Of Cavoli and Kings

Ahh, Italia…

…where questions of what to eat for dinner are passionately debated over lunch, where hands flail about as gracefully and as expressively as the nuances of a person’s voice, where coffee is as dark and powerful as a single, swift punch to the nose, and the time is always right for a little bit of zealous yelling—-in short, Italy is a country of confidence and passion, of commitment to certain good things in life such as food, wine, and conversation, and of highly valued stubbornness.

…which is where I come in. I arrived in Italy as dramatically as I could, sobbing on the airplane to the horror of several Danish children who kept peeking at me over the seats—-crying in joy to be returning to my former home.  Since then, I have been sampling the culinary delights of Italy—-risotto alla Milanese, tiramisú dusted with dark cocoa, gnocci served in a light red sauce. My friend Lorenzo tells me that it is the simplicity of an Italian meal which is so attractive.  “To eat simply is to experience the true flavor of something,” he says, his hands opening in front of him in a gesture of purity. “We Italians never over-season our food.” Dreamy, I know.  This little gem of conversation came forth in a heated discussion on the superiority of Italian pizza over “la schifezza che fanno i americani.” (Translation: the crap we make)

I am here in Milano only until I can find a farm to volunteer at.  I have a few leads, and hopefully I will get situated this coming week in a nice farm in the south of Italy, perhaps in Puglia. I would like to be by the sea, milking sheep…

Someone's Sneezing in the State of Denmark

Greetings from Copenhagen!

This time of year the weather is fa-reezing! The city is beautiful and delicate, but I only see basic shapes and vague outlines as I hurry through the ice-cold streets with my scarf pulled up to my eyes. Coffee shops and bageri (bakeries) are like those checkpoints on video-games that you must reach in time or you run out of lives. My danish speaking abilities are limited to asking for tea or water, and of course repeating tak tak tak tak to everybody I meet (Thank you! Thank you!) I feel like I’m doing pretty well for having been here only three days, and don’t even mind that one girl told me kindly “you speak well, except you sound a bit like a baby pig”.  Apparently danish piglets squeal and make “shk-shk-shk” sounds like I do. It does not help that I have a terrible cold and my voice is raspy and squeaky. 

Copenhagen is very still and spindly this time of year. Spires and thin towers stab the low-hanging sky, and the rivers are flaked with pancake ice and frost.  There is a generally sinister tone to the city, I think, perhaps owing to the fact that Hans Cristian Anderson lived, wrote, and died here.  Any place that can inspire the tale of a winter so cold that it would tolerate the tragic death of “The Little Match Girl” is a dark place indeed.  There is also a tower upon the Church of Our Savior outside the community of Christania that has an ornate spiraling staircase to the top.  The story goes that the architect designed the staircase to turn counterclockwise to enable swordfighting (that was an issue in those days, I guess). However, he traveled abroad for a time and when he returned he discovered that his construction crew had built the tower staircase spiraling clockwise—the wrong direction!  Distraut, the poor architect flung himself from the top of his imperfect tour and died.  This story is eerily reminiscent of other stories that take place in Denmark, such as Hamlet, the Little Mermaid, and the Red Shoes.  “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,” as they say, though only in the winter.

A Beamish Welcome

I am waiting for my flight in a snowy Toronto.  Though there are dozens of hot airplanes roaming around the runways and plane docks, the snow is stubbornly sticking to every surface, refusing to melt even with these giants' engines radiating heat all across the cement lot. There is something decidedly determined about the winter here--as though nightfall at four p.m. has been strictly mandated, and the wily wind that is sending the snow whirling around the airport relishes in its ability to cast a white moss of snow across the landscape within minutes, a facade for gentleness.  In a few minutes, I will be taking flight for Denmark, the first stop in my post-university recess to Europe.
I have named this blog "The Jubjub Bird Weekly" because I see this journey to be a quest of sorts.  For as long as I have had memory, I have had the identity of being a "student", an identification that I wish to gracefully shed in order to discover what I can be as a human being outside of academia.  My friends and family may be laughing at this point, recalling how I attempted (and somehow failed) to dye my hair purple the day after I graduated, went on something of a shoe-buying binge, and gave away 90% of all my belongings in a single afternoon. But despite of all that, I feel as though I am on the right track to discovering Gillian the homo-sapien, Gillian the warrior, Gillian the aspiring-anthropologist-without-affiliation-with-an-establishment/writer. And part of this quest requires me to travel alone, which is what I am setting off to do for the next four months.

So, now, I will take that vorpal sword in hand--that heavy blade known as "life"--and do with it what I will.