Como Italy Quotes

I like fire and water. You are lucky to have both right here.” From " Desperate Pursuit in Venice" Chapter Two. Kataryna's response to Luca.

I, for instance, was triumphant over everyone; everyone, of course, was in dust and ashes, and was forced spontaneously to recognise my superiority, and I forgave them all. I was a poet and a grand gentleman, I fell in love; I came in for countless millions and immediately devoted them to humanity, and at the same time I confessed before all the people my shameful deeds, which, of course, were not merely shameful, but had in them much that was "sublime and beautiful" something in the Manfred style. Everyone would kiss me and weep (what idiots they would be if they did not), while I should go barefoot and hungry preaching new ideas and fighting a victorious Austerlitz against the obscurantists. Then the band would play a march, an amnesty would be declared, the Pope would agree to retire from Rome to Brazil; then there would be a ball for the whole of Italy at the Villa Borghese on the shores of Lake Como, Lake Como being for that purpose transferred to the neighbourhood of Rome; then would come a scene in the bushes, and so on, and so on — as though you did not know all about it?

Attempting to escape across the Swiss border on 26 April 1945, Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci, her brother Marcello and fifteen others were captured by the Italian partisans. On Saturday the 28th Mussolini and Petacci were executed by sub-machine gun in front of a low stone wall by the gates of a villa outside the village of Giulino di Mezzegra on Lake Como, one of the loveliest beauty-spots in Italy. (It seems rather unItalian to murder an attractive and apolitical mistress, but such is war.) Their bodies were added to those of the other captured Fascists, loaded in to a removal van and driven to Milan, the birthplace of Fascism. There, the corpses of Mussolini and Petacci were kicked, spat upon, shot at and urinated over, and then hung upside-down from a metal girder in front of the petrol station in the Piazzale Loreto, with their names on pieces of paper pinned to their feet.

If Alessandro and Rosy are working from a disadvantage in terms of product recognition, they have put generations of accumulated experience into practice to fill the menu with dozens of little tastes of Como. They make fragrant, full-flavored stocks from the bones and bodies of perch and chub. They cure whitefish eggs in salt, creating a sort of freshwater bottarga, ready to be grated over pasta and rice. Shad is brined in vinegar and herbs, whitefish becomes a slow-cooked ragù or a filling for ravioli, and pigo and pike form the basis of Mella's polpettine di pesce, Pickled, dried, smoked, cured, pâtéd: a battery of techniques to ensure that nothing goes to waste. If you can make it with meat, there's a good chance Alessandro and Rosy have made it with lake fish. And then there's missoltino, the lake's most important by-product, a staple that stretches back to medieval times and has been named a presidio by Slow Food, a designation reserved for the country's most important ingredients and food traditions. The people still making missoltino can be counted on a single hand. Alessandro guts and scales hundreds of shad at a time, salts the bodies, and hangs them like laundry to dry under the sun for forty-eight hours or more. The dried fish are then layered with bay leaves, packed into metal canisters, and weighed down. Slowly the natural oils from the shad escape and bubble to the surface, forming a protective layer that preserves the missoltino indefinitely. It can be used as a condiment of sorts, a weapons-grade dose of lake umami to be detonated in salads and pastas. In its most classic preparation, served with toc, a thick, rich scoop of polenta slow cooked in a copper pot over a wood fire, it tastes of nothing you've eaten in Italy- or anywhere else.

Tínhamos que encarar o rosto obsceno daquela realidade que nos tocou no destino. Aquele barquinho naufragado estava cheio de somalis, essa era realidade! Cheio de homens e mulheres, de seres humanos reduzidos a larvas. Aquela embarcação de papel estava cheia de gente com o nariz como o meu, com a boca como a minha, com os meus cotovelos. Todos nós da diáspora somali, no dia em que ficamos sabendo dessa notícia, não sabíamos o que fazer com os nossos corpos. Os que morreram nas costas da ilha de Lampedusa tinham provocado não somente uma comoção sem igual, mas um mal-estar. Por que eles morreram e nós estávamos vivos? Por que o destino nos dividiu em dois? A estação melhorou muitíssimo nos últimos anos. De uma parte, houve a restauração feita pela prefeitura, de outra, várias comunidades migrantes também se organizaram. Há lojinhas de todo tipo. Quer colocar aplique no cabelo? Quer um pouco de cardamomo para os chás condimentados do seu recanto? Quer um tecido com a história da rainha de Sabá para pendurar nas paredes de casa? Em Termini, encontram-se coisas fantásticas: de saris a raiz de rummay para escovar os dentes, e até goiabada que os brasileiros comem com queijo e chamam romanticamente de 'Romeu & Julieta'. E também quantidades infinitas de eenjera e zighinì. Moha, em sua época de ouro, pintou e bordou. Eu e minha mãe éramos espectadoras mudas das confusões que ele armava. Por um período, ele teve até três nomes. Louis para as mulheres que achavam que ele fosse sul-americano, Ali para as brancas que não sabiam pronunciar seu verdadeiro nome (e todas as vezes lhe diziam 'Que massa, como Ali Babá', e Amedeo para as mais duras na queda e experientes. Só disse seu nome verdadeiro à mulher que se tornou, por fim, a mulher da sua vida. 'Eu não queria estragar o nome. É o que me sobrou da Somália, além de vocês.

The calm lake and bustle of people outside on the main pedestrian street of Bellagio were complimenting the environment.

A movement had begun, and the discovery of universality spurred it forward. In the summer of 1977, two physicists, Joseph Ford and Giulio Casati, organized the first conference on a science called chaos. It was held in a gracious villa in Como, Italy,

Valtellina is the longest Alpine valley, stretching eastwards from the northern shores of Lake Como to the Stelvio peak, 3,500 m/11,500 ft high. This spectacular valley was loved by Leonardo da Vinci, who even mentioned the good osterie (inns) you can find along the route.

During my freshman year of college, I was single, but my wife–whoever she would be–had always been in my thoughts since that Christmas. I wrote letters to her in middle and high school, which I kept in a journal, and I gave them to my wife Joanna on our wedding night. She read them as she sat on our hotel bed in the mountains above Lake Como, Italy, and cried. Those letters meant the world to her.

Lake Como," she said the little name to herself lingeringly. He had described a marble palace amongst cypress trees, had made her feel that she was there with him listening to the lap of the water, the singing of a nightingale, the love serenade of a boatman on the lake. "Piangi, piangi fanciulla," he had sung for them the first line. She hadn't known that he could sing.