Valtellina

Tirano

To re-orient you: I last wrote, chronologically speaking, of the train ride from Milan to Tirano - remember I was winded with jealousy seeing those kids on the platform? The rest of the train ride was uneventful - just our suitcases rolling around the carriage and a cute little girl who, as I indicated to her through the reflection in the train glass, had the same glasses as me.

When we slid into the Tirano platform, it looked as it fleetingly had when I was 13, but dark-lit. That soon dissipated as we walked further into the city. For some reason (probably the espresso I’d had before the train), I was in a swelling, adventurous, excited mood, not minding the cold; we dragged our suitcases across the cobbled streets and Emily pointed out her favourite spots from when she had come with her family two years ago. In the dark of night, the big wooden doors and narrow streets and stone walls looked extra medieval. We finally reached our hotel, and we burst into the warm, and the receptionist was there expecting us: “buonasera ragazze! Siete Panizza?”. We slid into our personality-roles immediately, with Emily sorting out all the documents and having the booking under her name, while I was the messy, ditzy one, who had to open her suitcase in the middle of the lobby to fish around for the passport I presented triumphantly. I was also asked if my midriff was not cold, which you’ll notice is a common query I receive throughout the next week.

We settled down in our quaint little room, and then went to Trattoria di Valtellinese for dinner, where two deadpan girls with low ponytails and vests were behind the counter - it was almost something you’d see in a movie, but I’m not educated enough to say which director. There were only two other tables there, both of whom we’d seen in the lobby of the hotel. We were right near the sliding doors that led to the kitchen, so I’d peek in whenever a waitress went in or out  - it was very different to the kitchen of the restaurant I work at. Not that i was expecting it to be exactly the same, given that mine is very busy and quite fancy, but there were only two chefs, both of whom were wearing beanies, in a biiig workspace. Also interesting was that, despite it being a trattoria in the middle of a country town while my restaurant is a ristorante in capital city of Australia, they had a more modern ordering system than us - the waitresses used little electronic pads where you just clicked the item and it was went directly to the kitchen. We still have to cut up A4 paper into little dockets, write on that, and then copy it out onto carbon ordering pads and give one to the kitchen, keep one for setting, and hand one in for billing.

We went to sleep pretty early that night. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this yet, but, being as I am extremely introverted, I was finding the constant activity and constant company very emotionally draining. And so I learned to make the most of sleeping time - I’d stay up a little longer lying in bed in the dark while Emily slept, thinking to myself or listening to music, and, unconciously, I would wake up a little earlier and do the same thing. It wasn’t exactly like being alone, but it had to do. I came to cherish that time.

I woke up the next morning starving - Italy was really pushing my ED and my metabolism was catching up to it. We went to the cute little breakfast room where there was a little dog sitting outside the window peering in, probably taking advantage of the warmth. Part of my breakfast included a big-ass Valtellina apple, which are grown in Cologna, and picked by my very own family.

We spent the first morning just wandering around the town, looking in shops - beautiful shoes were everywhere. We went into a bookshop and I found authors I would NOT have expected in a countryside shop - Jamaica Kincaid for one! In Italian, of course. I bought an Italian translation of my favourite book in the world, Lolita. Its language is beautiful, and I want to see if and how that’s translated. Oh, the iconic first lines - “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.” - in a language more aurally beautiful than English: “Lolita, luce della mia vita, fuoco dei miei lombi. Mio peccato, anima mia. Lo-li-ta: la punta della lingua compie un percorso di tre passi sul palato per battere, al terzo, contro i denti. Lo. Li. Ta. Era Lo, semplicemente Lo al mattino, ritta nel suo metro e quarantasette con un calzino solo. Era Lola in pantaloni. Era Dolly a scuola. Era Dolores sulla linea tratteggiata dei documenti. Ma tra le mie braccia era sempre Lolita.”

We also went to the Panizza jewellery store, because of course. 

I was also VERY curious about something - the entire time we’d been in Italy so far, I’d not seen a single supermarket. This greatly concerned me: where were they all? Did they not exist? Sure, Italy has lots of gourmet pasterias and pasticcherias and all that, but what if you needed laundry detergent? We finally went in one, and investigated. It was much like an Australian supermarket, just mostly with Italian-y stuff. I was satisfied. I also noted thart San Pellegrino drinks were sold in 1.5L bottles, which was very amusing to me, because in Australia you can only get them in those dinky little 200ml glass bottles.

Emily had arranged for a taxi (well, when I say that, I mean THE taxi of Tirano - driven by a man called Mario. No, I lie - and sometimes there’s another taxi, driven by his son. But anyway, Emily had arranged for us to be picked up and taken to Roncaiola, another village up on a mountain (Tirano’s in a valley) for lunch. There’s a special restaurant there. It felt very strange taking a taxi to an entirely different village, but I suppose, in reality, the distance was no different to going from one suburb in Sydney to another. Apparently, when my dad was there a few years ago, he WALKED up. Which is so something my dad would do. I’m glad we did not walk up.

Roncaiola

Osteria di Roncaiola was beautiful. See, it can be called “the osteria of Roncaiola” because it’s literally the only restaurant there. Nevertheless, as I said, beautiful. I was somewhat distracted the entire time by the man at the table behind Emily but facing me. He reminded me of my boss’s brother, who runs the brother restaurant to the one I work at. He’s very scary, no nonsense, quite impolite, and always doing something that seems very important on his phone. So was this man. I watched as he was served his pizzoccheri, which confused me because the menu said it had to be for two people max. So either he gets the kind of special treatment such a character begets, or he could eat a lot. Either way, I was kind of slightly in awe.

Emily had red wine risotto with bresaola (I think it’s unique to the Valtellina region, so I’ll just describe it as like a beef prosciutto that’s a bit darker and thicker and chewier.) I had buckwheat gnocchi (everything in Valtellina is made from buckwheat. Any carb you usually see as white/yellow coloured, re-imagine as black here. This includes bread.) in a liquidy cheese sauce. I was kind of obnoxiously dancing in my seat in that white girl food dance way, but make it rap.

We finished (and fake Pasquale had finished is pannacotta) with a little extra time before we were to be picked up by the taxi again. I was reluctant to leave the restaurant, which was pretty and warm and safe, but we did, and went to explore a little bit. This included looking at its church, as well as the bustling central square of Roncaiola:

Here I am in the Big Apple!

And as we waited in the sun for Mario, Emily arranged that we would go straight to Cologna to see the family. I was terrified - extremely socially anxious. I could hear Nicolina, the matriarch/grandmother, on the phone to Emily from a metre away, but I tried to relax and enjoy the sun. 

Eventually, Mario returned. Well actually, I lie - on the way there, Mario’s son had picked us up. Now we had the Real Mario.

Cologna

We dropped us off at the church. Emily said their house was near the church. She wasn’t kidding. It was right next to it. And we walked up, and we saw three names on the buzzer - Scala, Gri, Panizza. All our family. We rang the doorbell and, from behind us, we heard a “ciao!” We turned, and a boy in a beige turtleneck sweater, lightwash jeans, and airforce ones was peering over the balcony. “Ciao!” we sang back, arms full of Australiana.

Nicolina Panizza opened the door, a frail, tiny old woman whose voice tremors but who is still full of life. She gripped our arms and kissed us and wouldn’t let us take off our boots. We went upstairs to the first apartment, where her and her husband, Aldo Scala, live. There again was the boy - Luciano, who Nicole had shaken her head over when we were in Pavia. He’s 18, and would get along excellently with my seventeen-year-old brother Hugo - apparently he comes home at 4am drunk every night, and recently suffered a head injury because he threw a beer bottle at a road sign and it rebounded and hit him on the head. He didn’t look as I had expected though - like most Italian kids, he looked very well put together, effortlessly blending streetwear and modern fashion with a clean classic style. 

He told us that he had been asleep on the couch (he is Nicolina’s grandson, son of her son Mario) and when he heard the doorbell, in his half-asleep state thought we were Jehovah’s Witnesses. They reach even the mountains of Italy! It took a lot of back and forth and World Reference to translate “Jehovah’s Witness”, by the way. It because a funny little motif - we’d struggle for a bit occasionally, and then reach for our phone and go “World Reference.” Then Monica, Nicolina’s daughter and Luciano’s aunty, appeared, and she was lovely too. Apparently, once upon a time, her English had been very good, but it had receded to basic vocabulary. I’m not criticising - I wish I could speak Italian properly. But we all sat at the table with coffee made on the moka, and, to my delight, I realised I could drink it. I’m really getting there! Emily distributed the gifts - ugg boots, RM Williams hats and belts, and some T-shirts. You can imagine. It was so cute - they put them under the Christmas tree even though they were all just as is and already given. We talked, stiltedly. This was what I was most afraid of - awkward non-conversation and silences. Silences did occur every now and then, but they always ended pretty quickly. We learnt that Luciano and Monica had both just come back from (different) school(s) - Monica’s a middle school teacher. Class ends at 1 there, just like in Singapore! Some days they have afternoon sessions. And they have school on Saturday!

An hour and a half or so later, Luciano asked if we wanted to go looking around with him in his car. We said yes, of course. He was very proud of his car - it was navy, really quite nice. I don’t know anything about cars, as you can probably tell. He tossed his neon yellow Supreme x North Face beanie on the dash. Oskar would have been very jealous. I liked it and told him as much, acknowledging that I knew about streetwear too: I felt like that would be a good avenue of connection and youth-respect. He showed us his instagram story of his friend decked out in fluoro yellow, including his hat, and we added each other on instagram. What a unique pride - you and someone you admire verbally adding each other!

Grozio 

Luciano’s driving is a combination of teen driving and Italian driving, which should be a hint. Carefree, but there’s skill there. I don’t have that kind of skill - another aspect of life in which I am a fraud. Anyway. This isn’t self-hatred hour. He took us to castle ruins near another village called Grozio, which he said was a very weird place: very insular, and as such, weirdly secretive and homogenous in terms of appearance and, interestingly, haircuts. They also have a very unique dialect. (oh yeah, every tiny village has a slightly different dialect, which seems very inconvenient to me haha). Anyway, the Castello was actually due Castelli - one 15th century ruin, and one 10th century ruin. It was beautiful and only a little cold. We hiked up in the fading light, Luciano with much more ease which was a little embarrassing. We wandered through and climbed up some parts and read opposite sides of an information board - one side was English, one side Italian. We talked about the usual things you talk to other kids from other countries about - how the school system works, what you do with your friends, where the clubs are, etc. I was beginning to feel comfortable around this relative of ours, which is nice. Oh, Luciano has this funny habit of saying something in English, and then talking at us in very fast Italian which I wish I could have understood. In terms of language, by the way, I’d say we met each other halfway. That’s probably personal bias, though - I’m sure they were speaking a lot more English than we realise. 

We stood at the top of the 10th century ruins and we at the stretch of electrical dams (?) that power 80% of Milan, and our cousin pointed out a little pond through the trees of the mountains that him and his friends swim in in the summer, and where our other cousin, Luigi, (Nicole’s sister, Monica’s son) fishes for trout. We walked back as the sky threatened to pitch back. On the last stretch of road back to his car, another car pulled up and some boys climbed out. “That’s my friends,” Luciano said, and Emily and I looked at each other, terrified. Already we were meeting the youths of Valtellina, who were probably way cooler than us. And they were, of course, but quite friendly, we stood together in a circle as they smoked and we communicated a little bit, mostly through Luciano. They, like him, were fashionable - I saw one of them was wearing a sky blue Napapijri coat! I think - I think - my outfit stood up against them. At least I hope. By the way, I had begun to crack the code of how to look like a typical Italian girl - hair long and out, middle parted, that’s it, with hoops. I had begun to blend in.

Soon after Luciano dropped us back in Cologna (interestingly, being in Italy has meant I’m now confused as to when to use “at” and “in” in English, because I had heard its slightly different Italian use continuously for a while), and he went home to Tirano - he comes to Cologna after school to visit his grandmother.

Cologna II 

Before he left, Luciano took us into the cellar where his uncle Pierro (Nicolina’s unmarried son) was, and helped him hang up some sausages he had just made. He had jars and jars of homemade jam, homemade grappa with various fruit from the mountains in them, bottles and bottles of local wine, and a huge wine barrel. 

He gave Luciano a couple of bottles to bring up, and as we walked up the stairs, Luciano smirked: “Pierro buys something every day. A drink, bresaola, prosciutto, sausage.”

This time we were brought to the second floor/apartment, where Monica and her husband Renzo live; we were having dinner at theirs. We met Luigi and Renzo - both extremely outgoing and friendly. Actually, that was the entire extended family. All so welcoming and friendly. Emily’s dad, my uncle Frank, had gone to live with them for three months in the summer when he was in his twenties, and then of course seen them again two years ago, and they LOVE Frank. “Figlia di Frank! E figlia di fratello di Frank!” Hahaha. I didn’t mind - it took some pressure off of me. Luigi was  very affable - he’s 23, so a bit older than me, and Emily’s age. He’s almost a comic book character - everyday he wears black pants with a black belt with a big oval silver buckle and a black T-shirt, with gelled black hair combed backwards, and if he’s going out somewhere, he puts a checkered shirt on over the top. 

Renzo is a character too - he had a big grey handlebar mustache and is extremely animated. Luigi has this almost german accent when he speaks English (very little, like Renzo and Monica); he goes “ah! Yies!” a lot. Renzo is a bus driver, driving the bus from village to village in the Valtellina region. I’m not quite sure what Luigi does, but I think he does a lot of agricultural work for the village and also sources a lot of the family’s food - he goes for three hour walks in the mountain, picking porcini where he can find it, fishing in summer, hunting rabbits etc. He told us lots of funny stories, like the time he got knocked over by a wild boar, the time he encountered the single bear of the Valtellina mountains. Luigi and Renzo do all the cooking, because Monica doesn’t like cooking, but LOVES cleaning. Apparently she wakes up early just to clean and does multiple loads of laundry a day and goes around the house cleaning with Muffi, the cat, on her shoulder. Speaking of Muffi, she was SO cute and also loved me:

We had ravioli for dinner (Monica declared that there was only one shop in Tirano with acceptable ravioli and Emily and I looked at each other like, well fuck, they all looked pretty good to us! Guess our taste is less refined.) We drank 30% wine from Barufini, the village facing Cologna on the other mountain across the valley, where there’s lots of sun, and so where they grow grapes. Emily told them about how, when our dads were messy or dirty when they were kids, their grandmother would scold them by saying that they looked like “Barufing” - that’s people from Barufini, in dialect. There’s a rivalry between the two villages, so they loved that. When we were in Pavia, Nicolina also told us of this legend that a long time ago, because Barufini had very few women, some of them came to Cologna and said, “if you give us some of your women, we’ll give you some of our sunlight”. They didn’t of course. Mirrors?

We were also fed cute little baked things after dinner. There was a point where I just very tangibly snapped - my social capacity had been absolutely maxed out. I became very anxious and sad and wanted to go back to the hotel. I didn’t show or express this, of course, but I think I became very quiet. At some point, I yawned without realising it, and Renzo lept up: “hai sono! Allora, I bring you back, dormire!” I was glad. 

Tirano II

I collapsed that night and we woke up later the next day. We had a more relaxed day ahead of us: we were to go the the thermal baths in Bormio. I was immensely looking forward to it, because it was nice, relatively un-socially taxing, and relaxing (I knew from the onsen in Japan. I was glad we had to wear swimmers in Italy, though). We went to the bus station, and when we asked in our unconfident Italian for two tickets to Bormio, the man behind the glass looked at us for a moment and went, “ah! Cuggina di Renzo! No ticket, no costa”. We were amazed. Renzo has a LOT of friends, so we should have known. We had seen his contact list on his phone the night before, and there must have been a thousand numbers in there. Anyway we were giddy with the coolness of the situation, thanked him, and walked to the buses, where a man promptly asked us for our tickets. We looked back at the ticket office, unable to articulate the situation to him in Italian. But HE must have known too, because after like 2 seconds he went “ah, ok” and waved us on. Fuck we felt VIP.

The bus ride was quite nice. My phone died at about 10am from messaging so I finished Fahrenheit 451. 

Bormio

Once we got there (it took about 45 minutes) Emily called the number of a taxi driver Renzo had given us, and he drove us into the mountains to Bagni Vecchi - the oldest baths, which Leonardo da Vinci had used. in fact, I remember I had read something where he had written about the baths last year: “In Valtellina, c'è Burmi. A Burmi, sono i bagni”. Again, Renzo and his connections hooked it up for us - the fare was only 10 euro instead of 40. The baths were was really, really beautiful. There were Panoramic baths, Roman baths, Medieval baths, I forget what else baths, and a lot of them were deep down, cut into the stone. But I think this is the sort of thing where pictures will have to suffice. I will say, though, that my favourite was the infrared sauna - even though, condescendingly, it had red-coloured lights in it.

We left at about 1, starving, Renzo’s friend brought us back down and then we went around looking for somewhere to have lunch, but NOTHING was open. It was really weird and we were getting hella hungry, but we eventually found a bar (remember - coffee bar) to have panini at. There was this strange… Russian? family next to us, and the booming mother ordered tomato juice for everyone. And when their food came, she turned to us, pointed to our salt shaker, and said “SALT.” So we gave her our salt. I’m not describing it well but it was strange.

We walked back to the bus station, but we had time to kill so we spent it in the warm station bar. There was a massive TV playing MTV in the corner, and Billie Eilish’s music video for “when the party’s over” came on, so i very autistically made her go watch the part where she cries black tears. I don’t think she liked it as I do - oops. There were lots of school kids there, who had just finished school and were taking the bus back to their villages. Even at the age of 21, I am intimidated by high school kids. Will I ever not be?

Tirano III

We got back to the hotel and showered and had a little rest before going to get dinner. I broke out my sparkly tights, still warm inside from the baths. And as we left the hotel lobby, we gasped, because it was gently snowing. It was beautiful. The restuarant wasn’t very far away, so we didn’t get too wet, and our table looked out onto the restaurant’s courtyard, which gradually filled with snow as Christmas music played in the background. I had pizzoccheri for the first time and loved it. We got home and crashed after that.

The next morning we walked around exploring a little bit more, and when we walked back to the hotel at about 11, I looked up to see Renzo standing next to his car! He hugged us and took us to Cologna for lunch.

Cologna III

We walked in to a warm, lively house, Nicolina’s kitchen full of people. Aldo was sitting at the table, as was Pierro and Renzo, and Luigi was preparing the pizzocheri (yes, pizzocheri again!) with Nicolina. We were ushered to sit and Luigi put a HUGE pile of it in front of me. It was way better than the restaurant’s - and waaay more cheesy. The amount of butter and cheese was really scaring me (even Luigi shook his head when he was telling us what goes into it: “butter… a LOT”), but I sucked it up and enjoyed it and finished it all. And we had wine, and coffee and panettone. Oh yeah, I forgot to say, Monica and Pierro like to add wine to their coffee…

At about 3, after sitting around the table talking for a while and eating panettone, 

Pierro and Emily and I got the car, and embarked towards Livigno, a tax-free haven where lots of people also go to ski (not us). The family liked to make fun of people in Livigno, being as they are so isolated. To put it succinctly, Luigi pronounced, “they fuck their relatives”. I’m not too certain about the veracity of that statement, but it paints an accurate picture.

We stopped in Tirano on the way to pick up a mysterious girl called Francesca. She was beautiful and elegant, with long black hair so straight and thick it looked like a weave, a long face and dark skin, all black, and a cigarette she was halfway through smoking, which she put out and put back in her cigarette case. Renzo banged the ceiling of his car, “oh, three beautiful women in the car!” We giggled. I whispered to Emily, “is she our cousin too?” Emily did not know. France was very nice and made it easy for us to talk to her familiarly, just as everyone else we’d met here had. We learnt that she was 28, and back home for Christmas between semesters at acting school in LA. I’m not making this up.

Livigno

Truth be told I fell asleep for a lot of the car ride. That, plus my yawning from a couple nights before, meant I had earnt the title of the sleepy Wiggle. Every time I yawned or leaned my head against the window Renzo would gleefully look at me through his rear-view mirror and say “Dormire Ale?!” I’d alway say “no, non dormo, non ho sono” and then I’d promptly fall asleep. It was useful in this case, because we got to Livigno in like 20 minutes according to me. We went into the cafe di sciare first (Livigno is, of course, a skiing town) and Renzo, as usual, knew everyone there. I was grateful for the warm comma so I could mentally prepare for the cold and the awkward gaping of time.

That’s something I wanna talk about quickly. I’m very wary of great gapes in time. I’m in Japan now (I swear I’m not usually jumping from country to country lol my life is very boring) and we snowboarded for the first time. (We went skiing, once, when I was 13 so let’s just call it the first time doing snow sports ever). It was fun and whatever, but I was so dreading, just because I know that people spend the whole day on the hills, and that blank mass of time scares me. I don’t know how to explain it - my mind just gets really bored and anxious when it’s not thinking about anything. With running, it’s ok, because I listen to music and think of things, but in situations like this I’m not good enough to zone out and think about other things. Same with this situation, but mix it in with social anxiety - the gape of having to talk with nothing planned. 

Anyway, I’m stop complaining. I was concerned about the social mechanism of how we were going to decide to go into what shops, and how to get past the awkwardness of buying something, and when to stop? What if there weren’t enough shops to fill up the time? Imagine how much brainpower I’d have if I didn’t waste mental energy worrying about shit like this. (My main motivation for ED recovery, actually!)

I’ll cut to the fucking chase. We walked around, Francesca broke off (understandably - she had shit to DO and BUY) from our group. The time went pretty quickly, thankfully. I bought some chocolate covered fruits and nuts (I dislike chocolate covered nuts but I’d sort that later) to snack on and some grappa from Livigno. I really don’t know where the time went, actually, but it did. We met up with Francesca again, but she was Intimissimi and Renzo kept charading that he was drooling at the lingerie displays which was VERY uncomfortable. He got sick of waiting for her to choose between different types of underwear so we went walking around and encountered some MORE people Renzo knows, who were selling Bombardino - kind of like an Italian version of eggnog. I really wanted to like it, I really did, but it was so strong and sickly, and I knew I’d feel sick the whole car ride home. I felt guilty, too, because Renzo had bought them for us and I was just wasting it but oh well, half a drink is cheaper than getting his car re-upholstered. The two Aperol Spritz marketing men making spritzes kept coming up and talking to us and putting weird “kangaroo” hats on mine and Emily’s heads because we’re Australian. The hats did appear, in fact, to be depicting foxes, but I had neither the heart nor the vocabulary to tell them as much. The shorter man also asked me to come to some party that night, but I gracefully dodged that so go me!

Eventually we all got back in the car, and I thought we were on our way home! Em and I would have a small dinner and I’d have some time alone in the dark. But we found ourselves, after dropping Francesca back at her house, in Sondolo.

Sondolo 

Renzo got out of the car and yelled up at a window, and a woman opened it and talked for a while, then ushered us up. Their apartment was beautiful, very modern - and very familiarly domestic. Actually, domestic in a way that I wish was familiar. It was Emanuela, Renzo’s niece of some sort. She had stayed on the farm for a year when Emily was a toddler. She had carried Emily on her hip, which is extremely amusing, because Emanuela is tiny, under 5 foot, and Emily is 5’7” at least. (When did I start using inches? Subtle assimilation.) She was beautiful, and two equally beautiful children clad in winter pyjamas came bounding over. One was Samuele, the 5-year-old boy. Oh my god, he was SO cute. SO cute. He reminded me of Felix (nevermind Felix is 12 now). Another was Matilda, a 10-year-old girl. She was very cute too, and in that really awkward stage looks-wise that I remember being in when I was that age. So I guess she reminded me of me. There was another 9-year-old girl, but she was at her grandmother’s house studying. Emanuela showed as a photo - also, as Emily and I exclaimed, “bellisima!”. 

There’s not much else to say about this, other than that I was very hungry and tired at this point and still carsick and wondering what we were doing there, and there was wrestling on TV, and Samuele was imitating them, and Renzo would amuse the children my pulling up his jumper, sucking in his beer belly, and release twice, going “small, middle, forte”. The children love that bit, apparently.  Eventually we left, and, in the car, Renzo said, “do you like pizza?” Emily and I looked at each other. “Si! Ma adesso?” Apparently Renzo was going to take us to his favourite pizza restaurant, in another village, whose name I have forgotten.

?

Here, too, Renzo seemed to know everyone. Emily and I shared a pizza, much to Renzo’s dismay, and then he made us try this dessert made of a bitter licquer whose name I have also forgotten. I really couldn;t eat it, but Renzo didn’t seem to mind. “Non ti piace? No problemo, non mangi.” I was thankful. Emily has a penchant for bitter things, so she liked it. They got into a conversartion about the licquer, and Emily was saying yes, yes, thinking he was asking her if she had liked it, but then I realised Renzo was asking her if she wanted a SHOT of it. We had already been plied with a lot of alcohol that night, so Emily was very glad I managed to translate that properly ahahah. Renzo, nevertheless, had a shot. Of course.

And the, finally, it was time to go home.

Tirano IV

Out the front of the hotel, Renzo said he was working the next day, and that we should meet him at 9:30 on his bus and he’d take us to Aprica.

We collapsed, woke up late, and ran to the bus station. We got to his bus with a minute to spare. He would have waited, probably, because the bus timetable in Italy is VERY lax (a big contrast to the Japanese system), but still, how mortifying!

Aprica

Nothing much to say about Aprica, honestly, except for the beautiful view on the way there:

Dead town - everyone was skiing. More old women coming up to talk to us, espresso, and some surprisingly trendy clothes shops. We went to one and were looking in the men’s section and the shopkeeper woman rushed up to us: “è per l’uomo!”. I didn’t know how to explain to her that gender and its associate fashion rules are a socially-bred construct in Italian, so I just said, “ma bello!” She walked away, shaking her head disapprovingly. At some point, Luciano messaged me on instagram to say he was picking us up at 2 to go to Cologna. At 11:45, Renzo rocked up with his bus, and we walked on like the celebrities we felt like.

Tirano V

We went to some overly fancy place for lunch, where I had purple gnocchi (“goth gnochhi”, if you will), 

and a cute baby next to us ate pizzocheri. There was also a very professional-looking woman reading the newspaper eating a strange lunch, and very frequently staring at us. Later, we learned it was Francesca’s mother. I hope I wasn’t swearing too much.

This part made me nervous, because I knew that that night, all us younger cousins were going out to have pizza for dinner (“mangiare la pizza”, as they kept saying. This in itself I was pretty okay with, but the fact that we were going to Cologna as early as 2pm was distressing. Would we be able to talk for 5, 6 hours straight? I was going to get SO socially tired. (Even typing what we did every day makes me marvel at how I managed.) But there was Luci in his lil navy blue car and neon yellow beanie, just out from school. On the way, we picked up Federica, his 16-year-old sister, who had also just finished school, but in Sondrio (she goes to a science school, while Luciano - I don’t know, and I don’t even think he knows, really. Something about surveying and construction.) We parked under their apartment building and Luciano dialed “Sorella” on his phone and chastised her for being “solo ritardo” - which is funnier to English speakers, I think. While waiting, I asked: “If Federica is ’Sorella’ on your phone, then what’s Sofia?”

He smiled, “Sorellina.”

I think that’s so cute. I’m tempted to do the same with my brothers’ contacts - fratello, fratellino, and fratellinino (fratellinissimo?).

Cologna IV

Fede (wow that’s gonna get confusing - they call her Rica too so I’ll call her Rica.) Rica finally came down, also very fashionably dressed, in light jeans with raw-cut hems, maroon docs, and a black Napapijri coat. I was intimidated, of course, but she was friendly. Much quieter than her brother, which he had said - he preferred Sofia because they were similarly loud and raucous.) I got the impression immediately that she was a very smart girl, already focusing on biochemistry (like me!) (minus the very smart part).

It was very interesting watching our cousins with Nicolina, their grandmother. I always lived in a different country to my gradparents growing up, so I never got particualrly close to them in that typical Italian way, where the grandparents are the automatic caretakers. As Luciano said, “Italy’s economy is held up by grandparents”. We all had coffee from the moka, of course, and amaretti biscuits which I actually hate - they taste like medicine to me. We were just chilling, when Nicolina came out with a rubbish bag full of photos. “Photo d’Australia!”.

Man, there were a lot of fucking photos, but we had HOURS to kill, so we went through them all. I found some very funny photos of my dad. He can NEVER call me an emo again.

He's the one on the left lol

Renzo and Monica on the mountain in their younger days - how I'm tryna be with someone.

Emily also drew out a quarter of our family tree:

Tirano VI

When it was about 5, us kids left to go back to Tirano. Luci drove us on the icy back roads through the vineyards because there was traffic on the road - yes, traffic in a village! (Milanese coming to ski) - and I thought, yes, maybe we'll get into an accident and die, just like those kids from Tirano who had gotten into a big crash the day we'd arrived, and which had been all over the news. But we didn't. Rica called the pizzeria, called Bracere, and put the booking under Panizza, which was quite funny. And we went to their house and met their mother, whom, much to my delight, is actually possible MORE batshit than my own mother - which I didn’t think was possible. Mario, the kids’ dad, came home from work. He’s a strange, slightly scary man who refers to my aunty Linda solely as “la Milanesa”. He sat down next to me and said, in Italian, “so, what is the state of the Australian economy currently?”’ Mind you, I couldn’t even answer that question in ENGLISH, so I just said something about the mining running out.

I’m going to start speeding through the narrating, because I can tell it’s getting boring. We went to dinner, late of course, because we’re FUCKING WOGS BABY! And we sauntered in, the five of us kids, and Luciano was talking affably to the waiter, who turned out to have once been his football coach at age seven or something.

Sidenote: after observing our cousins for a couple of days, I began to understand Italian winter fashion: light-wash jeans, a belt, and a thick wool jumper - tucked in if you’re a girl, not if you’re a boy. And, of course, chunky shoes - docs or AF1s. I learned to follow this formula.

We all had pizza, and mine was one that seems very American, but is apparently very popular with the youths of Italy: Margherita with chips on top! It was really good, and I didn’t even feel too guilty. 

And after, Luciano said, “andiamo dolci?” like the oldest sibling that he is, and indeed, andiamo. We all had macedonia, which sounds like we ate a country, but it’s just and Italian fruit salad with alcohol and sometimes ice cream or cream. It wasn’t that great - as Rica said, “nothing special”. It was mostly kiwi and apple, because that’s what’s grown in the nearby villages.

I’m unable to point this on a specific point at dinner, but the whole time, I felt this glowing sense of pride. Not towards me, or any of the others specifically, but to us as a whole. Five cousins hanging out, vaguely resembling each other but all unique looking, talking with ease, dressed cool, eating young people food heartily. And I did feel this pride twaords my new-found cousins: all smart, cheeky, worldly even though they live in a tiny town, but still charmingly insular when it came to their own culture (at one point we were talking about sushi, and Sofia, the fourtenn-year-old, went “it’s nice, but why would you eat that when you have Italian food?”). And well-dressed, and witty, and attractive, and at ease with themselves and others, all of them. I’m pretty sure our ability to get on so well and so easily owes mostly to their own friendliness and welcome. 

Luci went out for a smoke and came back, and then, “andiamo?”, we left. And all the Scala kids confidently said goodbye to all the staff, and left giggling. And I just followed along, highly aware that we hadn’t yet paid. Were we dining and dashing? If so, that was kind of cool, and I was playing along. Emily though, more adherent to rules by disposition, or perhaps more aware of what was actually going on, took out her wallet and started asking nervously, as we walked out, about paying. Me still thinking we were dining and dashing said “shh, just walk”. But when we got out the door, it was made known that Luciano had secretly paid the bill when he went out to smoke. “Thank Nicolina”, he said. 

That actually hurt a little bit. Was the whole dinner just orchestrated by the matriarch? Had she just told her grandchildren to take us out for pizza, instead of our cousins just hanging out with us because they wanted to? I guess I’ll never know.

Teglio 

The next morning, Renzo was out front again, different car this time, to take us to Teglio. Even at this point, after so many days of it, I was so touched and pleased by how he’d hug and kiss us every time, always looking so happy to see these girls he barely knew, just because we were related.

Teglio is - surprise surprise - beautiful and small. We climbed a hill where, studded along the path, were nativity scenes made by the people of the town made from different materials. My favourite was the one made of pasta. 

The view from the top was amazing. There was a little church, and from its side, you could see the entire valley, which had made it a very important village during the war (which war(s), I forget.) Sofia later told us that Valtellina is called as much because of Teglio, frmo which the entire region is visible - it puts the telli in Valtellina. 

Renzo bumped into yet another person he knows, and then we were back off to Cologna for lunch.

Cologna V

Again, the kitchen was all a-bustle when we got in and took off our coats. Nicolina’s kitchen has a fire that doubles as a stove, and upon it was a metal bucket filled with grey sludge with a big stick stuck upright in it. I got excited - polenta for lunch! It was still very amusing to me how primitive it looked, though. The stick was hilarious to me. 

Gigi (Luigi) was frying the sausage, which Pierro had made, and we sat down to three trays full of sausage that, at each iteration, got darker in colour, all cut up into big chunks. The first was beige, almost white - this was the normal sausage. The second was brownish, most resembling normal sausage - this was sausage with the pig’s skin added. The last was literally BLACK - blood sausage. (Or, as Luigi says in that accent of his, “vloood salsigge”.

 My favourite was the middle ground. The black sausage was NOT pleasant to me, but my relatives, especially the older men, loved it. They love all sausage. (No pun intended. REALLY no pun intended they’re a lil homophobic.) Apart from our actual lunch, the table would always have wedges of cheese and bread and dried sausage on the table, and the men would get their curved knives with the wooden handles out of their pockets and cut off pieces for themselves. They would do the same with the after-lunch fruit. I always wondered why my dad had one of those knives with him, and now I know why! All it took was going all the way to Italy instead of just asking him. 

By the way, Mario at this point said to me via a combination of Italian and racist gestures that made me nearly burst into tears right there at the table: “you can do whatever you want in life, just don’t marry a black or Asian person.” Mate, you don’t have a thumb.

While we were having our coffee after, Monica said that we would be having risotto for dinner upstairs in their apartment. This made me worry - what would we do for the five hours in Cologna in between? We were going to walk around the village after lunch, but after that…? I tried not to worry about it.

As prophesied, we viewed Cologna properly. We took the car, because Nicolina is old and can’t walk far. We saw the other old houses they own in the village. There are many abandoned houses, because people have ‘migrated’ to Tirano where there are shops and amenities. There was also the house owned by what they referred to as the “Quattri” family, whom they talked about a lot. Emily and I were confused - we’d never heard of the Quattris. But when Emily had called her dad that morning, she asked, and he said - it’s us. The Quattri family are the four (quattro) Panizzas who migrated to Australia, one of them being our great grandfather. So we were looking at our own house. (By the way, there are members of the family in Australia that our parents gave us STRICT instruction to not mention under any circumstance, because they’re slightly batshit and there’s bad blood there. They asked about these people anyway, so we had to play dumb, which wasn’t hard, because I know next to nothing about them anyway.)

After that we went to the Cologna cemetery. It was BEAUTIFUL - the best-kept cemetery I’ve every seen. The thing is - almost every single gravestone in the place said Panizza. They were all either Panizza or Della Bona, which is hella weird to see. Your own name on gravestones. No Alessandra Panizzas, unfortunately. It also made me wonder how much incest there must be. It was very Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Nicolina kissed her mother’s grave.

? 

After that, Pierro dropped Nicolina off, leaving only Emily, Sofia, him, and I. I was already very maxed out socially at this point and grumpy, but only in my head. Pierro took us to another village between Cologna and Tirano, where we had coffee and bisuits and chocolate tarts. 

At lunch, Pierro made many inquiries about my nose rings, and this continued here. “Do you have to take them out before you go to sleep?” “How long do you have to have them in for?” (I think he meant to ask how long I’d had them for.) By the way, I very much consider this day a case study in Pierro, who is a very odd figure. He always looks grumpy, and has a hooked nose, and when not at work always has a hat on because he has no hair, which his other family members always point out. 

When we were look at photos from Australia, where Pierro stayed on the farm for a year, they’d point and go Pierro! and show that even then, he was always wearing a hat. He never married either, and must be in his late fifties - an enigmatic lone wolf. At this cafe, Pierro had coffee with grappa in it. 

Tirano VII

Then we got back into the car, and I thought, where could we possibly be going now? The answer was another coffee shop, this time in Tirano, right next to the Basilica. Right outside the cafe, this crazy-looking man who was just jabbering to random people came up to Pierro. We went into the cafe and the weirdo, Mario, came and sat down next to us. Turns out they’re friends. Pierro had another coffee with grappa and Weird Mario had an espresso, on Pierro. We then decided to go to the Basilica, because Pierro was outraged that we hadn’t been yet. We rebutted - but mass is on at the moment! He replied that he didn’t give a fuck about the mass, which is quite hilariously contradictory.

It was beautiful, the Basilica, but I don’t understand why everyone loves it SO much - I found it about as beautiful as all the others we had seen. We went into the actual grotto, where the Virgin Mary had appeared. As we were standing in that little area, an old Italian woman came up to me, specifically, in the group of me, Pierro, Weird Mario, Sofia, and Emily, and started talking at me in Italian about the sighting. (Old Italian women LOVE me for some reason.) I didn’t understand her, so I just nodded politely at her, pretending I was following . About two minutes into her speech, Weird Mario leaned over and said, “non parla Italiano (she doesn’t spell Italian)”. Thanks Mario.

Cologna VI

Eventually, we returned to Nicolina’s warm kitchen (minus Weird Mario). Em and the others played cards while I pretended to sleep in the couch, just so I could have some time alone. 

And then we were called upstairs for dinner. We were having risotto con funghi for dinner - Luigi had picked the porcini himself, during his daily three-hour walks in the mountain. He told us that, this season, no one could find porcini anywhere on the mountain, and then,  one day, when he was out fishing or something, he stumbled upon a MASSIVE bed of them. He showed me a photo of him lying next to the stash looking very pleased with himself. Apparently the other men of the mountain were immensely jealous. The risotto was good! I’ve never had risotto with fresh procini before, only dried, because you can’t get it in Australia. I told Fede at the bar the other night (he’s the head chef at the fancy Italian restaurant we work at) and he, too, was immensely jealous. The risotto experience was slightly ruined, however, by the fact that I was only given a fork, which is unnerving to me (growing up in singapore you ALWAYS use a fork and spoon together, especially for rice), and I was too shy to ask for a spoon. Still, I managed. I know, you’re relieved, you were really worried for me for a second there. The irony is that now I HAVE to only use a fork, because of this fucking cast on my left arm.

We were very aware that this was my last night in the village, and I wanted to make the most of it, but I was SO socially tired. The craziness and friendliness of everyone soured from cool to really upsetting and scary. But I didn’t show it, of course, and eventually we were driven back to Tirano, to be picked up for my final lunch the next day.

Tirano VIII

Em and I did one final walk around Tirano in the morning. We had breakfast at a random bar, and we thought the man running it didn’t like us, but he came up to us and started giving us free panettone and orange juice and stuff, so I guess he did?

Cologna VII

Sofia made tagliatelle, dressed with the jus of the arrosto she’d also made, and damn she’s going to be a good chef. Not much to say really, other than that I was fed a fuck tonne and felt guilty but also proud. Us cousins sat and talked for a while. They told us about all the "icons" of Tirano, one of those being Weird Mario, whom we'd had the honour of meeting the day before. Apparently he bought a girlfriend online, and was telling everyone about it. Another icon, whose name I forgot, found a baby doll that would make noise and kept it in his ute, and because of his reputation, the police thought he'd kidnapped an ACTUAL baby and chased him and he threw it over a wall. 

They also showed us this old newspaper, and it made me very proud. 

That's my grandfather: "the senator of the people".

And then, at 2, I kissed everyone goodbye, and Luciano drove me back into Tirano. 

Tirano IX

Em and I had to get our suitcases from the hotel, and while we were in the lobby, Em said she had to go to the bathroom. In the meantime, I awkwardly attempted to maintain conversation with the lovely reception lady, and this was made doubly hard by the fact that she couldn’t speak English. I lasted a good 10 minutes, which I’m very proud of myself for - all the while thinking, where the fuck is Emily, this is so awkward - and then I excused myself to go look for her.

“Em? Em? I called out, and I don’t think she heard me, but i heard her, crying in a stall on the phone to her mum. I was shocked - I hadn’t realised she’d be so upset about me leaving. I didn’t know what to do, so I just tiptoed out and waited in a chair nearby. A couple minutes later she came bursting out with sunglasses on, saying “sorry! Sorry!” with a slightly wobbly voice. I pretended to not know anything, and we wheeled to Luciano’s car. 

He parked illegally and askew at some spot outside the train station, stroking under his chin in retort (it’s hard to explain, but in Italy there are a lot of hand motions used basically like emojis in texts - to add an implication. Stroking under your chin with two fingers basically means “I don’t give a fuck”. Maybe I’ll compile all the ones I know.) I bought my ticket (“posso avere un bigliette a Milano centrale?”) and Luciano helped me “obliterate” it, and then they said goodbye. He hugged me and said, “when you’re in Italy again give me a call” which seemed very adult. Emily hugged me too, and started crying. 

“I’m sorry, I’m just emotional.” It made me inarticulably sad, and I don’t know how to act in such situations, so I probably just did something sub-par. Anyway, they left the platform, and suddenly, blissfully, I was on my own for the first time in two weeks. I can’t explain how euphoric it felt. I got some snacks and a coke zero from the station bar for the three-hour ride, and just sat on a bench, bristling with happiness. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVED everyone and everything, but I hadn’t been alone in so long. And suddenly, as the train was pulling up, I heard “Ale! Ale!” It was Renzo, who had just finished his bus shift at the bus station on the other side, and wanted to see me off. That was so touching. The people on the platform were staring as he hugged and kissed me goodbye, wondering what was going on, but I didn’t even care. And I got on the train, slotted my suitcase away, and again, I was alone. Then an old lady came up with the cutest dog every who sat very obediently in its own seat, and I don’t know if it was just because I was in a really good mood , but it was the best thing I had ever seen, and for a moment everything was O.K. in the world. And I helped her put her suitcase up, and she started talking to me in Italian, and then another old lady started talking to me in Italian - I don’t know what it is, but old Italian women LOVE me. I spent the journey messaging N blissfully and listening to music. Honestly, it was like the whole world had opened up. I can’t describe it.

(I’ve been saying that things are inarticulable or indescribable a lot. What the fuck, then, dear Sa, is the point of having a blog?)

Milano

It was night by the time the train got into Centrale, and I had to figure out how to get to Malpensa Airport through the smoky cold platforms. I couldn’t find it and kept walking back and forth with my suitcase. At one point I saw a cute dog on a leash, and then recognised its owner as the one whom I had helped with her suitcase. She was staring at the train timetable. We nodded at each other in recognition.

Eventually I realised you had to take a shuttle bus. There seemed to be no government- or centrally-organised bus, just lots of competing stands selling tickets to the airport on their own buses. It seemed really dodgy, but I chose the most legit looking one and just got on - it was 8 euro. The lights didn’t work on the bus, and we didn;t leave for AGES, but I eventually got there - albeit the wrong terminal, which was another shuttle bus ordeal, though this time at least an official airport bus. It was SO foggy out that I couldn’t see five meters past the orange-lit smog. In a very Italian fashion, halfway through the journey, there were a bunch of boats (?) on the road, so we spent a good fifteen minutes not going anywhere. The Americans got VERY agitated, as did the people who were already late for their flight. I highly doubt they made their flight. 

Malpensa

Here’s a cute, very traumatic, very Sa incident that happened at the airport. I was feeling very chuffed with myself for managing to get to where I was supposed to be, by myself, so smoothly. So there was this escalator to get up to the check in desks, right, and it was one of those escalators that span three stories. About halfway up, my suitcase fell backwards. At first it only fell a few steps, and i was like “fuck”, and went to grab it. Just as my hand was about to reach the handle, it slipped down further, and said “fuck it”, evidently, and slid ALL THE WAY DOWN THE FUCKING ESCALATOR. (There was no one behind me.) I couldn’t run down the stairs faster than they were going up, and I split my foot open once doing that anyway, so I was just forced to watch as I was carried further and further away from my poor suitcase, lying sadly at the bottom of the escalator. (With a bottle of grappa in it, mind you.) (People in the intermediate stories were watching this whole thing unfold.) And then, three stories above my abandoned suitcase, I couldn’t figure out how to get back down, because there wasn’t a matching long-ass escalator down - why would there be? So I was running around the departure hall, trying to find a way down, praying that no one had taken my bag yet. I found a lift, but it was some oversized luggage lift and they were really mean to me. After like 5 minutes I finally found a lift, and the doors opened, and there was a cleaning lady with her cart just staring at it at her feet while people walked around it to get onto the escalator. I ran over and apologised and she seemed relieved, and then I went back up the escalator, clutching onto my suitcase (with a now broken handle) VERY hard.

Other than that fuck up, and typical Italian airport worker attitude, things went smoothly. I bought pocket coffee and watched youtube while waiting to board and then I was in my plane seat, and I thought to myself, I did it.