COMMENTS & CURIOSITIES:

Are you there? I’m not. Except by the time you read this, I will be. This global village business can be confusing.

We’ve been in Italy for a while, which is why I was AWOL last week. Do you know where Italy is? If you find the Strait of Gibraltar and go straight, you’ll see it, just past Sardinia. It looks like a boot.

We started in Milano, visiting cousins, then to Sicily for another cousin’s wedding — a marathon, still recovering, more on that later — then north to Venice, the city Italians call “La Serenissima” — “The Most Serene.”

First, the 15-second Italy tour: Milano — very cosmopolitan, the center of Italian fashion and design, with cheeses and prosciutto lowered from heaven at night and given out to us mortals during the day.

Sicily — remote, rugged, breathtaking, with pastries that cannot be described and of which we will never speak again.

Venice — for those who are passionate about beauty and grace, music and the arts, a water-borne miracle — La Serenissima.

And now, the wedding. To Italians, food is life. Everything else, good or bad, happy or sad, is just what happens between meals. At a wedding, the food obsession spins out of control.

The ceremony itself was manageable, even for me — 40 minutes on a beautiful spring afternoon with an excellent piano and violin duo playing Vivaldi and Brahms.

Afterward everyone headed for a nearby enoteca, a wine bar, while the requisite wedding pics were pixelated.

A few glasses of wine and some light antipasti later, it’s into the cars and up the hill to a cliffside hotel with a stunning view of the fishing village that is our hometown, along with the collage of turquoise and cobalt and teal that is the waters of Sicily.

A team of tuxedo-clad servers pass prosecco and antipasti — seafood morsels, cheeses, cold meats and grilled vegetables. The pace is quickening now, the antipasti coming faster.

I hear a number of young American guests rave about the food and talk about already being full. I smile and think to myself, if they knew what was to come, they would be shocked.

After about a half hour, the servers snap the white linen coverings from a buffet table that is roughly the length of a soccer field and spilling over with prawns, clams, oysters, sea urchins, langostini, grilled and fried calamari, octopus, pickled and smoked fish, local cheeses and fresh breads.

The Italians applaud, the servers bow in unison then busy themselves passing Sicilian red wines and Tuscan whites and looking puzzled at the American guests who politely decline more antipasto.

After another 45 minutes or so comes the announcement the Italians have been waiting for, “Signore and signori, please make your way to the dining room ... dinner is served.”

The Italians applaud, the young American guests look nervous. They should be.

Over the next hour and a half they will be served four courses consisting of pasta, a choice of local sea bass or steak and polenta, mixed green salad, then fruit and cheese.

Some 20 minutes after the entree has been served, the servers march out of the kitchen in a perfect line carrying large platters of sea bass or steak then ask every guest with a perfectly straight face if they would like a second serving of their entree.

As the reception winds down, now approaching six hours, one more announcement is made, this one getting the loudest reaction of all.

What was the block-long antipasti table is now the dessert table.

It’s overflowing with cakes and pastries of every size and description, including just-made cannoli and cassata, a traditional Sicilian cheese cake and of course, a gelato bar.

My cousins ooh and aah and even if they could hear the occasional whispers in English around us, they wouldn’t understand them.

“Are we done? You’ll have to carry me. I can’t move.”

Finally, as the clock nears seven hours, my cousin Nina carefully cuts a miniature cannolo in two and asks if I want to share it.

“Non lo devo, ma sono buonissimi,” she says: “I shouldn’t, but they are sooo good.”

And there, more or less, is your basic Italian wedding bash. Lots of fun, assuming you live through it.

Next week, the report from Venice. Grazie, ciao, ciao. I gotta go.

PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs Sundays. He may be reached at [email protected].