Gardening

Tyler has been hard at work in the garden this spring!  We have had some beautiful flowers, including some tulips back in April and now some assorted pots along the front walk.  Tyler also planted various seeds and starts for the vegetable garden.  Out front along the driveway, we now have the beginnings of zucchini, lettuce, basil, watermelon, and tomatoes.  There is a small patch of herbs along the front walk like last year, and the strawberries are returning too.  More tomatoes are of course in the works... 26 plants are already in the ground, but there are probably another 50 (!!!) growing indoors right now, and those should go into the ground before too long.  We had peas too (thanks to our neighbor), but those have already been harvested and eaten.  Yum!!

Here are a few pics...

Garden Spring 2012

Sicily in the Springtime

At the end of April, we took a long weekend and went to Sicily for about 5 days.  May 1 is a national holiday (aka, no work), and April 26 was Lynne's 30th birthday (eek!) so we figured it was a good excuse for a short vacation.  On the 27th we packed up Skodie with our camping gear and hit the road.  We drove down to the tip of Calabria where you can take a car ferry across the straights of Messina to reach Sicily.  We then drove along the eastern coast to a campsite south of Siracusa, outside of the town of Avola.  The entire drive only took about 5 hrs, ferry and all.  Not bad!

We spent the weekend touring around some great towns like Siracusa, Noto, Modica, and Scicli.  We also went on a few hikes: one in a nature reserve south of Avola, one in the area where the ancient city of Noto used to be located, and another in a canyon outside Ispica.  We ate great food, including cannoli (Lynne's favorite) and granita (which is similar to gelato, but more ice and less cream, and it's completely different in Sicily than anywhere else we've tried it).  We also went to the beach every day and swam in the sea (which is still cold, but swim-able).

Overall, it was one of the best trips we've taken since moving to Italy. If you're looking for a spring travel destination, we recommend Sicily.  The wildflowers are gorgeous, the temperature is perfect, and tourist season hasn't really begun so crowds and prices are both low.  For us, it was paradise :)  Here are some of our photos... Enjoy!

Sicily April 2012

Trip to Paris in March

Hi again,
So we are waaaaay behind in posting things on the blog as of late. But we have done some traveling in the last few months, and we're finally getting around to posting a few pictures!

In early March, we had the wonderful opportunity to go to Paris and meet up with our friends Erin and Eric for a few days.  Tyler and I flew directly from Naples to Paris and spent a couple days wandering around the city by ourselves.  Then we met up with Erin and Eric, who let us stay with them for a few days at Erin's law firm's flat.  We honestly can't thank them enough for inviting us to join them!  We saw many of the great sites of the city, ate great food, walked a ton, and overall had a fantastic trip.  Here are just a handful of our photos.  Erin and Eric have a much nicer camera, so we left a lot of the picture taking to them.  But we still managed to get a few shots of our own.

After our trip to Paris, we both came back to Cosenza and said "so... where are we going next???" See the following post to find out what we decided on :)

Paris March 2012

Happy Birthday Tyler!

Today Tyler is celebrating his birthday!  He's also kicking off the best, most birthday filled month of the year (or as anyone not related to or friends with the Gratz and Cornelius families calls it, "April").

We both agreed that having your birthday on a Sunday in fact entitles you to a birthday weekend, which we began on Friday night with a visit to the usual local bar with the British guys for some end of the week beers followed by a visit to our favorite neighborhood pizzeria. On Saturday evening, we invited our good friends Martin, Rosana, and James over for a BBQ. Now, most Italians would consider this a bit early in the year to spend an evening outside flipping burgers and chatting with your friends, but when you come from Michigan, if the temperature reaches 70 during the day and the sun is shining, it is definitely time for shorts, flip flops, and BBQ-ing (even if the evening is a bit chilly after all). We were all still hanging out at midnight, so everyone got to officially wish Tyler happy birthday when the clock struck 12.

Today, continuing in the theme of "it's practically summer now", we headed to the coast for our first beach trip of the year.  We even managed to go for a quick swim ("quick" being the operative word) before sitting on the beach for an hour or two to read books and enjoy the sunshine. Going to the beach on April 1... thumbs up Calabria. We hope to start heading back there more often now, especially because for the next few weeks we can basically have the beach to ourselves. And as you can tell from this photo, our tans could really use some work...

Happy Birthday Tyler!! 

Italian Scrappy Dumpster Cats Jump for Joy

Italian Scrappy Dumpster Cats Jump for Joy


Rende (Italy) - Late in the evening saturday, several of Italy's famous scrappy dumpster cats were said to be making loud noises in the night. Five or six different cats were observed jumping about, meowing loudly, and taunting cars as they drove by. When interviewed, one cat said, "We are scrappy. We are Italian. And we just won our family NCAA Basketball Pool!"

Authorities confirmed that several cats were arrested, but as of this morning charges had yet to be filed.

"I don't know what happened, " said one confused neighbor, "...things seemed to be normal, I saw one cat eating some leftover pasta in the dumpster, and another was eating some rotting pizza, then, all of a sudden, they just started freaking out. It was as if they had won the Mega-Millions lottery."

Another witness was surprised to see a group of cats burning a couch. "I'm originally from Lansing, MI, so I am used to rioting and burning couches, but these cats were out of control," said local resident, Dr. Lynne Gratz. "But these cats are just too much, normally all they do is jump out of dumpsters and surprise me, but last night I couldn't sleep because these cats were partying well into the night. Now excuse me while I go eat this cannoli."

Officials from the Gratz Family Spectacular refused comment. "We in no way condone the actions of our 2012 NCAA basketball pool winner, and the opinions expressed by the Scrappy Italian Dumpster Cats are separate from the pool, its members, and its sponsors," said one official who insisted on anonymity. "We try our best to make this a fun, happy, exercise - but these cats just get too excited."

While the cats partied all night, the following morning was eerily calm, and only one cat was visible to confused bystanders. "I came down here to see some scrappy Italian dumpster cats tearing shit up," said one local boy, "but all I see are empty beer bottles and pizza boxes, these cats are crazy."

Copyright 2012, Associated Press

Valentine's Day Snow Day

It doesn't snow often here in Cosenza, and for the past month or so it seemed like although we were getting plenty of rain, the temperatures were hovering just above freezing and almost teasing us with what winter should look/feel like.  Instead it was just cold and wet.  Last week we finally got a taste of what I consider winter.  On Valentine's Day around late morning, the flakes started to fall and it was not long before everything was covered in white.  As Tyler and I were about to leave the institute to go home for lunch, we were told that there was a possibility that the institute would close for the rest of the day due to the weather. In fact, one woman said she was waiting anxiously for the confirmation from our director in Rome, otherwise they would all be "risking their lives" on the drive home from work.  Silly Italians.  Granted, if your city doesn't have snow plows or have any idea what to do with snow, maybe you have reason to be afraid of a few inches of snow.  Maybe.

For about the next 30 minutes as we drove home and started to make lunch, I kind of felt like I was back in grade school just waiting for the phone call saying that my wish for a snow day had come true.  When we got the call saying that I didn't need to go back to work that afternoon, I think I literally jumped for joy.  My first snow day since high school! Tyler and I enjoyed a great lunch of homemade tomato soup and grilled cheese (perfect on a winter day, especially when you haven't eaten that kind of meal in ages. Italians think tomato soup is weird).  Then we put on some warm clothes and set out into a winter wonderland.  Everything was white and the snow continued to fall hard.  But because this is southern Italy after all, it wasn't really that cold and we were able to enjoy a really nice walk through the snow.  When we got home we had the rest of the evening to relax and Tyler cooked another nice meal for dinner.  It might be my favorite Valentine's Day ever (especially given that Tyler usually refers to February 14 as "Anti-Valentine's Day"... haha).  Here are some photos of our neighborhood covered in snow. All the snow was gone by the next day, but it was pretty while it lasted. And now we're ready for spring :)

Valentine's Snow in Rende

Perils of Google Translate

For anybody who has done any translating (or any travel, for that matter) you are well aware that moving between two different languages all throughout the day can 'fry your brain'.

Doing so with the help of an online translator has improved things, especially at work.

But, BEWARE, moving between two languages is all about the context of the situation, and google translate can fail you, sometimes spectacularly: Pictured above is a "Bando" - an Italian announcement for a project about sheep's cheese in Tuscany. The English title was supposed to read: From Sheep to Pecorino: Traceability of the Milk Chain in Tuscany, Italy.

Anyhow, if you happen to type the word "pecorino" into google translate, you get ALL of the possible definitions of the word, not just those that are more genteel.

You can see by the options that Google Translate presented, that one or more of the possible translations could lead to some trouble. And, of course, that is what happened. Unfortunately, this poor sap didn't check this with a native speaker before publishing, and apparently the announcement went viral.

If you look at the more detailed screen shot of what he or she wrote on the version of the bando posted above, you can see that they missed their intended meaning of "pecorino." Oops!

Of course, they fixed it pretty quickly, but not before a bunch of people noticed and made copies. Ha!

Sheep's cheese, "pecorino," is delicious by the way.