Saturday, August 14, 2010

A Domani, Italia

Good-bye Italy, for now.
I am sorry I don’t love you.

Mattia Barzaghi's vineyards, San Gimignano.
And after two summers in your grasp, I fear I may never develop that Frances Mayes, dewy-eyed romance with you.

Many of my friends yearn for your gold-dusted sunsets, your size 2 women in stilettos, your DOCG Chianti, blue-green Riviera shores, Etruscan artifacts, Limoncello, your David.

I am clear-eyed.

The way I see it, Italia is the Rivendell of the 21st century.

Back to Mediterranean Middle Earth in a moment.

But first, let me say there ARE many things I adore in Italia.
Chiefly – people.
Cristiano Papi, Florentine to the core.

For example, Cristiano - my partner in teaching travel and cultural reporting for Miami University in Firenze. Such a smart, funny and easy-going guy. He would be a friend anywhere.

Cristina, my landlord of two summers. Turn the air conditioning down so low it blows fuses across the 1500s-era building? “We fix this,” Cristina says, adjusting the remotes with a severe look, then sashaying out, waving her hands and laughing. Get stuck in the 4-by-4 elevator? “I was so worried, Aaaaaannie,” Cristina cries, her dark eyes showing that she means it.

Carlo, my Italian teaching colleague, who spent 8 long years earning at Ph.D. at Cornell in Ithaca, N.Y., where I also spent many years. “Too cold,” he says, shuddering and clutching his shoulders, then laughing loudly at his good fortune to be back in sunny Italy again.

Claudia, the Holland ex-pat living in Naples who can navigate a train strike like a pro. The courtly Lorenzo, unafraid to strike up conversations with middle-aged women outside churches, then invite them to coffee. Mattia and Cassandra, tending lives rich with art in San Gimignano. Jerry, the fashion photographer who came to Italy as an American college student 20 years ago and realized he’d been born in the wrong country.

These are some of the people who have touched me - an American living abroad without, shall we say, proper training.

And then there’s your beautiful countryside, Italia. Of that, I would never complain.

Wind surfers on Lago Iseo, Italia.
In fact, though I have found many quiet, green places in Firenze to get lost, I feel most comfortable in your rolling Tuscan hills, your Alps, your clear seas.

Your bella lingua. Your persistent recycling efforts.

Your love of art and word and symbolism. And the fact that you live relatively respectfully every day with rich heritage, millions of tourists. That you value quality and family and friends.

For these things, Italians are to be admired.

But my Mediterranean Rivendell, all the magically charismatic natives, vistas and envious tourists will not save you in a global economy that, for you, includes the long distrusting arm and currency of the EU.
Church at Castelvecchio ruins, San Gimignano

This is also what I also see after two summers with you...
You hate change.
Your higher education system is broken.
You often lack ambition.
Your justice system is often unfair and impractical.
Your trade unions dictate your economic landscape – at least those parts that the mafia or Silvio Berlusconi doesn’t control.
You are sometimes sneaky (especially the older women who jump lines everywhere).
You objectify women and futbol and food and immigrants... and tourists.
Sunset over Firenze, Italia.

The Rivendell-esque characteristics are everywhere.
Golden sunlight washing over crumbling buildings.
Boastful egos still reveling in Medici accomplishments of centuries ago.
Siestas in the middle of a work day.
Threadbare clothing worn with handmade leather shoes.

Songs of passion that cannot carry a future’s tune.

Arrivederci, Italia.
But also, perhaps, a domani.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

You Say Tomato, I Say... Rat

First I see the dog.
Secluded riverbed path along the River Arno
It is frenetically running up and down the Arno River bank, barking incessantly, chasing some ghost.
Usually, you see unleashed dogs strolling in the evening with their human companions along the lower riverbed paths, away from the hustle and bustle of Italian city life. It’s a peaceful place, since the Arno is some 400 meters wide in central Florence, and it is still.
But there are no humans with this small, black dog.
And he is quite out of his mind.

As I draw closer I see them. In the water, swimming some 5 to 10 meters off shore, three overgrown…. rats.

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Leaning Tower of Debt - to History

It seemed like I would never meet an Italian who was entrepreneurial in a BIG way.

Seems like most everyone I come in contact with in my day-to-day life in Florence has a Small Business, Smallish Personal and Financial Goals, a Defeated Before I Try aura. Lots of excuses, or complaints, or arguments why things will never change.

Fatalistic even. This is life. I’m living, so things are fine.
“Come sta?” I ask one Florence card shop owner in rare confidence of my basic Italian. She looks up slowly from her book, and replies, “Bene, bene. È quasi tempo di siesta!” referring to the fast-approaching siesta hour, when most businesses close for two or three hours.

A few weeks ago, three friends and I stayed at an Umbrian B&B compound with luxury appointments and breakfast, noteworthy landscaping and a divine pool above Lake Trasimeno. The owner, Nadine, who grew up in Interlaken, Switzerland, clearly has a vision and passion.

But then she mentioned that her Italian husband, whom she met while a student at university in Perugia, worked during the week as a meter money collector, emptying coins from machines in towns near and far. “It is boring, but it is a job,” Nadine says, with a shrug.

This entrepreneurial inertia in Italy has been perplexing to me, the American.

Sunday, July 25, 2010

In the Santo Spirito

The church bells are already ringing when I leave my Firenze apartment at 10:15 this Sunday. The peels wash over me as I cross Piazza di Santo Spirito and climb the basilica’s stone steps.

I follow a mother and her young daughter, maybe 8 years old, as they enter the 13th century Augustinian church through a side door. The girl is wearing a white summer smock, with matching ponytail ribbon. An attendant greets them familiarly, but looks me over before nodding me through (my polka-dot dress, covering both shoulders and knees, apparently passing muster).

As we three walk down the long nave, a friar in a simple black, hooded cassock unchains the front pews to allow parishioners closer to the altar. He greets the mother and daughter, his voice warm, and chats with a group of older women up front.

I haven’t attended Mass on my own volition, well, ever.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

On the Bright Side...

While sifting through the 50 photos my Italy students sent from our trip to Venice, one person kept re-appearing, a chameleon with a charming, genuine smile.
La vie de la partie.
In fact, you'll find him dancing with a street musician in my own post below.

Justin Russikoff is not a Miami University guy, but joins us from Penn State.
If I ever am privileged enough to receive the url to his blog, a requirement for my class, I'll share it here.

This week, my students are crafting scenes observed in quiet moments (and some rowdy ones) while traveling. Read them via the links at right.

I could have written a scene including Justin, but doesn't this visual - taken on a Venetian river taxi - say it all?
UPDATE: Link to Justin's blog. Someday, you may see this link on Comedy Central.

Monday, July 12, 2010

Hot and Cold in Venice

As the water taxi rounded the corner to our drop-off point in Venice, the sun beat down upon the cream, maize and faded pink of palazzos facing the Grand Canal.
In moments, that brilliant midday sun was beating down on our heads, too, as we hauled our weekend bags to the Messner Hotel, near the spectacular Santa Maria della Salute church on Venice's southeast corner.
At 95 degrees, this was a day for the beach, for an air-conditioned nap, for several glasses of something cool in the shade.
We would get none of that.

No, our 55-person group was off to tour the Doge's Palace and the Basilica di San Marco, where tour guides would ply us with rich Venetian history, with spectacular statuary, with a close look at a famous prison just steps from where the Doges lived for centuries.

And out a prison window, through the bars, comes the view of The Bridge of Sighs, that last vista a doomed prisoner might get before being hanged. Say goodbye to family and friends, waving at you from that bridge, then you are dragged to the gallows. (I love you Richard Russo!)
We mopped the sweat from our faces, necks, arms as we went.

It was a metaphor for a weekend in which Mother Nature just got in the way of treasuring a famous city.

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Corriere della Culture

What is news in Italy?
Answer: Whatever makes it past the government and Berlusconi media "censorship."
Censorship both self-inflicted and power-inflicted.

In case you think I jest, Freedom House in 2009 ranked Italy as only "partly free" in terms of media censorship. For novices: The prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, is a media mogul, and what he doesn't own, he oversees as PM.
This is a very complicated and nuanced scene, and not the focus of my posting today, although Italy's recent persecution of YouTube - and the ramifications of that - are breathtaking.

Back to the Corriere headline: I do love to read the Milan-based news media Corriere della Sera, or Evening Courier if you must, since the former is so much more poetic.

Today's headlines in the English language version of "Corriere" cannot fail to attract attention, although the writing in some is tedious.

"Dell'Utri Found Guilty - Forza Italia Not Involved."
The hed does not do this lady justice, as the mafioso political crime verdict story says so much about the criminal justice system in Italy. For further information, read "The Monster of Florence."

"Pope Attacks Belgian Magistrates Investigating Paedophilia Scandal."

Friday, June 25, 2010

Corner of Via dei Serragli and Lungarno

Sometimes at random moments I find myself transported to the corner of Via dei Serragli and Lungarno.
Sometimes I am eating a dark chocolate gelato.
Sometimes I am watching customers - two or three deep - milling before the glass cases at the gelateria, overwhelmed by the choices.
Sometimes I am leaning over the bridge ledge, or even sitting on it, watching the River Arno slide by.

But always it is dusk, the city of Firenze spread out around me, warmed by those last golden hues.

Firenze is an easy city to love, a hard city to leave.
In four days I will be there again, struggling with my Italian, tripping over the cobblestones I simply cannot navigate in heels (so embarrassing), greeting the used bookstore owner with a cheery "buongiorno" (does he ever sell anything?).

Most of all, I get the guilty pleasure of exploring a Renaissance gem over 7 weeks. It will all seem new again, I am sure.

There are also dark things to mull over, like the rude shopkeepers, like the $300 traffic ticket I am still fighting from last summer. I got it for picking up a rental car in the Firenze historic district and dropping it off again. Why haven't they dropped the ticket, you might ask? Hey, it's Italy.

I leave for Firenze optimistic. About what a different culture teaches me. About having some time to think. About...

...what new thing I will spot at the corner of Via dei Serragli and Lungarno. At dusk.