Shannon ... the one who lives in Genova.

I know this lovely lady living in Genova.

I just discovered that Shannon had posted about our meeting up this time.  There was the breakfast at my favourite cafe - Bar Boomerang and then dinner on my last night in the city, at a pizzeria-not-my-own.  And you know what, it was okay.  So I wouldn’t hesitate in recommending a pizza at Sciuscia e Sciorbi, the staff were lovely.

That was mostly me, when Shannon wrote of paying our bill with change ... I had 20.50euro in change and I didn’t want to carry it on the long trek home, nor could I afford to give it away.  The pizza and wine worked for me. 
As I said, the staff are lovely ...

Anyway, meet Shannon and Traveler over on their Genova Blog.

Bar Boomerang, Genoa

One of my favourite places, here in the city of Genova, is Bar Boomerang. 

Initially it was the name that I noticed.  Then the fantastic, never-tasted-better cappuccino drew me back again and again.  On this, my second visit to the city, I discovered that their aperitivo is the nicest aperitivo I’ve had so far.

The staff are friendly, clients are important to them and their passion for the work comes through in all that they do.  If you are in Genova, I recommend you find your way to this cafe and decide for yourself.

In a small interview with Simona, the patient barista (patient in working with my New Zealand English), I asked a few questions about the cafe. 

She explained that the name had orginated from a visit that Marta, the owner, had made to Australia.  Marta and her husband enjoyed the trip so much that they named their Genovese cafe Bar Boomerang.  I need to explain that what we would call a cafe in New Zealand is a bar here in Italy, although alcohol is served so perhaps it becomes something of a hybrid.

Open five years, the bar is located on via Porta Soprana, 41-43,  not far from the ancient Genovese gate known as Porta Soprana. The gate, built in 1155, was originally intended as a defense rampart, with access for commercial traffic arriving via the interior, and acted as a barrier to would-be conquerors like Barbarossa and others.  Today it stands permanently open, welcoming foreign creatures like me inside this ancient part of the city.

As a tourist, a sometimes shy tourist without l’taliano, I was a little intimidated about just how to order my coffee. Of course, it’s quite simple. You wander into the cafe, order your coffee, select something to eat if needed and take it yourself.  In most bars, you can either pay a little extra and take a seat or stand at the bar and drink without sitting.

You pay as you leave.

At Bar Boomerang, their work is a passion and I’m sure that is what makes everything taste so good.  Simona took me through the four steps required to make good coffee.  Obviously you begin with good coffee, then you make sure your machines are clean.  The third step involves making a good press and the fourth, well that surprised me, it’s about noting the humidity and any changes in the humidity.  If it changes, the settings on the coffee machine need to change too.

The coffee is so very good.  It’s one of the things I missed for weeks after leaving last time and I expect it will be the same this time.

Most people know Italians take their coffee very seriously.  I asked Simona about the ‘rules’ and she explained that a typical Italian customer might have cappuccino or latte in the morning. Milk coffee is only for mornings and laughing she said, not before or after lunch or dinner.  This is more of a tourist thing or maybe in winter, on a really cold day.  Expresso is for all the time, after lunch or dinner particularly, as its role is to aid in digestion.  You could typically follow the expresso with a liquer of some kind like limoncello, grappa or jagermeister.

I feel more relaxed when I wander into the bars here now, still imperfect and prone to crave cappuccino at inappropriate times but less worried.

Bar Boomerang is open from 7am until 9pm,  6 days a week – closed Sunday.  They also serve lunches but that’s another post over on the blog.

In Genoa ...

I have these days where I wake wondering who on earth I think I am and why I feel I have the right to wander and ask questions of strangers ...

Initially, waking this morning was gentle and delicious.  The first footsteps passed by my window, the voices were quiet but later, after I opened the windows, I heard the cafe owner arrive and roll up her metal door while talking on the phone ... soon the coffee cups began clanking together in much the same way as I crash dishes together when forced to be the housewife at home.

I slept again, only to wake to the laughter of a group of men below my window.  I imagined them drinking coffee together at the cafe on their way to work, perhaps doing that everyday, and I enjoyed being there on the edge of their lives.

A craving for onion foccacia lured me out of my bed and down the street before I was properly awake which surely explains my fright on opening my door and finding a neighbour out there on the stairs.  She was amused as she greeted me and out of some place unknown to me, I responded with a good morning greeting in French ... I don’t know French, not really.

I was able to redeem myself with a ‘grazie’ as she held the outside door open for me.

And so my day had begun.

The onion foccacia still had 30 minutes before it was ready down at the forno so I chose something else, not wanting the woman who greets me with a friendly ciao every morning to interupt the baker for English ... I ate a delicious pie full of ingredients completely unknown to me.

And then I fell into this funk ...  wondering who I thought I was, coming to Italy without language but packing this desire to capture a small slice of the life that I find myself living on the edges of.

I began writing but today is the day I’m meant to begin everything else I came here to do now that everyone has left me alone.  Gert limped home with a walking stick yesterday ... a cracked bone in his toe.  He walked into a bed leg in the dark.  He made it safely, picking up the rental contract for the new house when he reached home.

The internet cafe down in the piazza cocooned me for a while, being online provided me with a kind of identity ... people who knew me had written, I could speak their language but I was still frustrated with this feeling of being small.

Almost midday and not much work done. I left the cafe and broke the cappuccino rule, ordering one from my favourite cafe too late ... but okay because I’m a tourist and tourists order cappuccino’s long after the 10am breakfast tradition here in Italy.

My guide on this is an author I recommend, an Italian called Beppe Severgnini, columnist for Italy’s largest-circulation daily newspaper, Corriere della Sera.  He wrote in his book, La Bella Figura, ‘Consider the humble cappuccino.  After ten o’clock in the morning, it is unethical, and possibly even unlawful, to order one.  You wouldn’t have one in the afternoon unless the weather was very cold.  Needless to say, sipping a cappuccino after a meal is something only non-Italians do’.

It’s not that I want to try and pass myself off as Italian, it’s only that I prefer not to stand out as a complete barbarian ... a charge leveled at me more than once by a 'gentle' Italian friend.  And I have never quite recovered from the surprise I gave another lovely Italian friend and the waitress when I ordered cappuccino (once) after a pasta lunch.  And regretted immensely because there really is a reason for that.

When in doubt, when shyness overtakes me, or I’m nervous and unconvinced about what I’m doing in life, my impulse seems to be ‘just do it anyway’.  I mean, I don’t parachute or go deep-sea diving, I don’t take drugs but going out and talking to strangers without language in a country not my own ... that’s something else.  I grew up in smalltown New Zealand and today finds me talking myself into doing what I love doing most of the time.

So tonight I will photograph apertivo at my favourite cafe here in the city.  And I stopped in at the farinata shop ... the one the family have owned since 1812, and photographed the beautiful food on display there, surely the best farinata in the city and a place you really should eat from if you find yourself in Genova.  I will meet Stefano and Guilia, Alex and I have tentative plans and I will surely return to my seat on the top of the hill at Boccadasse ... these are my plans for the moment.

And just after digging up the courage required,  the universe smiled down on me for a moment and an old man said, ‘Ciao bella ragazza’.  I don’t mind he that he was old because he made me smile for a while which was grand because I was all out of courage on this day here in La Superba.