A hospital trip

Fortunately, I've managed to stay out of the hospital in almost every country I've been to.  Almost.  But not in Italy.  I've been in the hospital twice in Italy.

The first time was in May 2010 when I was bitten by a dog.  I was running in the fields of Veneto which is one of my favorite things to do.  Rumor has it, there is a little stretch of land between the crops that is public and it's okay for me to run there.  I'm still not sure I totally get it, but that's what someone tried to explain to me, I think, so I ran with it.  

It was a beautiful evening and I was running through the fields of red poppies, along a stream, past big rolls of hay with church bells ringing in the background.  It seemed to me to be perfect.  Then I was attacked by a dozen little dogs.  Okay.  I wasn't really attacked.  You can hardly use the word "attacked" with "little dogs", but I was surrounded by them and I couldn't get away.  And then one bit me and the next thing you know I was in the emergency room because everyone was afraid that I might have rabies.  I got a couple of shots and a prescription for antibiotics (in case I had rabies??  I don't really know.)  And then later, when I was at the pharmacy filling my prescription I got a phone call from the Rabies Control Center.  How do you think I handled that call all in Italian?  In the end, I didn't have rabies and I made a few new friends and it didn't make getting bit by the little dog so bad after all.

The next trip to an Italian hospital was my choice.  It was last week.  I had a friend that had to have surgery and since I didn't have anything to do and I love hospitals, I decided to volunteer for nurse duty. What a trip.  I mean, really.  What a trip.  This trip to Italy.  This trip to France.  If I was writing a guidebook I'd include a trip to the hospital.  And since I've never been to a hospital in France, this story can only compare an Italian hospital to an American one.

It was like walking onto a movie set from the 1950's.  Or the 40's?  Or a war movie?  The corridors were filled with echoes and for some reason reminded me of an elementary school without the art work.  I was shown the bathroom on our way by which is the same bathroom the patients use for the toilet, for taking a shower and for brushing their teeth.  Then we got to the room.  It was quite big and had originally been equipped with 6 beds.  But, I was told that they think a law was passed some time ago (a few weeks ago for all I know) that a room could only be occupied by 3 patients.  

There were three beds in a big white room with three desk chairs and two desks.  The chairs were hard and upright and really seemed like they came from an office.  This is compared to the sofas and LazyBoys offered at hospitals in the States.  Mamma mia!  And the desks were really like school desks and this is where the patients ate.  

There were no curtains separating the patients from one another.  Which meant there was also nothing separating the patients from the other patient's visitors.  So, I made some new Italian friends.  You hear what they are suffering from.  You hear what time their surgery is.  You hear the results of their surgery when they come back to the room.   If they can't make it down the hall to the public restroom, you hear them (and if you choose to you see them) go to the bathroom in their papagallo.   It's a plastic thing shaped like a bird (hence the name) that the men used.

The windows were big and bright and....open!  Are hospital windows ever open?  It seemed really strange to me, but maybe I'm imagining that you can never open hospital windows.  It seemed a little unsanitary with the pigeons on the railing outside and without screens I kind of thought one might fly in to meet the papagallo.

One bed had a 16 year-old kid that had tonsilitis, but he had a fever and couldn't have the surgery.  He had been there hanging out for four days playing video games and texting and was finally sent home.  My favorite (pictured above) spent the whole first day in his pajamas to have one test done.  He slept there and had his surgery in the afternoon the next day.  Would we ever have someone admitted to have their x-rays taken and blood drawn?  Isn't that outpatient and then you come back the day of the surgery?  I told him that women in Chicago give birth and go home in the amount of time he was there waiting around. He played with everyone.  Laughed all the time.  And had a brilliant twinkle in his eye.  A hospital patient?  Hardly.  I liked his wife, too.

My job, in addition to being the entertaining American in a small Italian town, was to take care of my friend and make phone calls when he came out of surgery.  Phone calls in Italian.  Phone calls that I'm glad didn't have to deliver any bad news.  I was fine when he was wheeled back into the room and waking up from the anesthesia.  Then the doctors came in to talk to him.  I wasn't sure he was awake enough to understand everything, so I asked my new friend (who had nothing to do but wait around in his pajamas) to listen and then translate it for me.  Mind you, he'd be translating Italian into Italian.  But somehow, once you're my friend, I can understand you a little better.  I tried to listen anyway and what I gathered was that my patient was blind in one eye and deaf in the opposite ear.  That's when I freaked out.  The doctors left and I had a little panic attack.  My friend asked pajama man to call the nurse for me.  The nurse came quite quickly to the aid of my friend, and still groggy from anesthesia he said, "We called you for her."  She left the room again and came back with a comfy chair that reclined and told me to rest.

Once I regained myself I heard the news that my friend wasn't really deaf and blind.  I'd really only heard the words 'eye' and 'ear' but since the surgery was on his nose, it didn't make a lot of sense to me.  So, in normal Tenley style, I invented the problem.

I returned the next day to find another young boy in bed number 8 and pajama man still waiting in bed number 11.  My patient, in bed number 9, was fine.  By lunchtime he was up and eating at his school desk.  Number 8's mom was there, number 11's wife was there and the whole room was kind of united.  I decided I needed a nap and since bed number 9 was empty during the lunch break, I laid down.  I was awakened by loud voices and some arguing.  I had no idea for the first few minutes that it was all about me.  That's the beauty of Italian.  In the first place, you don't know if they are really arguing because that is kind of how they talk. And in the second place, I wasn't quick enough to figure out that I was the subject.  Until I saw the nurse pointing at me.  I wasn't supposed to be on the bed if I wasn't the patient and she was yelling about it from the hall.  Which means lots of other people were disturbed by the actions of the unknowing-American.  I jumped up and left for lunch.  

That afternoon, pajama man had his surgery.  It was on his vocal chords.  The last few hours we spent together I could only enjoy his twinkling eyes.  Number 8 had his surgery and checked out that night.  My patient was recovering well and checked out that night, too.  

I was sad to leave pajama man.  I wrote him a note (in Italian) and gave it to him as we walked out of the room.  It's really strange to share one of the most intimate and perhaps most difficult times in a person's life and then say goodbye knowing you will never see them again.  Do you exchange email addresses with someone you meet in the hospital as though you met them on a train while traveling?   I don't think so.  I'll always feel a little sad when I think of pajama man and how quickly he came into and out of my life.  Or should I feel happy that at least our paths crossed for a moment?

  

A kiss is not just a kiss

I think I've finally memorized how to give kisses in Italy and France.  I spent a long time watching a funeral this morning and in addition to funerals being filled with tears, they are also filled with kisses.  And Italian funerals are filled with kisses that start on  the left cheek.  (Followed by another on the right.)

After smashing a lot of glasses and nearly breaking a few noses, I'd almost given up.  I've always felt a little awkward with the whole kiss thing anyway, then throw in the fact that I don't know which side to start on, and you can kiss any comfort goodbye.  There are some people I really dread kissing.  I started to avoid them.  Well, not them really, but kissing them.  And then that got a bit weird and I felt like a creep.

After a few glasses bashes, I started to take them off before hellos and goodbyes.  That made things a little bit easier.  I guess I haven't really explained the problem.  The whole French kissing (not really FRENCH kissing) procedure starts on the right cheek.  So, after my first couple of weeks in France, that became the norm.  Then, I'd go to Italy for the weekend, have a few collisions, get used to it, and go back to Paris and start on the wrong side again.  I promised myself I would remember the difference, but unfortunately, I had a mental block and could NEVER remember which was which.  That made things even more tense.

Instead of thinking, "Oh, isn't it nice to see that person?  I think I'll go greet them with a kiss, " I'd think, "Oh no.  It's time to say hello.   Which side?  Where am I?  Italy or Paris?"  That doesn't make for the warmest hello.  Then add the fact that fifty percent of the time I do it wrong, and you've got a real culture clash. 

So, here's the new rule.  I was at a funeral in Italy.  I watched a person LEAVE the world.  In past tense LEAVE is LEFT.  So, in Italy I have to kiss people on the left cheek first.  How's that?  I'm sure it's just what people want to know.....that before I give them a kiss I'll be thinking about an Italian funeral.

No ifs, ands or butts.....s'il vous plait

A cigarette butt is about the same size as a gum wrapper, right?  Would all of the people who throw cigarette butts out their windows also throw a gum wrapper out the window?  I really don't think so.  Really.  And if I am standing on the street talking to a friend and they flick their butt to the curb, I really don't think I can imagine this same person flicking a gum wrapper in the same way.  The gum wrappers go back in the pockets.  So, what is it about smokers--educated, kind, recycling-minded, earth-loving smokers--that makes them feel okay about throwing their cigarette butts on the street?  I know they can't put the butt back in their pocket, but is that a good enough excuse to litter?  I can't put an apple core back in my pocket either, but I wouldn't feel okay just pitching it on the street.

I'm not sure why this subject made it to a blog.  Because I have nothing else to say?  (Highly unlikely.)  Because maybe it will make SOMEONE think about it?  (I doubt it.) Because I don't know how to say "cigarette butt" in French or Italian?  (In fact, maybe that's the reason.)  It's hard to have this kind of discussion, I mean the kind of discussion you can imagine that I would like to have, without the vocabulary.  I don't think that what I have to say carries any weight even if I could speak the language, but without it, I think it would be a bit ridiculous.

So, those of you who read this blog can give me insight if you have it.  In fact, I don't know if I have any readers that smoke. ;-) If I do, I hope you're not offended, but it really is something that I've been wanting to say for a long time.

And another thing.......   

Proud to be an American?

I'm pretty lucky to be an American....I guess.  But it doesn't always make me feel good.  Especially not on the night train between France and Italy.

The inspection by the border police has happened several times.  The interrogation by victims of the inspection to the victim of reverse discrimination has luckily only happened once.

I board the train at 20:15 for a 20:33 departure.  Depending on who is in the car, we might chat a little before bed and we might not.  Lights are usually out by 22:00 and it seems we are usually awoken again around 01:00.  We'll get to that in a minute.

Believe it or not, I've opted for first class on this journey.  First class means that there are four people in the cabin with four little beds.  Second class is six.  It's a 10 euro difference.  When I'm thinking clearly at the time of the ticket purchase, I remember to ask for an upper bunk.  An upper bunk means that you can crawl up there whenever you want to and read or write or sleep.  A lower bunk means that the people might be hanging out there with you for awhile before you go to bed and also again in the morning.  You get sheets, a wool blanket, a pillow and a bottle of water.  In my opinion, it's a great way to travel.  You don't have to take a train to a bus to an airport to wait in one line and then another line and then take a bus from the door of the airport to the plane and then a short plane ride with a bus to the train to your final destination.

So, what happens at 01:00?  That's 1:00 a.m. for my non-military friends.  The first few times I didn't know where we were.  In fact, I guess I still don't.  But, I do know that the inspection is by the Swiss.  Anyway, there's a loud, aggressive knock on the door.  At this point, everyone is usually sleeping.  I'll only tell you about the last time when my cabin mates turned on me.  But keep in mind, it's happened at least five times.

A rap on the door.  A drowsy opening of the door.  I usually stay curled up in my bunk because I know the routine.  They ask where you are coming from and where you are going.  They ask if you have a job.    They ask it in French, English or Italian and the responses are usually in Spanish, Portuguese, or French with the occasional, "I don't understand."  Bags are thoroughly examined.  Everything is taken out and every zipper is unzipped.  Seams are tugged at, souvenirs are unwrapped and pockets are checked.

The night the inspection was followed by the interrogation was the night I was sharing my room with two ladies from Columbia and one from Brazil.  As they were repacking their bags at 01:30 I caught a bit of their conversation in Spanish and Portuguese.  I looked down and said that I was sorry.   They were telling each other that it wasn't fair that it didn't happen to the American.  Then they started asking me questions.  Did it ever happen to me?  Why not?  Did it seem unfair to me?  So, I told them it made me feel guilty and sad and embarrassed.  Proud to be an American?  At that moment, definitely not.  There were four nice ladies in that first class cabin and only one of them was let off the hook.

A week of winks

A wink.
I think you're cute.
Just kidding.
That's the right answer.
Follow me to my office.  I have to tell you something.

It's a universal language.  Once you take one of my English lessons, anyway.  I used to wink at the refugees when I taught them.  Then one day, one of them winked back at me.  I was pretty sure she had no idea what she was doing, so I decided I'd teach a lesson about it.  I was right.  No one knew what a wink meant.  And I taught them that even if you give one,  your message might not always be clear to the recipient.

Then I started teaching 20-something year old French boys.  They were winking at their 40-something year old teacher and this time I was pretty sure they didn't know what they were doing, so I taught another lesson.  They claimed they knew what they were doing.  On the wrong day a wink from them only makes me sad.  It's like they think I am so old that it is safe to wink at me.  Like it's kind of cute.  In fact, I guess it reminds me of the way I talk to old people sometimes.  Maybe it is kind of belittling in a way.  They just seem so old and cute that I treat them differently than I should.  I don't think I'll do that anymore.

So anyway, it's been a week of winks in Paris. The 'follow me to my office' kind of winks.  And I've been giving them.   And to top it off, I looked up and saw this building winking at me as I pedaled by.  I'm not sure what it was trying to say, but with a little imagination, it turned a grey Paris day into a sunny one.  For a minute, anyway.

And I will leave you with this.
"When most I wink, then do my eyes best see."  William Shakespeare.
Shakespeare's not always clear to me, but with a little imagination, I can usually get something out of it.  What I get from this is that the 'follow me to my office' winks allowed me to start seeing things a bit more clearly.  I'll fill you in on the rest a little later.  "Nudge, nudge.  Wink, wink.  Know what I mean?"  Monty Python.

The reality is more than I could have imagined (Quando la realta sopra la fantasia)

Okay.  Excuse me.  If any of you saw this with a picture and no text, that's how I first saw it, too.  And now here I am trying to add the text and I seem to have lost the picture.  Neither of them work well without the other so I hesitate to continue typing until I find the picture again.  And now I have found the picture, but why is everything that I type being underlined? Unless you have a child under the age of 5, I don't think you can understand how I can be so inept at these computer things.  I really believe that a 5-year old has a better grasp of it than I do.  Anyway, about this photo.  I was at a friend's office and I saw it.  I said that it was a great picture and it became even greater when I heard the story.  The problem is, you didn't hear the story and may have thought that I'd made a mistake by publishing the unusual title.  So, here are the facts.  I'm sure you will find it far from interesting, but since it has been published, I don't want to remove it.  I would rather clarify.

The staple is in fact standing on it's two feet.  It was violently removed from a sheet of paper as staples  sometimes are and when it slipped through the teeth of the staple remover it landed on its own two feet.  It seems relatively impossible to make this happen even if you tried, doesn't it?  A day later we were talking and he asked me how to translate quando la realta sopra la fantasia.  It sounds nice in Italian.  In fact, even in Italian you can probably understand what it means.  So, I kept trying to think if we had a quote like this in English, but I couldn't come up with one.  The most literal translation would be when reality surpasses fantasy, but I didn't like the word 'surpasses.'  So, I changed it to the above title just to try to explain it in English a little better.  Little did I know a day later the photo and lousy translation would show up on my blog.  I'd given him the password in case I was ever without an internet connection (wouldn't you all be lucky that day?) and needed something added or changed never expecting that he might just post something.   He was nice enough to send a text to say that if I didn't like it I could remove it, but by the time I got to the internet I'd noticed that some of you had already seen it and I thought it would be better to keep it posted and explain. Anyway, I still think the photo is nice.  So, what I take from this has nothing to do with the photo or the idea that a staple could land like this. Instead I am preoccupied with the translation.  Do I really speak Italian and a little French?  How many things am I saying that I think make perfect sense that may have a completely different meaning to someone else?  And I'm also reminded of the translations of some of my favorite books.  Who do I really like, the author or the translator?  I think in many cases for me it is the translator that might paint a more unusual picture than the author had intended.  Parts of what make me like a novel are the well-crafted sentences.  A well-crafted sentence is well crafted by the translator, not the author.  It takes some creativity to translate and perhaps translators are enhancers.  However, in my effort to make a more simple, logical sentence out of the Italian quote, I think something was 'lost in translation'.  In fact, maybe I should 'have left well enough alone' and kept the photo on the blog with no text.  We all know that 'a picture speaks a thousand words' better than a thousand words speak a thousand words and certainly better than a thousand translated words. 

La Donna dei Biscotti

Some of you may know my nickname, but others may not.  I am sure you all know that I am not famous for my culinary skills, unless you are talking about cookies.  And then, I am The Cookie Lady.

Who would have thought that it would be hard to make chocolate chip cookies in Italy? Not me.  I knew I would have to do the conversions, but I thought that would be easy enough.  The oven temp?  How much is a teaspoon?  The equivalent of one stick of butter?  What is one stick of butter?  8 ounces?  I thought I would find it all on the internet.

But, the shopping was the difficult part.  I went to a grocery store in a little town at the base of the Prealpi mountains. It's a town big enough for the ingredients for chocolate chip cookies, I thought.  But no.  No vanilla. No chips. No brown sugar. No baking soda.  That's actually got a name like 'sodio bicarbonate' or something.  You wouldn't think it would be a part of my chocolate chip cookies, but it is. It probably says that on the box in English right under 'baking soda', right?  Well, I don't like the sound of it and I couldn't find it.
 
I decided I couldn't leave the store without buying something since I'd spent nearly 20 minutes wandering around it's three aisles looking for things.  (This is actually the big grocery store in town.)  So, I bought some Asiago cheese and a loaf of bread.  Yes.  A regular loaf of white bread  with a few words on the package that I didn't understand.  (I didn't have my dictionary.)  In the end, the words were 'soft' and 'sliced'.  Believe it or not, the soft, sliced pre-packaged white bread is better than the bread from un panificio. Is the new problem the fact that I have become so accustomed to my bread in Paris that nothing can compare?  Is there no good Italian bread?
 
Back to the ingredients. Mamma mia!  Brown sugar?  They have brown sugar but it's crystals just like white sugar.  The only way I could describe it to people in my search for these ingredients was that it was kind of like snow. Like if you wanted to you could make a little ball with it, no?  Chocolate chips?  I finally found them in a box.  It doesn't seem right to use anything that doesn't come in a red and yellow bag.  Vanilla?  That took days to find.  In the end, it comes packaged like the little samples of Ferragamo perfume I have in my top drawer.  Two tiny little tubes in a little package like batteries.  And.....it's white.  By 'white' I mean 'clear'.  But I have always called clear liquids white.  When I was young and wanted a 7up in a restaurant I would ask for a white pop. Butter?  Okay, they have butter in Italy, I know.  But they don't have salted butter and instead of a box with four sticks it's like a big slab.  It didn't seem like things were going to work out very well.

But, yesterday was the big day.  I went to my friend Matteo's house to make them. He's 7 and adorable and deserves a whole blog post which I will write another day.  For now I will stick with the cookies. I had some version or another of all the ingredients.  I put them in the bowl, mixed them up, and did the usual little taste test.  Unsatisfactory, but there was nothing I could do.  Maybe the white vanilla doesn't taste the same?  Certainly the butter lacking salt meant that I had to add more, but how much?  Teenie, tiny little chocolate chips?  These were not the cookies of The Cookie Lady, but it was the best that I could do.  Into the oven they went (on parchment paper on a cookie sheet which I have never done, but I was too embarrassed to ask Matteo's mom if I could put the cookies directly on the sheet).  The oven set at 190 instead of 375 didn't sit well with me, but that's what I googled.  The usual 8 minutes and obsessively checking for the perfect doneness started at about 5 minutes.  That leads me to believe the 190 to 375 thing couldn't have been right.  So, I took them out and didn't have my usual brown paper to put them on which is often, in fact, a shopping bag sliced open which seems to be the perfect finale for my cookies.

But, I did the best that I could.  And guess what? I have an invitation to go back to this house any time I want to make more cookies.  So guess what? I'm going back tonight.  This little town has it's own little version of Carnevale.  It's an hour from Venice, which is celebrating Carnevale now (almost) but that seems to be something for tourists.  I think what I will see tonight might be the real thing!  I was in Venice last year for Carnevale and what I saw seemed to be Halloween.  Maybe I missed something, but there were lots of people dressed up and walking around.  That was it.  Really.  So, I think I can expect the same thing tonight in a sweeter, simpler version.  It will be about the kids.  They wear costumes and get candy.  Matteo is going as a cowboy and he will be accompanied by La Donna dei Biscotti.