IL DIPARTIMENTO
TOM GIDMAN’S
YEAR ABROAD BLOG
An extract from Tom Gidman’s year abroad blog in Trieste, where he spent
the Autumn working for the Trieste Film festival. You can read more about
his adventures at www.grandoldyearabroad.blogspot.co.uk
“Trieste is a funny one. Coming here for
a number of months and then trying to
form some general views about Italy as a
whole is quite difficult. It has lots of the
things you’d expect from an Italian city:
coffee, wine bars, pizzerias and mysterious winds that occasionally come and
destroy everything. But then there are
other aspects that don’t quite fit. The
people, for example, are all rather tall. The
traffic is surprisingly calm and organized.
People don’t hang their washing between
buildings. This can make you think ‘where
am I?’ and ‘What really is this place?’
There is almost a dreamlike atmosphere,
especially on a cloudy day when the sea
blends perfectly with the sky to make it
feel like the city is floating around in a big
fog. A recent weekend left me even more
persuaded that I might well just be asleep,
as slightly unrelated activities just blended
together, as they do in dreams, you know
those ones where you’ll be walking along a
London street only to find that it’s taking
you up Mt. Everest, or something. Well
this day started with a walk up one of the
large hills that surround Trieste, the road
gradually turning from suburban houses
into extensive parkland. As we passed a
“casa dei bambini”, apparently where all
the children of Trieste are kept, (no wonder there were no bambini playing football
and/or marbles on the streets whilst
fetching groceries in rustic paper bags,
as I’d been lead to believe was normal by
pasta adverts), we eventually made our way
onto the rocky paths that wind their way
through a small forest, leading to a set of
tram rails on the other side. We followed
the tracks further uphill until we reached
what is known as an Osmiza.
Even the wine is made in the family’s small
back-garden vineyard. They are also only
found in this region, and were originally
only allowed, by the ruling authorities of
the day, to open for eight days of the year.
That rule no longer applies, yet the opening times are still as muddled and sporadic,
making it necessary to check the official
Osmiza website as to the exact locations
and opening times of the one you want to
visit. So, we made our way in and swiftly
stole a table reserved for Marco, on a large
veranda that looked out on to an amazing
view of the gulf, the little armpit of sea
that Trieste nestles in.
The name Osmiza, if you’re anything
like me, probably summons up images of
mythical treasure troves and cities made of
gold with pearl horses being ridden around
by alligators made of sunsets. Well replace
all those words with salami and you’re getting closer. In fact, that’s it. That’s exactly
it. An Osmiza is a small eatery, run out of
the back of somebody’s house, where only
home grown/reared produce is served.
We were instantly rewarded for the
reasonably long uphill walk we had taken
in the quite hot heat (that’s the sun for
you, what is it like eh?) and were eager
to see the enormous platter of food that
was about to come our way. We weren’t
disappointed. The platter had about ten
different kinds of cured pork, interspersed
with chunks of cheese, all washed down
with carafes of red and white wine. To be