Madeline's Plate

In today’s travel section of the New York Times is their recommendation for how to spend 36 hours in Rome. Reading this from my new home in central Texas I was struck with homesickness. But they make some good recommendations: my favorite cemetery is on there, as is one of my favorite gelaterias (Gelateria dei Gracchi, down the street from my last apartment in Piazza del Risorgimento). A trip to Rome is in the works for late winter/early spring. Until then I’ll be writing about the world and food of Austin: a strangely compelling combination of breakfast tacos, slow-smoked brisket and vegan cupcakes.

Madeline's Picks: Brixen

This small town is nestled in the Dolomites between Austria and Italy. The Italians call it Bressanone and the Austrians call it Brixen. By any name it’s charming. The main tourist season is during the winter, when people flock to the slopes, but my favorite time to visit is spring. This is the region that most of Italy’s apples hail from and if you come in early May you’ll see fields and fields of soft pink apple blossoms. I’ve already written about how much I love this region, but it merited one more picture.

*NOTE*: Why I have been so AWOL? Because I’ve (temporarily? permanently? who knows…) returned to the U.S. and been mourning Italy. Besides searching for work on three continents, I’ve been completing some translation jobs and devoting myself to preparing for numerous standardized tests. Just came across the photos of my last months in Italy – the months where I was enjoying life far, far too much to post regularly. This is the first of several photos of my favorite places.

Breakfast of champions: black fig roll from Le Grenier à Pain, goat milk yogurt with raspberries, hard-boiled egg.

One of the widely accepted Wonderful Things About Europe is that so many countries are compressed into such a small space. In late May I took a 2-hour flight from Bologna and found myself surrounded by chic people speaking an incomprehensible chic language, all in the same time zone.

Paris was my first big city – before New York, before Rome, even before Boston. I first visited in the midst of what my family now calls “The Lost Years” (due to the fact that all photographic evidence of the period has been destroyed). At age 11, painfully awkward and unattractive but blissfully unaware of the fact, Paris was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I returned when I was 15 and again at age 20. Every time Paris was its same expensively elegant self. But this would be my first trip to Paris after having fallen for Italy. By now Italy has become my point of reference for all things European and glamorous. I was curious how my first puppy love would look in the shadow of my first real relationship.

After living in Rome, Paris seems not only elegant, but also efficient. The metro runs on time. The buses appear when they say they will. The French still do that whole “strike” thing Europeans are so enamoured of, but at least the strikes are announced on the transportation system’s website rather than relying on word-of-mouth.

My hosts were French and for the entirety of our friendship had been faintly insulted by the fact that I had done a project on Italian cuisine. They gently probed: But perhaps I had Italian ancestry that drew me to the subject? Or I was one of those American women constantly on a diet? Or, they murmured, shaking their heads sadly, I had suffered an unhappy romance with a Frenchman and now avoided all things French? When forced to confront the fact that I had the audacity and bad taste to prefer Italian food, they reacted sensibly and immediately set about trying to change my mind. The result was that in 7 days I visited only one museum. Otherwise the trip was a buttery blur of pain aux raisins, baguettes, croque monseiur, macaroons, and boeuf bourguignon. Vive la France.

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Through a combination of wiles and cunning (my wiles, their cunning) my roommates and I scored one of the keys to our rooftop. Since you are not technically allowed up there, it is a covetable item. On a recent sunny day, I grabbed a Moretti “Rossa” – an Italian double malt that actually tastes like beer and not like watered-down cider – and a sandwich from the nearby 200Gradi. Located in Piazza del Risorgimento, 200 Gradi makes fantastic subs with interesting combinations of top-quality ingredients. All of their sandwiches are named for places in Rome. I had the Colonna, which comes with prosciutto, spinach leaves, mushrooms, and smoked scamorza. Combined with my Rossa, a bikini and a DylanDog comic book, it was a pretty perfect afternoon.

200 Gradi is located at Piazza del Risorgimento, #3 (2 minutes on foot from St. Peter’s or the Vatican Museums). www.duecentogradi.it  Sandwiches run about 4.50-6 Euros and they also sell beer, wine, and desserts. Tables are available both inside and outside, or you can take your sandwich to go.

I’ve now entered my final month in Rome. Just in time for my departure, spring has arrived in full force. Wisteria is in bloom on every corner and one sunny day follows another without end. It is breaking my heart.

I finished my contract in late March but decided to stick around for a bit of vacation. Working multiple jobs made it impossible to see much of the city and I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Rome without becoming better acquainted. Now it’s hard to imagine that in June I’ll be back in the U.S.

In the coming weeks I’ll be posting more regularly (I took a hiatus since my last employer discouraged publishing under my name while working for them). In addition to Rome, I’ll be spending time in Paris and Prague, with hopefully at least one night back in Bologna. But mostly I’ll be soaking up the sunshine and trying to savor every last moment in this insane, beautiful mess of a city.