Carrie Reale

Our last day in Roma…day 5

We started off the day with an hour long tram ride to the completely other side of Rome to visit Enel, an international power company that is based in Italy. This company also had an amazingly creative and colorful office, and it really made me wish more office spaces in the U.S. were like the ones I have experienced so far in Rome. Pictures below:

 

Yes, those are pantone color code chairs. My graphic design professor would go crazy over those!

 

The head of internal media communications, Ivano Fenoli, spoke to us about how Enel runs the communication web between employees literally all over the world. How many languages? How many platforms? Turns out…a lot of both. It was pretty fascinating to see how hard they work on communication and “news” within their own company. With thousands and thousands of different employees in tons of different locations, it would make sense that good communication and relation is important. It’s just not something we often think about much.

They have their own radio station (on which they broadcast a number of hours of live radio per day), a monthly magazine, an updated website, and a TV station. We had the opportunity to go and check out the TV and radio studios, and I was even in a little group that got to do a 4 minute test run of an interview. I was the “director,” so I started the program and chose which camera would go “on air.” I watched my friends (pictured left) from the control room and operated the cameras (pictured right). That experience made me appreciate TV broadcast management, but it most definitely just confirmed something I already knew: I never want to work in TV. You may not be able to see it, but I was really stressed when Courtney took that picture of me working the cameras.

After we finished with the Enel visit, we hopped back on the tram to ride another hour back to the hostel, and boy was it a long one. Did I mention there’s another 717 homie with me on the trip? And that we went to the same high school? And church? And now we go to the same college?! Yeah! Her name is Lauren Clouser, and she’s great. Go check out her blog. Anyways, we sat together on the tram and had nice convos and experienced an older Italian man getting way too us as he took off his sweater on the moving vehicle…

We got back to the hostel (finally), and Em and I took a super quick nap before her, Beth, and I ventured into Trastevere to find some iced beverages.

Let’s take a break for a minute. Because today was the first time I have consumed a beverage with ice in it in almost a week. There is no ice in Europe! Except for mixed beverages! Which I don’t drink much of anyways, so I have been starved of ice. I just really want a glass of cold ice water right now…but Europe is depriving me of that. It’s okay, though, it’s really okay.

But that’s why this iced coffee tasted so good. Not only was the ice an old familiar friend I hadn’t seen in while, so was the iced coffee. It was the closest thing to American coffee I’ve had since arriving here, and it just tasted really good. Also woke me up, because today was  day full of fatigue and very heavy eyelids. Some pictures from the rest of our stroll through Trestevere: #nofilter

OKAY – NOW FOR THE PASTA MAKING SESSION

We were so privileged to be able to go to the basement of Marlon Brando’s Roman apartment and make our own pasta from scratch. Yes, you heard that right. It was an incredible experience, and I was actually really good at it, too (the nice Italian man and woman helping us looked at mine and said perfecto repeatedly). We made gnocchi (not the potato kind) and ravioli, and it was just so fun to do as a group. The pictures will do much better at explaining to you what we did: (pictures enlarged to show detail)

Our little pasta making stations, complete with an apron 🙂
two amateur pasta makers set out on a dream: make the perfect pasta
first pasta: the GNOCCHI. We started with the flour, added water, and kneaded the dough until it was ready to be rolled cut into these tiny little pillows!
next step: using a fancy little wooden texture block to give them this texture and shape! We rolled each little pillows with our fingers
LOOK AT ALL THE GNOCCHI
next step: we took the other kind of pasta and made them into flat little discs!
after putting alllll of the discs into a pasta presser 6 times to make it a very, very long strip of flattened pasta, we each had our own little rectangle
We plopped cheese onto the rectangle in five places, folded it over, used water to get it to stick, and cut out these little squares! look familiar?
I think I can confidently say that mine looked the best…everyone else was also very jealous
proud ravioli mom
LOOK AT ALL OF DA RAVIOLIIII

The big reveal…

WE ATE THE FOOD WE MADE. It was sooo absolutely delicious. The gnocchi sauce had some sort of ham in it that added a glorious flavor, and we had a lovely dessert afterwards as well!

After we finished dinner, some people headed back to Trastevere, but Em and I decided to stay in Rome and grab more coffee. We ended up sitting in the Pantheon Piazza at a lovely little restaurant that had a really wobbly table but outstanding coffee. Midway through our coffee, we both simultaneously decided on some tiramisu, and we ordered it in our best Italiano accent. The tiramisu was outstanding, but the company was better, as was the music we heard while feasting on our espresso soaked ladyfinger treat.

There was a man sitting in the center of the piazza with a guitar, microphone, and amp, and he was playing music. Not just any music, the music I grew up listening to on the radio: soft rock from the 60s, 70s, and 80s. We heard songs by Cat Stevens, Elton John (S/O to my dad!), and even my favorite James Taylor/Carole King song: You’ve Got a Friend. Em went up and requested a song only to find out he really didn’t speak English, which means he was probably learning all of those songs phonetically. However, it was truly magical. As two avid Carole and James fans, our ears were the happiest and our hearts were happier.

We paid for our coffee and dessert and stood to listen to the man a little more. We left while he was singing a Peter Frampton song, said grazie and ciao, and hopped back onto the tram to get back to the hostel. That little experience we had was what I was hoping for and dreaming of as I packed for Italy. It was quaint, simple, and just lovely. The smile on my face should say enough:

That’s right – that building behind me is the Pantheon – the most well-preserved building from Ancient Rome.

I’ve stayed up a little longer than I originally anticipated, but that’s okay, because we have a three hour bus ride to Assisi, on which I plan to catch up on some sleep. Rome has been wonderful, but I’m looking forward to these future cities. There is so much more to come! As I sit here with Em, typing away at these blogs and listening to Frank Sinatra, I am still in disbelief that we are in Italy, and I cannot believe we are not even half way through with the trip.

Grazie to you all for sticking with me through these long blogs and strangely constructed sentences. I truly cannot say it enough. Until tomorrow, from Assisi!

Peace + love,

Carrie