As memories of Italy drift back, which by the way I always see in sunlit colors, and as a new summer arrived bringing along warm summer nights, just the thought of the recent rains we've left behind, the first feeling I experience is melancholy and like in the song, a thought comes to mind about the “sensuality of desperate lives”… However, the upcoming happiness of summer freedom and the ease of summer being, outweighs all dark associations – I take out colorful pearls, pull the suitcase from the basement. Even in winter, when I just think about the taste of summer, I manage to rise and overcome the despair due to cold winds and rainy days. Because this person hates winter in the city and finds anything below 25°C serious winter. 😉 

There are flavors that never grow old. Ice cream is one of them – a simple, sweet joy that unmistakably brings us back to the most carefree days of our lives. While the sun is high up in the sky, and the air shimmers with heat, the first bite of cold ice cream awakes a whole sequence of memories. Do you remember? That vanilla ice cream that drips down the cone before you manage to lick it, so you chase the shade of trees with your friends trying to save it from melting. Or maybe the refreshing taste of lemon and mint on an Italian coast while the wind blows sand into your hair and the sound of waves follows every laugh. That’s exactly when my moment begins – lemon ice cream and Italy. ❤️ I’m reminded of it by a song and his cigarette-roughened voice by my favorite Italian – Paolo Conte. Un gelato al limon. There’s no despair, no bad moment that ice cream can’t ease. Especially my favorite – lemon. 🍋 As if wiped away by hand. For all of us, ice cream isn’t just a treat, it’s a time machine. One flavor can bring us back to childhood, to the beach with our parents, to afternoon walks with first crushes, to travels to the south of Europe, among squares and stone streets flooded with lights. Especially Italian gelato – creamy, rich, full of flavor, it carries that romantic note of summer days that seem like they will never end.

By the way, did you know that the most famous Italian word after pizza is certainly gelato, and that is one, while there are as many as you like, gifts by Italy to the universe. Once you try authentic Italian gelato, it captivates you for the rest of your life. Because gelato is different from anything that is sold in the world under the generic name ice cream. It’s an ice treat made from milk and sugar by adding various aromas, while the word gelato comes from the Italian verb gelare, meaning to freeze. Unlike ice cream, gelato consists of less air and fat, and more aroma than any other type of ice dessert, which gives it an advantage over other similar frozen treats, because it gives it ease and freshness. Besides, it’s served at a bit higher temperature, which is why it’s softer and creamier to eat. Most famous world traveler, Venetian merchant Marco Polo, brought various wonders from his travels to the unknown world in the east, from ancient China. Among everything else, he was the one who introduced paper money to the world, which became popular in Europe in years after his return, described coal, which wasn’t widely used in Europe until the 18th century. It’s even thought that he introduced glasses and the compass to the west. Many attribute the introduction of ice cream in Italy to Marco Polo who brought, on his travels from China to Italy not just spaghetti, but also the recipe for preparing them. Still, as we know it today – gelato dates to the 16th century. Two Florentines, Giuseppe Rugeri and Bernardo Buontalenti, are the first who made this sweet treat for the family of Catherine de' Medici, but a Sicilian, a chef named Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli, first sold ice cream to the public.
In the year 1686, he opened Café Procope in Paris, which exists today, and is the oldest restaurant in Paris. He personally was highly honored in France, but the greatest is that he introduced this phenomenal frozen treat to the world. One time at the Spanish steps in Rome, passing by a group of tourists, I heard the guide tell his tourists that ice cream is a daily ritual in Italy. Walking the streets with a gelato in hand, explained the guide, became part of modern Italian way of life, while different regions claim their gelato is the best.

That’s why, when depressed thoughts about cold days, rain and sweaters take over, or anything else dark, I always think of music and the ones who told us “All you need is love” with the addition “and maybe some gelato”. Paolo Conte and his song, from the beginning of this blog, Un gelato al limon, I discovered at the beginning of the 80s when we, from evening to evening, sitting on the floor of a bookstore in Cetinjska street in Belgrade, endlessly played his vinyl. Btw, that wasn’t a regular bookshop where you come to buy a book and leave. It was a bookshop where we used to gather to chat, drink coffee, wine and whatever, read books and talk about them, listen to music late into the night… “I’ll see you at Aca and Iva’s”, that’s what the friends who owned the bookstore were called, that was the answer to where we would meet in a time without cell phones and SMS. That all lasted shortly, because in 1983 The Communist Party of the Old Town municipality decided to close it due to “liberal acts”!!! Can you believe it – sitting on the floor of a bookstore, listening to music, reading books and what we call today an auditorium as a form of subversive activity 😊… Different time, different kind of subversion. Aca and Iva got fired, our circle fell apart, but in my heart and Belgrade air forever will flow the laid-back sound of piano of one of the most charismatic Italians; that unusual music that drifts from honky-tonk do tango and cabaret and reminds us of the world of timeless romance he created.

The master of elegant melancholy, one of Italy’s most famous cantautore of all time, Paolo Conte may be the last great European jazz artist and the pioneer of a completely different time, an era he himself called “eleganze”. In the moment of arrival of awareness of “sensuality of desperate lives”… … “E la sensualita delle vite disperate”, Paolo offers us Un gelato al limunas a consolation for the fading dreams of all summer nights ever lived. Un gelato al limon, and summer will always be there.