November 2007 – DEV – The Umbra Institute – Study Abroad in Italy

In order to satisfy the urge to drink hot chocolate in the mountains, Emily Strup, Elyse Akhbari and Hannah Fenlon decided to take a trip to Bolzano, Italy, home of the Dolomites, a German-Italian population (complete with strange accents) and Oetzi the 5,000 year old ice man. Without much of a plan in mind, the girls took off for Bolzano on a night train from Perugia, bringing along all of their jackets, scarves and gloves.

Upon arrival, after walking around the little resort city and trying to decide whether “Gutentag” or “Buongiorno” was appropriate when entering a cafe, they took a somewhat terrifying bus ride into the mountains for some breathtaking Heidi-esque views and a run in with the “Earth Pyramids”, some of the area’s natural wonders. Later that day, after many joyous rounds of “Climb Every Mountain,” the trio visited the South Tyrol Archaeology Museum to meet Oetzi the iceman, a mummy discovered in 1991 by hikers in the Bolzano area. Though Oetzi’s story was interesting, the man himself wasn’t too friendly, noted the group. Elyse was pleased, however, to find that she and Oetzi were the same height.

The rest of the Alpine expedition was spent trekking along a beautiful river to the Runkelstein castle, experiencing vertigo on a funivia and dining on pretzels and other popular delicacies of the area. All in all, despite headaches received from listening to a new dialect and the subjection to mountainous temperatures, the trip was deemed a success. The only thing missing was a good pair of Liederhosen.

While looking across Perugia’s valley perforated with olive-trees and striated with vineyards, soap suds might not be the first thing that comes to mind.

Students enrolled in Comparative Global Business Cultures class this semester get the opportunity to see Italy from a much different view. While working on a project designed to analyze local companies and their organizational culture and strategies, students visited SACI—a local, family owned and operated company that produces household liquid detergents, nestled in the valley below and just outside Perugia.

At SACI, students first received an informative overview of the company’s 100 year-old history from Lorenzo Campanile, one of the managers and the youngest member of the father-son team which is now in its fourth generation. After an extensive tour of the production facilities, students spoke with owner and company patriarch, Antonio Campanile.

Students took notes as Mr. Campanile spoke about the evolution of the company, explaining how his grandfather started the business making soaps made from natural materials like lard, to the dramatic changes the company underwent after WWII as consumer demands lead the company where it is today; a European leader in the manufacturing of private-label liquid detergents for the large-scale retail market.

The goal is for students to build profiles based on interviews with each company’s managers that will ultimately determine corporate culture and leadership style. The outcome will be a formal report, presented to the company’s managers at the end of the semester, outlining recommendations and possible courses of actions for the company.

After today’s interesting experience students might just think again next time they gaze across the countryside, asUmbria not only has world-class monuments, food and wine but also—who would have thought—soap!

This week saw encore presentations of two Umbra events. First, on Sunday, a group of students headed out to Villa Monticelli and its olive orchards. Though the ground was too wet for picking, students took a walk through the vineyard and got a lesson in olive botany and cultivation from orchard manager Roberto Orazi.

The highlight of the trip, other than the visit to the olive mill, was again the lunch around an open fire. On the menu was the typical fare of olive orchard workers: sausages and toasted bread with salt and fresh olive oil. Fresh oil, unlike its cousin that has been sitting on

the supermarket shelves for months, is like a rock band playing in your mouth. It’s intense and rough, unlike the finer notes of aged olive oil. The sausages were good, but the bruschetta was better, students agreed!

Monday night saw the second Pizza Workshop. Back by popular demand, the workshop was a combination of theory and practice. Staff member Zach Nowak, himself a former pizzaiolo (pizza man), took students to Pizza&Musica, one of Perugia’s best-kept secrets. At this little hole-in-the-wall pizzeria students heard a short lecture on the history and biochemistry of pizza, and then got to try it
themselves. Robert Celentano and Gina Masarik were two of the students who spread the dough and even put in the oven – both made perfect pizzas and the Neapolitan pizzaiolo Felice declared that they had “tomato sauce in [their] veins.” Lecture and lab build up a hunger, and after these attempts all sat down to a dinner of pizza, tiramisu, and of course, caffè.

(Photos courtesy of Sarah Buczek and Mauro Renna)

When you think of Italy, what do you see? Most likely, images of Tuscany, of Rome’s ancient ruins or of Venice’s Grand Canal, of Florence’s Duomo or Milan’s sprawling fashion district. And granted, these sights and places are spectacular in their own beautiful right, but there’s so much more to Italy, so much more to discover for those willing to stray from the proverbial beaten path.

Last weekend, Umbra students Cassie Shepherd and Colette Kopon opted for a different sort of Italy, to travel to a part of the peninsula rarely seen on the standard post-card. Where to? A small, small town called Bezzecca secreted away somewhere in the province of Trento, in northern Italy. “We wanted to go somewhere we had never heard of before, somewhere where there wouldn’t be any tourists…” says Cassie. And that’s exactly what they found!

The first of the girls’ three day excursion into the Italian unknown was spent exploring Lago di Ledro (or Ledro’s lake), literally in the middle of nowhere. “It was really nice, though, to find a place where people expected you to speak Italian, where customs hadn’t become too mainstream or tourist-centric…” After passing a tranquil night in a tiny inn, Cassie and Colette spent day twoperusing Bezzecca’s local fair, whose attendees, aside from two Umbra students, were completely Italian. Yet despite being relatively small in scale, Bezzecca managed nonetheless to put on a good show, with blacksmiths, cheese-makers, and even a horse and cow auction (in cas
e anyone’s in the market).

From the fair it was into the surrounding mountains, where the girls wandered which ever trail caught their eye. And even though the girls had some “difficulty”, shall we say, in navigating the paths back toBezzecca, the views and panoramas were unforgettable. All in all, it was a beautifully atypical weekend…

Umbra student Erica Mouch had this to say about her culinary experience with five-star chef, Eros…

Even his name sounds fabulous. As soon as I heard I could cook with a five star chef – in his kitchen, in his own restaurant – I knew it was something I had to do and something I would never forget. As both my mom and I love food and love to cook, I convinced her it was a good idea. Although two is a good number for cooking a five star meal, three is better, so I convinced Katy Branston to come along for the ride! When we arrived in the kitchen, amongst the aprons and chef hats, we found 30 or so eggs, a guinea hen with its head still on, potatoes and chestnuts and dark chocolate! We were all wondering what exactly we were going to whip up!

With a brief introduction into typical Umbrian food, Eros and his fiancé Manuela instructed us to mix, chop, roll out and blend. After spending about an hour in the kitchen, we set everything in the oven and waited for it to bake. Another hour later, seven of our friends arrived and we all sat down (of course with a glass or two of wine) to sample our goods! The first dish, an antipasto of a spinach, herb and cheese rolled in the lightest phyllo dough known to man began our meal. This was followed by our tortellini (the pasta dough delicious thanks to Katy!) with a filling of ricotta and chestnuts with Parmesan, dark chocolate and truffles shaved on top. Another pasta with a red wine sauce complimented by chicken so tender it fell apart in our mouth filled our bellies and we weren’t done yet.

The secondo, guinea hen wrapped around olives, sausage, chicken and frittata was almost too much to eat, but there is always room for dessert! A d

elicate crescionda, a typical Spoletodessert , almost a crème caramel with three layers was the final dish. Never have we eaten so well! As full as an egg (Sono pieno come un’uovo!) we rolled out of the restaurant, content after spending a night with great friends, eating food fit for a king – slightly astonished that we created it. Katy and I have plans to attempt this meal for our Italian thanksgiving dinner!

Last weekend professor Giampiero Bevagna held his Roman Empire class in the most inspiring setting possible: among the ruins of the “Eternal City” herself.

Friday morning found students taking a guided tour of the Augustinian “Ara Pacis”, or Altar of Peace, commissioned by the Roman Senate in 13 B.C. From there it was on to the architectural layer-cake that is the Roman Forum. As always, students couldn’t help but stare in awe at some of the West’s more timeless achievements: the Arch of Septimius Severus, the Temple of Saturn, or the remnants of the Temple of Caesar… Professor Bevagna then led students to the strangely calm gardens of the Palatine hill, whose central location offered sweeping panoramas of Rome’s entire ancient district. As the Sun was falling students toured the ever imposing Coliseum.

Saturday morning wasn’t spent in Rome, but rather in her once crucially important commercial satellite, Ostia. As legend would have it, Ostia was founded by Rome’s fourth King, Ancus Marcius, some time during the 7th century B.C. Over the course of nearly two millennia Ostia was buried beneath the sands of time, only to be literally unearthed in the 19th century. What remained pays spectacular tribute to the Empire’s past, a perfect image of the classical Roman city. With the tour concluded, students had the afternoon to eat lunch by the sparkling Tyrrhenian Sea, under a warm November sun.

Yesterday night was Umbra’s Coffee Safari – led by staff members Zachary Nowak and Tyler Pace – through the streets of Perugia. Nowak and Pace first did a round of Perugia’s cafés: Sandri (an upscale cafè and pastry shop), Caffè Turreno (the “intellectual’s café”), and Caffè Morlacchi (the university caffè), with the last stop Caffè di Roma.

Locals refer to Caffè di Roma as “lo Starbucks” for its interior, whichseems intentionally modeled after the American giant. There Nowak and Pace gave a mini-lecture about coffee – its history, botany, and economics – before the focus of the workshop itself, the cup o’ Joe. Students indulged in, variously, anespresso, a caffè macchiato (an espresso “stained” with milk), and even a marocchino (a caffè macchiato but with chocolate).

The workshop was the first in a two-part series, which will continue next week with the Pizza Workshop. Those interested should sign up in Via Mazzini.

Yesterday Umbra students Hannah Fenlon, Elise Moyer and Kate Flynn opted to see the Umbrian countryside just as their medieval counterparts would have: on the backs of horses! And why not? Afterall, cars eat gas (not grass) and tend to rush you along a highway, affording little opportunity to take in the surrounding beauty.

The cowgirls saddled up with the help of AltraUmbria, an organization dedicated to the philosophy of “Slow Tourism”, which emphasizes a truly unique and authentic type of exploration, whether it take you to secluded hamlets or quaint trails tucked away among rolling hills. As Hannah Fenlon tellingly notes, “The trip wasn’t what we expected… it wasn’t touristy at all. The ‘business’ was really run out of a gorgeous old house, and the family was so nice, even though we showed up really late as it took us a while to find it. There wasn’t anyone else around, and the lady who took us out ended up letting us ride for more time… We had lunch near a ruined castle, it was beautiful…”

Apparently, the only difficult thing about the whole excursion concerned the horses’ linguistic skills. Unfortunately, they only spoke Italian!

It’s a tie this month! Congrats to Shandra Dohoney from Lebanon Valley College and to Emily Favret from Elon University. Both Shandra and Emily will enjoy a free meal at Quattro Passi Pizzeria.

Auguri!

“The Blues in Venice” by Shandra Dohoney

“A View of Valentino” by Emily Favret

Although the fall break week provided plenty of time to travel throughout Europe and see the sights, Sarah Murphy and I wanted to spend our week off getting to know another area of Italy personally, practice our Italian, and spend as little euro as possible. After searching through several possible WWOOFing farms, deciding upon the hopefully still- moderately-weathered-Sicilia was easy. Our destination, Villa Del Bosco, roughly 2 km from the small town of Calatafimi, (in the region of Trapani) was in the middle of their olive harvest and in need of willing workers.

After 24 hours of continuous travel, we arrived, munched down a quick lunch and tramped out about one kilometer to the near by olive groves. Villa Del Bosco has over 1000 olive trees and while I’d love to say we got to all 1,000, we probably only did 799 (something like that) . Although it rained four out of the seven days, forcing us to stay inside and clean house, we harvested olives for about 18 hours total, yielding roughly 75 average sized bottles of the freshest, greenest most delicious olive oil known to man.

Due to a number of other farms around the area, we would wake up to surprises, such as newly pressed wine, abowl of fresh picked tomatoes or chicken eggs still with a few feathers on, on the table down stairs each morning. The Villa Del Bosco also doubles as an agriturismo and we cooked for an average of 8 people per meal! Thank goodness for the Sicilian cookbooks that were around the house, as well as native Sicilians who treated us to homemade snail soup one night. It was extremely relaxing, we would wake up around 9 each day, stroll out to the olive grove (if it wasn’t raining) work for about 3 hours, come inside, cook a huge Italian pranzo (noon meal), take a siesta until 3:30 then head back out to the grove and pick till 6-ish. Coming inside, we would take a quick snack, lounge by the fire and read or talk with the other workers until we started to make dinner around 8-ish.

We either retired early to bed, traveled a bit to relax in the hot springs, walk around the mountains in full moon light or bake apple turnovers and other sweet treats. We didn’t have to pay for any ingredients, food or our beds for 7 days and nights! It was certainly an interesting, rewarding experience filled with trials (dealing with Italians who did not exactly appreciate or understand American cooking, a lack of running water for a day or so), successes (picking over fifteen 25 kg buckets of olives in thick mud and the Sicilians being sad we wouldn’t be there to make chocolate chunk cookies again) and a week of stories that make us laugh (a characteristic 45 year old German woman misunderstanding our English, hearing string cheese as chicken cheese) and wish we could go back (sleeping in until 9 every day AND taking a nap for at least an hour a day). I would do it again in a heartbeat and wouldn’t have changed my week in Sicilia for all the road trips throughout Europe.

Post by Erica Mouch

Erica Mouch, the author of this blog, is a student from Elon University studying at The Umbra Institute this semester. She also writes for Cafeabroad.com