Who you’ll meet while with us in Lecce
These are some of the people you’ll meet while with us. And while it’s unlikely that you’ll meet- say- our fishmongers…while on our Friday night wine course, the longer the course, the more likely you are to meet many, most or all of these people (and pets).
Anna
She grew up just south of Lecce, moved briefly to Germany, moved back and now she’s worked at the school for the last 17 years. Anna isn’t interested in learning English but that doesn’t seem to slow her down with connecting with people from all over the world. When we are on Dutch TV last year the entire cast and crew fell madly in love her and her purple hair –45 members of cast and crew lined up one by one for over an hour, just to have their picture taken with her. ‘Only in Italy do the grandmothers have purple hair’, the director said over and over again. Anna is a great example of, we may forget what someone says to us but we’ll never forget how someone makes us feel.
Ciccia
Ciccia is a 2-year old bassotta or dachshund (‘Ciccia’, is short for ‘Salciccia’, the dialectical word for ‘sausage’). She loves to travel- in her crate mounted to Silvestro’s bicycle- in his ancient FIAT 500 and on international airplanes, her passport up to date and only one corner, barely chewed. She’s not allowed into the kitchen but rather she sits up the stairs and switches back and forth from watches us and taking uncountable naps.
Alfredo
He’s a wine writer, the kind that writes books on the subject. He lives in a provincial town not far from Lecce with his wife and children. He often comes to dinner to work on his English and to better understand how guests at the school choose the wine they drink. ‘Wine only interests me if the average person can afford it and has access to it. Otherwise they are just trophies in a bottle’.
Antonella
Antonella teaches school to children with special needs, which she loves. ‘The hardest part is trying to figure how-exactly- each special child needs help. The easy part is using that method that once you understand’. She finishes teaching early in the day and wanted to better use her evenings. ‘Meeting people from all over the world is very stimulating! Every night I sit next to someone new: a French doctor, a Peruvian lawyer, a couple from Canada that live on a boat. Since I’ve worked at the school I’ve learned that people are people and everyone has something fascinating to recount.
Massimo
‘My favourite fish to eat? I am always in the mood for those tiny fish that stick together in the batter, when they are so fresh that you can smell the sea air coming up out of the oil as they cook’. People always ask me if I still want to eat fish after cutting and cleaning it all day long. The short answer is ‘yes’. Especially the little fried ones’.
Cesare
We have been buying produce from Cesare since the first day he opened in Lecce’s covered market, 16 years ago. Cesare is a classic greengrocer, or one that buys from the central market obscenely early in the morning and then brings it all Lecce’s oldest public market, where we do all our shopping as a school. You can tell this is the case, by the presence of bananas and pineapples, two plants that don’t grow in Europe. Many visitors to Italy are taken back by a greengrocer’s questions. ‘When do you plan to eat this melon’? Or, ‘how do you plan on using them’, in response to ‘I would like a kilos of tomatoes’ but greengrocers ask to give you the right product for how and when you intend to use it. You didn’t think salad tomatoes made good sauce, did you?
Spartico
(‘Spartico’, Italian, ‘Sparticus’, Latin). ‘The Salento is a very special part of the world, where you can watch the sun come up over the sea, drive half an hour and then watch it set over different sea. God created a garden and vineyard in the middle of the Mediterranean and called the garden, Il Salento. We don’t have many things here but we do have, we have better than anywhere else’.
Alex
He’s from a long-line of farmers and foragers, which is why he’s legally allowed to sell his produce, untaxed (he has a scale but no cash register). If Alex has it, you know it is: hyperlocal- grown just outside of Lecce, seasonal- he only sells what he grows- and organic- and at times- biodynamic, although none of it is certified as either. You can always tell how Alex feels about you, whether he removes the outer leaves before or after he weighs your produce. I called him ‘Alessandro’ for years before he eventually sheepishly corrected me. ‘No, it’s ‘Alex’. It’s not my nickname but my real name on all my documents. My mother is English’. ‘Do you speak English’, I asked him. ‘No’. ‘Does your mother’? ‘No, not her either’. OK, ’Alex’ it is.
Totò
‘In many ways this is the most important market in Lecce. It’s where a lot of local people, maybe those that don’t drive and they can arrive on foot without worrying about parking’, he says. ‘I love working here, being part of the community. It’s not just the oldest market in Lecce, it’s also everyone’s favourite’.
Anna Maria
‘I figured this out a few years ago, that I open about 25 kilos of mussels a day, and there about 80 mussels per kilo and I’ve been working here for 35 years’, she says, her speech slow but her hyperactive robotic hands on autopilot. ‘That’s 21 million mussels so far’.
Salvatore
Comes from a large family of fishermen and fishmongers, from Porto Cesareo, on the Ionian coast. Each of the children in the family was given the choice to catch fish or to sell it and Salvatore chose ‘sales’, as that would bring him to Lecce, which seemed like a big important city, when he was little. ‘Even after all these years, I still think Lecce is the most beautiful city in the world’.
Roberto
He owns and runs a local bed and breakfast and fills in for staff on occasion, whenever someone needs an evening off. Rare in the southern Italian travel industry, he’s actually travelled a great deal and is always tickled to meet people from all over the world. ‘Silvestro’s school has done more to promote Puglia than 99% of the tourists boards. And he was the first one to do it, when no one else believed in us’
