The Internet Personified: I am a beloved child of the universe
Dear friend,
In Italy, bidets in bathrooms are the law. That's what my Italian friend tells me, her aunt is an architect, and no matter how small the bathroom, there must always be one bum washing station next to the pot. They would save space if they considered the potty shower, so ubiquitous in India now, and which have made it almost impossible to poop comfortably anywhere else. In Germany, for example, I have to make do with toilet paper. TOILET PAPER. It's barbaric. There's a certain sort of white country that thinks wiping your bottom after you shit with paper is the height of civilisation, no matter what evidence to the contrary. I wonder how the British posted in India managed. Did they "go native" in that matter at least?

In Frankfurt, K's friends have several free samples of something called the Happy Po. (Po = bottom in German). It's a squeezable plastic bottle with a small shower head on top--a portable bidet! They gave me one because I was doing my usual "wtf is toilet paper" rant, and I was delighted. It's now in my bag, but I haven't needed it in Italy, because of the aforementioned bidets. This is truly the most civilised place in Europe, in one respect at least.
***
I also told my friend that Italian food truly rivals India, something that made her roll her eyes and laugh, but I meant it as a compliment. Indian food is rich and diverse, and the same can be said about Italian. The thing is that Italian food has travelled everywhere, even little towns in India will have pasta white sauce and pasta red sauce. We experimented with cooking pizza at home when I was a child--with a sauce made of tomato puree, garlic, onion and green chillis with Amul cheese on top. Everything in Italy, therefore, is familiar. I know this pasta, that pizza, I've even eaten gnocchi and ravioli at fancy restaurants before. But since in India most restaurants follow The Big Chill model of spicing things up, the food here seems slightly bland in comparison. Once you're over that, and you bite into a ravioli done in butter and sage sauce, practically dripping off the fork, or you eat a pizza with fresh tomato and all that cheese just gloriously slathered on, or, as we did yesterday, you eat pulled cow's cheek in a sandwich "with extra picante oil because I'm from India and I like it very picante" oh god, the food is a revelation, as it is with every first time Italian traveller.
But we are also budget travellers, so as soon as we were able, we got meat and cheese and bread from a supermarket. This is in Mestre, a little suburb off Venice, because to stay in Venice proper would be a) bankrupting and b) living with ALL THOSE TOURISTS. They pour out of and around Venice in hordes, all of them wearing the same blank, beaten expression. I was dismissive of the heat back in India, but Italy is VERY VERY hot, the sun is bright, and very few places have AC or fans, so we are just used to sweating gently. Luckily nothing is smelly. (Yet.)
Catching a train from Oulx (Italian alps town) to Turin yesterday, we took the super fast French TGV by mistake, and wound up overshooting Turin and ending up in Milan. I panicked briefly, but then we looked at the train timetable. Since it was a regional train and not a fast one, it was stopping in Milan as well, so we sat around the station and waited. And waited. The train was about an hour late, and by the time we got on it, the AC had just given up and stopped working, and there were so many people. Places to sit, certainly, but SO HOT. There was one Punjabi man in our compartment, who I was going to engage in conversation as one does when one is abroad, but he finished his long chat (lots of bhenchods, happily said out loud because he didn't think anyone else understood him) (I am confusing because I am with K, who is passing for Italian or Spanish, so they don't really get my skin colour, but are assuming I am from thereabouts) and then fell asleep, tongue sticking out of his mouth, fully manspreading into the seat across him. The man in the seat opposite him had actually just gone to get some air outside, and when he came back in and found his seat taken over by this guy, he just quietly stood outside for the rest of the journey, only waiting for us to leave, two hours later, before he came back in, so he could take our seats. Very polite. I would've poked the sleeping guy.
Where was I? Oh yes, sandwiches. So in Venice, we had our sandwiches which we carried everywhere. Unfortunately (for us and not the Venetians) they are cracking down on people doing this so it is forbidden to "picnic" in any of Venice's most beautiful public squares. (Here's a story about German backpackers paying a fine the same time we were there) We were even chased away from sitting on the stairs around San Marco's and we weren't even doing anything, just sitting. Luckily, we found a quiet shady corner watching the gondolas go by, and since we weren't dipping our feet in the water or eating or drinking, they left us alone. (We ate the sandwiches on the water buses--vaporettos--and it was hot and crowded, but at least we could sit and eat.) I loved Venice. I didn't want to go, because crowds and tourists and Venice literally saying PLEASE DON'T COME but I'm glad we went after all. I think they could fix their tourist problem by only allowing tourists in by day/night pass and only issuing a certain amount each month or something. But then they lose all their tourism money, which they don't want either. So who knows? WHO KNOWS?

Mestre was quite delightful though, it felt REAL after our long days in Venice, it was nice to come back to someplace which felt like actual people lived there all the time, not some kind of Westworld theme park that Venice had.
I almost forgot to mention! We also did the Bienalle which is on in Venice right now and it was terrific in spots, bizarre in more spots, and some bits were actually just boring, but it was mostly an amazing thing to do, even for two people who do not know very much about modern art.
***
We met one of K's friends in Verona, and went to the opera. That was amazing. We left it too late to buy tickets, but she is a woman who does not give up, so she went up to a bunch of security gates and asked how we could get in. I even told her to let it go because no one was budging, but she said, "Let me try one last one" and did, and that guard told her to wait till 10.30 pm where there would be an interval and some people would leave before the end. Operas being very long and it being late and all. So she went off at 10.30 (leaving me and K drinking cheap wine and eating those little risotto rice balls) and came back with three ticket and we got to watch Aida in an ancient Roman arena, and it was GORGEOUS, a moon rising and the stage all lit up with Egyptian props (the opera is about a princess kidnapped by the Egyptians and so on and is not SUPER exciting, but the setting was lovely, and the music was nice, and I was glad we did it and also glad we did it FOR FREE which was part of the fun.) (My friend Ashwati, who is an opera singer, is reading this right now and rolling her eyes at me. But I can't help if I'm a philistine, Ash!)
***
Always have a dish you travel with. What I mean is one sure fire recipe that you keep in your back pocket and trot out to thank your hosts for having you. This is what we did in the little Italian village that our friends met us at. It wasn't much of a treat (she refused to let us split the grocery bill!) but I did manage to get my hands on some kastoori methi (travel hack: went to an Indian restaurant and small talked to the guy and he gave me a generous bit in aluminium foil). I've made this butter chicken before (using this recipe) (note: I do not pre-marinate or use the green pepper which is the world's most useless vegetable) to good feedback and these were friends who I met when they were posted in Delhi, so they were missing Indian food. I was happy to see ZERO leftovers in the pan, and they liked it so much I Whatsapped her the recipe so she could make it for her dad, since we had a little kastoori methi left and everything. The next day she made spaghetti in tomato and aubergine sauce which was delicious (Italian cooking tip: freeze little jars of pureed carrot, garlic, onion and celery which is the base for every sauce they have. It's okay if you don't have celery, you can use just the other three also. Then you just whip out and pan fry right before the other ingredients.) What's your Thank You For Having Me dish?
I don't have links this week because I am still a-travel, but I am in Florence and here for the next two nights SO I'm sure I'll do some reading when I am not looking at beautiful art. Sadly could not get an online ticket to see the statues (David! When will we meet?) but I did get one for the Uffizi which has some sculptures as well. Follow me on Instagram for LIVE UPDATES, as it were, but yes, I'll write you again soon.
xx
m

Where am I? The Internet Personified! A mostly weekly collection of things I did/thought/read/saw that week.
Who are you? Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, writer of internet words (and other things) author of seven books (support me by buying a book!) and general city-potter-er.
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