Montereale Festival

The Italian culture (and Europe in general) is very social. They spend lots of their free time socializing: families get together to eat and drink, friends and neighbors meet up at church, the open air markets, the town bar. A really fun part of the culture are the town festivals. Each town usually has at least one a year, the larger towns have many festivals a year. Our tiny town of Grizzo has grown into a larger town next to it, Montereale. Steve and I aren’t quite sure where one town ends and one begins, so we think of the whole Grizzo-Montereale area as “our town.” Anyhow, the Montereale part of our town had its annual Court to Court party in August for one whole week. It was sort of like an around-the-world party, having 15 or so different stations set up in the various courts and gardens of the town. Each station carried a different item to eat or drink, from wine to antipasti to main courses to desserts, the idea being you hit up about 5-6 stations to eat a complete meal. Steve went with our Landlady’s son, Claudio, early in the week, so by the time we went as a family, he knew the system and where the beer and wine stops were. We didn’t eat dinner there because the idea of dragging the kids to several stops to make a complete dinner was not one that appealed to us. But we did each get a little something to keep us all happy as we took in the Italian culture in our town. Steve got some beer and wine, Brian and Emily shared a Fanta and some candy, and I found my first real cupcake in Italy! Italians don’t have cupcakes, or even a word that translates to cupcake. I made some cupcakes this last week and we brought one over to Claudia’s daughter, who is staying in his house on holiday for a few weeks. I asked her what a cupcake is called in Italian and she said the closest thing would be to call it a “muffina,” which is just the Italianized version of our English word, muffin. We all know a muffin is not a cupcake and a cupcake is not a muffin! Italians really need to embrace the cupcake. And Americans need to embrace these town festivals! It was so much fun, we went back the next night with some friends and no kids!