Daily Life in Matera

In my last post I compiled a list of signs of adjustment to life in Matera. But those were just little signs, part of a daily routine that I am heartily enjoying. It was necessary, however, to adopt another Italian habit—the siesta—in order to sustain this daily routine: I am always running about. Sei sempre in giro, said my room mate the other day, but so it is. The shop schedules here are so varied as to require careful strategizing in order to accomplish basic errands. The fact that, as a teacher, I work in the morning, when most of the shops are open, and come home around 2 o’clock, during the siesta, makes organizing errands even more difficult. Yet I wouldn’t exchange this running about from shop to shop for one stop at the supermarket.

I wake up about 6:45. As soon as I enter the kitchen, I open the balcony windows and start preparing the caffe’. No longer do I use a coffee maker: instead, I use a caffetiera, which is a device with three sections. In the bottom section you put the water. Then you heap the filter with coffee grounds. The filter is placed in the bottom section, and on top of the filter is placed the third section, which vaguely resembles a tea kettle. Within three minutes, the water boils up through the filter into the top section. Before pouring, you must stir the coffee, as the strongest brew boils to the top. Until last week I drank the coffee straight, with perhaps half a cucchiaino (one of those adorably tiny spoons) of sugar, but now I copy my room mates and drink coffee with milk—or rather, milk with coffee. And it’s proprio buono.

My school schedule varies from day to day, though on Mondays and Thursdays I start at the first hour, at 8:15. In the licei, the days are divided into hours: first, second, third, and so on to the sixth. They start one after the other, with no break that I can divine except for the recreazione, or recess. The lack of breaks makes hopping from one school to the other difficult, but fortunately there is a shortcut between the two. And somehow I always have time to stop by the coffee machine in the sala docenti, or the teachers’ room. America needs to adopt this wonderful machine: Imagine a vending machine with an array of buttons, each of which offers drinks like lemon tea, cappucino dolce, cappucino al ginseng, espresso, caffe’ lungo… You put the money in the slot (40 centesimi for a lemon tea), select your drink, and within 50 seconds a piping-hot drink appears, complete with foam, if you selected a coffee.

I adore teaching; but I will save my account of the schools for another post. My working day ends typically at 1:15, though there is one particularly grueling day when I don’t finish until 2:15, which means that I don’t get home until 3, and that I don’t eat lunch until 3:30 (if I’m lucky). But Materan food is well worth the wait! The walk home is about 20 minutes. On the way, I stop at the fruttivendolo across the street from the school, and then, if need be, I stop at la DIVA to buy the necessities for the day—milk, water, etc. Cheese and meat I hardly ever buy at the supermarket (which is supermarket in the most diminuitive sense; Americans blinking might miss la DIVA). Instead, I go to my macelleria of choice, which is a couple of alleys away from my house. I’m sure that the butcher there only says Mi dica, out of politeness: He knows that the foreign girl is going to ask for two slices of chicken, or turkey if she’s really adventurous. (Ah, but I am going to surprise him within the week with the unprecedented request for an entire turkey.)

Sometimes I buy cheese at the macelleria, but as last week I made friends with the owners of a caseficio a block away from my house, in the future I will vary my dairy purchases between the macelleria and the caseficio. In Italy, casefici are small shops where you can buy dairy products right from the source; instead of merely distributing the cheese and milk, the shop owners produce the items on the family or partner farm. Thus far I have not been too adventurous in my purchases of cheese; but I am still intoxicated with the joy of buying fresh mozarella, which comes in many different forms. Of these I can only name a few—nodini (little knots); bocconi (balls of mozzarella); treccie (braids); stracciatella (shredded); sfoglie (sheets)… and so on… Each of these types is for a different purpose, such as melting on pizza or eating in salad. The other day I discovered la scamorza, which is a fist-sized sphere of cheese, similar to mozzarella but firmer. At first, untutored girl that I was, I ate it chopped in little pieces in pasta, but yesterday my room mate showed me how to eat la scamorza sciolta: You cut circular slices of the cheese and place them directly in a frying pan, cooking them until they just begin to melt. You then remove the slices and dress them with olive oil and salt. The texture is neither hard nor spongy in the way that mozzarella usually is. Che buono!

So lunch is clearly an important affair. Even if I’m ravenous, arriving home after 2 o’clock, if the stove is free or if I’m not eating with my room mates, I pull out the pasta pot. Another small change must be added to my list: I am thinking about abandoning the American custom of eating everything on the same plate. Instead, I shall eat my primo piatto (pasta) on one plate, the secondo piatto (chicken or meat) on a second plate, and care nothing for the washing up that must follow. As I said in my last post, the meal is not complete until I have made coffee, which I drink straight in a minute cup. (Though I will admit that finishing one’s coffee in one mouthful is still a strange sensation.)

After lunch, I try to study, but usually the walking and the lunch prove too much and I doze for half an hour. Then, depending on the day, it’s off to the library to study some more or to prepare the next day’s lesson. After 6:30, which is when the library closes, I start the evening round of errands—here to buy the cheese; there to buy the meat; here to buy the band-aids; there to buy the baking sheet; to this supermarket to buy the honey; but to this supermarket to buy the eggs; and to yet another supermarket to buy the pasta. Errands are not conducted on the basis of convenience; I keep a running list in my head of the best deals and plan my trips accordingly. These trips can take me around the city, back to the center, and around the city again. In truth, I often plan these trips so; because starting around 5 o’clock, the city starts to hum with an energy that makes staying inside impossible. Although most people go out on Saturday and Sunday nights, even on week nights the streets are crowded with people leaving work, shopping for dinner, or just strolling.

In the next post, I must tell you about shopping in Matera. Until then, Buona Notte!