L’appetito viene mangiando, “Appetite comes to you while you eat.” This saying is a convenient justification for the fantastic Italian tradition of the aperitivo, the apertif. Around seven in the evening, all across Italy, friends sit down at a streetside café or inside a pub and order a drink whose price includes an array of delicious little snacks.

Yesterday the Perugia student organization eGeneration organized the first of their Fall aperitivo dates at the local wine bar Cinastik, and a number of Umbra Institute students attended. eGeneration President Luca Gatti, a Perugia native, explained the tradition at the beginning of the event, after which Umbra students with other foreign and Italian students who had come for a glass of prosecco (a light Italian champagne and traditional aperitivo favorite) as well as olives, crackers, and gorgonzola with honey over it. The aperitivo was the one of many of the opportunities that Umbra students have to get to know their Italian and European counterparts, some of the forty thousand students in Perugia. Alla salute!!!

In the photos: The logo of Cinastik Wine Bar in Via dei Priori; on the right, Hannah Fenlon of Kenyon College “smiling” at the camera; Umbra staff member Zachary Nowak explaining the Italian custom of the aperitivo; Umbra students mingling with international students in Perugia.