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Bernini belongs to the birds

Pigeons amuse tourists in Roman piazzas by perching on the heads of famous Bernini statues.

Kelsea is on vacation.

Posted by Kelsea at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)

Recipe: Saltimbocca alla Romana

For a little bit of Italy right in your own kitchen, here's an easy recipe for Saltimbocca alla Romana:

Chicken (one split breast per person) or veal
Prosciutto crudo (raw ham, about an ounce per person, sliced thin)
Fresh sage
White flour
Butter
Toothpicks

Slice chicken across as thin as possible and cover each piece with a layer of flour. Divide ham to equal the amount of chicken pieces and wrap each piece with ham. Place a leaf of sage on top and hold together with a toothpick.

Heat skillet on stove and melt butter (to keep from sticking). Cook each toothpicked package until light brown and continue adding butter to keep from sticking.

Serve with vegetables of your choice and Italian red wine.

Posted by Kelsea at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)

Italian holiday sweets

While Americans lick candy canes and gobble down mom's homemade sugar cookies, Italians have a bit of a different idea as far as holiday sweets go.

Panettone is a traditional cake found at any supermarket during this season.

Ready-made and boxed, it's basically a sweet loaf of bread with dried pieces of fruit. Panettone can also be found plain or with chocolate chips.

My favorite treat, however, is torrone. (I wish my supermarket carried it all year round)! It is an oversized candy bar: Pure chocolate with hazelnuts. The best part is that it's so thick you have to cut it with a steak knife.

Posted by Kelsea at 3:44 PM | Comments (1)

Season's glimpses

Taking an evening walk in my neighborhood with the camera...

Christmas shoppers crowd the streets under the lights on Via dei Giubbonari, off Piazza Campo de' Fiori.

A plastic Christmas tree clashes nicely with a Mediterranean palm outside a restaurant.

A bakery entices customers with holiday cookies displayed in the window.

Posted by Kelsea at 1:04 AM | Comments (0)

Christmas in Piazza Navona

Every year around Christmas time, the famous Roman Piazza Navona transforms into a playground for shoppers and sweet-seekers.

Lining the square are bancarelle (outdoor stands) that sell figurines for nativity scenes and other crafts, ciambelle (doughnuts) and candy.

Children tug on their parents' hands, begging to play the prize-winning fair-like games or take a ride on the old-fashioned merry-go-round.

It is a Roman tradition for families to gather in Navona on the 6th of January to meet Befana, the old woman (not a witch, as I was emphatically corrected by an Italian) who brings candy to the good children and coal to the bad. Befana originally left the sweets in stockings hung by the fireplace, but the children prefer to go to the piazza to meet her in person.

Posted by Kelsea at 3:49 PM | Comments (3)

At the immigration office, a bit of a shock

I had applied to renew my permesso di soggiorno (permit to stay -- i.e., visa) at the immigration office in June. Without this document I am considered an illegal alien. They told me to return the following month to pick up my renewed copy. Here it is December and I'm still going back every 3 or 4 weeks with no luck.

Seeing as how I will be returning to the U.S. for the holidays and need my permesso to re-enter Italy, I decided to sit down with the immigration officer and politely demand my long-awaited papers. The office is open from 9 a.m. to noon during the week, so I left for school early Tuesday morning to stop by.

At 9:30 I arrived at the entrance. I asked the guard to see the immigration officer.

"Not here," the guard replied, rocking his chair on two legs, his feet propped up on the desk. "He went out for a coffee."

"Will he be back soon?" I inquired.

"I don't know. Try back in a half hour."

I was appalled. This guy works for three hours a day and he takes a half-hour coffee break?

I waited, keeping my temper while trying not to notice how late I was going to be for class. When the immigration officer finally arrived, I entered his office and genially explained that I had been waiting for six months for my permesso and had to get it before my departure.

"Ahh, don't worry!" the officer laughed, carelessly waving his hand in the air. "You're American. You won't have any problem getting in or out of the country. If you were Albanian or Sri Lankan -- that's another story. But with an American passport you can do what you want. Just tell them at customs that you're on vacation or something."

I sat there with my jaw dropped, shocked at his political incorrectness and uncensored honesty. There I was sitting across the desk from the very government official who controls this stuff, and he was telling me that I could basically break all the rules.

"I will however, fill out this 'urgent request' form to speed up the process of getting you your permesso," he told me.

He printed a form and began to fill it out. "Let's see, 'Reason for urgent request?' I'll write that you have a death in the family. Yeah, that will make them hurry up."

He finished filling out the form, looked up at me and winked.

"Just come by whenever."

Posted by Kelsea at 12:00 PM | Comments (5)

Today is a holiday in Italy, a day to shop and put up the Christmas tree

Christmas tree in the Salsiccia-Bellizzi household, Rome.

December 8th -- It's the day of the Immaculate Conception in Italy!

Well, not only in Italy, but this once-religious holiday is now used by the Italians as a day for shopping. Everyone gets the day off work except retail workers, who beef up their staffs for the holiday crowds.

Today is also the traditional day to put up the Christmas tree and Nativity scene.

For us, American students abroad, it's an extra day to study for final exams.

Posted by Kelsea at 12:21 PM | Comments (0)

If you need a doctor in Rome...

I got sick over the weekend. It started with that scratch on the back of the throat but by the end of the day I couldn't swallow or even shake my head without pain. I spoke with my mother on the phone and she freaked out, saying that it was meningitis, a deadly disease that can affect stressed-out college students. This caused me to start worrying so I took action to get myself to a doctor.

A cool thing about Italy is that healthcare is free.

Each residential zone has a doctor assigned to it. If you go to the emergency room, you pay nothing. I had taken advantage of this twice in the past -- walking myself to the emergency entrance and requesting help. Yes, it was free, but I had to wait two hours before seeing even a nurse. The first time I went to the Italian E.R. (a year ago), they told me that I had an appendix infection.

"But I have pain in my kidneys," I replied in broken Italian.

The three doctors shook their heads and assured me it was my appendix. They told me that I would have to return every day for five days (and wait 2 hours, no less) to get a shot of antibiotics.

"Non è possibile," I said. "I go home for Christmas in three days."

They told me that was fine, and that I didn't need the shots.

...For appendicitis???

I later found out from my American doctor that I had a kidney infection. So this time around, I wasn't going to fool around with the Italian hospital. I headed out to the American Hospital!

In truth, the American Hospital is also Italian, but it employs doctors who have studied in the US and speak English. This hospital was also where Kurt Cobain of the band Nirvana, who were playing a concert in Rome some years back, recovered after a drug overdose. I figured that if it was good enough for a rock star, it was good enough for me.

The alleged meningitis ended up being a bad case of strep throat. My doctor was less interested in writing me a prescription than in the fact that I was from New England. She had studied in Boston for 5 years.

For those traveling to Rome, keep this in your pocket:

Rome American Hospital, via Emilio Longoni, 69 - 00155 Roma. The Hospital does NOT have an emergency room, but walk right in and request to see an English-speaking doctor. Foreigners will be asked to pay a small fee.

Posted by Kelsea at 11:57 AM | Comments (2)