Things I'm missing in Italy...

After a while of living abroad you will probably realize that there are things from your home country that you're missing in your new life. It might be stupid, but there are a few things from Norway that I really miss. Apart from family and friends, that is....

1. Long summernights when the sun "never" sets. This depends on where in Norway you are living. If you're as far north as the North Cape you have the Midnight Sun, i.e in the summer you have daylight 24/7.  In Bergen where I was living the sun sets around 2300-2330 and it gets dark around 0200AM. And then sunrise is around 0400 AM. Which means that you have only 2 hours of "dark" night. For some people this might sound like a nightmare because they don't understand how we manage to sleep when it's plain daylight outside. However, the Norwegians are used to this, and this is something I really miss. So, one year I have to go back to Norway for my summer holiday....

2. Usually when you are finished eating dinner (supper, tea) in Norway we thank whoever has prepared the food (which means that before you leave the table you say "takk for maten" to your mum, your dad or the hostess if you've been invited to dinner at a friends house. "Takk for maten" literally translates as "thank you for the food" or "grazie per il cibo" which might sound a bit strange in English/Italian - and maybe also other languages.). It might sound strange, but I feel really rude, impolite, ill-mannered when I can't express exactly what I want. I usually say "grazie", but it still doesn't feel "right".

3. Since I'm already talking of food, I can admit that I'm missing the Norwegian "brunost" (brown cheese). I guess that brunost is to Norwegians what Vegemite are to Australians.... My Norwegian family is always bringing me brunost when they come to visit, but unfortunately I finish it off too fast... A funny story (that wasn't quite as funny when it happened) is the time when they stopped me in the security check at the airport and they went through my cabin bag and almost cut it open with a knife to see what was inside.... My bag was full of brunost and it so happens that on the computer screen this cheese looked a bit like the stuff they use for making bombs...(!) You know, the "play dough" they use in films to connect the bomb.... So, what have I learnt from this? To put the brunost in the suitcase I'm going to check in....

4. Oat flakes. That is, you can buy oat flakes here (and it will cost you an arm and a leg....), but it's not the oat flakes you can use for making porridge. Here they mix it in soups (minestrone) and no matter how long you boil the stuff, it won't turn into porridge.


5. Tooth picks (!?) Of course you find toothpicks here, but they have the size of a telephone pole and is unsuitable for cleaning your teeth. They use it mostly for "stuzzichini", that is finger food....


6. Tea leaves. This is incredible I think. I've looked everywhere and I can't find ONE place that sells  loose tea leaves.( One second thought, maybe not so incredible after all, since "no one" drinks tea in this country...)


7. Brown bread/bread with cereal, nuts, seeds etc. This is something that is dearly missed. I know you can find brown bread some places here in Italy (mostly up north in the country, but also in Toscana...), but where I live there isn't ONE single place that sells brown bread. Because of this I'm making my own bread at home, but the downside of that is that the brown flour will also cost you an arm and a leg. You have to pay around 2 euros for 1 kilo of brown flour! Oh well. The good news is that LIDL has opened a supermarket not far from here and they sell self raising (brown) flour so maybe this is my "salvation"...?


8. To be able to say something funny without even thinking.. It might sound weird, but it isn't easy being funny in another language. Many times I think of something funny to say (in Norwegian), but then it isn't possible translating into Italian (it might be because of cultural differences or it might be that it just isn't funny anymore when it is translated) and other times it happens that when I've translated the phrase into Italian the moment has passed....

9. The rain from my place back in Norway. (Bergen, where it rains more than any other place in Norway....) So, every now and then I miss the "clean" feeling after a heavy shower of rain, or I miss the sound of the rain. (Nothing is like going to sleep at night when the rain is pouring down outside...) The last couple of times when it has rained here I've put on my wellies (rubber boots, stivali di gomma), my raincoat and brought the umbrella and then I've gone for a loooong walk.


10. This is really a silly one. I miss the special "broom" with a unit for "clipping on" the cleaning rag. (Which means the cleaning rag never falls off by accident when you're cleaning the floors!) In addition to being a smart device it's also long enough for me to use. Here in Italy all the brooms are just to short so I end up with backpain after cleaning... (Yes, I know. I'm complaining! I just needed to get it off my chest....)

I guess that was all for now. I just want to add - because there seems to be people that are misunderstanding what I'm writing on this blog - that I'm not writing this because I feel superior to others or that I hate Italy or the Italians. I wouldn't be living here at all if that was the case. So maybe my next blog post should talk about what I like about living here? Will do!!

And oh... Sorry for not putting in any pictures in this post. At the moment I don't have access to my own computer with all my pictures. Will add pictures later. Have a nice week end everyone!

How I ended up in Italy - part 2

Image: digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Here's the last part of the story about how I ended up in Italy.

During my year in Florence it sometimes felt like I had an invisible hourglass in front of me, that counted down months, days, minutes and seconds until the dreaded day when I would have to turn my back to the Duomo and hop on the train to the airport to fly back home to Norway.

Fortunately this day never came.... And why not? Well, mostly because a pair of velvety brown eyes came into my life when I least expected it.... And from then on, things happend very quickly. Before my year in Florence ended the decision was made. I was just going back to Norway to sell my apartment and get rid of all my "earthly goods" and then return to Italy for good.

Back in Norway I started the process of getting rid of most of the things that I'd spent 25 years collecting. Some things I sold, others I gave away - my children took what they wanted or needed - and the rest I have to admit that I threw away. And 5 weeks later when I had sold my apartment I found myself on the plane back to Italy to start my new life in a small town midway between Rome and Naples. I brought with me 400 kilos of my "old life" (which really isn't very much, I can assure you) and half of it was photo albums, books, dvd's and cd's. 

So, now I'm living here in Italy, trying to "fit in". But believe me, even if Oslo and Rome are just 3 hours apart, the distance between Italians and Norwegians are bigger than "3 hours". It takes time to adjust to another culture and there's actually a big difference if you marry into an Italian family or if you take with you your Norwegian family and move to Italy. When you are part of an Italian family you automatically get to live life the Italian way, but if you live here with your Norwegian family you can live the way you're used to from Norway and just pick what you want from the Italians....

The work situation in Italy is not good. It's difficult to get a job and if you get one you might discover that they pay you 600 euros a month, not even enough to pay the mortgage for a house or an apartment... At the moment I'm not working; however, my husband is running a pub and I help out whenever it's needed.

One year ago we got ourselves a dog; which I have discovered, is similar to having a baby.... You can't do anything without taking the dog with you.... Which meant that I spent a lot of time at home. And so I ended up in the world of bloggers...

This is Bella, 2 months old

What I can tell you about living in Italy as a foreigner is that it's not difficult at all getting used to go to the restaurants, eating wonderful food and drinking superb wine, watching the sun set and listening to the chef in the kitchen who's singing "o sole mio".  But this is not everyday life here. If you're living here you don't go to the beach every day, eating water melon or 

gelato (ice cream) while you're reading books and working on your tan. What you do is living a perfectly normal life, like I would do in Norway... the only difference is that there's an Italian "twist" to everything - which sometimes get on your nerves....

I have to say that I've learned something that I wouldn't have learned had I stayed in Norway - like there's so much in the world you can't change, you just have to live with it; that the bureaucracy in this country is "unbelieveable"; many things go wrong or don't go your way; "nothing" is done in time and if you have an appointment with someone at 2 o'clock they show up at 3 o'clock. (I'm a person that always show up when I'm supposed to so this is really hard for me to except, but slowly slowly I'm learning and accepting that this is how it is... )

However, something that makes both Foreigners and Italians stay in this contry is perhaps that

a plate of pasta

and a bottle of red wine

 is very comforting when life takes the wrong turn!

VIVA L'ITALIA!

How I ended up in Italy - part 1

One of my readers on the Norwegian blog asked me if I could tell something about myself; how I ended up in Italy, what I'm doing here and so on. I've already answered my Norwegian readers, but maybe there's someone out there who doesn't understand Norwegian that would like to hear my story (or at least I hope so...)

I'm born in the middle of the 1960s so at the moment I'm halfway to 90... At the beginning of the new millennium I was living a completely normal life in Norway, working at an airport and raising three children as a single parent.

However, in 2006 I started my studies in Italian language and litterature. A bit weird studying Italian when at that time I was a real Hellenophile, always travelling to Greece, loving everything Greek. But if I wanted to study Greek I had to go abroad - which at that time wasn't an option for me because I couldn't leave my children - so I decided on the Italian studies instead.

Since I hadn't been too interested in anything Italian before I didn't know very much about the country when I started at the University.  You can take a look at the pictures below to see exactly how much (or how little) I knew.......

Pizza

Pasta

Berlusconi

Picture is taken from Wikipedia

Alberto Tomba

Picture borrowed from here

Pavarotti

Picture is taken from this site

Not much, huh?

In 2008 I went to Florence as an exchange student - a rather mature exchange student that was.... I had my little studio right beside the "Duomo", the beautiful Cathedral in Florence. The studio was really very, very small, but it didn't matter to me. I was in Italy, in Florence, living so close to the Duomo that I could almost just reach out and touch it from my window!

I spent my time mostly at University studying among other things the Italian dialects. But of course I found time to drink cappuccino with friends....

...or I took the train to other cities to explore the place just for the day.....

...or you could find me sitting close to 

Ponte Vecchio 

just taking in the atmosphere, eating gelato (ice cream) and looking at all the tourists and hoping that the year would never end so that I wouldn't have to pack my suitcases and head home to Norway again.....

(to be continued)
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Uno dei lettori del mio blog norvegese mi ha chiesto di raccontare un pò su di me. Perché sto qui in Italia, che cosa faccio di bello ecc.

Sono nata negli anni -60. All'inizio del nuovo millenio facevo una vita più che normale in Norvegia, ero divorziata con 3 figli e lavoravo all'aeroporto.

Nel 2006 ho cominciato a studiare all'università - lingua e letteratura italiana. Un pò strana forse, perché amavo tanto la Grecia.... Comunque, per studiare la lingua greca dovevo andare all'estero, che al momento non potevo fare. E così, anche se sapevo poco o nulla d'Italia, ho deciso di fare il corso della lingua italiana.

Puoi vedere le prime 5 foto per sapere quanto poco sapevo d'Italia... Non tanto, eh?

Nel 2008 sono andata in Italia, a Firenze per stare un anno come studentessa di scambio. Avevo preso in affitto uno studio vicino al duomo, così vicino che potevo quasi toccarlo dalla mia finestra. Lo studio era piccolissimo, ma io ero felicissima perché stavo in Italia.

E che cosa facevo a Firenze? Quando non stavo studiando i dialetti italiani, facevo dei piccoli viaggi col treno per vedere altri posti, andavo nei bar con le mie amiche per prendere un cappuccino (ancora non bevevo il caffè...) o stavo seduta sul muro vicino a Ponte Vecchio sognando che non dovevo fare le valigie e tornare in Norvegia dopo gli esami....  

(Per essere continuato...)