Colazione, pranzo, aperativo, cena. Everything in Italy seems to be organized
around food.
Before you
go to work you'll have a caffé con
brioche. At lunchtime you hook up with your colleagues or meet some friends
to have a decent pranzo which usually
consists out of a primo (pasta), a secondo (meat, fish or vegetables) all
flushed away by some water or a vino
della casa. If this hasn't been enough you can go out for an aperativo late afternoon or wait for
diner time.
Even in
Milano many shops - especially the small entrepreneurs - are closed from 13.00h
to around 16.00h. To people from the north of Europe this might seem very old
fashioned. For the Italians however this closure (or siesta as it is called in
Spain) gives the entrepreneurs the opportunity to have a decent lunch. The
decent lunch will enable them to go on until halfway the evening.
During the
weekend lunch becomes even more important. On Sunday families or groups of
friends go out together or meet each other in a ristorante or go for a picnic or barbecue in the countryside.
A few weeks
ago me and my boyfriend went for a long hike up in the mountains near Bergamo.
Since there was enough time we started somewhere around 300m and walked up to a
rifugio a 1000m higher up. After a
three hours walk - during which we hardly encountered any people - we reached
the top. And we were amazed. Not only by the view but probably more by the fact
that the hill-top and the field around the rifugio
was packed by people eating polenta and drinking local wine.
This is
Italy. Even when you don't expect it, you will find food and people enjoying
it. Although people might be critical on the country and the way it has been
governed in the last decennia we could all learn from their traditions in which
food - and eating food in particular - has such an important role in daily
live. After all it is true that Mediterranean
diet and life style makes people healthy and old.
