Italy

Washing Clothes in Italy

~ Marie Morganelli, PhD ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday, I bought produce. Today, it was time to tackle doing a load of laundry.

I thought it would be simple. My host had shown me the order of operations already: First, select the setting I wanted. Then, select the temperature. Put soap in the dispenser, place clothes in the drum, close the door, and pull the handle to start the cycle. When finished, press the (un)lock button to open the door.

In other words, this is like doing laundry at home.

Except of course it wasn’t like doing laundry at home.

At home, I have the option for cold water and a gentle cycle. Here, I have neither. My cycle choices are:

  • Rinse with spin
  • Short spin
  • Rinse without spin
  • Drain (I think; the Italian word is “scarico,” which means “drain” but in context that doesn’t make much sense to me)

For temperature, the closest thing to cold I could get was warm. Cold does not seem to be an option.

My temperature options are:

  • White cottons with pre-wash 60-90 degrees C (140-194 F)
  • Colored cottons with pre-wash 40-60 degrees C (104-140 F)
  • Short cycle cotton 30-40 degrees C (86-104 F)
  • Synthetic with prewash 40-60 degrees C (104-140 F)

This one baffled me. How was there no cold water option? Should I wash my things in the sink? There’s no way Italians wash everything in the sink. If that were the case, there would be no washing machines.

I decided to go with the options that were as close to cold and delicate as I could get: short cycle cotton and short spin.

I put in my clothes. It’s a good thing I only had a few things to wash. The drum was just big enough to hold my two shirts, one pair of shorts, one pair of pants, two sets of socks, and two pairs of underwear. I maybe could have squeezed in one more shirt, but that’s about it.

I put in the clothes, put in the soap, pulled the knob, and waited for the action to begin.

After a few seconds, my clothes started to slowly spin. Then, they spun so fast they seemed to disappear. Calling the spin cycle a “centrifuge” was spot on.

This stop>spin slowly>spin super-fast cycle repeated for about fifteen minutes, and then stopped for good. That was it. That was the entire “wash” cycle. Except, there was no wash. No water entered the machine.

Why on earth would someone choose to spin their clothes around for a while without actual washing?

I tried again. This time I chose “rinse with spin” as my setting, and this time I got water!

About 15-20 minutes later, I had clean clothes that I hung on a drying rack so big it’s taking up most of the living room, which is hilarious when you consider how few clothes fit in the machine for a single load.

Doing laundry while in Italy: complete.

I still have no clue if I used an appropriate amount of laundry soap, but I’m calling this a win and going to bed.

I have water!
The temperature settings.
Soap drawer
Wash settings
Dry spinning

Buying Produce in Italy

~ Marie Morganelli, PhD ~ Leave a comment

I’m in Italy right now. I came for a month, because, well, because I can.

I teach middle school during the school year and have the luxury of my summer off, so I decided to make the most of it. So I’m here in Parma, doing my best to learn my way around my new neighborhood, practice speaking Italian, and embrace living in Italian time.

Today’s mission: find the local grocery store. That’s one of my favorite things to do when I travel. You learn so much about a culture by what is – and isn’t – on the shelves at the local market. Peanut butter? Not a chance. Chestnut spread in the jam aisle? Absolutely.

Other interesting finds: pesto-flavored potato chips, lemon-burrata ravioli, and fun beverages: Lambrusco, the local wine, and Chinotto, the national soda.

The regular price tag
The sale tag
The scale

I got my things home, including lugging a six-pack of 2 liter bottles of purified drinking water (the pipes are old so the water that comes out of the faucet is safe for cooking and bathing but it’s not advisable to guzzle it by the liter on a hot day). Then I realized I forgot to buy fruit. I wanted to go to the local fruit vendor, but couldn’t find him, and ended up back at the grocery store. I grabbed a few peaches, bagged them up, and headed to the checkout line.

The cashier lifting the bag, and looked confused. I didn’t understand her words, but I understood her body language. She kept lifting and dropping the bag, pantomiming that I needed to weigh the fruit.

I took the bag back, said a quick “mi dispiace” (I’m sorry) and headed back to the produce aisle, hoping I would see what other people were doing.

I saw one guy weighing fruit at a scale. Great! I followed him and put my peaches on the scale after he walked away, only to realize I had no clue how to tell the scale what I was weighing. There were no stickers on the fruit, and no product number (it seemed) on the price tag label on the shelf where I got the fruit. There was only a scale and a keypad with – get this – keys numbered from 1 to at least a hundred. It may have gone higher, I didn’t take notice of when the numbers stopped. I just saw blank number after blank number and no instructions on what to do with them.

I half considered leaving. Putting the fruit back and walking out the door was an option that was available to me.

But in that moment I became even more determined. I was buying that fruit! Those peaches would be mine! There was no way I was letting buying produce in a supermarket beat me.

There had to be a code for the scale. Nothing else made sense. I went back to the fruit stand. I looked at the tag again. And again. I saw the name of the fruit (peche), and the price per weight. I did not see a code.

I put my fruit on the scale, got the weight, and pressed a random number to see what would happen. My button rang my fruit up as l’aranche: Oranges. I had a clue!

The scale was covered with discarded bar code stickers, implying that people screw this up all the time or do exactly what i just did, and leave the discard stickers there.

I put the bar code sticker for the oranges on the scale with the other discards and went back to the peach display. I stared hard at the tag, looking for anything that looked like a code.

I noticed three tiny numbers, each in a separate box. There was a teeny tiny “1” in box. Next to it, there was a teeny tiny “8” in its own box. Next to that was another teeny tiny “1” in its own box.

I went back to the scale.

I put the fruit on the scale, and got my weight. I pressed “1” to see what would happen. The wrong thing rang up. I put the sticker on the scale and tried again. This time I pressed the only other number I had: “8.” It worked! The price tag popped out for my peaches and I headed back to the check out counter. The lady smiled when she saw me back with my properly labeled bag.

I’m still a little embarrassed by the fact that I actually considered giving up. Only for about half a second, but still. Then, on the way home, I found the produce vendor that I had been looking for from the beginning. I bought some apricots from him, no bar code needed.

I have fruit. I have wine. I have Italia. What more do I need?

How to Cure Jet Lag

~ Marie Morganelli, PhD ~ 1 Comment

Friends, I did it.

I found the cure for jet lag.

In the past, I would fly from the East Coast to Europe, or from the West Coast to Australia, and resign myself to feeling exhausted the next day. I would force myself to stay awake and walk, walk, walk outside in the sunshine until I basically collapsed into bed, usually around 6pm local time. Then I would sleep for at least 12 hours, and wake up still feeling tired.

DSC_0710 copy
One of the sights on my post-nap stroll.

I was an exhausted, useless mess for a solid 24 hours, if not more.

On my last trip, I did a little research about sleep. I learned that we need to sleep in 90 minute increments in order to get the full cycle of sleep. If you sleep less than 90 minutes, you wake up too soon, groggy, cranky, and no better than had you never slept at all. If you just sleep until your body is ready to wake up, the result is nearly as bad.

My most recent trip involved traveling from the mid-Atlantic region to Italy. That involved an overnight flight of about 8 hours. Which means that after the in-flight meal service after you take off, plus breakfast about an hour before you land, you really only have about 6 hours to try to sleep, if you’re lucky.

I was flying in economy, which usually isn’t the worst thing on overnight flights, but this time I was on Alitalia and I swear they must have done research on how to design an airplane seat that is the least likely shape possible to support the human body in any sort of recline. They even had non-removable headrests that forced your head into an unnatural position if you were of average height. Or, of any height, quite possibly.

As an added bonus, there always seemed to be a bright light hitting my face no matter which I way I shifted.

In short, this was the least comfortable overnight flight I have experienced yet. I got the least amount sleep I have ever gotten on a plane, despite my noise cancelling headphones, melatonin, blanket, and pillow.

But, while the overnight portion of the trip was a frustrating, sleepless mess, I tried a few

DSC_0066 copy
The sunshine was a great help.

new things upon landing that made all the difference in helping me conquer jet lag.

This is my new overnight routine to beat jet lag:

  • Wear noise-cancelling headphones. Mine are Bose over-the-ear wireless headphones. They are comfortable and the sound quality is great. They weren’t cheap but were worth every penny.
  • Wear compression socks. I don’t know how I ever traveled before compression socks. They feel like normal socks while you wear them, except your feet don’t swell up like balloons by the time you get to where you’re going.
  • Drink water. Buy a metal water bottle (less likely to break than plastic, plus, you know, the environment) and a metal carabiner. Fill that bad boy up at a water fountain in the airport before you board. Hang it to the magazine pocket on the seat back in front of you the minute you sit down. Drink from it liberally. Make it your goal to drink every drop of water in that bottle before you step off the plane. Do this for every leg of your flight. Don’t worry if you have to pee. Dehydration is worse than needing to go to the bathroom. Just drink the water. Plus, getting up to go to the bathroom frequently is good for your circulation.
  • Check with your doctor first, but if you can, take some melatonin before you try to sleep. It’s a natural supplement that will help trigger that sleepy feeling you need to fall asleep. It’s not a sleeping pill, though, so you won’t wake up groggy. But again, I’m not a medical doctor and I have no idea if melatonin can interact with medications, so do your research before you put anything in your mouth.
  • Set your watch to the local time of your destination the minute you board the plane. Don’t do the mental math of what time is it really, just accept that you are on the time of your destination already and that’s it.

    When you get to where you’re going, do the following. These steps are really key:

    • Fill your water bottle with fresh water and drop in an airborne tablet. You can get the cheaper generic kind at CVS or Costco (and probably lots of other places), if you like. Let it fizz, and drink it down. All of it. You’ll get the full benefits of hydration plus electrolytes.
    • Take a nap. That’s right. Do it. Sleep right in the middle of the day. But, and this is the key, only nap for an amount of time divided by 90 minutes. I set my alarm for exactly 90 minutes, but you could also do 180 minutes or 270 minutes. You get the picture. When your alarm goes off after that period of time, get up.
    • Go outside. If you flew overnight, it should still be daylight when you wake up from your nap. Walk around. Drink more water. Keep walking. Walk walk walk. Drink drink drink. (just water – no caffeine or alcohol)
    • Go to dinner at the local dinnertime. You will be tired, but you won’t be the kind of tired where you feel like you were hit by a truck and want to die, face down in your plate.
    • Go to bed at a normal bedtime. You’ll wake up the next morning after sleeping for about 8-10 hours feeling like you can conquer the world. Just like that, jet lag is gone.

DSC_0063 copy
Walking in daylight after my nap + hydration helped me adjust to local time quickly.

While I was tired when my alarm went off at the end of my nap, it wasn’t terrible. I definitely felt energized and ready to go outside. The hydration and the electrolytes made a huge difference. Thanks to the nap, hydration, and electrolytes, I was able to both enjoy a nice dinner in polite company of others the day of arrival AND wake up the next day feeling great – without any trace of jet lag.

**I am not expressly endorsing any of the products to which I have provided links; I am providing links as a courtesy, for informational purposes only. I do not receive payment of any kind should you choose to purchase these items.