Parma

After four days in Paris, I packed up and headed to Parma, Italy.

I consider Parma – a small city in the Emilia-Romagna region best known for its production of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese and Prosciutto di Parma – my second home.  My junior year of university, I studied there for a semester.  I’d opted to live in a homestay with an Italian family and was placed with Marco and Paola, a Parmigiano couple who do not have children of their own but who have hosted multiple Boston College students over the years.  I couldn’t have asked for a more amazing experience.  They are incredibly special people, and over the past six years, they have become two of the most important people in my life.  I love them like my second set of parents.

And I love Parma itself.  The city is small but very affluent, with plenty of windy little streets and colored buildings and cobblestones and unbelievably charming nooks and crannies. Biking is one of the primary ways Parmigiani get around, and the city is small enough that you can get almost anywhere on foot.  Parma was where I first fell in love with Italy, and it will always feel like home. During the year I spent in Firenze, it was so nice to know that Marco and Paola were just a two-hour train ride away and that I could go “home” whenever I needed a break from my life in Firenze.

Getting off the train at the Parma station this past month (I flew from Paris to Milano, then took the train from Milano Centrale) was a bit surreal… simply because it didn’t feel surreal at all.  It had been exactly 485 days to the day since I’d left, but when I saw Marco and Paola at the train station, it felt as though no time at all had passed and that I’d simply been gone for a long weekend.

This, by the way, is one of the beautiful things about Parma, and really about Italy as a whole.  Things change, obviously –  new restaurants and bars open, others close, people occasionally move – but overall, things seem to stay more or less the same.  My house in Parma looks almost exactly the way it did when I arrived for the first time six years ago; most of the restaurants and bars are still there and are operated by the same people; the buildings themselves are the same buildings that have been there for centuries.  It’s comforting, in a world that seems to be changing so rapidly, to know that things change a little more slowly in Parma.

I spent the rest of my month abroad predominantly in Parma, leaving only for occasional day or weekend trips.  It was wonderful to have time to spend with Marco and Paola and to return to all of my familiar haunts – Parco Ducale, Piazza Garibaldi and Via Farini, Parco della Citadella (my favorite park to run in), la Pilotta, the Duomo, and all of my favorite gelaterie, coffee shops, and bars.
  

The food in Parma is amazing. Emilia-Romagna is a region very well known for its gastronomy, in particular its use of countless varieties of fresh pasta and its production of salumi and cheeses.  In addition to the famous parmigiano and prosciutto, Parma is also home to Barilla Pasta, as well as traditional fresh pasta dishes like tortelli d’erbetta and anolini in brodo. Culatello di Zibello and Salame di Felino are produced in municipalities of Parma, while nearby Modena is home to aceto balsamico di Modena.  It was in Parma six years ago that I was first exposed to real Italian food, and it was impossible not to fall in love with it.  Living in Parma is an incredible gastronomical experience: not only is Paola an amazing cook, but we always have a kilo of parmigiano and a leg of prosciutto in the house (the standing Berkel meat slicer occupies a prime spot in the kitchen), Lambrusco wine made from Paola’s parents’ own vines, aged aceto balsamico, wonderful olive oil, homemade marmellate, and countless other top quality products.

 

 

  

I’d timed my trip to Europe so that I could attend the Expo (World Fair), which was hosted in Milano from May through October.  This year’s theme was “feeding the planet, energy for life,” which encompassed the ways culture, technology and traditions relate to food and diet around the world.  It was the first Expo to ever focus on food, and I’d been hoping to be able to make it back for it since I’d left Italy over a year ago.

I tagged along on a school field trip with Paola and her students (she teaches religion at the liceo classico in Parma) one day in September.  I was very disappointed; the Expo was certainly interesting to see – each of the 145 countries represented had its own pavilion and nearly all were massive and architecturally very impressive – but there were so many people that the wait to enter many of the pavilions could take as long as six hours and the overall atmosphere was extremely chaotic.  And even once I finally did make it into a pavilion,  I didn’t particularly enjoy most of the displays, which were generally very technological or theatrical. The Expo was far more about spectacle and extravagance than it was about actual food or the social implications of feeding the planet.  I’m glad that I was able to experience it (this was the only time I’d ever been to a World Fair) but I can’t say that I actually enjoyed it very much.

 

My last weekend in Parma, Marco, Paola and I, along with their friend, Santo, went for a hike in the Apennines, a mountain range that runs down the length of Italy.  We began and ended near Bardi, a small comune in the province of Parma home to the Castello dei Landi.  It was an absolutely spectacular day, and the foliage had just begun to change color for the autumn, so the colors were incredible.

          

I finally left for the States on October 14th (more on my side-trips and other adventures soon!), stocking up beforehand on a kilo of parmigiano (which seriously threatened to put my luggage over the weight limit for my flight) and a bottle of 12-year aged aceto balsamico.  My flight was scheduled to leave from Milano Malpensa at 6:45am, so after an emotional goodbye with Marco and Paola at the Parma station, I took the train to Milano and spent the night in the airport.  It was an absolutely incredible month and I was very sad to leave, but I was also beyond grateful to have had the opportunity to spend more time in a place that I love with people that mean the world to me.  Parma, ti voglio molto bene.  A presto.