. There is usually a running class sponsored by the Bavisela running club that starts sometime in January and meets once a week until race day (the other days you're on your own or you get together with other people in the class to do the other two runs their plan requires). Check the Piccolo and I will let you know if I hear anything. I've taken the class and met some great friends there. It's nice to develop friendships with people where it's not all "magnar, bever" (even if eating and drinking are fun, too). There is also a great small race too, which is an 8k and goes from Miramare castle to Piazza Unità. The full marathon goes from Gradisca to Trieste, picking up the half marathoners in Duino along the way.

You wouldn't know it but Trieste is a great running town. There are a lot of teams out there you can join. Some are more serious than others, but they really make training fun, especially if you prefer running with company. This is my team, although I'm not terribly active (drives them nuts), but I do like being a member of a team anyway. I rarely race.

Running is the best way to get rid of that layer of panetone  on the gut. Let's go! Get out there!

Happy Running. Don't let the rain get to you. At least the Bora is quiet this week.

Thanksgiving Pictures are here!

If you haven't seen them yet, check out Thanksgiving pictures here. Thanks to Denise for putting them up.

THANKSGIVING IS BOOKED!

The Thanksgiving dinner we have planned for this Thursday at Baracca & Burittini is COMPLETELY BOOKED FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER! That's very exciting for us, as we weren't thrilled about having it at a restaurant in the first place, but now that the place will be filled with our friends, we think it will be lots of fun. We got all kinds of neat things donated for door prizes and quiz prizes including a free cruise, books on Trieste, jewelry, cloth shopping bags, coffee... Now we just have to make sure the games are good.

I'm going to go to the Association now to plan those, in fact. I am all about Trivia. Mauro says he has something up his sleeve too, and Nino, he'll be there, helping out. So my first priority (according to Mauro's wife) is to keep those two on track (ciacole non fa fritole, as they say!-- Chat does not make pancakes!!). I'll let you know how it goes.

Our friend Anna is going to keep the kids busy. I will be insisting on the hand turkey making station (as long as I can make one, too).

The menu for that night is going to be the kind of Thanksgiving my mom dreamed of but we kids never let her have. The Bon Appétit Thanksgiving complete with fancy recipes from the magazine. We just wanted the staples: Turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, pumpkin pie. She would be delighted to know that our dinner will include Pumpkin Gnocchi (I can pretty much vouch for every American living in Trieste. We're okay with this one as we tend to love all things pumpkin). There will be turkey, of course, but I doubt we'll have to witness any arguments about who exactly will have to carve the dang thing. Of course this means that there will be no turkey sandwiches the next day, but no clean-up either.

For dessert there will be some kind of delicious specialty of the house. But, a few of us Americans are bringing American pumpkin-based desserts as well. John is making a pumpkin pie, Elizabeth is making some kind of pumpkin bar, and I am making pumpkin bread.

If you DO decide to get yourself a turkey to cook up over the weekend, however (just for the leftovers) may I suggest calling my friend, REMO? You should tell him for how many people and that you want to throw the entire thing in the oven. He'll understand. Tell him Karoline, the American, sent you. By the way, my turkey from Remo last year was the best turkey I have EVER HAD IN MY ENTIRE LIFE. I'm not kidding.

See you Thursday. I am already making my list of things to be thankful for.

Gobble gobble!

The American Film Series Starts tomorrow

It's at the Ariston theater (that's by Fincantieri, Allianz, and that wack-o looking building that houses the new pool). The times are 4pm, 6:30, and 9. The movie is The Informant with Matt Damon. Come to the only movie playing tomorrow NOT dubbed into Italian!!! I'll be there with bells on-- if not with bells on, at least with a hole puncher!

Monday Night American TV and Film Series

If you're looking for something to do tonight, come to the Cappella Underground at 8:30 and watch FORBIDDEN PLANET with us! This is the second of a 12-part series on American television and cinema presented by Prof. Leonardo Buonomo, who is on the board of the Italian American Association. He is a professor of American Literature at the University of Trieste. Last week we watched an old episode of Star Trek (who knew that Captain Kirk was so cute when he was young??) and it was really interesting. 


If you still haven't renewed or gotten your Association cards for this year, you can buy them at the Capella Underground, which is on via Economo 12/9 or at the Association (via Roma, 15) or at Uvec Travel Agency (Via Giusto Muratti, 4 just off Viale xx settembre). Membership is 20 euros for students, 30 euros for adults and includes the Monday night series as well as the American film series (9 films starting this Thursday with The Informant) at the Ariston theater in Trieste. 

Coloring Pumpkins at the Mall was Fun!

It was our first time celebrating Halloween the old fashioned way: at the shopping mall in Udine. Our good friend Stefano set us up with a special area just for us, right in front of the Carrefour grocery store for maximum traffic. (The thing that kills me in Italy is that their shopping malls are "anchored" by grocery stores rather than department stores as they would be in the States. Those, and places where they sell plasma tvs). This was day two of our Halloween pumpkin decorating for kids extravaganza. My friend Denise, her awesome daughter, Anastasia, and I, along with 18 (!!) student volunteers from Istituto Nordio (high school) spent Friday afternoon on the floor drawing on pumpkins at the mall in Trieste. That went well, especially since the students were so great with the kids. They worked in one-hour shifts drawing, complimenting, giving candy, picking up wrappers, and capping pens.

On Saturday, we had less help, and decided to split up. Denise and Elizabeth went to the mall in Trieste again, while our super responsible good friend and ex-volonteer at the Association, Anna, came with me and Sweetie to Udine. For those of you who don't know, Udine is a little over an hour from Trieste. We decided to do Halloween there because we are a regional association, and it's important to have a presence all over the place if we can.

That being said, in Trieste people have at least a vague idea that the Italian-American Association exists, so having us at the mall luring children into our space with candy and asking them to color scarey Halloween pictures and draw on pumpkins is sort of normal at the end of October. The kids there often come in costume, even though it's not really an Italian holiday (every year it gets more and more popular, though, especially with little kids and the going out crowd). Parents take advantage of the free distraction to get their grocery shopping done in peace.

In Udine, however, people looked at us funny and/or tried to avoid our gaze for about the first 15 minutes of our 3-hour stint. But then the kids started noticing the candy, and then they came, and we offered it to the parents, too, and they seemed to like that. Kids attract kids, so more of them came and colored. Besides candy, we gave the parents hand-outs explaining how to carve a pumpkin and how to bake the seeds.

I carved a pumpkin so they could see what a real Jack-o-Lantern looked like. The big surprise was that Sweetie, who has been with me for years, had never seen one up close. He was so excited about the process that we had to repeat it at home yesterday, and he got to do the drawing and carving. He then declared that he would be doing it much earlier next year, to take advantage of the Halloween season.

Here are some other things I noticed while hanging out at the mall on Halloween.

1. Italians love getting recipes for things.

2. Kids with glasses draw pumpkins with glasses.

3. The goop inside the pumpkin still feels like brains, even as an adult.

4. Kids love hanging up their artwork when they're done

5. Almost all of the girls dressed up as witches for Halloween (Anastasia was a native American).

My favorite quote from Saturday was from a man who was passing with his family. He seemed pretty intrigued by the whole pumpkin thing and said to me:

"We do not believe in these things, they are not our religion. We are from Marocco."

 Well, we don't really believe in it either... but it's fun to color on pumpkins!  And his kids did, so that worked out.

A BIG THANK YOU to everyone who came to visit us and to those who helped out! MWAH!

Ok. Halloween's over. Phyoo! Another holiday down!

I don't mean to BRAG or anything but...

I just made the best chili in the world. Yeah, and I made some pumpkin bread too. Dayum! Good stuff, people!!

HALLOWEEN FRIDAY AND SATURDAY

If you have kids, bring them to the Torri d'Europa on Friday or Saturday to decorate pumpkins with us! If you live closer to Udine, come to Centro Commerciale FRIULI on Saturday. 4pm-7pm.

Kids should come dressed up, of course!

In Case You are Missing Sour Cream

For those of you living in Trieste, or anywhere else you can't find the world's most perfect ingredient, I have found two great solutions for you. 

One: Make it yourself. 

Take one pint-sized container of FULL FAT yogurt (be careful to get PLAIN and not Vanilla) and blend it with a standard-sized package of Mascarpone cheese (Italians living in America for years lived with the problem of not finding their precious Mascarpone for making Tiramisu, but I think you can find it there now. If you can't, maybe someone can suggest a good substitution?). The ratio of yogurt to mascarpone is about 2:1. Blend it really well. It tastes just like the real thing. 

Two: Go to Slovenia. 

In Trieste we're just 10 minutes from the border with Slovenia where you can find the real thing. You just have to know what to look for. Go to the refrigerated part where you find yogurt. It is called KISLA SMETANA. 

Phyoo. Now you can make your tacos. Except you'll have to pay a mint to get the UNCLE BENS tortillas at the Super Coop at the Mall (until you live in Trieste, you think that he only makes rice. WRONG! In Italy he makes  salsas and flour tortillas and they're in the "foreign" section of one or two big grocery stores like PAM and SUPER COOP...) or you can make them yourself (easier than you think and cheap. But that's for another post...) and you're in luck: the Super Coop is open on Sundays! 

Happy cooking, unless you decide to go out and enjoy the day. 

Ciao!

Making Friends With the Pressure Cooker

It took me a long time to miss the good old American Crockpot. I think it's mostly because the first few years I lived here I was more into learning how to cook Italian than making chili. I was experimenting with homemade pasta (amazing salmon and ricotta ravioli one time, but what a pain!), gnocchi (sometimes great, sometimes gummy), and bread (too much salt, not enough salt, sometimes decent). I was stewing ragus and toasting bruschetta, layering lasagnas and tossing up and spinning pizza dough (actually, I flattened it with a floured rolling pin, but that's not poetic) and decorating it with gorgonzola, asiago, and gouda. 

But then the cravings hit: tuna sandwiches, my grandpa's chicken soup, Ranch dressing, brats, cranberry juice, potato salad, buttermilk biscuits, chocolate chip cookies, cheese and sausage on crackers, tacos, cole slaw, turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes, and the American classic: chili.*

WELL EVERYBODY KNOWS THAT CHILI IS BEST WHEN IT SITS IN A CROCKPOT ALL DAY AND STEWS. But I couldn't find a crockpot anywhere, so I made it in a big pot and cooked it for three hours (Great Grandma Toodles' recipe says three hours MINIMUM) and that worked okay UNTIL I DISCOVERED THE PRESSURE COOKER!

COOKING REVOLUTION

Basically, like a crockpot, you can throw just about ANYTHING you want in there, and as long as  you keep the water below the line marked on the inside, you can close it and let it whistle however long you need and it will turn out perfect** really fast, which makes it like a crockpot, BUT BETTER! Plus, it's economical-- just ask anyone you know who is older than about 75. I'm sure they will have one collecting dust in their pantry and will be happy to unload it. That's how I got mine (Thank you, Long Gone Nonna Ofelia!)

THE PRESSURE COOKING COMMUNITY

Once you get into pressure cooking, you start running into other people who like them, and then you get all kinds of new recipes to try. My friend Graziano (who is an Engineer) appreciates the efficiency of the pressure cooker, the fact that it uses little water, and you don't dirty so many dishes (no dishwasher). He is the Master. Thanks to his tireless experimenting, I know that you can throw dry pasta, whatever sauce you want, and half the water you would normally use to cook the pasta and let it whistle for half the time that the pasta package says, and it will turn out delicious.

THE MIRACLE OF SOUPS

Like at least one family that I know (Elizabeth and Mauro), I have started making a pot of soup a week (sounds repetitive, but it becomes addictive, and, as Elizabeth points out, most schools that offer lunch serve either vegetable or meat broth as a starter to students daily and they never get tired of it) and the pressure cooker has made it even easier.

Here's what I made today: PUMPKIN SOUP!

Here's how:

I cut up  and sautéed a leek, three carrots, three stalks of celery (the numbers are arbitrary, I use what I've got) and a small piece of Hen (vecchia gallina fa buon brodo, but chicken will do) threw it all in the pressure cooker with some rock salt, a bouillon cube, two hunks of garlic and pieces of half a small cooking pumpkin and three peeled potatoes. I filled it with water up to the line. Then I shut it and turned on the gas and let it cook. When it started to whistle, I timed it for 30 minutes.

When I opened it I seasoned it with: All spice (thanks, mom), cloves, a little cumin, and some cinnamon. I took out that piece of Hen (the meat is too tough to really eat) and blended it with a hand blender, and VOILA!!  Excellent soup. Try it.

BUON APPETITO!

*I learned how to cope with variations in ingredients as best I could (brown sugar equals a cup of white sugar with a spoonful of honey, baking powder equals 1/4 teaspoon baking soda + 1/2 tsp cream of tartar. Don't have cilantro? Try some diced celery, it's not the same but does freshen things up in a similar way.  3 tsp lemon juice are the equivalent of 1tsp of cream of tartar, etc). Note that in 6 years I have never found a suitable replacement for American Vanilla extract, although I did find a recipe for making it yourself, which I will probably try this winter with the grappa that we make, or with last year's leftovers.

**(boiled potatoes: 10 minutes, stewed meat and onions: 30 minutes, add potatoes and cook another 11 minutes and WOW!)

I need a recipe for baked pumpkin seeds

So for Halloween in Trieste, we're organizing a kiddy party at the Mall (Torri d'Europa) in Trieste on October 30th (4-7pm) and in Udine (Centro Commerciale Friuli) on October 31. Kids can dress up and and decorate pumpkins with us. Doesn't that sound like FUN?

We are going to hand out directions for parents to help their wee ones carve JACK-O-LANTERNS when they get home. I'm thinking that while the parents are carving, the kids can separate the gooey pumpkin innards from the seeds and they can bake them.

I need a recipe... I can Google it, of course, but if anyone has any ideas, BRING THEM ON!!

I did a major No-No today!

Sweetie pointed out that I have become one of those people who complains in the summer when it's too hot and then in the winter because it's too cold.

It's true. I did that, and I feel awful about it. I did some soul searching, though, and realized that as much as I would like to do more, I can only take back one of them. This summer it was really hot and humid for WAAAAAY TOOOOO LOOOONG. That month or two of incessant complaining (for sweating for no good reason), I'm sorry to stay, stands.

I apologize, however, for this morning. I know that I may have snarled when I took out the dog at 6.30 (why was I up so early?) wearing a hat, fleece jacket and coat and was STILL COLD, but, to my defense, I think it was the new haircut. It just doesn't have the neck coverage I'm used to. So let's just say my harsh vocal reaction to the elements this morning can be chalked up to plain old unpreparedness (is that a word? Can it be now?). Tomorrow I will just have to wear a scarf, too.

That being said, I did run downtown (it's all part of my making-running-my- lifestyle kick) in running tights, long-sleeved shirt, and another thicker shirt over that, but I put a pair of shorts in my back-pack. You never know, it might warm up later...

Who won the Barcolana anyway?

Was it any of you, dear readers?

Congratulations, President Obama

for that Nobel Peace Price. I don't care what anybody says. You deserve it!

Did you see Cesare Cremonini last night?

How awesome was he?!! And how nice was it of him to end his three-month tour in Piazza Unità with little old us?! He was awesome. We were so close to the stage I could see every hair in his beard and I swear a couple of times he sang JUST TO ME (Sweetie was totally cool with it). If you didn't see the show (which was even more enjoyable because it was FREE), I'm sorry you missed it.

Toward the end it started to pour, and what was funny was the fact that the entire audience all seemed to have umbrellas except for Sweetie and me, and that they put them up without any regard whatsoever to who was behind them, next to them, at what distance, to anything. Once they were all up, though, it looked pretty neat. Cesare, thankfully, was covered, but sweaty enough to make it look like he had been down there with us.

***

Today, then, is the Barcolana. Are you going up to the Napoleonica to watch the regatta? Are you in the regatta? Are you downtown partying in the piazza and watching it on the jumbotron? I'm not. I did go down to walk around and see the stands twice (Friday and yesterday) but I'm staying home on this sunny Sunday morning. I should be getting some work done, but I think I will go for a run. Sweetie took the dog down to Sistiana for her Salvataggio in Acqua training (she's had her license for three years but she likes the other dogs, going into the water, saving people, etc.) so I'm alone until lunchtime. Maybe I'll watch the Barcolana on Tele4.

Have a great day, whatever you do!

Can you guess where this is?

Trieste Trivia question of the week. Come on, where is it? For those of you new to Trieste, that is the city's symbol, the ALABARDA, although we call it a Halberd in English. Sounds much more attractive in Italian, doesn't it?

Who knows, you may end up liking Trieste so much you get one of these tattooed somewhere on your body. My friend Stefano from Tribe & Crew Tattoo shop once told me that an American girl was in Trieste for the summer and went home with one. Think about it!

Who said Trieste isn't a Happenin' place?

So the other day BY CHANCE, I happened to be looking at the home page of the University of Trieste when this event caught my eye. It was a conference to be held at the Scuola per Interpreti in Via Filzi on cooperation between Europe and the United States of Africa. Well, looking at the list of presenters, I saw a name I recognized. Boubacar Boris Diop, who is a writer and journalist from Senegal whose writing I had studied in grad school in the States and whose intense, high-energy and genuine enthusiasm fascinated me in 1999 when I spent a summer studying Francophone African literature in Senegal on an NEH grant and he was our teacher for a day. During the same trip, all of the American French teachers (I was a high school French teacher in one of my past lives...) got to have dinner with an African family, mostly teachers and writers we had come into contact with over our stay. My family, as it turns out was Boubacar Boris Diop. Just me, and him. There was another guy there, too, apparently an assistant of his who worked at his newspaper. But he was only there to bring over the food. We had Senegal's national dish, which was quite tastey. We spent most of the meal talking about poetry (I later wrote a poem about the meal, which I'm tearing my house apart to find) and literature. I told him my two favorite African writers were Aminata Sow Fall (whom I had just met) and Ken Bogul. That dinner stuck with me, and, a few days later, when our delegation of teachers was ready to leave, we had a party to say goodbye to our new friends. Boubacar brought Ken Bogul. There is a picture of the three of us. They are on either side of me, and I have the smile of someone who has just met her two favorite rock stars. Where is that picture?

I got to the conference yesterday early. When the speakers arrived, I scanned them but couldn't figure out which one was Boubacar, so I asked until I found him. He looked completely different. He's bald now, different glasses, seemed a little taller. For a second I thought I had the wrong guy. He didn't recognize me, either. I was 25 back then and ten years is a long time... I hauled out that rusty French and it came back comme ci comme ça, enough for him to remember who I was. We decided to meet up afterwards.

When it was his turn to speak, EVERYBODY listened. For one, he actually spoke INTO the microphone. That, and he had this CHARISMA that made me remember exactly why I felt so lucky to have been the CHOSEN ONE who got to eat at his house on eat-with-an-African-family night. WOW!

It turns out Boubacar Boris Diop moved to Tunisia. Said he wanted to learn Arabic anyway, and that way he is close to Senegal and close to Europe. Whoever thought that both of us would leave our homelands and meet up again ten years after we met the first time, in, of all places, Trieste?

Life is funny like that sometimes.

The Seven Dwarves are Alive and Well and Living in Trieste

I have seen them on a number of occasions working in different gardens around town. How did they get residence papers? Are they here on a working visa? I hear those are really hard to get. Then again, they are originally French, I think ("La Belle au bois dormant", n'est-ce pas?!), and France IS part of the European Union, so that probably made it easier. Anyway, in case you're looking for them, they are here. Snow white is harder to find, however. She may be supervising several gardens at once and going back and forth between them. I will let you know about that.

Joyce smelled it, too

I was on my way to the Italian-American Association this morning, which I tend to think of in its Italian form: "Associazione Italo-Americana" or ASSITAM for short, when I came across the life-size bronze statue of James Joyce on the canal bridge in Via Roma. He's got his head tilted just so, he's wearing those funny round glasses and hat, his hands are in his pockets like he's in no hurry to get to work, which was at the Berlitz school (now defunct) to teach English. He lived in Trieste for ten years, I've heard, and spoke the Triestino dialect fluently. He said it was "easy on the tongue," while he preferred to write in English. His daughter's first language was Triestino, by the way, and the family went on to speak it together even after they left Trieste.

Right now I happen to be reading the book Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere by Jan Morris (I have it checked out from the library. You can read it when I'm done), and she has this great quote from Joyce talking about going to see the Opera in the cheap seats at the Teatro Verdi (a place to see, by the way, same architect as the Scala in Milan, so just like it, only smaller).

"The business families of Trieste were fervent opera-goers. When Joyce went to a performance, to sit among the 'sour reek of armpits' and 'phosphorescent farts' of the upper balcony, he often saw in the stalls and boxes below bourgeois pupils of his, following the music with extreme attention..."

And that's all I have to say about that.

Except for this. That statue of Joyce is about 5 years old now. A lot of people must pat him on the back as they pass him on that bridge because his left shoulder has become the color that parts of statues get when you rub them for good luck.

The Number 21 Bus today smelled like a farm

I really meant to run downtown this afternoon but I just couldn't make it work. So I took the number 21 bus in via Flavia all the way to Piazza Oberdan. Takes about 20 minutes.

The bus was really full, and it was hot. At some point, though, I realized that it also smelled like a farm. And because I had 20 minutes to think about it, I started asking myself, "Well, what kind of farm does it smell like? What kind of animals are on this farm? Do I smell, say, a chicken coop? A barn with cows? Isolate that smell, give that smell a name!" But I couldn't say for sure exactly what kind of farm it would be.

And then I tried to figure out what the source of the smell could be. A person? Well, it was about 150 degrees celsius (that's a gazillion degrees Fahrenheit), and sweat was rolling down the small of my back for no reason (although this time, I assure you, it was not me). So the possibility was there.

Gorgonzola. That's what it smelled like. Gorgonzola.

Which reminded me of a time my American friend came to visit me from France. He had this odd smell about him. A lot like the smell on the bus today. Sour. Ripe. From the second I saw him. I didn't say anything.

When we got home, I took my coat off to hang it up on the coat tree. Just as I was thinking about how he didn't look as dirty as he smelled, he pulled a container out of his coat pocket. It was a plastic tub like you buy ice cream in here. He opened it with a face that said TA-DAH! and thereby UNLEASHED THE SMELL. It was a glorious hunk of cheese, and that was enough to put a new perspective on that nasty smell. It was the kind of cheese that makes your eyes water but TASTES SOOOO GOOOD!

So that made me think differently about the smell on the bus. Some nice person must be bringing some other very nice person a piece of delicious cheese. Yes, that is what that smell is!

Mystery at Sant'Anna

Well my run downtown was a success. It was so good, in fact, that I forgot to take pictures. Well, I did take one. As I was passing the cemetary parking lot (I usually tell people I live near the stadium, but the truth is, I live closer to the cemetary) I noticed areas where perfectly square pieces of concrete had been removed and surrounded with red tape that warned "Don't fall in here." What are those holes for? Is the cemetary running out of room? From across the street they did look oddly rectangualar, those holes. I wondered this out loud to Sweety this morning who quickly pointed out that you could also plant a tree in each one and eventually provide a little shade in that wide open unprotected lot.

Fair enough. I'll keep you updated on this one.

*UPDATE* Sweetie was right! They planted a whole bunch of trees in those holes, and cut down the big tree that was hanging over the street. How about that? Parking Lot Landscaping! I'm all for it.

How long does it take to lose the parking guilt?

I said I would tell you the story of what it's like to live in Trieste if you're not from here. So that is what I'm going to do today. My mission is to run from my house by the stadium to Via Roma 15 where an intensive English class is starting tonight at six. I want to be there to make sure everything goes smoothly. I was hoping to be there by four, but I think it's best to give myself a little extra time-- usually it takes me about half an hour to run there, but I want to take a couple of pictures, and make sure I have time to towel off before people start coming in... Yeah, I'm one of those crazy people who prefers running to work, rather than taking the bus, or, the worst, driving there.

Because a lot of the Trieste I see is on running feet, I feel more comfortable not driving here unless I have to. Yesterday, I made an exception.

Since I had to be at the Association early to learn how to help people sign up for classes, check out books, etc. and because I was planning a nice meet and greet for new students, I let my husband talk me into driving downtown. Big mistake. I drove around in circles for what semeed like hours! There was NO PARKING ANYWHERE IN THE ENTIRE CITY that you didn't have to pay for, and I really hate paying to park.

So what did I do? I found a street lined with illegally parked cars up by St. Giusto--that's the area by the Cathedral and castle up on the hill where Triestini like my husband park because until recently it was ALL FREE. Of course, you have to make the killer walk back up again to find your car when it's time to go home, but, hey, 80 euro cents an hour saved is 80 euro cents earned, right? I saw an opening there, slowed down, and (gulp) drove up onto the curb first with my left front tire, then eased up the left rear tire and parked with two wheels on the sidewalk. Just like the Italians do.

I got out, locked the car, and started making my way down the street, passing the NO PARKING, TOW AWAY ZONE 24-HOURS sign on the way down and tried to ignore it. No big deal.

I got to the office.
Then the panic set in.
My car is going to get towed. I am going to get a ticket. I will definitely get caught.
Evil thoughts of how this parking job was going to ruin my life circled through my head.
So I skyped Cristian and told him about my situation.
"Do you have time to go move it?"
"No. There's no parking. I'm afraid. Come take it away... PUH-LEEEEEEASE!!"

So that's what he did. After he finished work, he ran and found the car with our dog, Luna. It was the ONLY car there parked illegally on the sidewalk by that time. Apparently there is some kind of time limit for these types of things. He took the car home and played tennis for an hour.

When I was finished, he came and picked me up in the car, Luna in the back. Thankfully, besides not being towed or ticketed, I didn't have to climb back up that hill to St. Giusto either. It turned out okay after all.

But I am not taking any more chances. Today I am going to sweat it out on foot and get a 3-mile round trip (correction, it's 3 miles one way so it's a 6 mile round trip) out of it. Maybe even take a few pictures.

My Favorite Place in Trieste

If you haven't visited the American Corner library at the Italian-American Association in Piazza Sant'Antonio, 6, you should.

The library at the Italian-American Association has long been my favorite place in Trieste. It is a place where you can hang out and read, and it is physically beautiful. Books have a way of warming up a room, and with its high ceilings and parquet floors, they don't make libraries like this anymore.

If you are looking for things to do in Trieste or interested in volunteering, you should absolutely stop by.

Check the Blog for info on what's happening this week. aia-fvg.blogspot.com