New Olive Oil and Not-so-new Frustrations

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Warning: I am particularly grumpy this evening. I will attempt to edit my writing so it does not develop into a frustrated rant, but I make no promises of success.

Again, tonight, my apartment is internet-less for the fourth day in a row. This time, however, it shut down mid-research for one of my three 15-page papers I’m working on. (*editing out three paragraphs worth of “if-youre-going-to-prevent-me-from-travelling-during-my-last-month-here-in-Europe-so-that-I-can-prepare-three-huge-research-papers-and-various-presentations-all-due-in-the-same-week-without-an-English-library-in-which-to-research-you-should-at-least-provide-functioning-internet” ranting*)

…Hey, I made no promises….

Though the unreasonable workload and the failure of ANYTHING in my apartment to function properly have made me less than cheery for the past few days, I did go olive picking this morning.

It was a foggy 9am when we took the bus ten minutes outside of the city where, after a straight-uphill hike, we made it to an Agritourismo. The owner gave us a very fast demonstration and then left us to fill two baskets with olives. After a little bit of work and a lot of picture-posing, we walked back to the house where a spread of delicious Tuscan bread covered in the new olive oil awaited us. November begins the time of the “new oil,” a two month period in which the new olive harvest is used to produce the year’s oil. A strange green color, I absolutely tasted the difference between this and other oils I’ve had in the past.

When we returned, we had a little over an hour before our field study that took us to two Piazzas and the Civetta Contrada museum. All I can say is that, the more I am exposed to the Palio obsession and contrada cult culture, the more I’m baffled by it. As Amanda, our director and a Civetta fantatic so blatantly stated, “all this money and all this work…and all the winner gets is a piece of cloth. Siena has been considered vain, crazy, and stupid for the Palio....and it’s probably true.” --- She said it, not me