Expat Women Confessions

 

Living in Positano is not about lounging around on a sunny beach all day and having beautiful views to console you when things get rocky at home or at work. A holiday here does not easily translate into everyday life especially if you are an ex-pat from a faraway continent.

Living in Italy in a small summer tourist orientated town with barely any winter entertainment because your friends move out at the first hint of cold is not everyone’s cup of tea. It can be a lonely experience.

Small cultural problems surface which can test your sanity like battling with bureaucracy at the town hall, dealing with medical care in a language you are unfamiliar with or the lack of suitable local schools. Plane tickets to return home become a big part of the budget.  But above all it is the frustration with the laid back local’s attitude to problems and ‘this is the way things are here’ acceptance which makes lobbying for services and changes to the system almost unheard of.

I didn’t imagine that life would be easy when I moved overseas as an expat. I really missed family get-togethers and holiday traditions, and lost the support system of life-long friends. I was grateful for being able to understand the dialect in Positano as well as speaking Italian as it made my integration easier in a town that was already used to accommodating foreigners. It was difficult adapting to the confined spaces in Europe after a lifetime in Australia and comforts of home I took for granted were quickly forgotten as I pulled on extra sweaters in winter rather than stand on ducted heating for warmth. Now of course, the internet (when it works) has made the world a lot smaller and communication over long distances an everyday affair and helps keep one’s sanity.

A new book has been launched this month together with a competition on Expatwomen.com. It is full of tips that I wish I had read when I moved overseas 20 odd years ago:

Expat Women: Confessions - 50 Answers to Your Real-Life Questions about Living Abroad

This comprehensive guide book written by Andrea Martins and Victoria Hepworth for expatriates or want-to-be expatriates discusses chapter by chapter a real life situation which can arise living abroad. It offers sensible advice for any practical or psychological problem, reassurance and weighs up the positive and negative aspects of the decision-making. I was surprised at how much I have in common with these women!

Among the many examples of the situations the book deals positively with are those covering guilt over aging parents, loneliness, visa, alcoholism, trailing spouses, holidays, families,repatriation and reverse culture shock. It also talks about coping with the feeling of having no real home base especially for those families who work intensively in many countries. It has comprehensive tips and encouragement. Living as an expatriate can be bewildering culturally but is also an enriching experience opening a sea of opportunies.

As @downatheel mentioned on Twitter:

 ‘Usually I live the adrift feeling of living abroad. Today an anchor would be nice’.                       This book would be good anchor to hang on to.

Slow Food in Positano : Carciofi Imbottiti or Stuffed Artichokes

There is no better place to linger over a meal on holidays or weekends, than one in which you can watch ships cruising past in the distance or waves crashing on the shore.

Meals on the Amalfi Coast and all of Southern Italy often involve the simplest fresh locally seasonal ingredients. Frozen ready made meals are unheard of and pizza if not home cooked, is a meal that comes directly from the wood fired oven in the restaurant closest to you, rather than a packet. Time and care is taken in preparation from scratch and often recipes are ‘family hand-me downs’ generation to generation.

Spring seasonal food in southern Italy is heralded by fresh asparagus from the mountains, Fava beans (broad beans) from the garden and artichokes from the shop.

I love finding artichokes as extras on menus at Positano in April and May as I can be sure they are fresh and cooked in a traditional way. Roasted in coals, conserved in oil, with pasta or potatoes, as a parmigiana ingredient instead of eggplant, artichokes are sought after and valued in Southern Italy. The exquisite Island of Procida in the bay of Naples even has its own Artichoke Festival in April!

When the artichoke season unfolds in Italy in early Spring, my family squeals with delight when they hear that tasty stuffed artichokes are on the menu at my place. They love them prepared this way so much that my son used to ask for  them before he could talk by miming the action used to eat them. I shared the recipe with Anna Savino from Itali Anna who said they were a big hit at her place too.

The basic recipe I use comes from my mother-in-law, and was a poor man’s meal, using left over pieces of stale bread rather than breadcrumbs but essentially the recipe is the same. There are no measurements here. If you like olives, add extras; same for capers etc. I use about 5 to 6 olives per artichoke and the same for capers. You will have to take your own initiative regarding the amount of breadcrumbs depending on the size of the globe.

They take a bit of time to stuff leaf by leaf but if you are only making a couple, life is simpler. They really are a slow food, as they are eaten leaf by leaf by holding the leaf with your fingers and scraping the flesh off with your teeth which is messy and can take a while as you can imagine. But they are oh so good!


  
Stuffed Artichokes
Ingredients:
Fleshy artichokes with their stems, preferably round and not too big
Potatoes baby or cut into wedges
Stuffing:
Breadcrumbs
Salted capers, rinsed
Olives -green or black
Parsley
A garlic clove
Artichoke stems peeled
Condiment:
Olive oil
Salt
Method:
Cut the stem off the artichoke, peel the stem of its fibrous exterior to get to the tender heart. Place stem directly in water and lemon juice to prevent discoloration. Peel two bottom layers of the artichoke’s leaves off and discard. If the artichoke has spines on the outside cut them off with a knife. Firmly hit the artichoke upside down on the chopping board to loosen the leaves and throw it into the lemon water too.

Place all the stuffing ingredients except breadcrumbs into a processor and chop roughly. Tip into a bowl and mix in breadcrumbs and a good douse of extra virgin olive oil. Starting from the outer leaves place a small amount of stuffing at the base of each leaf with a tea spoon, turning  and filling the  artichoke until you reach the middle.

If there is stuffing left over after you have filled them all, a little can be placed in its heart (centre).
Place artichokes in a shallow pot or tin. Peel baby potatoes and place them between the artichokes to help them stay upright. Place a little water at the bottom of the pot, add salt to artichokes and a generous round of oil on top. Cover tightly and cook for 20-30minutes depending on the size and tenderness of the vegetable.
Check regularly to see that the water does not dry out. The artichokes will be cooked when the outer leaf detaches easily from its base.


 
Rest them awhile, take your time and slowly enjoy the taste of Spring…

I’m back!

Dear Readers,

I’m back in control of my blog!

Blogger finally answered my request and ousted the hacker who had hijacked my account. I will do my best not to let him back in, the scoundrel, although I really don’t know what the benefit would have been too him in the long run.

He has deleted pages including your bloglinks. If you have linked back to me please leave me a note in the comments so that I can exchange the favour.

I have included the two posts below that I wrote on my temporary blog  will I was waiting for some reaction from blogger so you have something to whet your appetite for holidays in Positano.

I am so happy :)

Thanks for bearing with me!

Zoom in on Positano

 

‘A picturesque cascade of pastel coloured houses tumbling seemly haphazardly down the mountain wall.’

How many euphemisms can one find on the internet for my pretty town…

Positano is justifiably one of the most photographed towns on the Amalfi Coast. The juxtaposition of the mountains, arched windows, bougainvillea and incredibly blue skies enchant the visitors all year round who click with glee for their photo memories.

But what do I see when I look at their photos?

I , like other locals, zoom straight into our home.

Visible only from the sea, from other villas in the neighborhood or from certain angles on the beach, our home is positioned such that I am certain that when I take photos of ferries headed for Capri or Sorrento, they are full of tourists clicking their shutter right back at me.

 

Sometimes I find recent photos on the internet or Facebook with detail of the neighborhood area so that I can tell whether the gardener’s covered the citrus trees, the wisteria’s finished flowering or, as in a few weeks ago, someone had been in our home.

I peered closely at the photo. I distinctly remembered closing the shutters on the seaside as the sun fades furnishings quickly here. But this time there was a shutter window on one side that was open.

I mentioned it to Hubby who told me the carpenter had probably been in to take measurements for mosquitoes nets on the house, but soon we had a phone call from the caretaker to tell us a window on the French door had been broken.

Apparently the warped old French door had not been  closed properly by the carpenter’s apprentice (it has to have a particular knee-jerk -hand held high -while pushing  and turning the handle to lock into place) and had been thrown open in a windy storm.

So, thank you for admiring the scenery, and keep those cameras clicking if you happen to sail past! 

Dolce Far Niente in Positano (reproduced from Bellavventura in Positano)

Even boats seem to get into the spirit of things here.

Rocking gently, floating on air, the crystal clear water can give the illusion of levitation when the sea’s transparence couples with the light at certain angles.

The video is a bit wobbly. I hope it doesn’t make you seasick.

 

 

I’ve decided to strike back at the hacker who stole my Bell’Avventura blog . It’s not just the blog but you, the faithful readers, the community who have given me confidence tuning in regularly, leaving lovely comments and linking back to my posts.

It’s inspiration too: I  can look at the mundane in Positano and wonder who wouldn’t want to be in my position and experience the simple things like first rays of the morning sun as they scrape the peak of the mountain flooding the gardens with light. The ups and downs are part of  everyday life but never so worthwhile as in the Amalfi Coast.

You may have wondered why I took so long to post. I’m out of touch with setting up a blog from scratch. What the heck, I can’t even get the header to look right! In any case, I have reported the incident to Blogger and I hope to get Bell’Avventura back one day but will set up home here for now.

Welcome.

Steps of Positano.

I just had to share this: Italy Vacation are having a contest where the winner has to guess the number of steps in Positano!

 

Has anyone ever counted all of them? It’s like asking how many stars are there in the sky!

I know the number of steps going from the Grotta to the Fornillo Beach (too many especially uphill at midday); from Via Trara Genoino  (La Scalinatella) to the main beach; from Nocelle in the mountain to Positano and we are well over three thousand but I've never bothered to count all the steps in town.

There must be thousands and thousands.

The winner of the contest will receive a gift of USD $500 to be applied toward your next Homebase Abroad trip to the Coast.

So start estimating the climb over town and submit your answers.

Say I sent you. It won’t help you win, but I can count steps in case of a dispute. May take me a few years though.

For my part I’m going to start contacting all the people named Pasquale and Assunta that I know in town to weasel the answer from them. I will expect them soon at my place, counting stairs right to the very bottom…

 

Blog Stains- Dare to be different in Naples

Few people are as passionate about a place as Bonnie Alberts from Napoli Unplugged is about her adopted city Napoli.

She shares an extensive guest post about the deep heart of  Naples wandering off the beaten tourist paths into the soul of the city and walks us through it’s history, it’s culture and into the Neapolitan daily life.

 

A Few of My Favorite Napoli Things
Bonnie Alberts, Napoli Unplugged

Although I know they are all the rage these days and do seem to serve a purpose, I'm not a huge fan of top ten lists. They are like soundbites that if not used carefully, can quickly create stereotypes about a place.

Think about the top 10 for Napoli.  At the top, and I do mean the very top of every Napoli top 10 list you will find "eat pizza in the city in which it was born."  Neapolitan pizza is a national treasure to be sure and an experience not to be missed, but Naples offers the curious traveler much, much more.  There is the food and the wine, the caffè and dolce, world-class museums and ancient monuments, Greek and Roman ruins, churches and castles, parks and gardens, strolls along the water and deep into the quartieri, oh, and what about the views.

And that's just for starters.

A good guide-book (or peek at our website or the Saturday Strolls on our blog) will give you the main attractions.  Things like strolling through Centro Storico and Naples famed Christmas Alley, Via San Gregorio Armeno to see another Neapolitan treasure, the hand crafted presepe.  Visits to the Archaeological, Capodimonte and MADRE Museums, the Royal Palace and the Veiled Christ and tours of Naples Underground.

But  if you've done all that and are looking for more, here is just a small sampling of some of my favorite Napoli things.

 

Sunrise, Sunset

Sometimes people forget what an absolutely breathtaking this city is and the very best time to experience this beauty is early in the morning.

It might seem obvious but you'd be surprised how many people either don't realize the sun rises behind the Vesuvius or don't want to get up to see it.  One of the best locations to watch the sunrise from or better yet, catch an award-winning shot of it (I'm still working on that) is at the Fontana dell'Immacolata on Via Partenope.  From there, stroll down Via Partenope towards Mergellina along Naples seaside promenade, Lungomare.  With the sun at your back, the views of Mergellina and Posillipo are spectacular.

 

If you don't want to get up at the crack of dawn but still want an award-winning shot, head to Sant'Antonio a Posillipo Church. One of the most iconic views of Naples, the setting sun behind you lights up Vesuvius and the city in a way that belies words.

Take the Mergellina Funiculare (another fav of mine) one stop up to Sant'Antonio a Posillipo.  Head left out of the station onto Via Orazio and walk up the hill (also gorgeous views) to Via Minucio Felice.  Follow the road down until you find the overlook.  After you've captured your award-winning shot, continue down until you reach Piazza Sannazzaro.  Great views all the way down!  At Piazza Sannazzaro, pay homage to the Mother of Naples, the fountain of the Siren Partenope in the center of the Piazza.

 

The Intellectual Heart of the City

Not far from Naples famed Archaeological Museum is Piazza Dante.  Big, bustling, and bursting with activity, it is dedicated to the poet of the same name, Dante Alighieri of The Divine Comedy fame and whose bigger than life statue towers over the Piazza.

On the north side of the Piazza you'll find Via Port'Alba, a narrow alley where local bookshops large and small spill out into the street.  Wander along Via Port'Alba to Port'Alba, one of two gates installed during the Spanish expansion of Naples.

From there head to Piazza Bellini and you'll find yourself in the intellectual heart of the city and surrounded by important institutions such as the Fine Arts Academy (Accademia di Belle Arti), the San Pietro a Majella Music Conservatory and several University Buildings.  The statue at the center of the piazza is of course in honor of Bellini - Vincenzo Salvatore Carmelo Francesco Bellini that is, a 19th century Italian composer.  On the south side of the Piazza you'll find Greco-Roman remains from the city’s 4th century western wall.

 

The Two Parks of Virgil

One of the most important and influential writers in history, the man who gave the world the “Aeneid” and whose words guided and inspired Dante, Ovid, and countless other poets, Virgil's footprints are all over this city.  And to commemorate this legend Naples has not one, but two parks dedicated to him.

One sits at the foot of Posillipo hill and the other sits at the top of Posillipo hill, Capo Posillipo, one of the most picturesque districts in Naples.  So beautiful is this district, and to be sure, much more beautiful in Virgil's day, that it takes its name from the Greek Pausylipon which means “respite from pain.”

Perhaps the more important of the two parks is Parco Virgiliano a Piedigrotta at the foot of Posillipo hill where legend has it you will find Virgil's tomb. While you will definitely find a Roman era funerary monument there, that it is actually Virgil's tomb is pretty doubtful. Nevertheless, it has attracted visitors for centuries. Nestled behind the Santa Maria di Piedigrotta Church and next to the Mergellina train station this quaint little park is a quiet haven away from the bustle of the city.

While you are there you can also pay homage to another important writer, the 19th century poet and philosopher Giacomo Leopardi. And don't forget to peek into the Crypta Neapolitana, a 700 meter long tunnel ascribed to Virgil's sorcery although it is more likely the work of the Roman engineer Lucius Cocceus Auctus.

 

 

At the top of Posillipo hill you will find breathtaking views of the Bay of Naples from Vesuvius to Nisida, Bagnoli and beyond at Parco Virgiliano a Posillipo.  Although fairly well-known, I rarely run across tourists here.  Follow the park's circular path to take in the views and you just may catch a wedding party using this picturesque location as a natural backdrop.  And don't forget to look for one of the most recent additions to the park, a bust of Gandhi erected in 2008.

If you visit on a Thursday morning you can catch the chicest market in Naples, the Posillipo Market that runs along the tree-lined entrance to the park.

 

 

John Turturro's Passione

A celebration of the Neapolitan spirit that emanates from Neapolitan music, John Turturro's movie the Passione was primarily shot in Naples poorer neighborhoods, among which is Rione Sanita.

An extremely important area of Naples that once sat just outside the city gate Porta San Gennaro, it was the city's burial center for centuries.  Among its most important treasures are the Catacombs of Naples - San Gennaro, San Gaudioso and San Severo, the Cimitero delle Fontanelle, and the renowned Palazzo dello Spagnolo that was the backdrop for Comme Facette Mammeta - How Your Mama Made You in Turturro's Passione.

The characteristic double staircase known as Ali di Falco (Wings of the Hawk) was the design of Neapolitan architect Ferdinando Sanfelice whose design you can also see in Palazzo Sanfelice just up the street. Other locales in Turturro's film include the San Martino Charterhouse, Castel dell'Ovo, Chiaia's Bluestone Club, the remains of Ristorante Lido Pola in Bagnoli, and the streets of Rione Sanita which were the setting for Pietra Montecorvino and Max Casella's Dove Sta Zazà.

 

Wine Your Way Through the City

The Campanian countryside is well-known for its wines and abundance of vineyards and local wineries, but you don't have to leave the city to experience great wine.  Dozens of wine bars have popped up in Naples recently, especially in the chic Chiaia district along Vico Belledonne a Chiaia, Via Bisignano and Via Giuseppe Ferrigini.  Our favorite is Enoteca Belledonne on Vico Belledonne a Chiaia.

Another great wine venue is Città del Gusto in Naples western district of Bagnoli.  In addition to its restaurant and the Gambero Rosso cooking school, it hosts wine tastings and wine related events throughout the year.

If you happen to be here in May, a week-long celebration of wine starts with an event called Wine and the City. For four days local businesses host events pairing wine with their products, think Wine and Art or Wine and Fashion.  This year Wine and the City runs from 18 – 21 May and is followed by one of the greatest wine shows in Italy and the only one dedicated to wines made entirely from indigenous Italian Varietals.  Held in the Medieval halls of Castel dell'Ovo, Vitigno Italia runs from May 22 – 24 this year.

Still thirsty for more? Passionate wine enthusiasts can keep up with all Naples and Campania wine events and even earn Italian Sommelier certification through the Naples Chapter of the Italian Sommeliers Association,  Associazione Italiana Sommeliers AIS – delegazione di Napoli.

 

Shop with the locals

Naples boasts some sixty local markets, from the nearly 600 stall shoe market at Poggioreale to tiny street markets of just ten or fifteen vendors.

In fact, for many Neapolitans, shopping daily at the market is still a way of life.

Naples is life lived on the street and there is no better place to experience that than at a local market.  One of the very best markets in the city is Naples foremost seafood market, Porta Nolana. Tucked behind the ancient Porta Nolana gate from which the market takes its name, it runs parallel to Corso Garibaldi near the Circumvesuviana station along Via Cesare Carmignano.  While the seafood is in abundance there,  live clams - le vongole veraci, eel - il capitone and the salted cod - il baccalà, you can also find fresh vegetables, poultry, meat and more.  At Christmas time, the market springs to life as shoppers find overflowing tubs filled with the staples of the Neapolitan Christmas dinner, il baccalà and il capitone.

 

A Secret Villa on Capodimonte Hill

Just up the hill from the Real Albergo dei Poveri, the Bourbon Hospital and Almshouse for the poor at Piazza Carlo III and nestled in the ancient piazza Sant'Eframo Vecchio is the 18th century hunting lodge Villa di Donato.

Carefully restored by its owners, magnolias and palm trees in the gardens in front of the Villa create a dramatic entrance to this historic property.  One of only a handful of “house museums” in Naples, the ground floors have become a spectacular backdrop for concerts, art exhibitions and cultural events, while upstairs, well-preserved frescoed hunting scenes on the walls and ceilings are a testament to the pictorial style prevalent during the Bourbon Dynasty.  Privately owned, the Villa is only open during events and by special request.

There are many, many more treasures hidden in Naples just waiting to be found.

Visit Naples, Discover Napoli!