Ho comprato il pesce (I bought fish!)

This was, in all honesty, a huge adventure.  And as we have now learned, going from A to B is never so straightforward here, yet after some slight stress and panic (all beneath my cool facade of feigned understanding) I succeeded in buying a fish fillet to cook for dinner.

Let me explain.  Like anything else in Italy, to buy fish, you need to go to the pescherie - the fish guys.  This is really the only way to do it - there is no "get out of jail free" card because you literally can't buy fish in any of the supermarket type stores.  So I realized I had to go for it when I felt like I was going to burst open with ragù sauce - I needed to eat some fish.

Like any secret agent, I began by scoping out the scene.  So I discreetly wandered around the three pescherie (of course they are all right next to each other) one afternoon, trying to make sense of the place and, obviously, form a plan of action.  The problem was, I couldn't make any sense of it - it was absolute mayhem.  At every pescheria there was a huge crowd of loud civilians standing outside the shop, gathered around all the fresh fish, shrimp, and prawns, conceivably yelling at the one big Italian guy in the fishmonger apron, and this guy was throwing all of the fish people wanted into newspaper before sending it up to worker behind the counter, who would then ring up the order.  Simple, right?  Obviously not.  Here was the major problem I had with this process: all of the fish outside had EYES.  And scales.  And bones.  In other words, it was all whole.  

Now don't get me wrong, I will always try new cuisine and am not terribly picky, but I definitely do not know how to clean and gut a fish, much less remove the eyes, much less remove the legs from prawns, etc etc.  And the worst part was that I saw all of these delicious-looking, cleaned fillets sitting inside the store in the counter.  But how to get at that holy grail of a whitefish fillet, not to mention get past the huge Italian fishmonger with his scary newspaper hands, was completely beyond me.

So enough scoping.  Plan of action totally out the window.  I decided to bite the bullet and dive into the scene.

I walked inside and realized I had to grab a number from one of those deli tabs.  Number 10.  Ok, I could deal with this.  So far so good.  Until the next obstacle presented itself to me - the big guy who was working outside was yelling "Sette! Sette! (Seven! Seven!)", while inside a screen above the counter read "2".  My heart started beating slightly faster - dear god, I do not want any of that crap with the legs and eyes and scales, I will seriously go hungry, and how I am supposed to explain this situation to this huge fishy man and in front of all these Italian grandmothers who just want to get dinner for their kids and grandchildren and friends and friend's kids and friend's grandkids.  And what is going on with that number 2?  Why is it not number 7?  Am I the only one who is confused here?

I sat there for a minute in a moment of zen, willing my language skills to their maximum power and potential, as my number approached.  Finally, the moment of truth: "DIECI! DIECI!"

"Ah, sono io, that's me!"  And before he could say anything else to me, I proceeded to explain in hurried Italian that, no, I don't want any of the stuff outside, I just want something from inside, and what do I have to do to get my one stupid whitefish fillet?

This guy looked at me for a second, and then said in the kindest voice, "Cara, stai tranquilla.  Aspetta per il tuo numero qua."  This basically translates to "Dear, just relax.  Wait for your number here." And he pointed to the mysterious screen (which now read number 7, those tricky tricky fishmongers).  So it turns out, he was just ahead of the game and getting people ready to pay.  And so I waited for number 10 to show, told the guy behind the counter that I wanted "un filletto di quello" with some strategic pointing, and paid my 1 euro and left.  And you wonder why that had to be so stressful, right?  It all makes so much sense in retrospect.

However - I am still not entirely positive what type of fish I had for dinner that night.  But I know it was the cheapest, and it had no eyes.