Growing up in a multicultural family was not always easy. I spent a lot of my life feeling like the odd-one-out wherever I was, like I never fit in anywhere 100%.
I was always a little different, the American when in school, the Italian when going back home for vacation. I had German speaking nannies in the States, English speaking nannies in Italy.
Then again, being a mix of sorts had its perks.
I got to travel a lot to see family.
I learned early on that different is good, interesting, enriching.
It also meant learning many lanuguages.
My first words in New York were German. When the English was starting to sink in we moved to Paris for a year and my brain got rewired. I wouldn't really say I speak French, but I certainly have a knack for it. Then we moved back and when I finally learned to read and write in English, we moved to Italy, where I started over again in a new language. I even picked up Venetian on the way and a few words of Swedish and Spanish.
When we were kids, my sister and I had fun listening in on tourists' conversations, we always had a secret language to gossip in wherever we were and we got to daydream (more than we usually did) during English and German class in school.
I could read books and watch movies in a variety of languages and making friends on vacation was easy once I got over my initial painstaking shyness towards my peers.
I never, however, was shy around adults and it entertained them to no end to hear me readily switch from one language to another without a moment's hesitation.
Languages are key for who I am and what I do today.
Last, but not least, languages are useful if you spend a lot of time ogling recipes. If my mother wasn't German, I probably would not have been able to make this recipe and translate it for you. Which is a very good thing, believe me. Once you have tasted how the silky fruit makes the baked batter go all custardy in its proximity, becoming the perfect contrast to the crumbly, crystallized buttery topping, you will understand how right I am.
