I'll Rosticciana You, or The Great Rib Debate

This is a story about an unexpected fight about ribs that turned into a lesson on how to win Italian arguments if you're Tuscan. It was 2004 and I was on a family trip to Italy. We were staying at a beautiful castle in Tuscany, Castello di Meleto, and went down to the nearest town, Gaiole in Chianti, one night for dinner.

There were three groups of people in the restaurant. One single man, a couple, and the three of us. It seemed like a sleepy place, especially with only three tables filled in the rather large dining room.

We perused the menu, trying to figure out what would win this evening's round of Delicious Things to Put in My Belly. Then one of the waiters walked over and gave us the rundown of the specials and mentioned something in the mixed grill called rosticciana.

"What's that?" My dad asked. And with that innocent question, storm clouds quietly gathered.

At first, the waiter tried to find the words in English as we tried to will ourselves to become fluent in Italian. No dice. We had to seek help elsewhere.

The waiter turned to the couple, who were actually native English-speakers. The man was Canadian, from Orillia, Ontario, and his wife was from New Zealand. They had lived in Chianti for 10 and 12 years, respectively.

"Rib," said the Canadian man.

The mysterious lone diner piped up and attempted to correct the Canadian. You see, he was actually eating the mixed grill and proceeded to pick up pieces of meat as if to say, "This is it, and this, and this, too."

Well, this threw the waiter off, so he went to get another opinion from someone who worked there.

In the meantime, the two men started arguing in Italian about the meat. I, again, tried to will myself to understand Italian out of both embarrassment and curiosity. Obviously, I can't tell you exactly what they said, but it was a true argument, complete with huffing and puffing and hand gestures.

When the waiter finally came back, he confirmed that rosticciana was, in fact, spare ribs. My dad, mercifully, ordered the mixed grill.

Soon after, the lone man left and the Canadian immediately turned to us. "So, do you want to know what that was about?"

I shook my head up and down. My eyes widened as I tried to stifle my excitement for scandal.

It turns out the lone man was from Milan and rosticciana was absolutely not what they called ribs there. (Anyone who is Milanese, please feel free to add your two cents if you're reading this.)  Apparently, the conversation became something of a pissing match about the Tuscan way and the Milanese way.

And that's when the Canadian told us the secret to winning Italian arguments if you're a Tuscan. Are you ready? It goes something like this:

"Yeah? Well, Dante was Tuscan."

There you have it. Remind them that Tuscany produced "The Father of the Italian Language" and one of the greatest poets that ever lived. It would have been especially fitting in a fight over the meaning of an Italian word, but our Canadian said he didn't use it. He thought it would have been rude. How wonderfully, stereotypically even, Canadian!

The rest of our dinner was joyfully and triumphantly consumed in the way one does after some impromptu entertainment and learning a new, sneaky insult, especially the rosticciana.

I'm curious now. Have you ever inadvertently started an argument while traveling in a foreign country? I'd love to hear about it. (She says, with eyes widening, trying to stifle her excitement for scandal.)

History Love: An Unlikely Valentine

Since it's Valentine's Day and our thoughts lightly turn to love and buying over-priced chocolate, I thought I'd do a post about one of my favorite couples in history, Napoleon and Josephine.

Two years ago, you could have mentioned them and I would have said, "Yeah, yeah, famous romance, meh, whatever." But then, last year, I read Sandra Gulland's The Josephine B Trilogy and I fell in love with their story. As soon as I started reading it, I could not put the 1200-page brick of a book down.

Gulland wrote them as epistolary novels, weaving together letters to Josephine (all but one of which were real, if edited, versions) and entries into her fictional diary spanning from her childhood to her death. The novels feel intimate and respectful of the past. It brings life to facts, events, and people. It feels as real as historical fiction can feel, without layers of gloss or fantasy. (As a side note for history geeks, she also has fantastic footnotes, maps, family trees, timelines, and a few other special surprises. Love!)

After becoming completely immersed in the story, it finally had me sobbing for the last 50 pages. And when I say sobbing, I mean it. Tissues in one hand, book in the other, ugly crying. I have never cried like that over a book. Gulland actually made me cry real tears relating to that short, funny looking, fiery, overly ambitious, power-hungry, cheating, passionate Napoleon guy. Magic!

So by now you might be saying, so what? They're books. It's fiction. And you'd be right. But the books are based on the reality of a fascinating, passionate, tumultuous, and ultimately tragic relationship. A relationship that was no Disney fairy-tale.

Josephine, originally from the island of Martinique, was widowed with two children, Hortense and Eugène, after a largely loveless marriage to a handsome jerk named Alexandre de Beauharnais. His life ended at the guillotine.

When she met Napoleone Bonaparte (the original spelling of his Corsican name) in 1795, he was six years her junior and kind of a weirdo with crazy ideas of invading Italy. He fell head over heels for her and basically changed her name to Josephine. Her real first name was Rose. Their marriage in 1796 originally was something of a marriage of convenience.

Over the years, he had affairs. There is evidence that she had some, too. He divorced her and remarried an Austrian princess, Marie-Louise, so he could have an heir. This was after Josephine went through many painful trips to specialists and "spas"  over a period of years to try to cure her infertility, which was probably brought about from severe stress when she was imprisoned during the Terror. And yet, an imperfect, but real, strong friendship and love developed between them.

So, I will leave you with some excerpts from a few of Napoleon's letters to Josephine in honor of Valentine's Day--may yours be full of love whether you are in a relationship or not, whether your love is like a glossy fairy-tale or not.

The first three excerpts were found at this excellent online exhibition PBS did on Napoleon. I definitely recommend going there and reading through it thing if you're interested Napoleon and/or his relationship with Josephine.

December 1795

I awake full of you. Your image and the memory of last night's intoxicating pleasures has left no rest to my senses.

Sweet incomparable Josephine, what a strange effect you have on my heart. Are you angry? Do I see you sad? Are you worried? My soul breaks with grief and there is no rest for your lover; but how much the more when I yield to this passion that rules me and drink a burning flame from you lips and your heart? Oh! This night has shown me that your portrait is not you!

You leave at midday; in three hours I shall see you.

Meanwhile, my sweet love, a thousand kisses; but do not give me any, for they set my blood on fire.

B.

In November of 1796, Napoleon was away and hearing rumors of Josephine's infidelity. He wrote:

I don't love you anymore, on the contrary, I detest you. You are a vile, mean, beastly slut. You don't write to me at all; you don't love your husband; you know how happy your letters make him, and you don't write him six lines of nonsense. . .

Soon, I hope, I will be holding you in my arms; then I will cover you with a million hot kisses, burning like the equator.

Eventually, Napoleon needed to find an heir. This pressure and his increasingly open affairs sparked marital problems and jealousy between the two. He wrote to his brother Lucien "Josephine is decidedly old and as she cannot now have any children she is very melancholy about it and tiresome[. . .]the woman cries every time she has indigestion, because she says she believes she has been poisoned by those who want me to marry someone else. It is detestable." They divorced on January 10th in 1810.

Josephine wrote in her divorce statement:

The dissolution of my marriage will make no change in the feelings of my heart. The Emperor will always find in me his truest friend.

(From page 1106 of The Josephine B Trilogy. A picture of the letter/statement and French transcription are here.)

Napoleon and Josephine continued to write each other after the divorce, he wrote this a week after:

Trianon, January 17, 1810.

My Dear, D'Audenarde, whom I sent to see you this morning tells me that since you have been at Malmaison you have no longer any courage. Yet that place is full of our happy memories, which can and ought never to change, at least on my side.

I want badly to see you, but I must have some assurance that you are strong and not weak; I too am rather like you, and it makes me frightfully wretched.

Adieu, Josephine; good-night. If you doubted me, you would be very ungrateful.

Napoleon.

(From a great archive of Napoleon's letters to Josephine found on archive.org)

Josephine died on May 29, 1810 at her beloved Château de Malmaison, just outside of Paris. Her son, Eugène, wrote to Napoleon to break the news.

Sire, Emperor (Papa),

I am writing to you now with tears in my heart. Your beloved Josephine passed away suddenly. We still cannot comprehend that she is no longer with us. Our distress is made more bearable knowing that she lived a full life, a life full of  love. She loved us. She loved you--profoundly.

[He goes on to describe her illness over a period of days, a problem with her throat, and her subsequent death.]

She was placed in a double casket. Over twenty thousand people came all the way out to Malmaison to pay their last respects. Astonishing. Even the gate here at Saint-Leu is covered with bouquets and letters of sympathy. Really, Papa, it touches us deeply to see such an outpouring of love.

"Tell him I am waiting," Maman told Hortense a few days before her death. Fever talk, we thought at the time, but now it all seems so clear. Mimi, who was with her through that last feverish night, says her last words were of you.

Did she know how much we loved her? If Maman's death has taught me anything, Sire, it is that one must speak one's heart when one can. I love and honour you as my Emperor and commanding general, but above all as my father. Bon courage, as Corsicans say. May God be with you. I know her spirit will be.

Your faithful and devoted son, Eugène

(Found on page 1171 of The Josephine B. Trilogy)

Almost 11 years later, on May 5, 1821, Napoleon's last words were: "France, l'armée, tête d'armée, Josephine."

France, army, head of army, Josephine.

Daydream Destination: Cassis

Last week we went to Portofino which is known, in part, for being a favorite spot of the rich and famous. So today I thought I'd take you to Cassis (pronounced Kah-see, but I've also heard people pronounce the final "s"), a small town on the French Riviera. It's still sun-soaked and Mediterranean but is completely different from Portofino. Someone whose name rhymes with Schmick Schmeeves and who writes those ubiquitous blue guide books to Europe calls it "The Poor Man's St. Tropez."  Hmm, ok. Maybe. I haven't been to St. Tropez (yet!) so I guess I'm not really qualified to weigh in on that too much. But I think that Cassis doesn't necessarily need to be compared to St. Tropez. It has breathtaking natural sites and a soul of its own.

When I went to Cassis in 2009, we were staying in a small town in Provence called Lourmarin for ten days. It was an easy drive from Lourmarin to Cassis, just over an hour or so when we went. So if you're ever staying in Provence or elsewhere on the Riviera/Côte d'Azur, here's a unique town you can do in a day.

The main part of Cassis is centered around the harbor. Most of the restaurants and cafés surround it and offer great views of the people, the boats, and the sea. We had lunch/ice cream at one café and the people-watching was fantastic because it was August, which is high season. It seems like almost everyone in France gets shaken down to the south in August, so Cassis was alive with a bustling mix of tanned, relaxed vacationers and tanned townspeople.

It is easy to meander through the town and along the harbor. There's a casino within walking distance if you like gambling.

There are also some shops along the streets, but don't expect to see big name designers. It's not really that kind of town, and that's part of what I like about it.

This place isn't made for buying, it's made for being. There's a great, free public beach directly ahead of the main street and next to the harbor (this is also where the washrooms are, for those of you like me who wish there were maps pointing out good public WCs) Most European beaches I've been to have fees, so having a nice, free, easy to access beach in a great little town is special.

What makes Cassis unique, however, are its calanques. Calanques are valleys made by tall, steep cliffs plunging into water, like fjords. Limestone forms the ones here.

The best way to see them is by boat. You can choose to see 3, 5, or 8 calanques on a group tour based on how much time you have and how much you want to pay. The 5 calanque tour we went on was about an hour long and was perfect for us.

Tickets are reasonably priced and easy to get at one of the little huts in front of the tour boats on the harbor. You can't buy them too far in advance, so make sure to check out the tour times and then ask someone in the huts when your time will go on sale.

So what is the tour like? Well, first you hop on one of these boats.

Now, if you're wearing a white camisole and a khaki skirt, I recommend not sitting at the bow if you can help it. If you want to get wet and have a great ride, sit at the bow. If you don't have a choice, like us, just be ready to get wet and cover anything that doesn't like water.

Our captain seemed to think that accelerating into the middle of the waves was great fun. It was. I think he must have had some sort of game to see if he could beat his best time from calanque to calanque. Almost everyone at the bow was screaming with glee as the Mediterranean surged over the edges of the boat and onto us. My dad was mostly cursing and trying to save the camera. I was loving every second but wondering who and what I was flashing.

Here is a bit of what the beautiful and imposing calanques look like.

What I love is that the tour takes you into the calanques, which kind of slice through the topography and make little cove areas. In each calanque there were always sunbathers tucked away on slabs of limestone, little beaches, or diving from their boats. It felt like you were stumbling upon a wonderful secret spot despite being on a tour that runs constantly.

Our guide explained what we were seeing, but my French was too rusty to understand much of it. There's something called God's Finger along the way, but I couldn't catch the rest. I do wish I had been able to follow it better. Being able to understand some parts led me to make up reasonable sounding stories in my head. For example, this looks like a troglodyte cave to me:

As you come back into town you get a lovely view of the beach and the cliffs behind it.

So there you have it. A different taste of what a visit to the French and Italian Rivieras have to offer you. On one hand, you have the quiet wealth of Portofino. On the other hand, you have lively, relaxed Cassis, which is less of a fantasy-land but no less fun.

I will never forget standing in the warm sun, trying to dry my clothes, and feeling the salt crystals that formed on my skin as the water evaporated. Teenagers were huddled in groups watching each other and listening to music. Families played on the beach. Couples walked hand in hand. Cassis was wonderfully alive.