Watching the Wheels for a Bit

We've enjoyed a low-key month in Lucca, where cultural events are always going on, but finding them is the challenge. When you do find the events, though, they are usually charming. Meanwhile, we successfully ordered a cake for Sam's birthday, despite likely violating numerous Italian conventions about celebratory sweets. Sam also has entered the last few weeks of her Italian language class and we're contemplating how to spend our summer.

The Quixotic Birthday Cake Quest

The most celebratory thing we typically do for Sam's birthday is get a simple, moist yellow cake with buttercream frosting. But southern Europe is not a place to find such a classically American sweet. We don't yet have the necessary bakeware to prepare a cake, so we steeled our nerves to try to explain to the nice women at the excellent bakery shop here what Sam wanted. But in the social media age, even in traditional Italy, celebratory cakes have ceded deliciousness to photo appeal. In (limited, poor) Italian, Sam explained that she wanted something more like a homemade cake and not an elaborate construction in architectural fondant. I think the bakery staff wondered why we'd come to a specialty shop for this but they were polite and listened. We eventually agreed on a yellow layer cake comprised of two different types of cake they already offer and that we've previously enjoyed. When I came back on Sam's birthday to get the cake, the woman at the counter pulled out the cake and it looked nice--and simple--as we requested. But she gave me a distressed look and asked "Don't you want something pink on it?" I had to ask what she meant and soon enough, she had returned with some attractive pink frosting flowers freshly added to the top. Clearly, this cake looked too humble, in her opinion, to serve as a celebration cake.

The next step she performed is perhaps the most hypnotic ritual in an Italian bakery. I'm surprised there aren't online viral videos, like those ridiculous whispery product videos, for this next step. At any nice Italian bakery, if you are taking away something, they methodically swaddle it. She cut multiple cardboard strips to carefully wrap around the cake, and then did the same creating a sort of helmet to protect the top of the cake. This cardboard exoskeleton is then wrapped in parchment paper, a long ribbon is carefully tied around this, and then she taped a cute little sack holding the birthday candle to the ribbon. This same ritual, minus the candle bit, is undertaken if you order 2 or 3 small pastries--which are absurdly cheap for the quality--and you still leave with a lovely package.

The cake was good, but we'd clearly pushed them out of their comfort zone by asking for something so basic. Sam's homemade cakes are definitely better. Maybe next year it's a homemade?

Finding Festivals

Italians love events and festivals and Lucca seems to have about five things going on every weekend day. There are several online calendars made by expats in Lucca to list everything. We'll often see something intriguing listed, decide to go, but fail to locate the event at the indicated time. A few weeks ago, this happened on the local liberation day (i.e., liberation from Pisa in 1369!), when we had hoped to see the annual crossbow competition. We managed to see a few nattily dressed people in 14th century costume but the crossbow event wasn't where it was supposed to be. For all the precision employed for certain things here, there are a bunch of details that are often left perplexingly vague, such as starting times and locations.

A couple weeks ago, we read about a chance to hear some arias by Puccini sung outside on the walls here during a weeklong music festival. Puccini is the most famous son of Lucca and he is celebrated in many ways in this town, including with frequent performances of his works. Why not go hear his music? So we headed off to the supposed location and feared we'd struck out again because, even though we arrived on time, the musical performance ended minutes after we got there. Soon a guy in the audience moved to the front and started lecturing, and at first we assumed it was about the music, but then we started hearing Italian words for trees and plants and Greek mythology as he spoke to the rapt Italian audience. The next thing we knew, he stopped talking and the whole group walked maybe 500 feet to stand underneath a different canopy of trees. Was it over? Little did we know, but the event was structured as a botanical walk, with the speaker describing the history, mythology, and health and medicinal properties of plants along the Lucchese walls; and his talk was punctuated with lovely Puccini arias at many of the walking stops. At one of the stops, the botanist had to pause because of the noise created by a passing parade of people who carried banners celebrating a saint. The entire scene almost couldn't be more Italian. Who thinks to combine botany with exquisite operatic music outdoors? Tuscans do!

School's Almost Out for Summer, but First, Food Party!

Sam's been taking an Italian language course for the past couple months at the local adult learning center. She loves her class and the two teachers. Unbelievably, this class costs 20 euros in total. In the fall, I'll take the course she's currently taking and she'll move on to the next level language course. Sam and her fellow students learned the other day that there's an all-day party(!) scheduled to celebrate their graduation after written and oral exams take place in a couple weeks. They'll also get to go on a tour of Lucca led by a local expert.

It's heartwarming to hear how Italians take joy in food and activities. Much of Sam's language class circles back to food topics without any sense of guilt for all the food-talk. With more physical and cultural distance, maybe we're getting a better sense of the Puritanical mindset in our home country. Italians have an unbridled joy about things like food. They want to know what you ate on your vacation and they insist on details! On the other hand, it's easy to imagine an American voice guiltily saying about a meal, "I know, I know, I shouldn't have eaten that and I'm going on a diet immediately." Yet Italians are more likely to be normal weight than Americans. I think the Italians have a much better mindset about life joys. They are onto something with this dolce vita thing.

Waterworld

The one recent trip we've done was a pleasant bus ride to the coast and to the town of Torre del Lago Puccini. There's an attractive spot, indeed with a tower next to a lake, where Puccini wrote some of his most famous music. We walked from the lake all the way to the sea, to investigate whether we might enjoy some summer swimming there. The town is pleasant but Italians love an "organized beach" which means thousands of beach umbrellas covering the flat, sandy beach. That's not our scene.

We've also gotten spooked by how intense tourism seems already, early in the season. We're contemplating staying put in Lucca for much of the summer since everywhere seems destined to be busy. And maybe we'll be able to crack the code on exactly when and where all these charming Lucca events take place.