Yearning

Italy, with its scenery and its people's life, occupied my soul, and towards this land I felt a yearning. 

from The True Story of My Life: A Sketch by Hans Christian Andersen

Dolce Via

Some wonderful photographs of Italy in the 1980's by an American named Charles H. Traub, released in his new book Dolce Via.

Marburg and Kassel: A Tale of the Brothers Grimm

'The 20th of December 2012 is the 200th anniversary of the publishing of the first volume of the Brothers Grimm's "Children's and Household Tales". Their famous collection of folk and fairy tales has been translated into 160 languages and is on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register for the preservation of cultural documents. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm aren't known only for their 86 fairy tale classics such as "Little Red Riding Hood" and "Snow White", but also as linguists. As students in Marburg, they were enthusiastic scholars of German philology, researching dialects and grammar.'

I looked into exchanging to the University of Marburg!! But along with all the other European universities, it didn't make much sense to be studying for an English major there. So extremely excited to be at the University of California, Santa Barbara soon!

Tuscan Lunches

'I had never cared about lunch, until I was introduced to Sunday ones in Tuscan vineyards. Celebrations of food and wine amongst friends and family, they transcend the notion of mere meals and transform into a theatre for the senses.

It has much to do with the setting, the compelling beauty of ancient surroundings, of land which has yielded produce for millennia, of eroded stone walls and roads which wind through hills, and row upon row of vines. There is little more glorious then sitting through hours of golden summer afternoons at a long wooden table with twelve or sixteen or twenty others, or in winter warming limbs and souls with fires and food and wine.

Gianfranco has friends at Montespertoli and we go there often, mostly for winter lunches. We crunch up the circular gravel driveway and arrive at the back door, which leads into a vast stone kitchen filled with people. The ancient stove roars with flames, heating an assortment of saucepans that steam forth wonderful aromas. Someone is carving a prosciutto, claret-red slices sliding off the edge of the knife. There are women to stir the saucepans, wash the salad, slice the bread. I make myself useful by carrying cutlery to the dining room where men pose around the leaping fire, clutching glasses of Campari and smoking. Handpainted jugs of water and flowers clutter the table. I set for eighteen people, folding paper napkins into tiny triangles beside each plate. Two-litre bottles of homegrown chianti, translucent red, line up like soldiers. Outside the tall windows mist wraps around bare trees and church spires.

Platters are placed on the table: slices of wild-boar salami, tiny spicy venison sausages, rounds of toast topped with coarse chicken-liver pate sweetened with marsala, shiny black olives tossed in garlic and parsley. Wine is tipped into glasses and wedges of crusty, spongy bread passed around. Lunch has begun.

Pasta comes next, a deep ceramic bowl of steaming spaghetti in a simple tomato sauce fragrant with fresh basil, or a rich cream redolent of wild mushrooms. On top of the fire have been placed two metal grills which clip together to enclose the main course: thick slabs of prime beef, a handful of quails, fat homemade sausages. Passed around the table they are black-striped and crisp from the flames, perfumed with fresh rosemary, garlic and good oil.

Afterward there is a chunk of parmesan, aged and crumbly, and a tangy pecorino from Sardinia to eat with a large bowl of various fruits. This is the winding-down stage of the lunch, when women begin to push back chairs and carry out plates and men light up cigarettes and pour whisky. Coffee brews aromatic from the kitchen, conversation subdues and becomes sleepy, comfortable and confidential, Pastries accompany the coffee: a wealth of shortbreads, crunchy almond biscuits, macaroons and iced eclairs bulging cream. Vin Santo, sweet and dark, is pouted into small glasses; outside the evening has begun to descend and Sunday lunch settles.'

from Amore and Amaretti - Victoria Cosford

The Lost King of France

I have just finished The Lost King of France by Deborah Cadbury, the biographical account of Marie Antoinette's son who grew up in the tumultuous time of the French Revolution, and whose death has been surrounded by mystery and confusion for centuries.

'In 1795, Louis XVII, the ten-year-old son of Marie-Antoinette, was declared dead by the revolutionary authorities. Immediately, rumours spread that the Prince had escaped from prison and was, in fact, alive. In time, several 'Princes' appeared to claim his name and inheritance, but which, if any, was the real Louis-Charles? The quest for the truth finally runs to the present day as modern DNA testing of a stolen heart leads to an exciting conclusion to this extraordinary two hundred-year-old mystery.'

Additive in its intrigue and well-researched history, this book is one of the best I have read about the French Revolution and the fall of Marie Antoinette and her family from royal splendour. Records of the conditions in which the royal family were imprisoned are heartbreaking, especially the treatment of the child prince. Wonderfully written, I highly recommend The Lost King of France.

Kaleidoscope

'Los Angeles is far from possessing the beauty of New York or the depth of Chicago, and I understand why some French people spoke to me about it with such distaste: without friends, I'd be lost. But it can be enjoyable as a kaleidoscope - with a shake of the wrist, the pieces of coloured glass give you the illusion of a new rosette. I surrender to this hall of mirrors... The French consul has invited me to dinner with N and M. In the entrance hall there is an exhibition of Hawaiian jewellery, shell necklaces, leis, and softly coloured seeds. I have never seen such an enchanting restaurant: it's as beautiful as the Palais des Mirages in the Musee Grevin. Greenhouses with luxuriant plants, aquariums, aviaries where birds coloured like butterflies swoop, all bathed in a murky, submarine light. The tables are glass pedestals in which the gleaming ceiling is reflected; the prismatic pillars are faceted mirrors in which space is infinitely multiplied. We dine under a straw hut at the end of a lake, in a forest, in the middle of an enormous diamond. The waitresses' costumes are a modest version of Hawaiian dress. In cylindrical glasses, which hold nearly a pint, we are served zombies (cocktails made from seven kinds of run poured on top of each other: the amber liquid is layered from dark brown to light yellow). The meal transports us, unexpectedly, to China. The dishes don't have that overly visual aspect that often discourages the palate in America; instead, the look very appealing. And if French cooking is 'thoughtful', as Colette says, this cuisine seems the fruit of a thousand years of meditation.

At midnight we are alone on top of a hill. We sit on the ground and smoke in silence. Los Angeles is beneath us, a huge, silent fairy-land. The lights glitter as far as the eye can see. Between the red, green, and white clusters, big glowworms slither noiselessly. Now I am not taken in by the mirage: I know that these are merely streetlamps along the avenues, neon signs, and headlights. But mirage or no mirage, the lights keep glittering; they, too, are a truth. And perhaps they are even more moving when they express nothing but the naked presence of men. Men live here, and so the earth revolves in the quiet of the night with this shining wound in its side.'

from America Day by Day - Simone de Beauvoir

Book Fair

New Zealand is the Guest of Honor at the Book Fair on Arts.21, Deutsche Welle

'The book market in New Zealand is relatively small. New Zealand only has a population of 4.4 million and about 2,000 bookshops. Two New Zealand writers have managed to sell more than 50,000 books in their own country. One of them is Lloyd Jones, whose novel "Mister Pip" became an international success.'

Rosa e blu

'Pink and blue. Blue rosette for un maschio, pink rosette for una della bambina. You pin them on the door , the main door of the palazzina that gives onto the street so that passers-by will see, so that friends will be informed without having to ask.'

from An Italian Education - Tim Parks

Cambi

'Se vogliamo che tutto rimanga come è, bisogna che tutto cambi.'

'If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.'

from Il Gattopardo - Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

Awaken

'The need to travel is a mysterious force. A desire to go runs through me equally with an intense desire to stay at home. An equal and opposite thermodynamic principle. When I travel, I think of home and what it means. At home I'm dreaming of catching trains at night in the gray light of old Europe, or pushing open shutters to see Florence awaken. The balance just slightly tips in the direction of the airport.'

from A Year in the World - Frances Mayes

Piazza Navona

'Our windows looked out upon the square, which circumstance is a source of infinite enjoyment to me. Directly in front, with its fantastic belfries and swelling dome, rises the church of St. Agnes; and sitting by the open window, I note the busy scene below, enjoy the cool air of morning and evening, and even feel the freshness of the fountain, as its waters leap in mimic cascades down the side of the rock.'

from Outre-Mer - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

British Guiana

'That ride remains one of the most vivid memories of the cattle trail. Checked and annoyed as I was, the splendour of the evening compensated for everything. Out on the savannah there is no twilight; the sun goes down blazing on the horizon, affording five or ten minutes of gold and crimson glory; then darkness. In the forest night opens slowly like a yawn. The colours gradually deepened, the greens pure and intense to the point of saturation, the tree trunks and the bare earth glowing brown; the half shades, the broken and refracted fragments of light all disappeared and left only fathomless depths of pure colour. Then dusk spread; distances became incalculable and obstacles detached themselves unexpectedly and came suddenly near; and while it was almost night in the trail the tops of the trees were still ablaze with sunlight, till eventually they too darkened and their flowers were lost. And all the pattering and whistling and chattering of the bush at night broke out loudly on all sides, and the tired little horse - who was doing a double journey and, being always on the move - suddenly pricked his ears and raised his head and stepped out fresh as though his day were only just beginning.'

from Ninety-Two Days - Evelyn Waugh

Viaggio

'Amatevi come compagni di viaggio, con questo pensiero d'avere a lasciarvi, e con la speranza di ritrovarvi per sempre.'

'Love each other as companions on a journey, with the thought that you will have to part from one another, and with the hope of being united forever.'

from I promessi sposi by Alessandro Manzoni

Trains

'Italians are entirely without any commitment to order. They live their lives in a kind of pandemonium, which I find very attractive. They don't queue, they don't pay their taxes, they don't turn up for appointments on time, they don't undertake any sort of labour without a small bribe, they don't believe in rules at all. On Italian trains every window bears a label telling you in three languages not to lean out of the window. The labels in French and German instruct you not to lean out, but in Italian they merely suggest that it might not be a good idea.'

from Neither Here Nor There - Bill Bryson

Charm

'It was dirty, but it was Rome; and to anyone who has long lived in Rome even its very dirt has a charm which the neatness of no other place ever had. All depends, of course, on what we call dirt. No one would defend the condition of some of the streets or some of the habits of the people. But the soil and stain which many call dirt I call colour, and the cleanliness of Amsterdam would ruin Rome for the artist. Thrift and exceeding cleanliness are sadly at war with the picturesque.'

from Roba di Roma - William Wetmore Story

Parking

'I love the way the Italians park. You can turn any street corner in Rome and it looks as if you've just missed a parking competition for blind people. Cars are pointed in every direction, half on the pavements and half off, facing in, facing sideways, blocking garages and side streets and phone boxes, fitted into spaces so tight that the only possible way out would be through the sun roof.'

from Neither Here Nor There - Bill Bryson

The Central Cloister of Museo Nazionale Romano

'Even in December it is full of flowers - canea and chrysanthemum, rose and iris, heliotrope and purple veronica. Broken statues and columns peep from among the greenery; here the marble bust of a dead Roman is crowned by a spray of tiny red roses which have not realized in this sheltered pleasaunce that winter has come; there some broken amphorae are half hidden in a clump of yuccas. In the heart of the garden where the four paths meet is a lichen-covered fountain almost smothered in waterplants, which never tires of singing to a dying cypress, the only one of all the five planted by the hand of Michelangelo himself, which still stretches its tired old limbs in the sunshine.'

from The Colour of Rome - Olave Potter

Exhilaration of Spirit

'Rome is the noisiest capital in Europe. The Italians love noise. It seems to give them an exhilaration of spirit. It is their way of expression, vitality, dynamic purpose, and the joy of life. The motorcar has given them an easy means of indulging in this form of self-expression, and they make full use of it. Their motor horns have a strident and ear-piercing timbre not possessed by any other make of horn in any other country.'

from European Journey - Philip Gibbs

Tea

'In London, love and scandal are considered the best sweeteners of tea.'

from Tom Jones - John Osborne

Infinite London

'London goes beyond any boundary or convention. It contains every wish or word ever spoken, every action or gesture ever made, every harsh or noble statement ever expressed. It is illimitable. It is Infinite London.'

from London: The Biography - Peter Ackroyd