Obama day

Apologies, we left the hotel Monday morning and I’ve been without internet since we arrived back here early Wednesday morning.

Holly and AJ have been really great company, and love this area as much as we do. It was sad to part company. After dropping them off at Bari airport, we headed up the coast to Foggia.

Foggia is my Italian home town or, to be more precise, my mother’s home town. Pia and Dino, my only aunt and uncle, were as usual so welcoming.

Needless to say, Pia had cooked up a feast. It was a feast of all our favourite dishes. For me, it was parmigiana, a lasagne of aubergine, mozzarella and a rich tomato sauce. It would almost be a vegetarian dish if the tomato sauce hadn’t been enriched by several cuts of different meats to enhance the flavour. The sauce alone takes a couple of hours to cook.

Jan on the other hand likes pizza patate, which is best described as a bake of mashed potato with mozzarella, mortadella, eggs and parmesan. That makes it sound so simple but it’s absolutely delicious.

Anyway, this morning we were watching television over breakfast and needless to say the subject of Obama came up. It’s interesting that the Italian people, like a lot of the rest of the world, have such hope and expectation of this man. I find it kind of scary. It’s great to have hope and expectation but in my view people are likely to be ultimately disappointed. He’s a man. One man. A very eloquent and intelligent man but I am personally cautious about what he can realistically achieve. Good luck to him.

For me disappointment is the difference between expectation and reality. If expectation is set too high and he can’t achieve too much then people are likely to be disappointed. We shall see.

At breakfast on Tuesday morning (keep up, I'm trying to cram several days in here) we were talking about assassination (as you do) when Pia started to rant about Berlusconi. I pointed out that he had been democratically elected twice so he must appeal to a lot of people. Pia dismissed my observation with a flick of her hand and said, “lots of politician seem to get assassinated, why not Berlusconi?”

It’s the Italian way!!