The Old Town
8/4/06 10:45p Viterbo
I stopped the last entry due to sheer exhaustion although the day hadn't really ended after our return from Rome. After a quick clean up I dressed again and went to the bachelor night. The groom showed up late to my hotel to pick me up on the way up to the restaurant, dressed in a German national team soccer jersey and shorts. The quizzical look on my face lead him to explain that he'd been told to put on this outfit for purposes of the party which lead me to wonder if there would be a stripper dressed as a referee or whether there would be some head butting later in the evening, but I was told that there no strippers or prostitutes at the bachelor night by agreement of the bride and groom. So I dodged a bullet there. The specific reason he had that jersey on was that without Germany, there would be no wedding, since the bride is German.
We met with the German contingent who were already getting toasty, and the fathers of the couple as well as some other relatives at a small pizzeria in the upper part of the old town, Il Labirinto. The restaurant seemed was a series of small stone rooms and filled with the smells of meals being prepared which had my mouth watering. This was slightly too soon, I discovered as the antipasti came out and seemed to consist of layers of local hams, separated by other slices of pork. After some negotiation (and much disbelief that I couldn't partake of the delectable cured meats - was I a vegetarian?) I was brought a plate of cheeses and a savory olive bruschetta which defied the laws of epitaxy for it's coverage of the bread as well as my ability to describe it with mere words.
aside: One of the disappointments of my trip to Italy has been the inability on my part to enjoy the cuisine properly, due to the use of pork as an ingredient, a seasoning, cutlery and stucco. They use it for everything in much the way that Southerners in the US use it for "flavor". Mores the pity, since the thinly sliced hams look terribly delicious, especially in the form of prosciutto and melon antipasti. I have been sore tempted but have no given in yet, sating myself instead on the cheeses of the region which require a book and a tour to do them justice.
Our pizzas came out soon after and the muffled sounds of eating were seasoned with raucous laughter and introductions. I was sitting at one end of the table by the groom's father who bears an uncanny resemblance to US Soccer coach Bruce Arena in both his general shape and the breadth of his protruding smile. The conversation was marked with short notches as everyone filed out at intervals to smoke - more on that later - for increasingly longer periods as the dinner came to a close. We marched through the old town afterwards to link up with the ladies at a bar in a nearby piazza where we stayed until the lone policeman of old Viterbo came around to see what the noise was about and ended up engaged in a deep conversation with one of the revelers.
Throughout the night I had been paying attention, as I do sometimes, to the folks around me, particularly the Viterbisi themselves. For a small town, the inhabitants seemed particularly hip, although truth to tell the Italians as a whole seem to be on the cutting edge of fashion from the youngest infant to the oldest hipster. This does not always mean that they look good mind you, since the current edge is cutting the other way. Young women are sporting cowboy-style gold boots and the young swains who court them are rocking the most hideous of mullets as they strive to get their attention. The return of the mullet in Europe is apparently a full court press from a hairstyle that had deservedly been put down with isolated pockets of hold outs here and there. The new mullet is even more abominable than its ancestor and at times deviates from the form "business in the front, party in the back" to "party in the front and back, business on the sides". It is the Vegas casino of haircuts, and I wonder how long it will take before it makes its seemingly inevitable beach head on the Jersey shore.
It's a pity really, since overall the local youth is very attractive. I am ashamed to say that the hot small town girls of Viterbo have given me quite a turn. What's a red-blooded man to do but turn to history and art and cold showers?