I’d been to other eastern European capitals, but Vilnius felt different. Dalia and I had been living together for about two years, but I’d never been to her home city, Vilnius. I first came to Lithuania nearly 30 years ago. Tim Parks Lithuaniaĭexter Fletcher and wife Dalia getting married in Vilnius. “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons,” moaned Alfred J Prufrock, as if it was a defeat. And in the 40 years since, with the one terrible hiatus of the Covid lockdown, this aspect of Italy has never ceased to be a consolation. But the carabiniere with his machine gun beside me at the bar was all smiles and solicitude. In town, the Red Brigades had kidnapped an American general, there were road blocks on the streets. Much of my Italian I learned in cafes, over the pages of the Arena di Verona, trying to get my mind around Andreotti and Craxi, Christian Democracy and communism. Leaving newspapers freely available on the tables. Placing a small glass of mineral water beside. How do Italians produce your coffee so much faster than elsewhere, so much stronger and better, with so much less fuss? Perhaps playing with the milk jug to trace a heart on your foam. Outside, everything seemed hostile, hurried, hot and humid but, inside, decorum, polished surfaces, pretty pastries, rapid service. I remember particularly the Pasticceria Maggia in Montorio Veronese, a village near Verona. The carabiniere with his machine gun beside me at the bar was all smiles and solicitude Amid the confusion of my first months in Italy, struggling to learn the language, to get a permesso di soggiorno, a certificato di residenza, to find work and, even harder, to get paid for work, the ritual of morning coffee quickly presented itself as an oasis of pleasure in a misery of bureaucracy and graft. The years with chocolate on my foam, and the years without. The years of the brioche, the risino, the treccina.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |