Why I Live in Italy

By Patricia Winton

If it isn’t Monday or Thursday, the briny air of the sea tickles my nose as I enter the hall. My preferred entrance is near the fish stalls, and all the piscine wares are laid out at 45-degree angles along one wall. The markets keep the fish together so the scent is isolated, but it isn’t foul, it’s fresh. The fishmongers close on Monday because the fishing boats don’t go out on Sunday, and Fridays are fish day in this Catholic country, so few people buy it on Thursday. Hence, the stalls close those days. 

But today is Tuesday, and the buzz of voices rises above the crowd toward the cavernous ceiling 60 feet in the air. Before I make my rounds, I pause to look at the swordfish, complete with its sword, and the baby octopus, but I settle for some clams.

Most of the butcher shops stand along the wall opposite the fish. Here, chickens, their red combs flapping in the breeze, hang in one stand while lambs dangle by their hind legs in another. The butchers themselves wield hefty cleavers, chopping through bones as they whack out steaks. Or they hold tiny knives to trim away the fat. You can choose the beef (or other meat) and watch it ground before your own eyes so you always know what you’re getting.

Interspersed among the butchers are bakers offering bread and pizza. In Italy, bread and sweet pastries are sold in different shops, and this market has few sweets. I choose a couple of rolls and a slice of red pizza for a snack later.

Nearby you find the salumerie, those magical shops selling cold cuts and cheese. Here the proprietor will lop off a few sausages, slice prosciutto paper thin, or grate a lump of Parmesan in a jiffy. If there’s a new salame, you might be offered a sample. Today I get a piece of gorgonzola and an etto (100 grams—about a quarter pound) of mortadella, the sausage from Bologna that’s the original bologna.

Along the remaining wall, small shops, complete with doors, offer knitting wool, paper towels, and underwear. All the goods are inside the shop, and the shopkeeper asks you what you need then she rummages among her wares until she finds the right needle or ribbon in the exact color you want. I don’t need anything there today.

The middle of this vast hall houses fruit and vegetable stands primarily. Some sell only fruit; some only veggies, and a few have both. You can buy one egg, if that’s all you need, or three bags of oranges if you want them. The wares here are seasonal—no strawberries nor asparagus now. Winter, the displays are heaped with citrus and apples, broccoli and leafy greens. You can buy a slice of pumpkin or artichokes cleaned and ready to cook. I buy oranges and artichokes. “Only two?” the seller asks in disbelief.

There are a few stalls that have no competition. In one, a woman whose nativity scene stays up year round, sells what are known as odori, those vegetables and herbs that give flavor to your dishes. The most common pack is a plastic bag with an onion, a carrot, a rib of celery, and a bit of parsley. Chopped, these veggies make the soffritto, the starting ingredient for many Italian dishes. Another stand sells fresh mozzerella. You can find an array of olives, or an assortment of dried legumes, or vats of bulk wine, or flowers for the dining table.

Perhaps the most intriguing of all is the fresh pasta stall. It expanded to encompass a prime corner last year. Here nests of pasta in varying widths stretch out over about a third of the counter. And just in case the preferred width isn’t on display, sheets of pasta—available for making lasagne—are ready to be cut into any width you want. Shaped pasta in twists and curlicues abound. There’s stuffed cannelloni in a couple of flavors, and ready-to-bake lasagne in three sizes. Stuffed pasta, like ravioli or cappelletti or tortellini, again with various fillings, lie at the end.

Supermarkets continue to expand in Italy, and large shops that sell everything from hairdryers to bicycles now dot the landscape. But it is the markets offering the freshest food that keep me here. Every town has them; Rome a couple of dozen. The one in my neighborhood is among the best. I’m lucky to be able to shop there.

Photos: courtesy Creative Commons

Please visit me on alternate Thursdays at Italian Intrigues.

The New Town Center

By Beth Green

Shopping—it’s not a necessity in Asia. It’s not even a pastime.

It’s become an art.

And since art needs a gallery, every respectable city in Asia has a fantastic shopping mall.

If an excess of period kung-fu movies has you envisioning the goat-and-chicken type of outdoor markets when you envision Asian shopping, you’re missing the big picture.

And I mean the really big picture.

Wikipedia has a list of the world’s largest shopping malls. Perusing this list, except for the palatial malls in the UAE, you see Asia, Asia, and more Asia. Even the Philippines, where I now live, boasts some of the largest shopping malls in the world, despite locals having far less disposable income than do people in the USA. 

A monk checks the wares at an Apple store in
IFC Mall in Hong Kong

While nostalgia and poverty (and tourists wanting to capture both of those on camera) keep traditional markets alive in rural areas, urban Asians flock—no, gravitate, as if being pulled by some planetary force—to the nearest shopping malls.

Malls, oh air-conditioned beacons of comfort, here take the function of what Westerners understand as the town center.

Shopping malls, in China and developing nations especially, symbolize how far the region has progressed in recent years. Progress, prosperity, the future—you can find all of those things between the doors, on your way to the cinema. Or going to the beauty salon. Or visiting the swimming pool, or making for the fitness center, or the driver’s licensing authority, or the amusement park…the whole town is here.

In our first city in China, the assistant assigned to foreign teachers could not get his head around the idea that we wanted to go to a wet market—the traditional, open-air shopping experience where you pick the fish you want out of a bucket by your feet and fondle a zillion strange vegetables, still encrusted with the farm’s dirt. Instead, he took us to shopping mall after shopping mall, pushing us to ride the escalators and bask in the cool air, while cautioning us not to buy anything (“too expensive!”). He loved showing off the city’s new wealth.

Asia also has shopping malls that are completely devoted to single categories of product. I think this has to do with the old grouping of tradesmen to particular quarters of the city. In olden times you’d have the tailors in one district, the silversmiths in another, and so on. Now, they’ve got baby clothes in one five story mall, shoes in another, and—my boyfriend’s favorite—technology in yet another.  If you think it’s difficult to pick out just the right gadgetry when you go to a department store or browse online, try visiting a whole shopping mall full of technology stores and then making a decision. I found visiting computer malls (and their close cousins, camera malls) in China exhausting, because of the crowds of people, stores blasting music to show off their speakers for sale, and floors and floors of kiosks and storefronts packed with wares. I finally had to tell Dan he needed to give me two days’ warning before visiting a technology mall so that I could summon the energy to quash the ever-growing urge to flee. If I was lucky, he left me at home.

Lion dancers bless shops in a mall in Guangzhou, China
during Chinese New Year

Of all of the countries in Asia, perhaps I like the malls in Malaysia the best. Malaysia is a bargain shopper’s paradise, like China, but without the crowds. Once, we were in Kuala Lumpur waiting in line at a foreign exchange bureau in a lower-end mall. Always nosey, I peeked over the shoulder of the blonde woman in front of me in line. She had a highlighter and a five-page list in small font of a “suggested shopping itinerary” from an Australian travel agency. Judging from her notes, not to mention the bags dangling from her bent arms, she was out to verify the whole list. No wonder she needed more cash!

One of the reasons I like Malaysian malls, in addition to the moderate crowds and the bargains to be found, is the food courts. Usually, you can find, tucked away on an upper layer of the mall, a low-cost food zone where vendors sell a variety of pan-Asian treats from small kiosks or carts. I always order either the “economy rice,” which comes with a choice of toppings plus soup, or I get tandoori chicken, with spicy chai and freshly made guava juice on the side.

Is shopping art? Perhaps I miswrote. Shopping, in Asia, is simply life.

The Panama Hat

Photo by Earle Martin

By Alli Sinclair

My first trip to Ecuador entailed traversing some lesser-known trails, thanks to three Ecuadorians I’d met who were on their annual holiday. They adopted me as their pet gringa, and I happily played the role, lapping up the attention my personal tour guides bestowed on me. (They probably felt sorry for me traveling alone but I actually enjoy my own company at times!) Between the four of us, we had a lot of laughs and created some unforgettable memories.

During our travels we ventured into the many mercados that Ecuador offers, and the ones that impressed me most were the markets just outside of Cuenca, in the southern part of Ecuador. On Sundays, Gualaceo has an amazing fruit and veggie market; Chordaleg is renowned for a wonderful array of local crafts including jumpers (pullovers), scarves, and Sigsig not only has a strange, modern metallic piece of art in the town’s centuries old plaza, but it is the perfect place to learn about the history of the Panama hat.

Yes, the Panama hat. We’re not in Panama, Dorothy, we’re talking Ecuador.

Legend has it that President Theodore Roosevelt brought the hats to popularity in North America when photos were taken of him wearing one while visiting Panama. But that’s not the only story. As the hats were shipped through the Isthmus canal in Panama before they hit the shores around the world, someone mistakenly thought the hats came from the country famous for its canal. Who knew one person’s misunderstanding would lead to the rest of the world following suit?

Ecuadorians call their hats sombreros de paja toquilla (hats of toquilla straw), but they’re used to tourists referring to them as a Panama hat. Available in a range of colours for both men and women, the Panama offers perfect for protection from the sun and makes a pretty awesome souvenir that will lead to some interesting conversations upon return to your home country.

The fedora is the most common style of Panama hats in North America, but in the U.K., the Optimo is the most popular. Another style, known as the Teardrop, or C-crown, is shaped like a tear when viewed from above and it’s worn with the point of the tear position at the front of the head. This particular hat is very popular with the indigenous women in the region of Cuenca.

Other styles include the Breton, Plantation (Gambler), Snap brim, Pork Pie (think Buster Keaton), Stingy brim, Boater and the Trilby.

As with most crafts, the price boils down to the quality of product. Although there doesn’t appear to be an official grading system, vendors will happily inform you of theirs and after a few hours wandering in and out of shops and stalls, you’ll get a feel as to what is good quality and what isn’t. Most people look for the fineness of the weaving, which can definitely help when choosing a hat of high quality, but the consistency of the weave and minimal gaps, bumps, and holes are what make the difference between a good hat and a fine hat.

Another way people judge the quality of a Panama hat is the whether you can roll it up and pass it through a wedding ring—I kid you not. The first time I saw this done my eyes bulged and mouth fell open. I couldn’t believe what I’d just seen. It can be done but only if the hat is of very, very good quality.  Expect these hats to cost you USD150 or more. Some craftsmen might sell you a USD20 or USD60 hat and tell you it’s possible to roll up your hat, stick it in a box and unroll it again and it won’t lose it’s shape. I’ve seen enough examples where this didn’t ring true. Consider yourself informed…

While the hats in Sigsig are absolutely beautiful, it’s the ones from Montecristi, near the coast of Ecuador, that have the Panama hat enthusiasts raving. Renowned for their flawless craftsmanship and supple weave while remaining strong and in-shape, the Montecristi hats have been around since the 1600s.

Even though the Panama hat is still popular, the art form is dying. In towns like Sigsig and Montecristi, where the master weavers rely on their handiwork to support themselves and their families, the younger generations are pursuing careers in other fields. In its heyday, Montecristi had nearly 2,000 artisans weaving hats, but today there are less than 50, and some Panama hat experts will say it’s less than 20. Regardless of the exact figure, the skill required to weave a beautiful, high-quality Panama hat is in danger of being lost to the world. I don’t know if there’s such an organisation such as Endangered Crafts of the World, but it would be amazing if such a group exists. Hmmm…. I’ve just had an idea. Anyone want to join me?

And for those who are interested in learning a little more about the people behind the hats, here's a mini-documentary that gives some food for thought.

Chaneh Zadeh: Lessons in the Persian Art of Bargaining

By Heidi Noroozy

A couple of years ago, I started out a blog post with the statement that Persian culture is not for the socially lazy. At the time I was writing about taaroff, the Persian practice of extreme etiquette, but my observation also extends to shopping In Iran. Especially when it comes to the bazaar, where prices are negotiable and vendors keen students of human nature. At a glance, they can tell which customer will be an easy sell, which a tough bargainer, and when they can squeeze yet another few thousand rials out of an exhausted foreigner unused to the rigors of a typical Persian business transaction. You can read about my adventures in buying carpets here.

That shopping trip was an early lesson in the fine and often confusing art of Persian bargaining, which in Farsi is called chaneh zadan. Roughly translated, this means to "hit with the chin,” a reference to the way person's chin moves up and down while talking—or negotiating a business transaction. Naturally, I wanted to practice my new skills. The number one rule: Never let the vendor suspect that you are in the least interested in his wares. Even if you have spotted an item you simply know you can’t live without, the proper attitude to assume is one of distain. Pretend that another shop two doors down carries far superior merchandise. Otherwise, the price will soar into the stratosphere.

Rarely, though, do I get a chance to practice chaneh zadan. My husband’s Tehran relatives consider it a serious breach of hospitality to let me do my own dickering at the bazaar. What’s more, they know I would crumble in the face of a seasoned bazaari’s far superior skill. And when I watch the locals engage in this fascinating Persian ritual, I have to admit they are right. I lack the requisite finesse. But that doesn’t stop me from studying the art on every trip to Iran.

On a recent shopping venture, this time to find a pair of earrings at the Tajrish gold bazaar, my sister-in-law and I trekked through its dazzling halls for close to four hours before we settled on the right pair of danglers. It really does take that long to shop for gold, which is why we leave the men at home. They lack the stamina needed to do a proper job of it.

We popped in and out of postage stamp-sized shops, examining various styles and models, holding them up to my ears (careful not to dislodge my headscarf and reveal too much hair). Each time, my sister-in-law would thank the merchant and drag me out of the store.

“But I liked that one,” I’d protest.

“That man would never give us a good price,” she’d reply. How could she tell? Had I missed the demonic gleam of greed in the man’s eyes, or had he spotted the longing I couldn’t quite keep out of mine?

When we finally found the perfect combination of gold filigree earrings and bazaari to sell them to us, the chaneh zadan could begin.

The vendor named his price.

“Gerooneh (that’s too much)!” my sister-in-law said, the upward lift in her voice conveying just the right amount of mild outrage. (I need to practice that.)

The bazaari typed a number into his digital calculator and pushed it across the counter.

My designated negotiator cleared the screen and entered a slightly lower number in return.

The two of them pushed the calculator back and forth a few more times, adjusting the numbers up and down. Finally, they reached a figure both could live with. It was only about 30,000 rials lower than the original price, a difference of just a few dollars, but that had a lot to do with the way gold is sold. It has a two-tiered price. The larger, non-negotiable portion, is determined by weight, based on the global market price of gold on the day of sale. The variable portion is the cost of workmanship and the merchant’s profit.

They both turned to me to approve the final figure, which I did with a mix of admiration and relief. To me, an American used to fixed prices and quick sales transactions, the slight price reduction hardly seemed worth the effort that went into the deal, fascinating as it was to watch.

Which brings me back to that statement from my earlier blog: Persian culture is not for the socially lazy. Even a shopping trip is an opportunity for lengthy social interaction. Without the give and take of chaneh zadan, neither party can feel completely satisfied with the deal they’ve struck. I have some lovely new earrings to prove it.

Retail Therapy, Bangalore Style

A Hermes display window in Bangalore, India

You know how it is when you're stressed and homebound, worrying about a sick family member. Well, hopefully you don't know, but for a period of a couple years, that was us, visiting India with our two little ones to spend time with a loved one whose days, we knew, were numbered. Our one simple diversion was taking an autorickshaw into the city to do some window shopping, off Commercial Street,  Brigade Road, or MG Road. (Side note, the initials of that last one stand for Mahatma Gandhi, who, wherever he is, is surely cringing at the excessive consumerism now associated with his name).

In the city's northwest suburb of Malleshwaram, there's also this narrow little street, known as 8th Cross, skewered by a maze of bustling side lanes, all thick with crowds of locals trolling the tiny shops, little kiosks, and sidewalk hawkers that satisfy most all of their shopping needs. We didn't need much, just a diversion, something to get us out of the house for a bit, and let the kids buy some trinkets and unusual little novelties. But we all enjoyed taking in the street scenes, flower art and fruit vendors among them. Take a gander.