Monthly Archives: November 2014

Balcony view

Living alone: pretty great or pretty great?

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One thing I really love about Torino is that rents here are low enough that I can afford to live by myself, in an apartment with an adorable tiny balcony.

Zero practical benefit but it's nice to say "I have a balcony".

Zero practical benefit but it’s nice to say “I have a balcony”.

Until I got a place by myself, I was vocal about not wanting to live by myself and turn into a hermit. But now I love my 1-person apartment. What changed my mind?

  1. Things stay where I put them. If I put the dishes away, they stay in the cupboard. If I leave the recycling bag next to the door so I remember to take it with me when I go out, no one helpfully puts it back where it belongs. I HAVE THE POWER OVER THE THINGS. (ahem)
  2. I can live in finely-tuned squalor. No housemates means no-one dirtying up things that I want clean or being horrified at things I leave dirty. Dishes? Get washed straight after meals, nothing gets left in the sink overnight. The bathroom? I would say “I mopped yesterday for the first time in ages and picked up hair that came from a friend who stayed a month ago”, but actually: 1. I didn’t mop so much as vaguely wipe a damp cloth around on the floor, and 2. the shocking thing wasn’t the month-old hair, it was the hair that came from a friend who stayed in the summer.
  3. I used to hate the idea of being sick while living alone, but I’ve gained a wealth of medical knowledge through “oh I bet this is a symptom that I’m about to die and no-one’s going to notice I’m gone for weeks”-googling. Pro tip: the (UK) NHS website is wonderfully non-alarmist. Is my little toe very bruised or did I stub it so hard as to break it? Other sites say, “It could be broken! Or maybe cancer! See a doctor!” The NHS says “well, if you’re really worried you could see a doctor, but what are they going to do, make you a tiny toe plaster cast? Let it rest; you’ll be fine. Have a cup of tea.”
  4. No queues for showers, toilets, washing machines, kitchen appliances, use of the living room. Why yes, I think I will have a shower while a load of washing is running and I’m using the oven. Actually, I won’t. It’s Italy, the wiring is notoriously bad, and I’m pretty sure washing machine+oven=blown fuse.
  5. SO IT TURNS OUT that “you’ll turn into a hermit!” is only true if you let it be. Everything else, about how nice it is to have control over the space around you, I would have guessed before I got my own place. But — this is a surprise to me — living alone made me more sociable. I can’t hide behind “I said ‘hi’ to my housemate, that’s enough human interaction for today, right?” When I go out with people, I’m not carefully rationing a store of energy for making more conversation when I get home. I can invite friends around without having to negotiate with other people who also want use of the living room. Not that I’ve become a social butterfly. I’m sitting here on a Sunday night wearing tracky dacks, eating crisps from the bag and updating my blog. But for an introverted bod like me, that’s exactly what I need to be doing so that I can go back out on a Monday morning and talk to people.
  6. And yeah, the balcony:

    20141022_083155

    Morning views have since been replaced by constant grey drizzle. Bah.

Giardini Reali, Turin, in autumn

Our weird cultural notions, or: Why does Zoe have a cold?

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Autumn is slipping past and winter is rolling in; the cover photo of this post is from only a couple of weeks ago and already the trees have lost almost all those leaves.

Late autumn brings good things, like excuses for hot chocolate, and — for my American friends — Thanksgiving, the one American cultural tradition that doesn’t seem to have been imported by the rest of the world. Seriously — why not?? It’s a holiday where you eat yourself stupid and don’t have to go shopping for presents for everyone! ie: The best idea ever. To be fair, by definition I’ve only ever been to “friendsgiving”, which you do with people you choose, rather than as a rellie-bash, so that is probably giving me a rosy perspective on the whole thing.

Also, I didn’t really intend for this to be a post about Thanksgiving, but I feel I should put this on the record: Green bean casserole. Sounds like it would be gross, is actually delicious.

Back on the topic of autum — it also brings the dreaded cold and flu season, and I’ve spent a good chunk of the weekend moping around at home with a cough (which seems to be getting better, thankfully!). How did I catch a cold? Well, the culture I grew up in in Australia tells me it’s from being close to other people who had the virus already. But I’m in Italy now, and if I really want to culturally assimilate, I’m going to have to consider some other possibilities. Like — and these are all things I’ve heard, from people from around Europe:

  1. It was cold and/or wet outside.
  2. I went out with wet hair.
  3. I went to bed with wet hair.
  4. I wasn’t wearing a scarf.
  5. I wasn’t wearing a warm enough jacket.
  6. I was cycling and ended up getting too hot, and my sweat gave me a chill.
  7. I didn’t change out of wet clothes quickly enough after being caught in rain.
  8. Only relevant in summer, but possibly I was exposed to too much airconditioning.
  9. Or any airconditioning, really. Can’t be too careful.
  10. Maybe I sat on a cold surface too long.

Yes, I have been known to say to people, “have you heard of the germ theory of disease? It’s been quite fashionable since, oh, the 17th century.”

This is absolutely not to say “haha, those crazy Europeans with their weird cultural notions”. Partly because I have become a total convert to the scarf theory of cold and flu prevention. I am wearing a scarf right now and I swear it will make my cough go away faster, do not ask me how.

And partly because I have odd cultural notions of my own: alternating too much between hot and cold air will make you sick; drinking a slightly nasty concoction of lemon, garlic, honey and hot water will cure your cold; sugar in any form (except, somehow, the aforementioned honey) will make a sore throat worse; sitting on that cold floor will give you piles, for sure.

So I will wrap my scarf a bit tighter and make another cup of lemon-garlic-honey tea. And maybe not wash my hair until I have a chance to dry it properly — you never know…

Cheap alcohol in Lidl

Notes from my extremely glamorous life.

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Having a bit of an urkkkk-cannot-brain-words-what-blaaaah sort of afternoon, which may not be an ideal time to update my blog! But here are some bits and pieces anyway. Next time someone tries to tell me how glamorous it must be, living in Italy, I’ll be pointing them to this post…

  • I was chatting with Mum the other day, and she said, “You know, even if you got the recipe for your Oma’s Christmas pudding, you’d go bankrupt making it, it’s got so much booze in it.”
    I have one word for you Mum: Lidl.

    It's blurry, but that's a 5.79 euro bottle of brandy. Or possibly brandy-scented hand sanitizer, at that price I'm not sure I'd want to find out.

    It’s blurry, but that’s a 5.79 euro bottle of brandy. Or possibly brandy-scented hand sanitizer, at the sub-10-euro price point, I’m a bit dubious.

  • To try and lift the tone from “Zoe’s adventures in low-budget alcohol”, here’s a photo from a few months ago:
    20140831_180449

    Villa La Tesoriera

    One of the nice things about Torino is that when you’re in a bad mood and just need to walk mindlessly until you’re ready to be human again, there are plenty of long, straight avenues to choose from. I found myself walking up Corso Francia one late summer’s afternoon, which is how I discovered Villa La Tesoriera, the grounds of which is now a public park. It’s very pretty, and far enough from my placethat by the time I’d reached it I’d managed to walk off whatever was making me grumpy at the time so I could actually enjoy it.

  • I’m writing this with a hoodie over my cardigan and thick socks on — it’s a bit chilly this afternoon and I haven’t been bothered to put the heating on yet. To be honest, I prefer extra clothes to heating; I’m not sure if it’s that heated air is too dry or if it’s just that I grew up with my parents and their “put a jumper on” ways, and now it’s what I’m used to.(I once walked into the kitchen to see my mum holding her hands above the toaster to warm them up while she was making breakfast — most people would have put a heater on at that point, right? Sometimes I’m never sure what’s normal and what’s my family. At any rate, what’s definitely less “normal” and more “my family” is that I mentioned to Dad the other day that I hadn’t put the heating on yet, and his reply was, So you’re reducing Europe’s dependence on Russian gas exports, good on you.)

    I guess the limiting factor in how far into winter I can wait to put the heating on is actually sociability: I can’t really invite people to dinner and say “byo blanket”. But until that becomes an issue…

  • Actually, I’m wearing thick socks and about a million bandaids, because I bought a pair of Doc Martens last weekend and so far in my attempts to break them in I have broken:
    1. a lot of skin,
    2. a pair of socks (put a bit hole in one of them),
    3. my spirit.

    The boots remain as hard as ever.

    Also, the one day I tried to wear them out of the house (very prematurely in the breaking-in process!) I had work meetings all day and also had to walk more than I expected, ie, lots of hobbling in front of my colleagues whom I had to keep talking to as if nothing was wrong. Oops.

    AT LEAST MY INNER 14-YEAR-OLD THINKS I'M COOL

    AT LEAST MY INNER 14-YEAR-OLD THINKS I’M COOL

    Maybe I should buy some of the 5.79 euro brandy to drink until I forget how much my feet hurt…?

That time I accidentally moved abroad

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I recently booked some flights back to Australia for Christmas. Inveterate travel cheapskate that I am, I decided to save money by flying Air China, via Beijing. It only adds 10 hours! It’s several hundred euro cheaper! How bad can it possibly be??? That last question is hypothetical, please don’t regale me with stories of how bad it will be.

Anyway, I’ve already done worse. I once flew Perth-New Orleans, via Singapore, London and Chicago. 3 airlines. 40+ hours. Shoving all my stuff into a carry-on so I wouldn’t have to collect bags and possibly miss a transfer. I even got extra security questions at Heathrow due to my weird itinerary.

Also, completely unintentionally, that trip was when I moved overseas.

It started innocently enough. I intended to go to a conference, spend a month in Italy, a few months in Scotland, be home in time for spring. And even that trip was more than I’d really wanted. I’d have been happy to just go to the conference. I’d moved around a bit the previous few years — a couple of 3-month stints overseas, plus changes of housemates and a move within Perth — and I just wanted to stay put for a while. Get some house plants. Give the batch of sourdough starter I’d made a chance to take off.

So when my PhD advisor said he was moving to Scotland and suggested I should also spend a few months there, I was unimpressed. “But I like Perth! I’m writing up, anyway, it’s not like I can’t just work from home if I wanted to. And why does it have to be Scotland, couldn’t you have picked somewhere sunny?”

In the end I’m not as strong-willed as all that, especially not against someone who managed to convince me to start a PhD in the first place because — this is what he said — if I went into industry I might have too much money to know what to do with it, and I’d end up owning investment property. I can’t remember what the arguments were for Scotland, there may not have even been any.

I agreed to some months in Glasgow, a “summer”, if you can call it that in Scotland.

And it was cold, and wet, and for a while there were mushrooms growing in my bathroom, and there was that time the office smelt exactly like a gas leak but it was actually just the drains. And there were the friendliest most sociable colleagues I’ve ever met, and nights spent dying of laughter while drinking whisky in a dark pub, and amazing scenery in the highlands. And I loved it, and with hardly any arm-twisting at all I agreed to stay another 6 months.

So pretty. Except that this it-will-be-dark-in-10-minutes dusk photo was taken at, like, 3pm.

Glasgow can be so pretty. Except that this it-will-be-dark-in-10-minutes dusk photo was taken at, like, 3pm. Winter in Scotland sucks.

When that time was up, the obvious thing to do next — as someone who didn’t want to leave Perth, remember? — would be to move home. So of course I took a job in Torino, Italy.

That was 2 and a half years ago, and I will grant that at some point, the move overseas stopped being accidental. You can’t live in a place for 2 years and not notice that you’re not living in your old hometown any more.

This image maybe over-represents how much sunshine and blue skies Torino really gets.

This image maybe over-represents how much sunshine and blue skies Torino really gets.

I can’t stay here forever, eventually my work contract will run out. What’s next?

Sometimes I’ve considered just not stopping, keeping on moving every 6-12 months. There’s an entire corner of the Internet full of people who’ve decided to perpetually travel. I can see why. Waking up in a city you’ve never been to before is genuinely exciting. And the possibility to re-invent yourself constantly, always being around new people who don’t need to know about your old hangups or unwanted personality traits or past mistakes — if you squint and hold your head at a funny angle, it looks like redemption.

But inertia has kept me in Torino for a while, and I’m glad it has. Waking up in new places is nice, but so is sleeping in your own bed. And what’s even better than having people not know you were a mess a year ago, is having people know perfectly well what a mess you are right now, and they love you anyway. Which, yes, Captain Obvious, but I’m a slow learner.

So I’d like to settle down somewhere eventually. Where? When? Who knows… I’m not sure I’m ready to move back to Australia just yet, but I suppose I shouldn’t rule out the possibility of doing it by mistake.

My third Christmas cake in 12 months.

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I’ve made a couple of Christmas cakes since I’ve been in Torino. The first was last Christmas. I wanted a hands-on project to take my mind off a busy period at work — Christmas was approaching and it seemed a good idea to make something “from home” to share with my friends here, so I emailed my mum who very kindly sent me her recipe. (In contrast, the week of Christmas, I was in Australia and tried to oh-so-casually ask my Oma about her famous Christmas pudding recipe, but no dice. Every thing else she’s ever cooked, she’ll happily write out for me in her immaculate European handwriting, but that Christmas pudding is going to the grave with her.)

Last Christmas’ cake worked out pretty well, especially considering I couldn’t find all the right dried fruits. So when summer rolled along and some friends and I decided to have a Christmas-in-July party, I decided a second cake was in order. The idea of the party was to have an Australian-style Christmas while the weather here suited it, for the benefit of the poor lost Europeans who have such bewildering ideas like “Christmas is a winter festival”. So I made a more Australian-style cake, swapping in glace ginger for some of the dried fruit, another trick I’d learned from my mum. I wasn’t as happy with that cake as the first one — I should have tweaked the alcohol choice to match the ginger — but it was still a good summer picnic cake to take hiking and even to carry across to Slovenia with me on my vacation.

So it’s inevitable: now it’s chilly in the mornings and they’ve put the Christmas lights on, it’s time for another cake.

Pretty lights: a message from Comune di Torino to make a Christmas cake already.

Pretty lights: a message from Comune di Torino to make a Christmas cake already.

No ginger this time, but I’m using home-made mixed peel and sort-of raisins, and I’m planning on a 1-2 week soak for the fruit, inspired by the most touching story I’ll ever read about cake.

Go, read it, see if you don’t also end up with something in your eye, and a hankering for a nice, rich, Christmas cake.

Below is the recipe I use, as my mum very kindly typed up and emailed to me (I’ve included her comments).

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