2003: La Dolce Vita Loca.
by Carl Russo
II.
This is exactly the Roman view I wanted to wash dishes to.
I was unable to sell the article that appears on the previous page, which is just well. The events I described made a swell crescendo to my last stay in Rome, and make, I hope, a good grabber for this Europhile entry. At any rate, the pressure is off and I can offer some scattered notes that led up to the blackout. Don't forget: click the pics to enlarge them.
My decision to poke around this museum of a city meant spending twice as much on accommodations than if I'd wandered the Italian countryside. Two-and-a-half weeks was the longest I could extract euros from the bank machine before hitting tilt, mainly because I just had to stay in the historical center. But that was enough time to start feeling like a local, a roman-tic illusion any real local living in a peripheral housing project would laugh at. Let 'em laugh, I say!
My apartment in the Campo de' Fiori neighborhood was not luxurious, just almost fantastic. It stood behind one of those giant wooden doors to a palazzo that always seems off-limits to an outsider. The exterior was patched with 500 years of plaster and paint in that picturesque state of ruin the Italians call decadente. But the interior looked like a cottage suite that Lauren Hutton might keep in Taos. Bone white with unfinished wooden floors and a beam ceiling. A glance out the kitchen window centered a mass of terra cotta and TV antennae pointing at every angle like crosses in a soggy graveyard. That's the stuff!
My first step to becoming a local also satisfied a long craving for authentic pasta, as four years had passed since my last Italian sojourn. I fell in with a group of blue-collars entering a modest trattoria for lunch. The men were wearing what looked like fishing vests over their coveralls, and they were speckled with plaster or paint—no doubt patching the palazzi.
Thursday is generally gnocchi day in Italy, so I ordered a plate like everyone else, then had a tasty fish while the guys chewed on pig jowls or calf's intestine or you name it. This custom goes back to the days when nearby Testaccio was full of slaughterhouses. The peasants of yore settled for the "fifth" fourth of an animal. After the beast was quartered for sale, they made do with the extra bits. I wasn't ready to feel that local yet.
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