Читать книгу Roman Daze - Brontè Dee Jackson - Страница 10

I never tire of that delicious feeling I have every Saturday morning upon waking. The feeling that I could go to Piazza Navona for coffee if I wanted to, that I could sit there all day if I wished, experiencing la dolce vita (the good life) without having to pay for an airfare or having flown for twenty-four hours. Piazza Navona is not the latest in a chain of new coffee shops, but one of Rome’s lovelier squares. It is full of flowing fountains, sculptures by Bernini, a magnificent church designed by Borromini, modern-day painters selling their wares, gorgeous Romans taking walks and, of course, fabulous coffee.

It is a lifestyle choice that I never tire of or regret. It is an option that I insist always be present. It is a deal-breaker when it comes to deciding where to live. ‘Will I be able to go and have coffee in Piazza Navona whenever I want to?’ is the deciding question. So Rome, as a choice of dwelling place, always wins.

The principle that ‘if it is for free it is not appreciated’, slavishly adhered to in my consulting business, or the truism ‘if you live near it you never visit it’, reigns supreme no matter where you live. Maybe that is why, despite spending just under half of my life in Melbourne, I have never been to the Melbourne Cup (an international annual horseracing derby) or to Bali (one of the most popular overseas destinations for Australians). Although I can say, probably because of my shame of never having been to the Melbourne Cup or to Bali, that I have sat in Piazza Navona and had coffee on numerous occasions, despite being a resident and not a tourist.

Unfortunately, as I actually am dwelling in Rome rather than visiting it, I rarely have time to go and sit and while away the hours in Piazza Navona on a Saturday morning. It remains a rather nice idea upon first waking but never seems to quite fit with the reality of my life because I always have things to do.

Today, like most Saturdays, I may not get the chance. We residents have things to do, things like Il Cambiamento (The Changeover). When I first came to Rome and heard people saying they spent their weekend doing ‘The Changeover’, everybody else nodding sagely and expressing understanding-type noises, I was a little daunted. It seemed to be a ritual that took all weekend and got such approval when you were the first in your group of friends to do it, and was always followed by a discussion about when the other listeners were going to do it. It did not seem like something people looked forward to.

Although I am a pretty good guesser, and in fact learnt a lot of the language that way, the words themselves gave me no clue. It was always followed by discussions about the weather, so I knew it was connected somehow. Did people change their partners or lovers with the seasons? Did they have one type of partner for the summer and one for the colder weather? It sounded like a big job. Did they change apartments or décor to suit the seasons? I am talking about a population who put on make-up to go to the gym and can change their clothes from morning to afternoon, so I thought anything was possible.

I soon discovered that Il Cambiamento means something quite different. It is a serious and laborious Roman ritual that takes place at the beginning of spring and autumn each year and can take up to a week. The Changeover involves taking all your winter and autumn clothes out of the wardrobe and replacing them with your summer and spring ones.

This changing over of clothes is necessary for several reasons. Firstly, Italian apartments are not large. They do not come with built-in, wall-to-wall robes or dressing rooms, and one or two seasons at a time is definitely the maximum that can fit into an average Roman wardrobe. Storage space is usually provided but is in rooftops or cellars, or a small ‘walk-in’ cupboard provided for the entire family’s needs.

Secondly, the temperature ranges from zero, or below zero, in the winter, to high thirties with high humidity in the summer. You can get frostbitten in January without wool from head-to-toe and pass out from heat exhaustion without appropriate coverings in July. You need cashmere to cope with the first instance and linen in the second. Of course, cashmere and linen require completely different sets of lingerie, accessories, shoes, bags, scarves and hats, which take up quite some space in the wardrobe.

Thankfully, another feature of Roman weather is that it is not changeable within seasons. It is predictable; you can tell the temperature by the month. Once the temperature soars in May it does not change for the cooler until October. Therefore, there is no possibility that any of the opposing seasons’ clothes would ever be needed. When the temperature does change, however, there is often up to fifteen degrees Celsius difference from morning to evening. Sometimes this change of temperature can happen in the middle of the day. When you enter the office it is summer, then it rains and when you leave it is autumn and you barely make it back to your apartment in your sandals and linen blouse.

Il Cambiamento must be cleverly timed, or you risk having to scrabble around in boxes hidden in your roof or deep at the back of the storage cupboard before work in order to be able to leave the house. Of course, this only happens to novices who either do not know that they need to do Il Cambiamento, who have not done it in time, or who do not know that Rome’s temperatures change by the month and who are still wearing sandals in October.

I do understand those who leave it until the last minute because Il Cambiamento is a laborious task. It requires unpacking boxes of summer or winter clothes and packing them away in drawers and in wardrobes. At the same time, you have to remove the previous season’s clothes from the wardrobes and wash or dryclean the clothes before packing them away. As everyone else is doing the same thing at the same time, it usually takes over a month to get your clothes back from the drycleaners. After your clothes, boots, coats, scarves and hats are cleaned, washed, ironed and stored, you can then assess your current season’s collection for gaps and proceed to do Il shop. Okay, I just made that part up, but that is what I do.

* * *

As my husband and I cannot face the idea of doing Il Cambiamento first thing on a Saturday morning, especially when it is being compared with sitting in Piazza Navona all day over a coffee, we go to la pasticceria (the cake shop or bakery) for breakfast and to fortify ourselves for our task ahead. Rome is littered with divine pastry havens that serve excellent coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice, as well as sandwiches and freshly baked sweet and savoury treats. Most Italians go to a bar (café) each morning for their breakfast or at least for a coffee and have their breakfast pastry, supplied by the local pasticceria, there. However, the best of both worlds is to go directly to the pasticceria and have your coffee there.

The taking of good coffee and breakfast pastry in a leisurely fashion while sitting down is a Saturday morning treat for my husband and I. It rewards us for the work week we have completed, helps us shift down a gear, lets us catch each other up on our previous week and plan our weekend. It usually takes hours, depending on how big our week was or how much we have to do on Saturday. We often use it as a joint procrastination technique which we willingly enable each other to carry out.

We have our regular cafés, but today we decide to try a pasticceria near our house. The best thing about a pasticceria is the range of baked goods available. There are light, flaky filo pastries and dense shortcrust pastries filled with cream, jam, custard, Nutella, honey, chocolate, cherries or apple in just about every size and shape you can dream of.

‘Are there any of those cream-filled pastries left?’ a woman asks me, straining to see past me as I stand at the counter. She has just run in wearing the uniform of a public street cleaner.

‘Oh Dio (Oh God), I really hope they have them left!’ she says.

She is satisfied and leaves with a finger bun filled with a Piazza Navona-sized amount of cream. I order a piece of shortcrust pastry, thin and crisp, biscuit-sized, topped with sour cherries cooked in their own juices until they form a type of jam. My husband has his usual custard-filled pastry. We sip our cappuccini and, after a decent amount of conversation, ask each other if we happen to feel like another, knowing that both of us will always say yes. This time, we split a flaky pastry base topped with thin slices of apple and glaze. We sip our coffees slowly and put off Il Cambiamento for another hour. Eventually, there is no more putting it off and we head home to begin.

* * *

After labouring all weekend, on Sunday evening we admire the fruits of it in our ‘changed over’ warm weather wardrobes. The next time I am in company, I too will relate the fact that last weekend we spent the whole time doing Il Cambiamento. I too will bask in the admiring glances and understanding nods. I too will feel smug that I have finished it so early in the season and gain satisfaction from being part of an inner circle, in a tradition I once thought of as bizarre.