This ain't no marshmallow factory...soft on Italy

Arrivederci Italia !

2009-12-01T10:17:00.004-05:00

We are back in Virginia. I suppose that the typical thing to say at this point would be that the months flew by, but the funny thing is that they didn’t. At least they didn't while we were there. Actually, most of the days seemed to stretch as though to accommodate all the new experiences we were having. Others seemed long because I was in bed with a cold or because the sun never came out. And yet, now that we’re home, it’s as though the entire three months have collapsed in the way one could, or so I imagine, squeeze tight an accordion. Since I ended up our stay with a cold of two-weeks’ duration, I barely kept up the blog. I really don’t want the “a-choo” post to be my final word on Italy,so I’ll write a few more. They’re things I’ve saved up in my congested head.

We ended our Italy adventure as we started, in Rome. I like Rome more each time I go there, and although I understand it when people tell me they find it overwhelming, I would just advise those people to focus on one small area of the city each day. After all, if Rome wasn’t built in a day I don’t see why we all feel compelled to see it in a day. Even if Rome did not have the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, the treasures of the Vatican and all the great fountains and piazze, it would be tops in my book because it had sun. Something that had been missing in Bologna for two weeks. (So, it turned out that my hypothetic book title Where is the Bolognese Sun ?was right on the money).

When I think about Rome what really strikes me is how theatrical the architecture and sculpture is—at least the Baroque examples, of which there are many. This quality of pizzazz was all the more obvious after Bologna which hides all it’s Baroqueness inside the revamped medieval churches, and which, in any case, is much more medieval in appearance. In other words, Rome is more like the character Cassie in A Chorus Line. In case you have forgotten or—shocking to think of—don’t know who that is , let me describe. Cassie was the promising dancer who left Broadway to seek fortune and fame in Hollywood. Apparently Hollywood was not kind to her and she has come Crawling Back. Although previously a star on the Broadway stage she must now submit to an audition as a member of the chorus line, just one hoofer among hundreds of hopefuls. Oh, the humiliation ! And not only that-- the director conducting the audition is her Old Flame. The group dance numbers require that each auditionee dance exactly the same way like a line of funky robots. But of course, Cassie cannot do this. She simply cannot stop herself from putting a little more ooomph into the hip action or curving her arm with just that much more force than the dancers next to her. She must be she ! And that is My Roma—always more theatrical than the other cities, always calling attention to itself. Rome is a big show-off.

Most unforgettable was the hotel, or to be more accurate, our hotel room. It looked out onto the Spanish Steps. When I say, looked out, what I mean is that Boris and Bill were able to stand on the steps and talk to me through the window. I feel a little bad for the other tourists. They probably saw me in the open window, dramatically pushing open the shutters in that Cassie-like way I have. (I must be me !) Perhaps, they wondered if I was an Italian contessa looking out from the palazzo that has been in the family for centuries. How intriguing ! How picturesque ! And then they heard my dulcet tones: “Hey Bill, didja remember the camera ?” To those visitors on the Spanish Steps that evening: I am really sorry if I ruined the atmosphere for you.

The first afternoon we did a lot of walking, enjoying Villa Borghese, which is actually a park. We noticed with a shock that the graffiti problem in Rome is much less than in Bologna. (Bologna, if you are within the sound of this blog—please repair your beautiful city !) We took a circuitous route to the Villa Giulio, not for the Etruscan artifacts which are housed there, but to see the gardens. I was unimpressed by these--low-lying shrubs, symmetrically placed--but Bill seemed quite happy with them.

Walking back to the hotel, we routed our way through the Piazza del Popolo and up the Corso, a long, long avenue that is a main traffic artery. Usually. On this particular evening, It was Thursday night, around 6:00, it was entirely closed to traffic. I am not sure if the closure was a nightly event, but I suspect it is related to the Thursday practice throughout Italy of limiting conventionally fueled vehicles. So, try to imagine getting to walk down the middle of Fifth Avenue in New York, and that’s what it’s like to walk down the center of the Corso, a street lined with shops and bars. We ended up the very full day at a small, friendly restaurant near the hotel. Despite the lack of tacchino (turkey), we had a wonderful, unforgettable Thanksgiving. I hope you all did too.

Only A-a-a-chooo

2009-11-22T07:28:00.004-05:00

Italy Through My Window

I’ve been sick for several days now. Nothing major, just the kind of cold that results in a general crumminess. I’ve mostly been in bed and with the weather remaining damp and the sky gray for possibly the seventh day in a row, I haven’t felt motivated to emerge from the house too often. It is very strange and frustrating to be bedridden in Italy. Italy is out there and I’m missing it ! It is some comfort to look out and see the stucco house across the courtyard and to hear occasional conversation of passersby. At least I have reminders that I’m drinking fluids and blowing my nose in another country.

When Bill sees our neighbors he’ll tell them that I am “malata.” They look at him with intensity (according to him) and ask “Influenza ?” He answers “No. A-a-a-choooo.” It is quite apparent that Bill is very happy about how easy it is to communicate without any of the tedium of actually learning a language. Boris is the same way. “All you really need to know is ‘vuoi giocare ?’” (Do you want to play ?) Meanwhile, I am sitting around with two dictionaries, two grammar books and an extra book devoted to Italian verbs. So clearly there are two contrasting attitudes about learning La Bella Lingua in Casa Impasta.

Last night Bill and Boris came back from our neighborhood gelateria with a big tub of three flavors. The place we like to go is called Tentazioni, on Via Toscana. In our collective opinion it rivals the best in the city although the number of flavors is limited. Anyway, I really did start to feel better afterwards , so now I’m thinking that gelato must have some of the same healing properties as chicken soup.

Sometimes Travel is Boring

2009-11-19T14:30:00.004-05:00

I have to say that travel is a lot easier when the weather is warm and the skies are blue. If it’s sunny and eighty degrees you can go to a caffe, have a glass of wine and basically do nothing but watch the people. I can do this for hours. When you do this in a foreign country you can say you’re soaking up the atmosphere or learning about the culture. If you do this in Charlottesville eventually a waiter will tell you to move along.

I bring this up because we have had awful, depressing weather for at least a week. We wake up and the sky is a yellowish gray, the kind of light that can set off migraines for me. And that’s on a good day. Other days it rains, or the sky is almost the color of charcoal. It’s hard to know what time it is. We were out yesterday afternoon, and it appeared to be dusk. It was actually 3:30. We enjoy the night better than the day, because that depressing low-lying cloudy sky becomes atmospheric after the sun goes down, and it really isn’t very cold out. There are lots of people out strolling in the central area, and with the Christmas lights it really has that festive bustling quality that a “real” city can have. I mean cities where people actually live and work.

We are leaving Bologna in a week, and are just trying to revisit parts of the city we have enjoyed. After visiting Ravenna we decided that we didn’t have it in us to scope out any more neighboring cities, rushing around to the sites and trying to make train connections. So, for the most part we are staying put. Except for my idea last week of visiting San Pietro in Casale, 20 minutes outside of Bologna. If you look for this town in a guide book you won’t find it. Here’s a link though. The reason we went there was that every time we took a train east we would pass it. From our vantage point through the train window it seemed like a pretty little town, and one afternoon I could see an outdoor market taking place. So I got it into my head that we were “meant” to see this town.

Getting there was easy and cost about $5 for all three of us. We arrived at about two in the afternoon and upon leaving the train station were greeted with an unpromising view of blocks of non-descript housing planted along a straight road that spread out in both directions, seemingly without end. Here’s a little bit of geography and history for you. With few exceptions, notably the Apennine Mountains, Emilia-Romagna is FLAT and as a former midwesterner I know flat. In addition the road that connects towns and cities along this terrain is perfectly straight and flat. The fact that it is superimposed on an ancient Roman road makes it a little more interesting. But only a little. So, San Pietro in Casale is adjacent to this road It is mostly residential, composed of two- and three-story apartment buildings. (Single family homes are the exception in Italy, even in the rural and suburban areas.) There are some factories and office buildings on the edge of the town and then the town gives way to orchards and small farms. Eventually you will run into one of the prosperous and interesting cities of the region--Mantova or Parma, for example. But you'll also come across a lot of towns you've never heard of.

There was nobody around as we walked through residential streets looking for the central area. The green and blue shutters of the cream- and peach- colored homes were closed tight. We felt like intruders, as though we had ridden into a town of the Old West on our horses. Bill expected that at any minute we’d hear a creaking door, flapping loose on a hinge. Perhaps the sound of a tinny piano would come from a town saloon. But no. At last we found the center of town which consisted of several banks, a movie theatre, a church , stationary store and a couple caffes. Except for the caffes everything was closed. There were a couple solitary people sitting outside, but the weather wasn’t really hospitable enough to do this with any enjoyment, and they didn’t look like they were especially happy to be huddled on the benches

So, within about fifteen minutes it became clear to us that San Pietro in Casale was undiscovered for a reason. It’s pretty boring. The funny thing is that when you go somewhere that has little to recommend it, you tend to search for interesting things about it. It’s kind of like when I go to my dentist and I try to figure out the pattern on the textured accoustical tile ceiling. It’s something I wouldn’t spend five seconds doing under normal circumstances, but when I'm getting my teeth drilled and filled, I suddenly find this activity quite absorbing. In a similar way, we looked for anything that might be a tiny bit interesting in San Pietro in Casale. Certainly, the church, Saints Pietro and Paolo (that’s one church, two saints) is very pretty in terracotta stucco and white. Unfortunately it was closed. We came across the town supermarket. It was in in a well-designed modern shopping center of sensible dimensions; it didn’t overwhelm the apartments around it. We admired the timbers that served as a portico and looked nice against the stucco walls.

I guess I can now see where that expression, “Nothing much to write home about” comes from. But this too is travel. Some places are just ordinary and probably most people the world over live in just such ordinary places. The good part is that the town's residents won’t have to worry about a travel writer buying a home and penning a witty travel-log called “My Year of the Bella Vita in San Pietro in Casale and Don’t You Wish You Were Me” which will subsequently bring in huge tour buses and ruin the town. To be honest, there isn’t much there to ruin.

We did what we generally do when we’re at a loss. We found a caffe. This one was quite comfortable, possessing chairs and tables. Perhaps you already know that at least half the caffes in Italy offer only stand-up bars, so to find one with furnishings was quite a welcome sight and served to give shape to the day. We had a light lunch and I took a look at jewelry the woman at the next table was selling. After lunch we had dessert. And then we had coffee. And we laughed thinking ahead to some day in the future, when back home in Virginia, we’ll say, “Remember that crazy day we went to that boring town ? What was it’s name again ? Who's idea was that ?” I don’t know that San Pietro in Casale will ever hold any magic for us, but it will always be worth a smile.

Cioccoshow 2009 !

2009-11-18T11:40:00.003-05:00

These tools and locks are molded chocolate, dusted with cocoa.

Concessions set up in front of the Duomo. That might be the Dave Clark Five on the right.

In the words of Rhoda Morgenstern (from the Mary Tyler Moore show), "Chocolate Solves Everything." Crummy gray weather (four days straight)? A Common Cold ? (Which I have) Uncooperative Homeschooler (ditto) ? Well, there's nothing like a five-day chocolate festival to cheer everyone up. Piazza Maggiore, Piazza Galvani and other streets in the center are now full of vendors selling all types of chocolate. They have come from all over Italy and I also spotted a Belgian chocolatier. So, we had a great time, trying various confections and enjoying the visual spectacle. Enjoy the photos and I'm sorry that multi-media doesn't include sending flavors over the internet.

Going to the Teatro

2009-11-15T08:04:00.003-05:00

Such a small world. Earlier in the week we went to a performance by the Spaghetti Western Orchestra. Just think about all the connections for a minute. The band performed music by Enrico Morricone, an Italian composer of film scores that were set in the American West but filmed in Italy. The members of the Spaghetti Western Orchestra who sang the songs about the American West that were filmed in Italy and composed by an Italian are from… Australia. At certain points one of the performers spoke in a Clint Eastwood voice. This was especially humorous when he was speaking Italian. “Sto cercando un uomo. Il nome e’ Bob Robertson.”

Bologna is actually not a very large city. In fact it seems smaller the more we’ve lived here. I think one could cover the entire historical area in less than a day on foot, as long as you didn’t stop in the museums. And yet for a city of rather small size, it has a lot of performance venues. Just ten minutes from our house is the Villa Mazzacorati, a grand Palladian style home made only slightly less imposing by the crumbling stucco and faded paint. It is now owned by the comune of Bologna and serves as a social center, clinic and also houses a historic collection of toy soldiers.
A few weeks back I visited the Villa for a concert by a soprano who sang selections from Italian opera and some American favorites. The poster said she was going to sing songs from Liza Minelli’s repertoire, so Bill really wanted to go. I told him he couldn’t show up just for the express purpose of laughing at the singer. As it turned out he and Boris made other plans so I went by myself.

I did not have high hopes. The performance was held, not in the gorgeous theatre which I’ll discuss momentarily , but in a utilitarian multi-purpose room filled with folding chairs. Just about every seat was taken for this free event. By my estimate I was the youngest person in the room. And I’m not that young. It became clear that the Villa Mazacorati functions as a social center for the retirees of the neighborhood, and looking around the room, I found little to distinguish the people from those that would have frequented the “Ethel Merman Sing-a-long” at my grandmother’s condominium. I guess what I mean by that is they were well dressed in elaborately textured sweaters with shiny jewelry and there was lots of burgundy-dyed hair. Not a blue jeans crowd and not a "Gray is Beautiful" crowd either.

The singer was wonderful, I thought. She performed sections of various operas, prefacing each with a synopsis, and even talking a bit about the style of the composition. When she sang certain arias it was obvious that everyone in the room knew them and she encouraged them to sing along, which they did, although nobody took her up on her invitation to get up and dance. Since the weather was nice, the back door was open. A handsome old gentleman was watching from outside, holding a poodle in his arms. He had probably noticed the sign prohibiting dogs. The singer invited him to find a seat inside, but he demurred. Instead he stood out there holding his dog and dancing with it in time to the music. Sometimes I think the main reason for writing this blog is just so I will always remember moments like that.

The real stunner of the Villa Mazzacorati is the Teatro 1763, a theatre designed by the family for their personal use. There are very few such private theatres still in existence anywhere in the world and this one has been immaculately restored. It is highly, (perhaps frantically would be the better word), ornamented with landscapes, decorative motifs and 24 nude plaster figures arrayed around the room. Altough they look like supports for the two levels of balconies, the figures are actually decorative in function, giving this highly Baroque interior an Old West bordello look.
We had been trying to make it over to the theatre on a Thursday for the free weekly guided tour and I finally did. I was hoping to meet Bill and Boris there, but they were no-shows so I had the tour all to myself. The woman who spoke with me was a volunteer and quite expert; like her counterparts at Monticello and historical sites everywhere that depend on the unpaid worker, she appeared to be a mainstay of the Villa Mazzacorati organization. Although she had a book full of notes I don’t think she consulted it once. She explained that the home had been used only in the summer and that other wealthy families were invited to see and participate in theatrical productions. It sounded very Jane Austin-like to me as I imagined the family rummaging through table-cloths and bits of brocade to create costumes for their latest melodrama. How many romances began as the amateur actors emoted to one another, I wondered. “My Heart Was Racine.” Such a good Harlequin Romance title, don’t you think ?

My tour-guide was just hitting her stride, explaining that the classical figure/brackets were often decorated with flowers and garland, when a group of young people, well-dressed and earnest, entered the theatre. It seemed that they were preparing for that evening’s concert featuring a soprano opera singer from Japan. She was there as well, looking the space over, casing the joint, if that’s not too crude a way to describe the way this graceful woman practiced her scales in various locations in the room. Of course it’s very important for an opera singer to have sufficient time to prepare for a concert. I, however, couldn’t help but feel sympathy for my tour guide. After all, she had set aside an afternoon to enlighten visitors and now all this hustle and bustle was intruding. So, when a series of soprano trills broke into her description of the theatre’s restoration, no one was sorrier than I. Oh, my worthy guide valiantly tried to hide her irritation by saying, “Now you can see how perfect the accoustics are !” but I could tell she was not entirely pleased. And so it went. She would launch into a description of the family’s background and the singer would interrupt with an arpeggio. Soon people began running back and forth with lights, sheet music, stools and delicious-looking hors d’oeuvres. I suggested that maybe we should end our tour but she wouldn’t hear of it. Her Show Must Go On ! So, we went outside and looked at the columns and the gracefully curving wings of the building. When we went back inside the pianist had joined the singer and it became pretty tricky to insert little snippets of information between his bass notes and the singer’s high notes. “Well, if it’s too difficult, maybe we should stop now…”I offered. But no. The tour-guide was not to be turned back. A tour I wanted; a tour I would have. She took me through the side entrance and showed me how the family would have entered the stage, going directly from their private living quarters to the balcony. This was very interesting. Finally, the guide must have felt secure in the fact that she had given me a comprehensive tour and we wrapped things up.

Last night we went to the theatre for a concert of Emilian music by a quartet of accomplished musicians. I was disappointed that my tour guide wasn’t among the audience members. I think she would have liked to know I brought the whole family back to the theatre. The program was made up of folk songs celebrating the fall season. Not surprisingly there were several songs celebrating the grape harvest and the ensuing enjoyment of the product. It’s amazing how an accomplished musician can actually hiccup in perfect harmony. While we enjoyed the concert, it must be said that the surroundings were a bit formal for the music which would have been heard centuries ago in taverns or under a tree. The well-dressed audience was very quiet except for applauding at the end of each song. What was really needed for the raucous music was a lot of foot-stomping and hand-clapping. But maybe that would have caused the plaster figures to come tumbling down upon us.

Personal Shopping

2009-11-11T15:20:00.006-05:00

Here is a sign from a clothing store in Bologna: “Aquistando 2 camicie, riceverai in omaggio una sciarpa.” This can be translated as “Buy 2 shirts, receive a free scarf as a gift,” but I prefer to translate the second part in a more literal way: “receive in homage a scarf.” I do love that. In fact, from now on when I get my free sandwich back in the United States, after purchasing ten as a select member of the Padow’s Sandwich Club, I am going to say, “I accept your homage. I'll have the tuna fish.”

The shopping experience in Italy is quite a bit different here than in the United States because normally you are patronizing very small, Mom and Pop stores (and restaurants for that matter). What this means is that you are never anonymous. You always say hello and goodbye. Also, no sooner is your toe across the threshold then somebody will approach you, asking if you need help. This can seem rather off-putting if you aren’t used to it. I normally say, "sto guardando” (I’m looking), which seems acceptable.

Sometimes the more personal nature of stores in Italy gets a little too personal. I am thinking of the farmacia (pharmacy). The first difference to notice is that there is very little self-service in pharmacies. For any purchase of any sort of medicine, even over-the-counter remedies, you need to stand in line and speak to somebody behind the counter. (I have even needed to approach the counter to get Kleenex !) There are no secrets here. Constipation ? Diarrhea ? Halitosis (I just threw that in for nostalgia’s sake even though I haven’t heard it mentioned in about thirty years). For all these garden variety annoyances as well as the filling of prescriptions you need to speak to the pharmacist or pharmacist’s assistant. Although I am not Catholic I cannot help but think that going to the pharmacist here is a bit like going to confession; in both cases one has to reveal failings of one kind or another. There have to be hundreds of pharmacies in the city. Seemingly they appear on every other block. I think the reason there are so many is so that you don’t have to patronize the same one too many times. I have nightmares about going into the pharmacy near our apartment and hearing one of the staff say in a loud voice, “So how’s your constipation ?” for all and sundry to hear.

I am kind of confused when I go into the pharmacy because everybody looks so official with their white labcoats, but they don’t wear nametags. What are their qualifications I wonder ? And why is the woman who just counselled me on acid reflux medicine now advising somebody about under-eye moisturizer ? Don’t you think that’s a little confusing ? It would be like your dentist all of a sudden helping you pick a lipstick color.

Brand-name medicines do not exist in Italy. I have had to buy heartburn medicine during our time here, and on each occasion I’ve been given a different product. The names of the medicines sound like somebody just grabbed chemical names at random from the periodic table and strung them together. It makes me nostalgic for Tums…so easy to spell. It has also been difficult for Bill to find a substitute for Excedrin. The combination of aspirin, caffeine and acetametophin just doesn’t exist. He has had to cobble together two or three medicines, paying double what we pay at home. So, my advice to travelers is to bring whatever medicines they think they are going to need for the duration of their stay—prescription and over the counter. Our mistake was figuring that we’d be able to find over-the-counter equivalents here, but that really hasn’t been the case.

Since we have been spending our time in the historical areas of the city we haven’t been encountering too many big box discount stores, although they do exist. Instead, we have been marvelling at the highly specific nature of the stores in the city proper. My favorite is the cartoleria. This would be analogous to an office supply store-- if you were shopping for office supplies in 1965. Here you will find a wonderful selection of pens, art supplies, notebooks and gift wrap. Speaking for myself, and possibly for most of us who dwell in the twenty-first century, I generally go to office supply stores for printer paper or printer cartridges—things I never find in a cartoleria. Bill and I joked that there’s probably a cartridgeria somewhere, and darn if I didn’t come across just such a store today. It was about the size of an elevator and simply full of printer cartridges and printer cables and the like. (Actually I don’t think it was called a cartridgeria, but that was pretty much what it was.) My guess is that if you need a pen though, you’ll have to stop off at the caroleria across the street. Or if you find yourself on Via Farini, you could always go to the Casa della Penna. I'll bet you've figured out the translation: House of the Pen. You'd better get there quickly though. Before they sell it.

Trying to Find Ravenna

2009-11-10T05:53:00.008-05:00

Grandma Ruth in Yellowstone...and Ravenna ?

Ravenna is only one hour and twenty minutes from Bologna by train. If it had its own license plate its motto would be “Great Mosaics, ” to borrow from Idaho’s “Great Potatoes.” And they are the best. The mosaics I mean. For most of us any hands-on mosaic experience took place at summer camp. As lame as most of our efforts were in this regard, at least it gave us a vague sense of the process involved. In fact, the first words out of my mouth upon seeing the mosaics at the Basilica San Vitale were, “Wow ! That’s got to be 100,000 ashtrays worth of tiles !” Seriously though, they are a sight to behold and everyone should see them at least once in their lives.

Upon alighting from the train I noticed how quiet the station was when compared to the bustle of activity at Bologna’s. The first thing we did was go in search of a tourist office and a map. The tourist office, it turns out, is about a ten-minute walk from the station. I don’t have a problem with walking per se, but Ravenna is a rather difficult city in which to get one’s bearings, with lots of curving streets and faded street signs. Wouldn’t it make more sense to have the tourist office and the free maps at the station ? Or maybe we’re all supposed to earn those free maps by taking five or six wrong turns first.

At some point during the last ten years or so a law must have gone into effect decreeing that every town and city of a certain size have a Benetton, a Feltrinelli bookstore and a Max Mara upscale clothing boutique. Apparently the law requires that these shops be located in the historical pedestrian area. Oh, how I look forward to reflecting on our trip to Italy, paging through our photographs and reminiscing: “Oh there’s that orange cashmere sweater from the Benetton in Padova ! Remember? I think I liked it just a little bit better than the sage green turtleneck sweater we saw at the Benetton in Venice. Or maybe I’m confusing it with the olive green cowl-neck we almost bought at the Benetton in Ravenna.” Misty, water-color memories.

So, to get to the unique parts of these cities one is required to run the gauntlet of chain stores. Yes, it isn't only the United States that is replete with those. Finally, we reached the Piazza del Popolo which is easily the most welcoming, prettiest area of the city. There’s a civic building with a clock tower and charming medieval architecture. A few steps away is an indoor market housing all manner of grocers and butchers. Unlike markets in many places which have makeshift, utilitarian exteriors, Ravenna's is substantial with a late-nineteenth century appearance that seemed Parisian to me.

After a quick coffee we went in search of the Basilica San Vitale. It really should not be hard to find a Basilica. A building of that stature is generally conspicuous. And yet, we were continually confused by signs that would point us in one direction and then leave us marooned on the spot where they had directed us. From now on I am going to call this phenomenon Sign Betrayal. We were counting on you, sign with the dome graphic, and you just up and left us ! Of course, when exploring an unfamiliar place you eventually eliminate all the wrong turns and find your way. Basilica San Vitale was wonderful and it was empty, which is amazing to me. I think it is no exaggeration to say that it is the Sistine Chapel of mosaics. The stylized Byzantine figures were wonderful but I was even more fascinated by the decorative motifs, some of which were complicated enough to have stepped out of an Escher print.

For awhile, strange as it may seem when you visit this unassuming city now, Ravenna was the center of the world. It was the center of the Holy Roman Empire and later the heart of the Byzantine Empire. Viewing the mosaics one can well imagine that its inhabitants must have felt they were living in a golden, timeless city. And yet the Ravenna of today is strangely empty and not in a good way. There are streets where buildings of anemic yellow and vanilla just seem to go on forever, monotonous, narrow and vacant. These are streets that practically dare you to walk down them, so forbidding do they appear.

It says a lot about a city—and not good things-- if it takes a half-hour to find someplace decent for lunch. Finally, we found a pizza self-service restaurant. After the food was ready, we took it to a back room furnished with urban hip chairs and nice tables. And yet, everything was wrong. The calzone tasted like something from a high school cafeteria and the dining area was virtually a museum of failed aspirations. There was a raised area, presumably a stage for music. It was now occupied by a cabinet of some sort. There was a bank of three computers and above them a mural with the words Internet Center. The computers looked out-of-date, weren’t being used and weren’t turned on. The walls were blank except for two art prints the size of sheets of notebook paper, too small to see. They flanked a Vietato Fumare (do not smoke) sign. So much for creating an arty ambience.

After lunch we made our way to a couple more churches beginning with Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, It has an amazing sequence of figures on either side of a long wide nave. As I looked at the faces of the women I was interested to discover that each was unique; my preconception of Byzantine art has always been that the individuality of the figures was submerged, but the more I looked, the more it seemed that each of the figures could have been a portrait. And not only that. I kept coming back to one who looked strangely familiar and then realized that she bore a striking resemblence to my grandmother. I have placed her photo next to the one from of the mosaic, so you can be the judge. Just remember, she usually wasn’t so squinty.

Our last stop was the church of Sant’Apollinare in Classe which is reachable by city bus. After passing supermarkets , car dealerships and housing developments we finally saw a church of impressive dimensions in the middle of a field. Since my last visit twenty years ago a hotel has been built on the grounds of the church. I don’t mean that the hotel is merely near the church; I mean that it practically shares an entrance. If you’re not careful you may wind up registering for a room instead of buying an entrance ticket for the mosaics.

The mosaics were, not surprisingly, beautiful with vividly rendered animals and trees of an individuality that was fascinating. Leaving the church, we faced a cold steady rain. We ran to a nearby bus stop located in a flat empty area where the outlying town of Classe just gives out. Luckily the bus arrived in minutes.

I was glad to leave Ravenna. There’s a worn out quality about it that has something to do with the depressing new buildings, the abundance of graffiti and the aggressiveness of the panhandlers and street vendors. There is so much beauty here if you look for it but not a lot of simple enjoyment. Maybe the grim, wet weather has colored my view of the place.

I guess if a visitor stayed long enough s/he would find the real Ravenna. It would include the historical sites and the dispirited modern zones. The visitor would also want to take into account the schools where the fabrication and restoration of mosaics are taught. In a way, we left too soon, but I couldn’t wait to go back to Bologna. I just kept thinking about the strange pizzeria where we'd eaten lunch. It stood as a sorry relic of the owner’s aspirations. Designed to celebrate culture and food, it now seemed more like a bus station diner. The restaurant seemed appropriate to Ravenna: once an Empire and now a half-day field trip.

Bologna Books and More

2009-11-08T13:00:00.007-05:00

Here’s how you know that Bologna is a city for foodies. You go into the Libreria Ambasciatore , a book store/food palace, and just inside the entrance somebody is selling whole truffles. No, not the chocolate kind—those would be on the third floor. These are the kind that pigs dig up. Most of the ground floor of the store was redolent of the musky musty aroma. It really is unlike anything else. The cheapest I saw cost 30 Euros, and it was about two-thirds the size of a golf ball. In addition I would have had to spend another 10 Euros for a truffle slicer. Do you think I should have popped for that ? Perhaps you're thinking, “Well, you never know when you’ll need a truffle slicer” and I guess that’s true. It might come in handy if I ever need to make slices of American Cheese even thinner. Somehow I don't see a lot of truffles in my future.

It has been very interesting to browse through the cookbook section of the bookshops in Bologna. One thing that stands out is the paucity of all-purpose cookbooks. I have asked several people here, good Italian cooks all of them, whether there is an Italian counterpart to The Joy of Cooking. There really isn’t. Cooking is learned from family and the cookbooks that people prefer are those that specialize in a certain region, usually the region where they are from. Of course there are plenty of books available here about the Emilia-Romagna region. Liguria also shows up for its seafood and I see sections ranging from Puglia to the Veneto. If there are cookbooks from other countries they must be very thin on the ground. I see a few scattered here and there but nothing like what we would be used to in the United States.

Not surprisingly, the specificity of the cookbooks is but a reflection of the narrow focus of foods sold in the shops. One day Bill went to Simoni, pasta shop extraordinaire and committed the faux pas of asking for meat ravioli. No such thing around here ! It’s tortellini or tortelloni thank you very much ! Interestingly, Ferrara which is just half an hour from here boasts its own stuffed pasta called called cappellacci, meaning “small hats.” If I could examine them side-by-side I could probably tell the difference between cappellacci and tortellini, but since one is in Bologna and the other is in Ferrara it’s a little inconvenient to do so.

Back to the subject of books. ( Why do I keep gravitating toward the subject of food ?) My friend Bella has mentioned that she put my blog on twitter (I'm not sure what that means to be perfectly frank. It's good, right?) to let her friends in publishing know about my site as they prepare for a Book Fair here in Bologna in the Spring. To that end, if any visitors still feel they haven’t had enough of books after the fair, the Sala Borsa is definitely an amazing place to see. Really, it’s worth a visit even for the “casual reader,” which I guess would be most of us. The Sala Borsa, steps from the Neptune Fountain, was formerly the stock exchange. It has a beautiful open atrium with two levels of balconies above. The intricately painted ceiling has obviously been carefully restored. Now the space houses a public library, a children’s library, an urban design center and a gallery of temporary exhibitions. There is also an impressive collection of Italian and international newspapers and magazines. On the first floor is a lively caffe selling sandwiches, pastries and alcoholic beverages in addition to the expected roster of espresso drinks. Is it any wonder that I’m always coming back to food in this blog ?

This library/media center is everything one would hope for in the reuse of a historical space. Haven’t we all seen gorgeous architectural renderings of revamped civic spaces and redesigned parks? Often the result falls far short of the idea. In this case, it’s hard to see how the Sala Borsa could be any better than it is. Plus it's just so darned hip. It's as though the coolest people you know all got together and reinvented the concept of the library. I can just picture them saying, "Why not have a bar ? And with a waitstaff too ? And let's get some upholstered designer chairs that you can rotate when you need a desk for your laptop. This isn't going to be your nonno's library !"

I wanted to be sure to mention the Sala Borsa because we passed it on many occasions before we took the initiative of going inside. It isn’t always mentioned in the guidebooks and because of the abundance of college students coming and going I just assumed it was part of the University. Luckily Bill can never intentionally pass up a courtyard without checking it out so we all benefited from his wandering ways.

By way of a PS. Today I bought a Zingarelli dizionario, which I guess would be the Italian version of Webster. Although I bought the smaller version it promises to add a good five pounds to the weight of my suitcase. In addition to the usual definitions there are many pages of illustrations accompanied by appropriate vocabulary. We can assume that the subjects for the diagrams might shed some light on areas of importance in Italy. After an initial browse I have come across a half page with illustrations and names of cheeses (all of them Italian), and an entire page of desserts.

Grocery Store Revelations

2009-11-06T06:47:00.001-05:00

In my last post I wrote about the “next stage” of being a tourist and the things you find out after being in a place for awhile. Here’s another instance of that. Normally we do most of our shopping at an all-purpose grocery store called the COOP (pronounced like the “coop” in cooper), but every once in awhile I’ll stop at a small shop that sells a little of this, a little of that: sausage, cheese, various canned goods. Since the owner has to slice everything by hand it takes awhile to get served. It’s a good place to go to get practice listening to Italian, but you have to be in the mood to hang around there for a good twenty minutes.

The other customers were a woman in her seventies and two young woman who were police officers. They looked very official in a swinging sixties sort of way with white vinyl holsters holding their pistols. I think they just go around the city issuing parking tickets, but their ensembles always make me think of Diana Rigg in the Avengers. Anyway, the woman did what a lot of people do when they find themselves in social situations with police officers. She started talking about crime and things that were bothering her in the city. At a certain point she starting listing all the minorities who have recently moved into Bologna. She started with the Africans from Tunisia, and made her way through to the Chinese, Philipinos and Romanians. For good measure she threw in the Jews. As many of you know I do have a Certificate of Participation now from an Italian language school, so I have been honing my comprehension abilities. It wasn’t just that the woman made sweeping generalizations about each group. She took things a step further by describing pros and cons of each. It sounded almost like somebody going through the lineup of a baseball team and listing each player’s strengths and weaknesses. As she made her general statements about the influx of foreigners(not a good thing in her opinion) I interupted her flow and said I was an American at which point she did a kind of switcheroo and talked about how racist Americans were. This was about ten seconds after her denigration of various groups. Yep she was a slick one all right. I have to hand it to her though, she did try to bring me into the discussion by badmouthing Jews—surely even an American could get behind that. I told her I was Jewish. There are about 100 Jews left in Bologna and the former Jewish ghetto forms a parallel city just minutes from the University. For various reasons, including getting sent to concentration camps, there aren’t many Jews left in the city. So, I figured I might be the first actual Jew this woman had ever seen and I thought maybe she’d like to take a good look at me.

Well, the upside was she didn’t seem to want to take me out and shoot me. Nor did the policewomen although they were obviously equipped to do so with their groovy holsters. But the really disturbing part wasn’t so much the ravings of this particular woman, but the nodding of heads by the two policewoman. Yes, they were quite ready to blame every problem that Bologna faces on foreigners. And they were young, which is especially upsetting. We passed on to other subjects like travel and the weather. Everyone made their purchases and wished everyone else a nice day. ( They usually just say arrivederci. There really isn’t an Italian version of “have a nice day.”)

So there you are then. A part of Italy that doesn’t make it into Fodor’s. Part of the fallout from learning a language well enough to understand the people around you. For me, it’s hard to view this submerged hostility at the same time as the beauty. It’s like that optical illusion of two profiles that interlock with a silhouette of a table lamp; you can see one image or the other but not both. And that’s where I find myself right now, at times astonished by the beauty of this city and at other times deeply saddened by the ugliness.

Different Degrees of Tourism

2009-11-04T14:49:00.004-05:00

"The Good Doors"

I have been very fortunate to have lived in Italy for extended periods not once, but twice. Each of these stays, the one in Florence twenty years ago and the one at present in Bologna, have been very significant parts of my life. They have differed from one another in many ways. Florence is very different from Bologna and my life’s circumstances are very different now than they were then. Twenty years ago I was single and just turning thirty. Now I am married with a ten-year-old son and I’m hoping that people reading this won’t take the trouble to do the math regarding my age.

One thing I’ve noticed on both visits is the way staying in a place for months instead of days reveals new things about it; sometimes good things and sometimes downright ugly. Right now I’ll write about a pleasant episode. Something happened recently in Bologna that revealed the not-so-nice side of the city (don’t worry family and friends, nothing dangerous !) but I’ll save that for another time.

When I came to Florence in 1988 I travelled with my mother for the first couple weeks before she returned home and I settled down in the deceptively rural nearby outskirts of Florence. It’s always easy for me to remember the year because the Olympics were being televised from Korea in caffes and hotel lobbies everywhere we went. We were surprised at the variety of events that we saw, events rarely seen in the coverage from the United States. There seemed to be an infinite variety of games involving balls being bounced off walls and who knew there were so many different horseback riding events ?

The first week in Florence was warm with the golden light you see in the autumn on the days it isn’t raining. Naturally we spent a lot of time around the Duomo, a striped marble monster of a building. Since I was established in my apartment and my mother was staying in a hotel on the Arno we would arrange to meet every morning at the baptistry adjacent to the Duomo. We always met by the “Good Doors,” the ones designed by Ghiberti. I have to say that having visited Florence on this trip I spent a good deal of time waiting to get into the Duomo and I had the opportunity to look at the doors of the Duomo itself. They are quite good. In fact in any other circumstance we would probably be putting asterisks in our guidebooks to remind ourselves to see them. Of course the problem is, they are twenty feet away from really really great doors, like maybe the best doors in history. I always feel sorry for the anonymous Duomo door artist (or artists). Here was his chance for immortality but NOOOO, Ghiberti the genius had to steal all the limelight. Of course I do not begrudge Ghiberti his acclaim, what with launching Renaissance art and all. He’s entitled. Only do have a look at the Duomo’s doors too when you visit.

I seem to have gotten a little off my subject which really had to do with the shops on the street that encircles the Duomo. Of course there were stores specializing in leather, others with tiny replicas of the Duomo and still others with postcards and tee-shirts. The store that intrigued us the most was a narrow shop that sold tarnished iron goods; things like oil lamps and candelabras. In my memory almost all the items were hanging from hooks. It wasn’t clear whether the objects were actually antiques but they certainly looked old and each was one-of-a-kind. My mother was especially attracted to a little oil lamp. Its price was in that tough middle area where it was affordable yet more than she wanted to spend, so she decided not to buy it. As the week passed it was obvious to me that she regretted not buying it so after she’d left Florence I went back to the shop and made the purchase. The owner, an elderly fellow, got it down from the ceiling with a metal hook and then wrapped it carefully in paper. I left the shop in triumph and held onto the oil lamp until I gave it to my mother months later, much to her delight and surprise. The funny part, and a direct consequence of living in a place for several months, was that when I returned to the shop a couple weeks later a new “old” oil lamp was back on its hook, hanging exactly where the other one had been. Apparently the kindly owner had a back room somewhere with boxes of the stuff but he only put out one at a time. The guy really knew how to market his merchandise ! The last thing I wanted to find out was where the items were actually from. Of course if I’d just passed a couple days in Florence I never would have discovered the ruse, but I have to say I got a kick out of the incident and it wasn’t as though I had been cheated out of thousands of dollars.

So, that’s the kind of thing that can happen when you stay beyond the honeymoon period in a place. This probably doesn’t hold true in, say, Cleveland, but in Italy which is so much a confection of our own fantasies you have to expect that a bit of reality will eventually surface. Of course when Bill, Boris and I visited the Duomo last month I looked for that shop. I must have circled the perimeter three times and I never found it. There was a sophisticated-looking book shop and a designer leather shop I didn’t remember from before. My guess is that one of these shops took over the space. This was a disappointment of course. I wanted to see if the Great-grand son of the oil lamp was hanging there.

My mother died almost two years ago, which is difficult to believe. In the aftermath my brother patiently tracked down that oil lamp and sent it to me. It was one among many curios that my mother collected during her travels. To me it’s a record of a very particular place and time and it tells a great story.

A Day at the Museum

2009-11-03T12:43:00.004-05:00

Today was a rainy day so we went to one of the museums we had been saving for just such an occasion: the Museo del Patrimonio Industriale. I don’t know about you, but whenever I see “Industrial” in the name of a museum I picture an exhibition with train engines and various turbines, or even a full-sized coal mine like they have in Chicago. The fact that the museum was housed in a huge palazzo—huge even by palazzo standards—with double-doors flanked by gargantuan sculpted muscle men increased my sense of expectation. They could probably fit an airplane in there !

My optimism decreased quite quickly when we entered a room full of glass display tables housing teeny objects. I thought it was the gift shop. It was actually the museum. My expectations of seeing a Ferrari or even an impressive pulley system pretty much melted away as I found myself looking at an entire display case of keys. When we tired of those we passed on to the collection of weights and measures, and escutcheons—those decorative metal gizmos that frame keyholes. We were also treated to what is perhaps the hugest bellows in existence, probably about three feet in length. When we came across it I was ready to tell the guard, “In Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry they have a real submarine that you can get inside of—but this is nice too,” but I resolved instead to appreciate the bellows for the essence of its bellowsness. Sometimes being an artist is very handy. When all else fails you can fall back on the visual qualities of your surroundings. In the next room, for no reason that I could think of, there was a large marionette theater with perhaps thirty puppets. Boris was very excited about this so I told him that the theater was the reason we wanted to come in the first place…as a surprise for him !

By the time we got to the scissors display Bill was pretty much convinced that the museum was established by everyone in Bologna getting rid of their junk. And perhaps that’s true, but I have to say that after the initial disappointment, the museum guard won me over. He led us to a contraption that was clearly a press of some sort and explained that it was used to make coins. I think a little molten metal might have helped his presentation but I enjoyed it nonetheless. Without any warning the museum morphed into an art gallery. What a dirty trick to play on Boris. Suddenly we were in a room full of Annunciations, San Sebastions and other scenes of martyrdom. Things got better when we came across the most impressive exhibit in the place-- a beautifully painted carriage. It just showed up unexpectedly in the last room.

On our way out, the museum guard showed us a painting of a Madonna and Child and explained that the artist had been a student of Giotto. I don’t really know if he meant "student" in the sense that the two artists were in the same room together, or in the sense that I am a student of Picasso because I was born later and my 6th grade art teacher Miss Katzourakos (“all you have to do is say cat, zoo, ray, kiss” is how she clarified her name on the first day of class) had us all make cubist masks. In any event, the guard and I looked at the painting and decided that, yes, there were similarities in the way the faces were depicted. It must be said that Giotto’s technique was a whole lot better, but on the other hand that’s to be expected. By way of compensation we didn’t have to reserve tickets in advance for a fifteen minute visit as we had to do for the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua.

I forgot to mention that like the majority of museums in Bologna, this one was free of charge. As an added bonus we got to take a peek at the second floor of the Palazzo. It is just amazing that a family could have ever built it for their own private use—and they weren’t even ruling a country.

Right now Bologna is facing budget problems like every other municipality in the world. They are trying to save money on schools, and apparently they aren’t putting a lot of effort into the graffiti problem. I wonder what will happen to other public services like the accessible and easy-to-understand bus system. And I wonder how long the city’s museums can remain free of charge. As things stand I am enjoying this feature a lot. Today for example I stopped by the Morandi museum and looked at half a dozen paintings. Admission was free so I didn’t feel pressured to see everything. And besides, I really just stopped in to use the restroom.

Local Italian-style

2009-11-02T16:46:00.007-05:00

Near our apartment is the Mercatino Chiesa Nuova, an indoor market with perhaps a dozen stalls which sell fruit, vegetables, meats, cheeses and various other things. There's even a stall with a large inventory of hard candy if you like that sort of thing. Outside of the building are goods for sale which seem to change from day to day. One day there was a table with piles of stainless dinner-ware, pots and pans. It was gone the next day. You can usually count on somebody selling shirts of a jersey material bearing sequins and odd slogans. (How odd ? How about “Ethnic Passion” for starters ? A good name for a cocktail in my opinion.)

Standing before a market stall in which gigantic pears, plums, and clementines are practically tumbling off the tables, it’s hard not to be seduced. Fresh, seasonal produce you think. And yet it’s November and they’re selling plums. Hmmm. (Incidentally the weather in Bologna is very similar to northern Virginia or the southern midwest. Not exactly southern California). So, what’s happening is that food is coming in from all over the world. China is a big exporter for instance. Of course in such a picturesque market setting it’s easy to think everything was dug up from the ground or picked from a tree that very morning. Not that the imported food is bad, but it isn't going to fulfill the requirements of somebody intent on eating locally.

To make absolutely sure you are buying local you can shop in places that have a Chilometri Zero sign on the door. This indicates that the produce or cheese or salume (cured hams like prosciutto and all and sundry) originate in Bologna or the very near vicinity. I happened to see this sign the other day in a shop, but I didn’t realize that the term was such a common one until I read an article outlining plans to put a Chilometri Zero restaurant in a disused villa. The writer of the article didn't even bother to explain what that meant.

An especially easy way to buy local is to look to the wineshops or simply the wine department of any grocery store. In our local supermarket there are five banks of shelves well-stocked with a variety of red and white wine. They have just about any wine you could want…as long as it’s from the Emilia-Romagna region (the region which contains Bologna). There is quite a bit of wine made from sangiovese, the grape made famous by the Chianti region. The Emilia-Romagna version is lighter and slightly fruitier, thinner tasting. The same goes for the Merlot. It’s fair to say that the wines from this area are drinkable and go well with food; they just aren’t very memorable. The same goes for pignoletto , a white wine that is gaining recognition. It is frizzante, being fizzy rather than bubbly like a champagne and dry. It’s what wine guides might charitably call “a good quaffer.”

The other night we stopped at the intriguing, quaint sort of wine bar you always hope to find but usually don’t, or you find it in the morning when it’s closed and then forget to write down the address for another occasion. Happily, on this particular evening our timing was perfect. Olindo Faccioli is a tiny place a few blocks north of via Ugo Bassi, on via Altabella. Although minutes from a bustling city center area Faccioli is on a quiet secluded street with little traffic. It has been in business since 1924 although it did change locations rather recently: in 1934. The interior had floor-to-ceiling wooden shelves full of wine bottles. The shelves together with the bar which cut the narrow room in half made me think of an apothecary shop. When I noticed a pastel portrait of the owner I told him it was a good likeness. The portrait turned out to be his father. The two men were as identical in appearance as in vocation. The son's sommelier certificate was proudly displayed ( and believe me it looked a lot more impressive than my Italian Language Certificate of Participation).

To give you an idea how important drinking local wine is, when the owner was listing the wines available by the glass he specified the ones nella zona, in our zone or area. Then almost as an afterthought he mentioned a couple of wines outside the zone. By outside he meant Tuscany which couldn't possibly be more than two hours away. The wine list for bottles had one page each for every area of Italy: Puglia, Veneto, Tuscany, Friulia, etc. As for wines outside the country, there were possibly eight wines listed for all of France. Can you imagine ? I wonder if Italians travelling in France are surprised to learn that the French dabble in wine-making. And American wines ? I haven’t seen one anywhere since we’ve arrived.

One thing I have been very curious about is the tortellini and where it comes from. Every restaurant serves it and there are a lot of restaurants in bologna. If a restaurant has, say, twenty tables with two seatings for lunch, and two for dinner, the manual labor involved to make all that stuffed pasta is absolutely mind-boggling, to say nothing of the space required in a restaurant kitchen. And there’s rarely just one tortellini on the menu. You usually have a choice of two or three. Where could it all come from? Well, according to our neighbor, there are Bolognese women of a certain age who work at home producing all the tortellini that is served in all the restaurants. I get this image of cozy kitchens all over the city where these women are working. Is it like an assembly line I wonder? Or perhaps it is a more casual setting with casual conversations going on as the tortellini engine roars, providing sustenance for Bologna's insatiable eaters.

As for ourselves, when we’re in the mood for fresh pasta or pastry, we walk down the street to Simoni. All the while that we’re deciding between the ricotta-filled tortellini and the pumpkin-filled tortelloni we can look beyond the counter to the work tables in the back. There we see women rolling out dough or putting trays in ovens. Do I know the origin of the flour ? Do I know if the ricotta is made from Emilia-Romagna cows ? Well, no. I have no idea how local any of it is, to be honest. But I know it’s fresh. And good. Very very good.

Of Grammar and Graffiti

2009-11-01T06:08:00.004-05:00

Yesterday was the last day of my weeklong Italian language class. As usual during the mid-morning break, the various classes all convened at a caffe down the street. It’s one of the nice things about the school and the one at which I most excelled. At that point we were presented with certificates showing that we had completed the course. I now have a Certificate of Participation from the Madrelingua Scuola. Now aren’t you impressed ? I got up in the caffe and made a thank-you speech: "Thank you teachers and colleagues. You don’t win a Certificate of Participation all by yourself. I would like to thank the driver of Bus 13 for conveying me to school. Thank you to the chair and table in the classroom for enabling me to be comfortable once I showed up and last but not least, special shout-outs go to the laws of physics which provided me with the mass and surface area I needed to take up space in the room. ” Well, I didn’t actually make this speech but I wish I had. I mean a certificate for showing up ? How lame is that ? Unfortunately the word for "participation” in Italian looks pretty much like English except for a spare z and e. So this diploma, complete with my name in calligraphy, will be impressive to nobody.

This week I negotiated the vast waters of the intermediate level of Italian. These are the waters in which the majority of students tread once they get past the basics. There they struggle for quite some time as it is quite a long swim to reach the shores of Advanced level. Anyway, I studied the past and present congiuntivo, the subjunctive. There is very little to compare it to in English, but it is essentially used for sentences in which doubt is expressed. So, this week I learned about the many shades of doubt. There’s present tense doubt as in: “It seems to me that one of your earlobes is bigger than the other.” There’s past-tense doubt: “Yesterday when we dined at the trattoria it seemed to me that it would be a mistake to ask for ketchup with the veal.” The subjunctive is also used for hypothetical statements : “If people would manage to get their trash into the dumpsters it would not be so obvious that Friday is fish night.” And finally there is the subjunctive reserved for the impossible: “If the city of Bologna were to clean up its rampant graffitti, the perpetrators would see the error of their ways and never deface the buildings again.”

Which brings me to a painful subject. The graffiti in Bologna is everywhere and it is heartbreaking. We have been in a lot of cities during our stay, including Rome. Bologna has the worst graffiti problem we have seen anywhere. This isn't Street Art we're talking about, although I am sure I would hate that too. What we see around here is somebody who feels compelled to write his (or her, let’s be fair) initials on the wall of a gorgeous sixteenth century porticoed building. It isn't a lot of writing--just a couple initials--but just enough to bring about some instant ugliness. The poverty of expression is as depressing as the frequency. Here we have these buildings with lovingly carved capitals on the column and bas reliefs. Some of the facades and ceilings beneath the porticoes are painted with decorative motifs. Who can say how long something like this took the craftsmen whose names we’ll never know ? On my way to school I see a group of workmen restoring some massive columns, essentially sculpting the missing bits with plaster compounds. I see that it has taken them weeks—and that’s just to make repairs. It is mindboggling that somebody would damage the results with pathetic scrawls: a couple of initials, maybe bit of profanity. In some neighborhoods there is a six- foot wide band of graffiti, from the ground to a height convenient for the miscreants, which extends across five or six buildings in succession. If only they would just pee on the walls instead…but I suppose they’re doing that too.

Everybody Parliamo !

2009-10-29T13:55:00.005-04:00

Today was a beautiful autumn day here in Bologna and so, a perfect day for a public debate in Piazza Maggiore. At about 2:00 I passed by a small cluster of perhaps ten people. One of them, the one speaking, was standing on a little plastic footstool. I didn’t stick around but went on a walk into a part of town I had neglected until now. When I circled back to Piazza Maggiore about an hour-and-a-half later, the crowd had grown to about a hundred. They had formed an ellipse in front of the Neptune fountain. This time I stuck around to get the gist of the argument. It had to do with whether Silvio Berlusconi should stay or go as Prime Minister in light of the corruption charges against him as well as accusations of sex with a minor. He has been quoted as saying, “I’m not a saint.” No kidding.

Anyway, the debate at the fountain concerned these issues. What was interesting to me was the way that whoever had the floor was custodian of the footstool. Whoever wished to hold forth would stand on it. Although only a foot off the ground, it was enough to give the speaker sufficient authority to say his or her piece. Two men who were among the crowd had some energetic exchanges but it never got personal . They were on either side of the space where the group had formed. When one was done making his point he would disembark from the stool, walk about fifteen feet across the space and hand it to the man whose views he had just been criticizing. Then the other fellow would mount the stool, talk about how totally wrong-headed the first guy was, get off the stool and walk back across the no-man’s –land to hand the stool back. This went on for quite some time. Their exchanges were very civil. I was fascinated by the ritualistic aspect of it--it was very Lord of the Flies (with a stool instead of a conch shell). I wondered if it would occur to either of them that it would be more efficient for them to stand side-by-side and just shorten the distance between them by about a million percent, but apprently it didn't. Anyway, the space between them and the ensuing Walk With Stool resulted in a dramatic pause between the airings of their two opposing views. Efficiency clearly isn’t everything.

My own efforts at communication in Italian class are starting to yield results but it has not been easy. As I mentioned in a previous post, the rooms are like echo chambers so I really have to work to hear what everyone is saying. The other day in class we saw a riveting video about three people waiting for a train. I won’t go into detail, but in about three minutes we learn things about the characters that are not apparent at first glance. The problem was I couldn’t understand anything anyone was saying. When I asked my teacher whether the old man in the film (avuncular and yet a pick-pocket) was speaking in a dialect she said, “No. He’s just not opening his mouth.” So, we have this film made specifically for foreigners learning Italian and they choose actors who don’t open their mouths. Very frustrating. Perhaps our next film will feature speakers without tongues. After our first viewing we watched it again with Italian subtitles. Maybe this would be helpful, I thought. Not exactly. Because the actors were speaking so fast the subtitles flashed on the screen so quickly I could barely read five words before one subtitle vanished and the next appeared. They functioned not so much as subtitles but more like a memory test in which cards with various unrelated words are placed in front of you for a milisecond as you try to remember as many as you can. That was really a low point I can tell you.

Happily I’m starting to hear the language better. I know this because I am getting more out of eavesdropping on the bus than I used to. Although I haven’t heard anything exciting it’s nice to know that all over the world people are looking for better apartments or agonizing over the perfect gift for their sisters-in-law.

Boris Among the Pigeons

2009-10-28T13:24:00.003-04:00

For today's blog I am thrilled to introduce guest blogger Boris Impasta who happens to be my ten-year old son. I hope you will enjoy his unique take on Venice:

Pigeons are weird, funny, dumb birds. Their lives revolve around food. It doesn't matter if it's strawberries or prosciutto ham. They'll gang up on you or come on your head to get a scrap. They will chase each other for food or be chased by another that has food. If you look from 200 feet, one person feeds one pigeon (some dots are around). It's kind of like a magnet. You see a ton of little dots that come and make one whole big dot around the person who is the bull's eye.

On the Morandi Trail

2009-10-27T18:11:00.004-04:00

The most famous artist to come from Bologna is probably Giorgio Morandi, a painter who lived from 1890 until 1964. For most of his life he lived with his sister in an apartment in a quiet neighborhood, not far from the center of the city. He rarely travelled. The paintings for which he is best known are still lifes of very ordinary objects posed in very intentional ways. Like many art students, including Bill, I was introduced to Morandi’s work in college. As an eighteen-year old art student who was ready to Change People’s Perceptions with my ten-foot tall paintings, I was bored to tears looking at his unflashy, deceptively simple paintings. I still cannot honestly say I love them, but I do think having those thirty years or so acquaintanceship with his work has increased my appreciation of them.

In Bologna there are two places to see the work of Morandi: the Morandi Museum in Piazza Maggiore and the Museo Morandi, Casa, his former apartment which is located not far from Porta San Stefano, an easy bus ride from our apartment. Saturday we spent the day with Morandi, hitting both places. One of my friends, a phrase maker and fish babysitter extraordinaire called this our Moranday.

Morandi’s still lifes were based on a group of vases and bowls that he used and reused during is his entire career. Every once and awhile he would throw in a seashell. This is the stuff I wanted to see, the reason I wanted to visit his studio. Through all my years of seeing his paintings I felt like I could walk right up to the peach colored liqueur bottle with the rectangular sides and say, “I’ve been a fan of yours for years.”

So, we took the bus to Via Fondazza, a quiet, narrow street of shops with apartments above. Number 36 was just past Piazzetta Morandi and except for the “Morandi” label on the doorbell, it looked like all the others. We rang and were buzzed up. The austere stairway was like plenty of others, including our own. Upon opening the door, my perception changed entirely. The first thing I was aware of was a portentious voice decribing Morandi’s life and times. A slide show was projected on a wall. It featured grainy photographs of Morandi at work. This isn’t at all what I expected. Where was the studio ? The kitchen ? The bedroom ? Eventually I discovered these rooms behind floor-to-ceiling plexiglass screens. As if the plexiglass wasn’t obtrusive enough, they were decorated with odd graphic shapes, presumably to keep visitors or wayward crows from bumping into them. The odd thing about all this is that Morandi was not wealthy and had very few precious objects. A discreet velvet cordon would have served purposes of security every bit as well as these huge plexiglass walls. After all, Ca’Rezzenico in Venice, a palazzo transformed into a decorative art museum full of priceless and extremely breakable objects does very well with this method. Actually, most of the time you can walk right up to everything in the Palazzo. I really think the Morandi Casa designers needed a little perspective !

The whole time I was there I kept thinking about a possible episode of the Andy Griffith Show (which is one of my favorite TV shows ever). I could just imagine Andy winning the Best Sheriff in the Mount Pilot Region Award. He goes to collect the award in Raleigh (because he always goes there for the big stuff) and when he returns he is shocked to discover that Barney has turned his house into a museum complete with docents (Gomer and Otis, I’m picturing) and all the familiar rooms sealed off from visitors. (Did they have plexiglass in 1962 ?) I can practically hear Don Knott’s high-pitched voice as he proclaims, ”This is the very kitchen where Sheriff Taylor drinks his coffee every morning before his day of crime fightin.’ He takes his eggs sunny-side up.”

Of course our visit wouldn’t have been complete if somebody hadn’t admonished Boris to stop leaning on the plexiglass. I guess the designers of the space didn’t consider all the energy that would now and forever be expended guarding the plexiglass and removing finger, nose and forehead prints from it.

There is definitely something wrong with a museum that hits you between the eyes with its Museumocity. The brochure brings into perfect clarity everything that is wrong with the place, and I don’t think the problem is a faulty translation. Here is an excerpt:

The projects starts from the concept of a “place of narration and memory” [I am assuming this quote is from the architect Iosa Ghini.] and thanks to the use of contemporary materials and technological equipment, aims at giving value to the different functions of the environments; some of them (studio, store-room, anteroom) came back to life according to a planned operation of symbolic restitution of a lost place. Thanks to a museographic setting exploiting the narrative opportunities contained in the different tools used, the visitor can experience the typical Morandian atmosphere in the smallest detail.

Well, it’s been awhile since I’ve read Artforum Magazine so I’m a little rusty with the art talk. I think the “different tools used” might be the still life objects, the easel, the paints. You know-- all the Morandian stuff. I guess we can’t just say "studio" or "store-room" and leave it at that can we ? No sireee. We have to call them “environments.” It’s so much more museographic that way. Bill figured out that the “symbolic restitution” phrase was an admission that the apartment was a recreation. This makes sense when you consider that there was a thirty year period between Morandi’s death and the opening of the museum when it was probably empty or perhaps a batchelor pad with beaded curtains and a waterbed.

Despite all the hubub of the documentary film and the fact that the museum guards outnumbered the visitors, it really was great to see the place where the paintings were made. I just couldn’t stop looking at the still life objects all crowded into a closet. They were amazingly ugly; exactly the same kind of vases and knick-knacks you get for free from the florist or win at carnivals; the ones that show up years later at yard sales. What did Morandi see when he looked at his collection of objects ? Their ordinariness ? Or did he see something beautiful in them before he even picked up his paintbrush ?

After our visit to the house we went to the “regular” Morandi Museum in Piazza Maggiore, which is an art gallery with room after room of his paintings, spanning his entire career. Besides the still lifes we could see a selection of landscapes. There were perhaps a dozen of these scattered throughout the museum, at least half of which were views into the courtyard from his studio window, the view we had just seen earlier in the day. I had never been wild about the landscapes in the past, but now I could see that the colors absolutely were those of Bologna: the warm red clay of the buildings, the sage green of the foliage. I appreciated the clever design elements of the museum: walls, paintings and benches. Best of all, there was no voiceover and visitors could move freely through the space.

I thought I might come back from our Moranday all primed to paint still lifes or at least a Bolognese landscape or two, but that didn’t happen. Apparently I’m still waiting to come up against my next source of ideas. I just hope I won’t have to bump into a plexiglass wall in the process.

Battling La Bella Lingua

2009-10-26T11:21:00.004-04:00

I am ratcheting up the Italian class. This week I decided to take a twenty-hour course at the school where I have been studying with a tutor. (Four hours a day for five days, not twenty hours in one day). The idea behind it is to immerse myself in the language so that I hear the words better. As things stand now, I talk better than I listen. To which Bill would reply, “And how is this any different from your English ?”

I have to say that I am very frustrated right now. First of all, because we are in such an old palatial building, with high ceilings and real plaster instead of drywall, the classroom is like an echo chamber. Whenever anyone speaks it comes out sounding like that special effects part of the Led Zeppelin song “Whole Lotta Love.” And baby I’m not foolin’. I’m constantly cupping my hand to my ear like Walter Brennan, that beloved old codger from all the Wild West movies half a century ago. Any minute now I’m going to start saying, “Eh-h-h-h-h? What’s that you say ?”

But it isn't just the room, it's the people in the room that are frustrating me. Oh, I'm sure they're very nice once you get to know them, but they aren't doing much for my Italian studies. Here's why. One of the students is German. He is learning Spanish and Italian at the same time. He seems very proud of this accomplishment but I think he should really rethink it. The result is that every word begins its inception as a distinctly German guttural sound. Then we move on to the Spanish portion of the word. A slight pause and then along comes some sort of extra vowel at the end, for that Italian flourish. He’s the student on my right. On my left is a Russian with huge tatoos all over his arms. Before I took a good look I was ready to compliment him on his sweater. He speaks without opening his mouth. Sometimes when Boris is in a surly mood (my son Boris that is, I don’t think this fellow’s name is Boris although it very well could be) he refuses to open his mouth when he talks and I threaten to take away his allowance. Unfortunately I don’t have that kind of leverage in this case. I assume this student is in Bologna on some kind of ventriloquism scholarship. Next to him is a very nice man from England. He is, as Jerry Seinfeld would say, a “low talker.” I strain to hear what he is saying and catch maybe every third word, but here’s the odd thing—he’s a loud and long laugher. Although I can hear every nuance of his hearty laugh it is not doing much for my Italian conversation.

There’s an American student from Florida who speaks well and clearly. He’s leaving for the United States tomorrow. There’s also an Italian woman sitting in who is minutes from becoming a teacher of Italian and is gearing up for a big exam. Of course she speaks beautifully but since she is only meant to be a mosca (fly) on the wall, she barely speaks at all. And then there’s me. My grammar is a bit improvisational. I speak in that conscientious way that Americans do, with extra hard “r”s. Fortunately my Chicago accent with its flat vowels is actually helpful for Italian where the vowels are quite precise, not rounded like those you hear in Virginia.

At least I’m old enough to "own" my lack of comprehension and to admit it to the teacher . This cluelessness comes across as extreme interest so teachers tend to like me. I’m always the one asking a ton of questions. Today we had to listen to a dialog between two people and then test our comprehension. The catch was that we couldn’t read along with the tape. Remember when we used to have record players and the most hilarious thing was to put the 33rpm album on at 78 rpms? ( Dean Martin never sounded better.) Well, this is pretty much how the dialog sounded to me. When the teacher asked me what I understood I told her “quasi niente.” (Almost nothing). She asked me what I heard specifically. I told her “macchina.” (Car.) Yes, the dialog was about two people discussing the sale of a car although I obviously missed the whole dramatic arc which is unfortunate. Will Guido sell Maria the car of her dreams ? Will her father lend her the money even though he is reluctant to buy a used car ? And what of her independence if she accepts the loan ? Can she come to love a blue car when she has her heart set on red ? There it was, a stirring drama contained within a couple of paragraphs and I missed it all.

After my admission of defeat the teacher did what good teachers do the world over. She tried to find something positive in my handling of the language. As I recall she liked the way I said “buon.” Anyway, I think I’m stuck with this class. As I see it, I can’t switch to another because of the students when the teachers are quite good and I'm in the right class level. My only recourse as I see it is to bring an ear trumpet to class tomorrow.

Balloon Mystery Solved

2009-10-25T13:31:00.003-04:00

Several posts ago I was pondering the mystery of a windowbox decorated with balloons as well as flowers. Whatever could it mean ? And how about the Clown Man ? Was he involved ? Well, yesterday he was planting flowers in his front yard which gave me the chance to ask whether the windowbox was his and if so, why was it decorated like that. Yes, it was his creation. The reason ? He wanted to give children something fun to look at. I will admit to feeling a little creepiness in his answer but I don't think he was expecting to lure anybody with his windowbox. He just seems to be somebody who's child-like himself and wants to reach out to others. So while I didn't uncover an intriguing Italian custom, at least I solved my little mystery.

Dear Old Venice

2009-10-25T09:25:00.004-04:00

Good news everyone ! I have come up with a new affectation ! Whenever I reminisce about Venice I’ll say “Dear Old Venice.” Just to clarify how this works, I might be discussing a shortcoming—like the rudeness of Venetians to tourist. At that point in the conversation I’ll just shake my head like a doting mother and say “Ahh, Dear Old Venice” or for variety’s sake, “That’s my Venice !” Is there anything more insufferable than somebody using the possessive when talking about a place ? Well, I certainly hope so because I have about a month left to come up with whatever that might be.

I don’t know what I can say about Venice that hasn’t been said before and by much better writers. This was my third visit and each time I have been struck by how suddenly you are there IN the city. One minute you are looking out the window at cars and buses. Then all of a sudden you get off the train at San Lucia Station, leave its utilitarian confines and find yourself face to face with canals, ornate buildings punctuated by Moorish windows, gondolas-- all the evidence you could possibly require to demonstrate that you did in fact get on the right train.

Now that we can do so much planning online, we chose days which promised to be sunny, so every color was luminous. There may be something a little forced about planning an experience so carefully that the light conditions and weather are pre-arranged. Yet when you consider how heavily touristed a place this is, and how choreographed the visits, it isn't inappropriate. Right away you get the impression that there just might be a few too many tourists in Venice when you see a cruise ship the size of a Las Vegas hotel floating down the Grand Canal. There is a pervasive air of impatience on the part of the staffs at hotels, shops and restaurants. Boy are they sick of us. Throughout the city there are bright yellow signs placed at strategic locations indicating the way to Piazza San Marco, the Rialto Bridge and other must-see locales. Apparently several thousand Venetians got together and said, “If one more person asks me the way to San Marco I’m going to throw them in the Canal !” Hence the signs. Hence also the pay toilets for 1.50 Euros—that more than $2.00 !

At this point I feel I can make my blog rather useful. You may be getting sick of my quirky little observations about balloon-bedecked windows and such. So here is a hotel recommendation: Hotel San Sebastiano Garden. It is in the Dorsoduro section of Venice, well away from the crowds of San Marco, although for all I know there are crowds here too during the high season. But at least there are less pigeons. The area is full of wonderful old buildings and campi, the Venetian word for piazze (plural of piazza). It is very easy to cut across this part of Venice to reach the Accademia (Venice's large art museum, now underegoing major addition and construction, causing many rooms to be closed) and places beyond. The hotel was clean, with nicely decorated rooms and a very pretty garden in the back. If the staff is not effusive, it is efficient and polite. The prices are not cheap—that’s about impossible to find in Venice—but certainly lower down the scale than many. By the way, I am not receiving any compensation for this endorsement. Unfortunately.

Although it is by no means my favorite part of Venice, we did of course visit Piazza San Marco. How nice to see the Cathedral, the Belltower, the arcades flanking the square, the Doges Palace. Maybe someday we’ll be able to see them all together without a large “Guess Jeans” billboard obstructing the view. You see, companies that subsidize major restoration projects get to decorate the large screens that cover the building you came to see. Which means that right now Piazza San Marco has a little bit of Times Square about it.

There’s always one area or another being cleaned and currently the city is making major repairs to the drainage system so there is a substantial wall surrounding the belltower. On Boris's behest we took the elevator to the top of this last structure, the campanile, in Italian and it was great. You can really get a sense of the way Venice is laid out. It was fun to pick out the various churches and palaces we had seen previously at ground level.

Since our visit took place in mid-October there were definitely less children around, and not even that many college students for that matter. The typical tourist, especially in our hotel, seemed to be a retiree, well-dressed and coiffed and physically fit, rather like an ad for Centrum Silver. A nice-looking crowd. These types hardly ever wear tee-shirts with writing on them although I suppose the discreet Lacoste alligator might be their version of the Outer Banks “Brew Through” shirt. It just isn’t a friendly bunch. I know this because while waiting in lines for museums, inevitable here, I like to make conversation with whomever is next to me. This I was unable to do. It seems that nobody wants to be outed as a tourist, which is of course totally ridiculous. If you aren't a tourist why are you waiting to see Bellini paintings in the middle of the week on a beautiful day ? I mean, I’ve taught college-level art for years and I KNOW that people don’t love Renaissance art as much as all that.

We spent two night in Venice and almost three days. We enjoyed it immensely but were ready to leave. At least Bill and I were. Boris was absolutely entranced and I envied the lack of awareness he has about How Much Things Cost. It was hard for me to surrender to the spirit of Venice when a vaporetto ride (the “economical” mode of transportation) cost $30 a trip for the three of us. A simple pizza lunch cost as much as a substantial dinner in Bologna and virtually every church now charges admission. I ended up visiting more Bancomats than museums.

Loving Lard

2009-10-23T08:08:00.004-04:00

Greetings. We just returned from a few days in Venice and Padova. So this blog entry was left in limbo for about a week. Much like the cured meats that this entry describes, it has been aging and curing.

I looked at the calendar today and realized that we’d missed the Mortadella Festival. Darn. I hate when I do that. If you thought I was exaggerating when I said that Bologna is very serious about food, maybe the fact that there is a festival devoted to a cold cut will cause you to think otherwise. So you see that it is no coincidence that one of our lunch meats is called bologna instead of, say, venezia.

Despite missing the festival I was not lacking in my own cured meat experience this week. I had an epiphany, or as I like to call it, a lardiphany. Yes, I had sliced lard and I enjoyed it ! It was as though all those years I spent asking for “lean corned beef”, cooking bacon to be extra crispy, looking for the low fat content on ground beef all melted away—much like lard does when served on warm bread . It really tasted like nothing else I have eaten. It was thinly sliced with subtle spices and was a good deal less salty than the prosciutto and other cured pork offerings that are ubiquitous here. Another thing that sets it apart is the color. It’s white. There’s simply no mistaking it for anything other than pure fat.

So here I am, just where I want to be, on the leading edge of a trend because, in case you weren’t aware of it, fat is back baby ! (I keep wanting to write fat is fatback baby.) Yes--after years of being shunned it has returned in a blaze of glory. No longer a food of necessity, it is now artisanal. Of course the lard I ate was extremely artisanal. None of that mass-produced lard you get out of vending machines. Only the finest for me !

The site of my awakening to lard was Tamburini, a food emporium/wine bar. We had been passing by its tables, actually large wine barrels, for a couple weeks How I envied the contented customers dining on huge plates of cheeses and cold cuts along with large glasses of wine. So, one afternoon we happened to be passing by and saw an empty table. What to do ? What to do ? Boris had his heart set on gelato and here we were at the threshold of Cured Meat Paradise. You’re crying your eyes out for us aren’t you ? Not to worry. We solved the problem by sending Boris down the street to the gelateria that sells six types of chocolate gelato, and probably some other flavors too (although why bother with those ?) He brought his dessert back to the table and joined us, so everyone was happy. Especially me. Although I have certainly purchased little samples of meats and cheeses at various salumerie in Bologna, I always did so in a haphazard way. Eating at Tamburini is like having a native Bolognese do the shopping for you, matching condiments, cheeses and meats so that they all complement each other. The fact that every table was occupied by tourists didn’t bother me too much. This place is like a food museum so it made sense that visitors from all over would want to go there. I mean, you'd expect a few tourists at the Sistine Chapel wouldn't you ?

This palace of food is on Via Caprarie which is becoming my favorite street. It’s like a Rodeo Drive of food. Besides Tamburini there are various smaller salumerie, several caffes, the aforementioned gelateria and the Bottega di Caffe, a serious coffee store balanced by a room devoted to candy. In addition there is a store called Libreria Ambasciatori. It is a bit like Barnes & Noble in the sense that it sells books and has readings by authors. It has a caffe too, but then it goes a few steps further with an enocoteca that sells wine by the glass or bottle and several kinds of pasta and meat platters. It also has a large retail wine and food shop attached, and the staff is very knowledgeable about the foods they are selling. So really, it’s more like a combination of Barnes & Noble and William Sonoma. When we were kids we always used to joke about getting locked in the downtown Chicago Marshall Fields at night. Now that Fields has turned into Macy’s my new fantasy is to spend the night at Ambasciatori.

The funny thing is that five minutes' walk from these shops are four of Bologna’s museums. They’re interesting and they’re free and I know I should be spending a lot of time in them. But something strange happens whenever I walk down Via dell’Archiginnasio. Like a shopping cart with a faulty wheel, I find myself veering right toward the food instead of left toward the art. I guess I'm just exploring new avenues.

Here and Eternity

2009-10-14T13:22:00.004-04:00

Here are some interesting statistics derived from the Bologna Pagine Gialle, the Yellow Pages. Within the city, population just under 400,000(not including outlying areas), there are:

184 Catholic Churches
76 Gelaterie (Serving Gelato and sometimes other desserts)
484 Caffes (Serving Coffee, snacks, sandwiches)

It looks like I’m trying to make some sort of point about the worldly outweighing the spiritual, but I was just trying to make sure that there really were a ton of these institutions. I had a scary moment there thinking I was just walking in circles, seeing the same one or two every hour.

But no, there really is a caffe on almost every block if not two (and not one of them a Starbucks.) It is truly a mystery how they all manage to stay in business, but there are very few empty storefronts, or empty caffes for that matter. Somebody is always drinking an espresso somewhere and if the caffes offer identical beverages at identical prices, the clientele differs from one to the next. Clearly some are student hangouts while others are for retirees or office workers.

The gelaterie are (quite understandably) very popular spots. Gelato is practically the only snack food you’ll see being eaten on the street. You just don’t see the Italians carrying bags of chips or BIG Gulps. Even at the amusement park Gardaland virtually nobody was in possession of portable food. I’ll leave others to make the link between the dearth of snacks and the lower obesity rate in Italy.

Of course, Bologna, being a major city, has churches of all sizes, several which are as grandiose (if not always as visually compelling) as any you would see in Rome. Basilica San Petronio, for example, is the fifth largest church in Italy. Especially interesting to me are the smaller churches hidden away in the secluded areas of the city. Also, it’s worth keeping an eye open for the ex -churches, those that are now being reused for other purposes. For reasons never fully explained they have, for lack of a better term, gone out of business. I don’t know if these were shut in an abrupt way during a war or if it was a long, drawn-out affair. Perhaps there were weeks on end in which signs were posted: Closing Our Doors Forever ! or to adhere to a more biblical tone: Closing Our Doors For All Eternity !

On Via d’Azeglio, a street full of boutiques just south of the Basilica you can find the former church Santa Marie Rotonda dei Galuzzi. It is now a profumeria—a store selling perfume and makeup. It is not difficult to imagine its former life as a place of worship. The interior is painted white with large fluted columns that frame the space that used to be the nave. The ornate capitals and ceiling moulding date it as Baroque (like virtually every church interior in Bologna). The space behind a now-absent altar has an empty framed area where a painting must have hung. In this luminous setting shoppers purchase Lancome, Chanel and Estee Lauder products. What an odd juxtaposition it is! As if it were a church dedicated to the Transcendence of Appearances.

Continuing on through the Piazza Maggiore, past the statue of Neptune by Giambologna we cross over to Via dell’Independenza. It isn’t quite Fifth Avenue—not so fancy—maybe more like Lexington Avenue. In the window of one of the trendy boutiques lining the wide, noisy street is a tee-shirt featuring a photograph of a younger (50 let’s say) Angela Lansbury above which are the words “Murder She Wrote.” I don’t know about you, but when I want to get out of my deepening, widening middle-age rut the first thing I do to “let myself go” is to don my Angela-gear. Thank goodness I can find replacements in Bologna should the need arise !

Tomorrow night is one of the language schools “social evenings.” We’re meeting at the school and then going out for pizza. If it’s like the “gnocchi night” it will be a multi-national all-ages affair. There will be wine and animated if grammatically -flawed conversation. If you’re looking for me, I’ll be the one in the “Angela Rules !” hoodie

A Little Mystery

2009-10-13T10:58:00.005-04:00

I said when we were starting out on our Italian adventure that our plan was to do pretty much nothing and while it has been difficult at times to stick to this regimen, we have actually adhered to it quite well. Oh sometimes I fall off the wagon and actually do something productive. I mean, the laundry isn’t going to get up and wash itself, but for the most part I have kept my ambitions to almost zero.

The result of this approach has been that I see many strange things and I have time to ponder them. For example, this window box balloon/plant arrangement was on display in early September when we arrived. We pass it every day on our way to the bus stop. At the beginning of our stay I thought that its owner was the recipient of some kind of balloon- floral bouquet which s/he was nice enough to share with passersby. Of course the balloons, as they tend to do, started losing air. We figured, well that’s the end of that. Yet the day after we witnessed the balloons valiantly gasping for their last remaining thimbleful of air, they were replaced with new balloons. So, now I’m really mystified because it is obviously an intentional and possibly permanent display. The new balloons were blue and red. Perhaps this was some kind of good luck arrangement in anticipation of a baby ? I Googled all kinds of things: balloons, windows, fertility, baby, obsessive tourist with too much time on her hands. Niente. Nothing. You can see from the photo that the balloons have been switched again. They have probably been arranged twice a week since we've been here.

Around week four the plot thickened. I saw a man leaving the building who was very distinctive looking. He had wavy dark hair, way too long to be in style. It was reminiscent of Chico Marx. He wore brightly colored clothes, often red, and his bicycle was two-toned, also bright colors. He looked, in other words, like an off-duty clown. Now, it must be said that I am not at all certain that he is the owner of the apartment and balloon window box, but wouldn’t it be funny if it turned out he was a clown and his whole apartment was furnished in clown style ? I’m picturing a bouquet in the center of the table, all made of balloons to go with the one in the window. I imagine him sweeping the floor at night, causing a spotlight to get smaller and smaller. Maybe the shoes in his closet are all really really huge. I know that if and when I get my explanation (I’ll ask my Italian teacher if I can’t find out from my neighbors) it won’t be nearly as exciting as my little idea. So maybe I shouldn’t find out anything. The reality would only burst my…balloon.

On the Beaten Path to Pisa

2009-10-12T07:40:00.012-04:00

We went to Pisa yesterday. I was overwhelmed by the scale. The massive scale of kiosks where one could by these miniature sculptures of buildings along with refrigerator magnets and calendars. Please be sure to notice the fine detail of windows and columns on the sculpture above. After parking the car and walking down a crowded street we came upon a piazza surrounded by immaculately kept green grass. And you know what ? It turns out that Pisa has full-size versions of these very same miniature buildings !

That's really a smart-alecky way to start a blog post I know. The buildings are quite lovely and I can only feel sorry for the cathedral which is absolutely stunning but has to share space with one of the most famous structures in the world. I think I'll start printing tee-shirts with its image. The caption will read: "We Saw the Leaning Tower of Pisa and As Long As We Were Here We Saw This."

Bill spent a lot of time trying to get a convincing photo of Boris holding up the leaning tower. Not only does he seem to be supporting it, he looks so huge that he's supporting it in mid-air. That isn't an illusion. All that pasta and pizza really is making him bigger.

As if the photo wasn't corny enough, after lunch I couldn't resist saying,

"Hey ! We're having Pizza in Pisa !" Now that's comedy !

Oh--one last thing. I have been having trouble getting the "Comment" option to show up at the bottom of my blog. It vanished completely from the last post. For this one I have it back but it is WAY down at the bottom, so if you want to comment you'll need to scroll down. It seems like strange things happen to the layout whenever I include photos.

The Pleasures and Perils of Food

2009-10-10T07:37:00.009-04:00

I woke up this morning –late late morning it must be said—to the aroma of onions and tomatoes. Saturday must be ragu day for somebody. Well, it just confirms what every cook and wine geek says--that the sense of smell is as important as the sense of taste. (Hmm. I’m employing a lot of dashes in my writing today. It just makes me feel so breezy and carefree when I do that, like somebody who wears a lot of silk scarves). Back to my point about the sense of taste. The other afternoon I took a cooking class in which we made gnocchi, small potato dumplings. Let me tell you that gnocchi is A LOT of work. The biggest bang for one’s buck was putting a couple of little leaves of basil on top of the layered gnocchi/tomato sauce/mozarella. That millisecond of work made the whole kitchen smell like a summer garden.

Cooking classes seem to be a growing trend in Italy. Week-long courses are readily available and some are tied in with agroturismo in which you live in somebody’s home in a rural setting. For me, the afternoon class was really enough to give me a taste (if you’ll pardon the pun) of Italian cooking basics. We met at the language school, Madrelingua, (which I am enjoying and would recommend, so I've linked it) and the six of us that comprised the class took a ten -minute walk to the home of our chef-teacher. She was a young woman, obviously enthusiastic and well-organized. She managed to coordinate the tasks so that we ended up with gnocchi, polpette (meatballs) and tiramisu. Unfortunately she was one of those fast talkers who was extremely hard to understand. (She was speaking Italian after all). It’s a good thing that a cooking class is mostly demonstration or I think we would have all been totally mystified.

The most interesting aspect of the class for me was checking out the gadgets she used which were dedicated to very specific tasks. To puree the tomatoes she had something called a passapomodoro (which would be translated I think into "tomato pureeifier"). It looks like a salad spinner with a crank that pushes the juice and pulp through mesh, leaving the seeds and skin. The other item resembled one of those hand-held cheese graters, the ones that look like a garlic press except that the holes were large. This is actually a potato press. You put pieces of cooked potato in the storage area and squeeze the handles. The potatoes get extruded through the holes and this is how you get them ready to be mixed with eggs, flour and parmesan for the gnocchi batter. Now I understand why the one we have back at the apartment didn’t work so well with parmesan cheese. Generally I’m very much opposed to having gadgets around the house that only do one thing. They take up a lot of space that we don’t have. However, I can definitely see the advantages of both of these. I was very interested to note that the CD’s and books in our teacher’s house were mostly devoted to punk musicians. I like imagining her making gnocchi for Sunday dinner to a Sex Pistols soundtrack.

When it comes to food, every tourist, traveller or expat is thrust into a situation which requires diplomacy or (for the brave or foolhardy) honesty. I’ll always remember meeting the daughter of my landlady when I was studying in London. Her name was Pam. She was about five years older than me but seemed like she was about forty-five. After hearing that I was from the United States she said, “I don’t like your bread.” Well, how would you feel to be blamed for the processed bread of an entire country ? This was 1978 after all, well before artisanal bakeries starting popping up all over the States. I have to say that my relationship with Pam was never very good. I don’t think I could ever quite get past being unjustly linked to Wonderbread.

It was quite a different story the other day, in terms of food diplomacy. We were talking with an Italian friend who lives in our neighborhood and she told us about a wonderful butcher a few blocks from our house, a very traditional place and well-regarded. Oh, and they sell horsemeat exclusively. I want to bring this to your attention so that if you come to Italy and see a store called Equine Macelleria you will know that it is indeed a horse butcher. Equine isn’t a family name. Our friend was quite enthusiastic about the product. It is easy to prepare, strong-flavored but tasty. And all of a sudden I am hearing my husband say in a bright, enthusiastic voice, “We’ll have to try it !” At least I think it was him. In real life he is not this keen to try things like horsemeat. He can be quite fixed in his views and he’s not afraid to take unpopular stances. (He has been known to say that Ella Fitzgerald lacked gravitas. I mean who on earth criticizes Ella Fitzgerald ?) But as I said, residing in another country can bring out the diplomat in a person.

Am I perhaps being closed-minded ? Should there be more horsemeat in our country instead of less? Kentucky’s economic base could be greatly expanded. I’m picturing KENTUCKY RACEHORSE JERKY: They thrilled you on the track. Enjoy them as a snack ! Oh gosh, did I really write that ? Please forgive me, especially my horseback riding friends, but I’ve been having trouble sleeping so my mind has been wandering and not into very profound territory as you can see.

It occurs to me that I did not mention that the friend who waxed poetically about the horsemeat had invited us to dinner this weekend. Wouldn’t it be something if she served horsemeat due to Bill’s keen show of interest ? We discussed this later on and he referenced Anthony Bourdin’s travel/cooking show in which he eats scary food. I reminded Bill that Anthony Bourdin gets a zillion dollars to eat bunny ears or whatever. All we have is this blog.

Drinking in the Atmosphere

2009-10-08T06:18:00.010-04:00

I have already come up with three ways to make everybody hate me when we return to the states from Bologna:

1. While in conversation, stop in the middle of a sentence and say, "Now how does one say that in English ?"
2. Say, with great authority, "Of course it's impossible to get a good cappuccino in the States. It really isn't a question of foaming the milk, the issue is one of creaminess."
3. Take foreign words like cappuccino that are in common usage in every 7-11 and McDonald's and italicize them.

Oh I'm sure I'll have lots more annoying quirks to bring home to everybody It's become kind of a parlor game with Bill and me. Nevertheless, the second point about the cappuccino does have a certain amount of merit. While I am actually quite content with the cappuccini I get stateside, I did gain some insight about the careful balance of coffee and milk from Three Monkeys Online, a blog with interesting articles generated from all over Europe. Read the article on cappuccino for greater detail. I actually do think they're right about the texture. It's different here, with more cream and less of that spongy looking foam we get back home.

But that's really such a trivial matter and you know, living abroad without much to do forces one to really focus on What's Important In Life. For instance, right now I am very much preoccupied with the extreme variations in caffe macchiato throughout Bologna. Basically, this drink is espresso with steamed milk on top, and it's a good drink for somebody like me who thinks those little cups of espresso look awfully skimpy. And yet I have gone to a couple places where my macchiato has--shocking--NO MILK AT ALL. Some have a teeny amount floating on top like an oil slick. It's really hard to know what to expect. It's a little like ordering a Coke and sometimes getting a Sprite, sometimes getting a root beer.

Yesterday morning while on my way to Italian lesson Number 3 I passed a bar (caffe to us) that was quite crowded with people standing around the counter. If you see a bar where the counter is crowded, it's a local place. If you see a bar where the tables are crowded (which means customers are paying twice as much money for a coffee as they would at the bar), it's a tourist place. At least that seems true in the morning. Possibly after work anybody and everybody finds those scenic tables irresistable. So, ever the savvy sipper, I stopped in for a coffee. The woman next to me had a beautiful drink in a diminutive cup, an espresso topped with a cloud of creamy milk. I asked her what it was, and she told me it was a macchiato. I told her of my confusion about this elusive drink and she confirmed what I had guessed. It just depends on the style of the barrista.

Of course one can't spend one's day going from caffeinated drink to caffeinated drink. What an empty existence that would be ! An alcoholic drink now and then is just the ticket. My favorite so far is the Spritzer. Assuredly not the 1970's white wine and club soda beverage, but a mix of prosecco (a bubbly white wine, very popular in Northern Italy) and Campari or Aperol, two very bitter concoctions that are always served in mixtures with other things. This is one of those syntheses where the whole is so much more than the sum of its parts and will definitely become part of the repertoire at Casa Impasta.

Ferrara on Two Wheels

2009-10-06T18:18:00.003-04:00

Today we went to the nearby city of Ferrara, just a half hour by train from Bologna. We had planned to go to Ravenna to see the mosaics, but yesterday I met with my Italian tutor and it happened that we were reading an article about Ferrara . The article discussed the fact that there are 2.7 bicycles per inhabitant and that 87 percent of the population use bikes as a mode of transportation. The reason for these astounding statistics is that the historical area of Ferrara became a pedestrian zone after World War II, decades before other cities even considered it. I was intrigued and since Boris has become such a bike nut here I thought that this would be a treat and would make the viewing of museums and palazzi go down easier. So Ravenna was postponed and Ferrara was our new destination.

Leaving the train station we found a bike rental shop right away, one of several in the city. For about ten dollars per person we each rented bikes with locks included. They were fitted out with those mousetrap rack things in the back and mine even had an adorable basket. Getting into the historical part of town went pretty smoothly. There are separate bike paths set well away from the roads. Once within the city gates the situation changed a bit. On the bright side we were able to cover a lot of ground and it was enjoyable being part of the passing parade. The downside was the chaos of the traffic in the narrow multi-use streets. Bikes mingled with pedestrians, each pretty much ignoring the other. I know that when I’m walking on the bike/walking path at home I hear these perky alerts every few minutes: “ On your right !” as a bike passes me at blazing speed. There is none of that communication here, but for the most part everyone seems to coexist. Being used to it must be a tremendous help. The trickiest part is that the pedestrian streets aren’t totally without cars. Taxis and service vehicles are allowed and at one point a whole street became clogged because a garbage truck was making its rounds. The street was so narrow that unless we wanted to tag along with the truck all morning we had to practically flatten ourselves against the walls of the flanking buildings in order to pass.

The vehicles at least stick to conventional traffic rules. The bike-riders on the other hand are operating by their own inner compasses. They aren’t rude intentionally, but if somebody wants to cross your lane to buy an espresso they’re just going to go ahead and do it. Intersections were the absolute worst. The biker who has the right of way is the one who believes he has it.

We attempted to follow the bike path that is supposed to be on top of the city wall but I’m afraid we made a hash of that and somehow lost the wall. Or the wall stopped. It’s really hard to say which. We did however manage to find the ugliest square block in the city with derelict graffiti-covered warehouses. Yep. We’re definitely the people you want to team up with on The Amazing Race.

All in all I would say that I enjoyed Ferrara except for the bike experience. Ironic isn’t it ? The very thing that enticed us to go there was the thing I liked the least. It has very few tourists and the people were very friendly. If the tourist sites are few, the singular atmosphere makes up for it. With so few cars and so many people pedaling along, its as though everybody in Ferrara is part of a very quiet procession. As the day became more cloudy the atmosphere became more dreamlike. At times I felt as though I was inside a painting or a stage-set in which everything has less weight than ordinary things. This sensation of lightness, of freedom, reached its zenith for me at the moment I returned the bike.

Bologna on a Sunday

2009-10-05T10:09:00.000-04:00

I saw this hanging in a Palazzo we visited yesterday..

Clearly it is a Renaissance Disco Ball.

Looking for something a little unusual in a Bed & Breakfast ? Do you find the typical B & B too short for your liking ? Look no further ! This tower has a couple rooms for rent. It's right in the middle of Bologna and if you get lost on the winding city streets you can probably spot it looming over the other buildings. Just don't get it confused with the other towers nearby. In the closeup the windows above the entry show where the rooms are.

The sign on the door says that an upper room is available for wedding receptions. No mention of an elevator however.

Walking and Talking

2009-10-02T13:09:00.005-04:00

I have come to the conclusion that I am a really out-of-shape. Yesterday we spent several hours walking around, having a look at the museum of Medieval History. It wasn't a particularly demanding sight-seeing day as those things go, but by the time we got home every muscle in my legs ached. This I don’t understand. Bologna is flat and surely my years of living in central Virginia with its hilly if not mountainous terrain would have given me the requisite physique for this trip. I’m beginning to think that the aches and pains are due to walking on stone. Bill, on the other hand, thinks it’s because when I speak Italian to people I get on my tiptoes, putting undue stress on my calves. And he may be right. Why I do this is anybody’s guess, but it does take every bit of my attention to carry on a conversation in Italian and I probably tense up. So, in order to improve my conversational skills and hopefully get off my tiptoes I am going to take a few individual lessons at a local language school. Hmmm... taking a language course to improve my physical fitness. That has to be a pretty unusual strategy.

I stopped by the school yesterday and took a test to determine my level. It was Upper Intermediate, which was disappointing to me. Surely all those years of practicing and studying should give me a higher rating, but sadly, I’m not a detail-oriented person when it comes to language. I can never remember when to use in, a, or da. I am a busy person and I just don't have time for a lot of prepositions. At any rate, I’m glad that when I answered the self-evaluation question (before getting my test results) I selected the response “I have a good knowledge of Italian” instead of “I have such an amazing fluency in Italian that it borders on the poetic.” That really would have been embarassing.

Awkward segueway coming up here. Speaking of conversation, which I sort of was a moment ago, when we left our apartment yesterday afternoon to go to the park, we passed a group of four women in a courtyard just down the street. They were sitting on benches in animated conversation. When we returned home two hours later they were still there, still animated. It is amazing to me how central conversation is to Italians of every age. By way of comparison, think about the times you might have taken your child to the park. (If you live in Charlottesville Pen Park is a good example—large enough to have a decent sized sampling of people.) Think about how many of the parents are on cell phones while their kids are playing (including you or me). A lot right ? Maybe half the parents there ? That hardly ever happens here in the Bologna parks. The large one a few blocks from our apartment is packed with kids and parents after school. While the kids are playing,the parents are talking. Certain areas of the park seem to be reserved for the seniors. These are the areas with several benches grouped together. Every afternoon we find groups of them in animated conversation. I am interested in the fact that it is always men and women together. They are generally dressed very well, the women in dresses and the men in “grown up” slacks. It is very rare that you would see a man in his seventies in jeans. And cell phones ? Hardly a one.

This after-school park ritual has been a wonderful opportunity for us. Boris has met kids that he can ride bikes and play soccer with, and Bill and I have gotten to know some of the parents. When you start to speak to the residents it is almost like a curtain is drawn back and you see parts of Bologna that you miss in the guide books and tourist areas. So, now we know where to buy the best lasagna. We learned what the schools are like. We have commiserated about how boys hate to do homework. We found out that the reason the playground is roped off was that a child died last year falling off a deteriorating swing. Now the city has to check every single bold and chain on every piece of equipment. Which will apparently take months.

With my newly acquired information about where to get the best lasagna, I headed over to the local pasticceria yesterday. The price for a small container was shocking. So shocking that I can’t even bring myself to write down the price in this blog. But I paid up and brought home the precious container. When I told Bill what I paid he asked why I bought it. Well, that was the first thing he said after he recovered from fainting. I answered, “Because I didn’t want to disappoint you !” Boris nodded his head fervently. He had been looking forward to the lasagna all day. So, it has come to a pretty pass. A layered pasta dish has become central to our lives. We think about it all day and we’re willing to pay whatever it costs. I kind of get the whole drug addict thing now.

Chinese Food Bolognese

2009-09-30T13:35:00.004-04:00

When I was growing up, Sunday night was Chinese restaurant night. We kept the tradition temporarily alive last night as we headed over to Nuova Cina Ristorante (New China) a couple blocks from our apartment. It really looked strange to see “China” and “Ristorante” sharing a sign. By the way, the Cina is not a typo. To get the “ch” sound in Italian you put a C before an e or i. Adding an h gives it a K sound. So there you go, a mini-lesson in Italian pronunciation.

The restaurant looked exactly like a Chinese restaurant back in the states with shiny Chinese landscapes rendered in various colored foils. The menu confused us for awhile. Half of it was devoted to various types of ravioli and spaghetti. Since we chose this place in order to take a break from those items I have to say we were a little disappointed. Not to worry though. I spotted Sweet and Sour chicken which I haven’t eaten since probably 1965, and as I ordered it memories of Pekin House in Chicago enveloped me. I wish I could have gotten a drink with an umbrella in it, but that did not appear on the menu. (At the Pekin House my grandmother would have ordered a “Whiskey Sour but not Too Sour.”) Bill opted for Chicken with Peanuts. Boris really wanted a stir-fried noodle dish, but when we didn’t see anything like that on the menu I tried to explain to the waitress that in the United States we often ordered “lo mein” in Chinese restaurants when we wanted noodles. Well, I don’t know what reaction I was expecting. I guess I was hoping that by saying “lo mein” I would impress her with our amazing Chinese food expertize. Maybe she would give me a special wink or whip out a special menu for Those in the Know. In reality all I got was a blank stare. So we took our chances (or let Boris take his chances) and ordered Spaghetti with Vegetables and Pork for Boris. We avoided but were intriged by the Spaghetti al Riso, spaghetti with rice. Could that actually mean spaghetti and rice mixed together ? Well, when I saw various plates being brought out to other customers it dawned on me that Spaghetti al Riso were rice noodles. Aha ! The light dawned ! So, spaghetti was just an all-purpose word for noodles and ravioli was the term for dumplings ! It all made so much sense ! Boris’s spaghetti was comprised of “glass noodles” and looked pretty much like something we would order in a Chinese restaurant at home.

Our food was reassuringly slow in coming which suggested that they were actually cooking it instead of nuking it. Everything was pretty good and pretty cheap. It wasn’t especially memorable, but as my mother used to say, “Not every meal can be a gem.”

Everything Looks So Italian !

2009-09-27T17:00:00.002-04:00

Before I visited Italy the first time twenty years ago, I had the idea that it would look like the United States, maybe with some international traffic signs thrown in for variety’s sake. I imagined that each city would have a very authentic, very picturesque Italian section but would otherwise look like northern Virginia with a higher speed limit. No doubt I got this idea of Europe in general and Italy in particular from the time we went on vacation to New Glarus when I was in high school. In case you didn’t know, New Glarus is the Switzerland of Wisconsin. In fact it was such an authentically Swiss experience as I recall, that there was actually one block on the main street where the personnel working at the diner, the donut shop and the hardware store dressed in dirndls and lederhosen. That was some trip. Boy did I ever feel like we should have packed our passports !

With that vacation as my frame of reference, you can probably appreciate my surprise and delight when I discovered that everywhere I went in Italy looked, well, Italian. I still get a kick out of this. The other day I was walking down the street and on the ground in front of me was a bug—an Italian bug. I bent to examine it and much to my delight found that it really didn’t look any bug I’ve seen at home. It was kind of like an oversized lady-bug, without the spots and it was bright red. Oh I know not everything here is unique. The grass we walked on today looked just like the grass back home. But sometimes I am so overwhelmed at how uniquely Italian my surroundings are that I just want to say, "Stop ! Stop ! You're killing me !"

If I had to specify one main difference between being here in Bologna and being home it is the sheer amount of visual detail. I don’t know of any other way to say it. For example, there is a porticoed building on Via San Stefano which is punctuated by portraits from Roman mythology. I think that the satyr in the photo is quite dashing In addition to the many reliefs, numbering about twenty, each of the columns' capitols is sculpted with a different design. My guess is that these designs carry on the theme of the sculpted portraits. You might think that a building of such visual interest would show up in a guidebook, but it doesn’t. It is just one of innumerable fascinating buildings that you can discover throughout the city.

The ease with which we bump into interesting places has actually created a little bit of conflict with Boris. Everyday he wants to know what the plan for the day is. I guess he wasn’t paying attention when I told everybody I knew, and some total strangers too, that there is NO PLAN. What we really want to say to Boris is, “Well we plan to wander aimlessly until we get hungry. Then we’ll have a snack and strike off down a street we haven’t walked on before and then we’ll stop for a capuccino.” Surprisingly, this does not sound like a fun day to a ten-year old so we try to come up with little projects, or as I think of them, “faux projects.” Like tomorrow he’s going to go buy orange juice for breakfast. That should provide a wonderful opportunity for him to use the first-person conditional form of volere: vorrei, “I would like…” when he asks for it at the store. Plus we’re out of orange juice. Bill and Boris have also gone on sketching expeditions, picking out various architectural details. The other day Bill read that if you take the underpass below Via Ugo Bassi, one of the major thoroughfares of the city, you can see the remains of a Roman road. So that’s another little project for us. And you can buy cake around there.

I Survived Gardaland !

2009-09-25T09:45:00.008-04:00

Boris has willingly gone along with Bill’s and my compulsion to visit every church and intriguing little courtyard in Bologna. He has been patient in restaurants and hasn’t complained too much about living in a country without ranch dressing. I kept all this in the forefront of my mind when we visited Italy’s answer to Busch Gardens: Gardaland. Yes, Gardaland. Not Terra di Garda. We stayed in the town of Peschiera del Garda, a two-hour train ride from Bologna. It is not the most beautiful part of Lake Garda but has a wonderful historical area where our hotel, the Hotel Bell'Arrivo was located. We were given a corner room with the best view we have probably ever had from a hotel, looking out onto the lake and the canal.

On our second day we took the Free Bus to Gardaland, just five minutes drive from the station. Once inside the park, we encountered a very large castle and several strolling “characters” dressed in medieval style. One of these was playing trumpet, and believe me, it really added to the sensation of stepping back into the Middle Ages when he played his rendition of “YMCA.”

The park mascot is Prezzemolo, (parsley in Italian), a multi-colored Barney-like dinosaur. (In fact now that I've seen multi-colored Prezzemelo in celluloid and plush, Barney, by comparison embodies the cool of James Dean.) Prezzemolo is EVERYWHERE. If you want to bring one of him home with you, you can go into the gift shop and buy a small, medium or large one. There are about ten thousand of them on the shelves, which is actually kind of scary. Perhaps you would rather have a tee-shirt. Well, you can have Prezzemolo on a tee-shirt. Looking for a tee-shirt with something a little different ? How about Prezzemolo on a beaded tee-shirt ? It's pretty much Prezzi (if I may be so bold as to give him a nickname) or nothing in the apparel department. I would say that the teen and preteen demographic is underserved. Unfortunately for Boris, there were no articles of clothing with rollercoaster imagery so he wound up with a Prezzemolo hat, and you know what? …once you get it away from the other 9,999 Prezzemoli it isn’t bad-looking.

Because it was so late in the season and everyone is back in school, there were absolutely no lines. Boris was able to go on every rollercoaster, inverting and looping to his heart’s content. As far as differences between this park and an American one, I would have to say that the environment, the sculpted set-pieces were amazing in their detail and workmanship. You’d have to think that if Bernini were alive today he wouldn’t be designing fountains in Rome, he’d be the head sculptor at Gardaland, creating the Atlantis environment as shown here. I really loved this. It made me feel like I was in one of those epics with Victor Mature. I kept saying things to Bill like, “Hercules, you may have the strength of 1000 men but I will vanquish you with a flutter of my eyelashes.” Fortunately everyone around us was speaking German and hopefully didn’t understand me. Or if they did, I’ll never see them again anyway.

Everywhere there were these wonderful environments that framed various rollercoaster and spinning apparati. One resembled a Cambodian temple, another was vaguely Turkish (or maybe that was the snack bar) and a huge Space Station commanded a few of the whole park. Because Gardaland isn’t divided into “lands” a la Disney and Busch, you’d get these improbable juxtapositions: the Space Station looking down on Atlantis, for instance. It all made me think of the original Star Trek, the ones where they’d land on a planet ruled by women resembling the Bond Girls.

We spent six hours there and then successfully persuaded Boris that it was time to leave. I hope when he looks back on Gardaland, the major event of his life, he’ll stop a moment to remember the little things: the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, the Grand Canal.

Paper Windows

2009-09-21T06:54:00.004-04:00

As most of you know, the artwork that I do--at least when I used to do artwork which seems like a long time ago--was made of folded and cut paper. Naturally I had to get pictures of a couple stores in Bologna that use paper to create some fantastic window decorations. The one at the right was one of several all in white.

These are from the windows of

Hermes.

Maybe I should bring my portfolio over to Urban Outfitters when we get home. !

Gastronomically Yours

2009-09-19T07:48:00.007-04:00

Before we left for Italy I was talking with a friend about our plans for our time here. I admitted to being tired of making art, not even sure I wanted to set foot in a museum. I really had not idea how I would spend my time. My friend answered, “Oh well. You have your food.” So, I guess I’m known as a foodie, which is fine, but now I can’t get this strange picture out of my head of me sitting at a table heaped with comestibles which I greedily hug to me, a tableau vivant of gluttony. How appropriate ( and how calculated !) was our ending up in a city that is known as La Grassa—the fat. Yes, Bologna is one of the world’s great food cities, one of the centers also of the Slow Food movement.

There is no lack of food markets in Bologna. They’re everywhere. The other day we were leaving the Piazza Maggiore in the center of town, where the cathedral, Basilica Petronio is located. Turning down a narrow street we discovered it was lined with tiny vegetable, meat and fish shops as well as bakeries selling breads, cakes and pasta. To give you an idea of how surprising this was to me, imagine strolling in the center of a large American city , maybe Times Square in New York or the Loop in Chicago, and being able to do all your ordinary food-shopping right there at not one, but twenty shops. I’m not talking about shops of the Dean & DeLuca variety, although many of these shops could put that foodtique to shame, but “regular” places. A huge part of why this works in Bologna is that its residents are used to picking up groceries for a day or two and bringing them home on the bus. (At this writing I think a small grocery store is set to open near Charlottesville's downtown mall. I'll be interested to know if people can get used to the idea of a grocery store without a parking lot.)

In restaurants and shops we have been amazed at the wide range of pastas, many of which we haven’t seen in the states. There are tortellini, stuffed pasta, which are about the size of a penny.. A slightly larger version is tortelloni. Then there are the quadretti which are tiny, and I do mean tiny squares of pasta. The squares are about the size of a molecule. These, I learned, are meant to be put into broth for a few minutes.

The other day we went out to eat (not something we do very often because restaurants are quite expensive) and I ordered something that I think was called ballonzini. These were shaped like tortelloni but each one was about the size of a tennis ball. I found this pasta to be quite endearing; they would be the sort I would end up with after making two or three of the small tortellini. I would just throw up my hands and speed up the whole process by making them huge. Anyway they were filled to overflowing with a ricotta and ham filling that was very nice. The sauce was butter mushroom and I counted three types of mushroom. Yesterday Bill had a really nice pumpkin ravioli which had a sauce I'd never tasted before. It was mainly balsamic vinegar. The sauce was amazing, almost the consistency of honey and definitely on the sweet side (probably from added sugar). It reminded me of a Chinese barbecue sauce. Boris and I kept dipping into it with our bread, although I think we left a little bit for Bill. All of our pasta dishes have been very rich, as you can tell. I really think Bill and I need to come up with a strategy between us where we order one pasta dish and a salad (these tend to be quite large). As it was, we asked for boxes to take home our leftovers. I am pretty sure that this isn’t “done,” but it seemed a crime to leave it.

Speaking of “done” things, judging from mentions in guidebooks, it seems like everybody now knows that to order a cappuccino after 11:00 am is to give one away as a a tourist (like that guidebook and parachute-sized map spread out on the table wouldn’t do that anyway). John Grisham, in his Bologna travelogue/mystery, The Broker also goes on about this at some length. The explanation seems to be that having milk late in the day is bad for the digestion, but if that’s the case, I don’t understand why it is permissible to order caffe macchiato—espresso with steamed milk.

Today is Saturday and I am very proud of myself for getting to the market near our house before it closes. Last week we all made the assumption—a wrong one—that the supermarket was open Sundays. Luckily the pizzeria was open.

The Long Night

2009-09-16T09:34:00.003-04:00

One of the nice things about living in another country for a few months is that you get to see the little, out-of-the-way places where few tourists go. Like our little foray last night to the Emergency Room or Pronto Soccorso. I am on the mend, but over the past several days I was experiencing abdominal pain that finally got too severe for over-the-counter remedies. As we were driven in the middle of the night via ambulance to the hospital, I, ever the conscientious home-schooling mom, thought to myself that this too might prove to be an educational experience for Boris. And if not, well at least he got to ride in an ambulance.

Italian proved to be a necessity in almost every phase of our six-hour stay. Several of the doctors and nurses could speak English but were very self-conscious about doing so. So, I highly recommend that everyone travelling abroad have a decent pocket-dictionary or phrase book for these kind of situations. I’ve been studying Italian for twenty years, so I do pretty well but medical terms just never came up during any of my educational experiences. One more thing: bring your passport to the hospital.

The night was rather a blur except for the all-to-vivid fear I had that the doctors would find something serious enough to send us back to the States. It looks like it was a severe bladder infection and the intravenous antibiotics helped almost immediately. I got something of an insight into the public healthcare system. For one thing, we did not get a bill, although perhaps one will show up in our mailbox. Certainly nobody asked about our ability to pay. The emergency room was divided into separate little buildings, and I was ferried between several doctors by ambulance, the rides lasting all of two minutes. The progress was slow but steady. I will say that the doctors spent much more time than I’m used to and one nurse in particular was very kind; she set Boris up in a bed in the recovery room so he could sleep for a couple of hours. All-in-all I think I had consults with three separate doctors. They never introduced themselves, so although I knew that one was a gynecologist I never really understood the expertise of the other two. The person that finally discharged me from the hospital was also a doctor, rather than a clerical person. You could hardly call the process streamlined. By the last hour I thought we would never be done. Fortunately Bill brought the card game Quiddler which has turned out to be a favorite of all of ours. Suddenly, (during a game that I was winning) they called my name, I went into the office and had my IV removed. I left with a bunch of papers which will provide me with my most challenging Italian reading practice yet.

As many of you know, I am not a patient person. That’s Bill’s job. So this was a real trial for me. But even as I was lamenting my ospedale soggiorno, thinking I was appearing in a newly discovered work of Dante (Pronto Soccorso Purgatorio perhaps ?) I had to admit that I was feeling lots better than I had six hours before. We had left our house at 1 in the morning. When we left the hospital to hail a cab it was 7:30. We all went back to bed. Boris was sure he wouldn’t sleep, but he did so before any of us. We awoke afternoon. It’s 3:30 now and the boys are on a sketching expedition in centro and I’ll try to meet up with them. I’m looking forward to a nice afternoon.

A Continual Process

2009-09-14T07:38:00.006-04:00

The other day we were sitting in Piazza San Stefano, a quiet, auto-free space in front of a network of medieval churches. The buildings on either side of the church were centuries newer—17th or 18th century, mere babies. The detail in these buildings could keep the eye busy for hours. We wondered who the portraits were that were arrayed under the cornice and as we did so, had to resign ourselves to the sad fact that a building like this could never, would never be built again.

Which brings me to a brief discussion of the movie Death Becomes Her. It came out almost twenty years ago and starred Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn and Bruce Willis with Hair. Since only about five people actually saw this movie I don’t think you’ll consider me tiresome if I outline the plot. Meryl and Goldie, quite by accident, (isn’t it always by accident in these cases ?) discover an elixir that gives them eternal life. Unfortunately, this isn’t the same thing as eternal youth so their bodies wear out and their limbs tend to come off when they throw each other down the stairs. ( You'd think that having eternal life together would create a sort of bond, but they can't stand each other). Bruce Willis is a plastic surgeon and also married to one of them and due to his profession he is continually “on call” to repair damage to them. (It was a totally forgettable movie, not especially funny except for a dig by a witty reviewer who surmised that there must have been one heck of a fight between Meryl and Goldie to decide which of them got to be the blonde).

So why am I bringing this movie up ? Because it reminds me of Italy. Every local government must employ hundreds of Bruce Willises to repair one fading building after another-- cleaning, patching, shoring up, realizing that there is always a next one. Growing up in Chicago, where new buildings are always going up, way up, (often taking the place of lovely older buildings) I find this a strange state of affairs. Architecture here is so much more a question of maintenance than of construction. I picture a group of Council members (or whatever you would call the group that oversees the physical well-being of the buildings.) I imagine them peering through monitors that connect to hidden cameras trained on every quarter of the city. How fretful they must be as they try to keep up with damage incurred by pollution, weather and time…not to mention people. One Council member turns to the other and says, “Did you see the way that kid Boris was rubbing his chocolatey hands all over the stucco ? Those fingerprints aren’t going to come off anytime soon !"

Saturday we visited the nearby city of Modena which is lovely. The Duomo is a fine example of the Romanesque with engaging, even funny sculptural details on walls and capitals. The façade was partially in restauro (under restoration) and because of this, some of the walls were covered with protective cloth (canvas ?) Like many such contrivances, this one’s cloth covering was silkscreened with an exact full-sized photograph of the wall which it was hiding. So we were able to gaze upon the rhythm of the walls arches and its elegantly proportioned pilasters except that they weren’t real. How to react to this ? I have to say that when I see these faux building covers I feel like I do when speaking with a person who has spinach in his teeth. I try not to see it and yet it’s there.

In the larger cities and even the middle-sized ones, there is so much restoration work going on that I feel a little guilty. I want to go up to somebody in charge and say, “Really, I wish you wouldn’t put yourself to so much trouble for us. Honestly, you should see the mess I have waiting for me at home.”

Heard on the Via

2009-09-14T05:53:00.003-04:00

photo by Boris

A group of college woman (probably from the Johns Hopkins program based in Bologna) are walking away from the McDonald's that's near the Neptune fountain.

One says, "I'm not one of those Americans who come to Italy and heads for the McDonald's !"

Seems to me that she is and she did.

Language for Real Life

2009-09-10T10:14:00.004-04:00

Have you ever taken one of those “get your feet wet” foreign language courses? I’m not talking about the ones with the rather off-putting designations, French 101, Spanish 202. No, the courses I’m thinking of have welcoming titles like “Parliamo l’Italiano !” (exclamation point obligatory) and “ Toujours France!” After one session you come away with the basics for rudimentary conversation: “How are you ?”, “I’ve been better” and “The pen of my Aunt is on the table.” Armed with these sentences, you feel that fluency is within your grasp. Now I have serious issues with this approach. It lulls one into a false sense of competence. Only heartbreak can ensue once you travel abroad and encounter complex life situations. Just like home, people will answer you according to their whim, not according to your script.

To correct this shortcoming, I bring you the This Ain’t No Marshmallow Italian Language School. The school motto will be: “Life is tough and so is the subjunctive tense” which I’m hoping to incorporate into a school song. How will the classes be taught ? Well, there will be a series of practical exams based on real-life situations. No sense living in the clouds watching one’s Aunt’s pen floating by while you blithely discuss the weather. This is Real Life. Naturally these exams will be derived from our own experiences here in Bologna:

1. Purchase a cell phone and calling plan. This was a tricky one. I don’t understand the basics of phone plans in any language so even if my salesman had spoken to me in English it wouldn’t have helped much. We went into the Vodaphone Store on Ugo Basso near Piazza Maggiore, after a meal at McDonald’s (yielding to pressure from Boris). I explained that we needed the phone for three months and wanted the cheapest one I could get. Resigned to the fact that he would not be able to sell me a Blackberry, the salesman sold me the bottom-of-the-line. So far so good. Then I had to buy what is called a “SIM card,” a tiny metal card that goes into the phone. I think I bought 20 Euros of minutes but the price of those minutes would seem to range between 20 cents and 2 dollars depending on where you are calling. Wouldn’t it have been great if we’d been given a price list of countries and charges per minute ? Well, that didn’t happen. Still, if I’m not mistaken, we can make unlimited calls to Croatia.

2. Answer an ad for a used child’s bike for sale. Tell the seller that you don’t actually want to buy the bike but would like to rent it for three months for half the selling price. You agree to return the bike to the seller at the end of that period. Explain to the seller that this is a really great deal for him because he can sell the bike and also pocket a rental payment. OK—I had a little help with this because Giuseppe, our landlord’s son, sent me a link to an online ad. When I called, the seller was actually amenable to this arrangement. The hard part was getting there and figuring out how to transport the bike. He told me that he was located on Via Bentivoglio. We took a bus to il centro and a taxi from there. Once we got there, we could not find the right apartment building. Good thing I’d completed exam question #1 and had my telefonino with me. When I called the seller I found out that we’d made the ridiculous mistake of confusing Via Bentivoglio with Via Bentivogli ! I'll bet this mixup never happens ! Oh, and it was Giuseppe Bentivogli—not the other Bentivogli. By this time our taxi had left but I phoned for another using the business card our driver had given to us. And here’s an amazing thing—the SAME taxi driver came back for us ! In all my 51 years on earth I have never once had a Taxi Driver Repeat, and Bologna is quite large (population 400,000), so I really do think that this was an amazing coincidence. So, there we were, driving through beautiful arcaded streets toward our quarry. When we finally reached the correct address, Alessandro, the seller, was waiting for us. The bike was perfetto. We called yet another taxi, this time requesting one large enough to transport the bike back to our apartment. Right now Boris and Bill are at the park putting the bike (la bici) through its paces while I enjoy some peace and quiet. We spent $30 on the bike and $45 on cabs. But the story ? Priceless.

We Are Ensconced

2009-09-09T07:13:00.005-04:00

I am happy to report that our apartment in Bologna is very comfortable and actually looks better than it did on the website because the landlord has purchased new furniture for the bedrooms. The day we arrived from Rome was, like the five days before it, clear, warm and cloudless. The cab driver drove through streets lined with stucco homes and shops, most of them painted in shades of pink and peach. We were a little early to meet our landlord and so we and our bags were deposited beside the gate of our building-to-be. There we waited for a very long ten minutes hoping this wasn’t a question of crossed signals or an out-and-out scam.
We were of course thrilled when our landlord’s son Giuseppe showed up. I had one very tense moment when he explained that our apartment was on the floor below the first floor. Of course in the United States this would mean the basement. I was picturing a dank dark apartment and felt absolutely sick with the realization that I had never, in all my fact-finding, asked what floor the apartment was on. Let this be a lesson to you, dear reader ! When renting, find out what floor your apartment is on! As it turned out, we are on the ground floor, or rather a couple steps up from ground level. I had forgotten that in Europe the first floor is our second floor. What a relief !

Giuseppe was extremely patient and kind, explaining the intricacies of the heating system, the location of kitchen implements, linens, etc. What took the longest to explain was the system of garbage disposal. On virtually every street are a row of large dumpsters to which residents have access anytime they want. The good thing about that is you will never find yourself running after the garbage truck because you forgot it was your Day. The bad thing is that warm weather brings out that very persistent unpleasant odor you experience riding behind a garbage truck. Either we’re getting used to it or the slightly cooler weather makes the smell less of a problem. Bolognese are very serious about recycling and there are various bins for plastics, glass, “unsorted” and “organic.” I’m waiting for Giuseppe to bring us a key for this last one. I guess not just anyone is allowed to toss their chicken bones into the dumpster.

The street is very quiet and seems very settled with families and older people. There is a sizeable market with individual vendors selling cheese, meat and vegetables. The supermarket down the street is open all day—no closing in the middle of the day—but it has a sterile, off-putting atmosphere. There are caffes, newstands, bakeries and a few restaurants--really everything we need. A park has provided Boris with playmates. Boys of all nationalities really need one phrase: “Do you want to play ?” or in this case,“vuoi giocare ?” And those magic words, along with an arsenal of gestures, get him into pick-up games of soccer, il calcio.

A little while ago Boris was very excited to find out that we have an “old-fashioned” stereo. That is to say, it has a cassette player. Just another testament to Italy’s reverence for history.

A Boy of Few Words

2009-09-06T17:03:00.002-04:00

Here is Boris looking down on the Colosseum and finally his favorite word "awesome" has found a worthy object. A few weeks ago he had had an awesome ice cream at Cold Stone and his new Sketcher shoes were totally awesome too, but I couldn't help but wonder if that ubiquitous adjective shouldn't be saved for something a little more momentous. (My triple-word score in Scrabble which combined axe and equip was pretty awesome. If you do the math I think you'll agree). And then we were at the Colosseum and there was that word coming out of my son's mouth again only this time none of us could think of any other word to use.

Our Day Out With the Fish

2009-08-31T13:17:00.002-04:00

If you own fish I’ll bet that there are times you have felt guilty about not giving them enough mental stimulation. Round and round in the tank they swim, passing the same peeling pagoda and deep-sea diver year-in, year-out. Meanwhile your four-legged friends are playing fetch, catching mice and generally living it up. We had these very same thoughts and boy did we ever do something about it ! We loaded our guppies, danios, tetra, raspora, algae eater and catfish into the van and took them for a ride in the country. Oh what a romp ! Oh what a madcap afternoon ! Oh what a stupid thing to do !

The idea was that our friends would look after the fish while we are in Italy. Since we have kept this fish tank for five years or so, the water has just the right biochemistry. I really don’t know what that means exactly but it has something to do with the balance of well water, microbes and fish waste. Our finned friends seem quite content and are generally long-lived. So were we just going to throw all that water down the sink ? Of course not. This was Gray Gold ! We poured about half of it into milk jugs. Then, we thought we could just carry the twenty-gallon fish tank with half its water to the car, keeping the fish undisturbed. Well it turns out that water is really really heavy. And then there’s the ten pounds of gravel . So the gravel had to go, and we had to empty out still more water. By the time we could actually move the tank (and by “we” I mean that Bill carried the fish tank and I held the door) those poor fish were swimming in about two inches of water, now an inky blue black. Our son Boris sat in the back of the van peering into the murky depths of our fishes’ depleted habitat. Every once in awhile he would call out,”I see a guppy !” or “I see a fin !” This gave us a small degree of hope as we drove down winding country roads. Maybe the fish would survive and not hate us. Every so often we would hear a splash when Bill rounded a curve. He assured me that fresh-water tropical fish are accustomed to heavy storms that roil their waters. I think he meant the ones that live in the Amazon, not the ones that were born and raised at Pet Forum.

Finally we reached our friends’ farm. I told the fish to run and play in the verdant fields but they were having none of it. We reconstituted our fish tank and by the time we left the water was regaining some of its transparency and the fish were looking reasonably mobile. I hope they enjoy their months in a foreign land. So far reports of their well-being have been positive. I understand they’re planning to start a blog.

Confessions of a Reformed Over-packer

2009-08-27T17:58:00.003-04:00

I can’t believe it. Finally after almost thirty years I have learned to pack light. (Should it be lightly ? That sounds a little precious to me). Three suitcases for three people…and none of these are huge. Three backpacks each with emergency clothes, books, toiletries…and we are set for three months. Oh how times have changed !

Cue flash-back music. Close-up of my streamlined bag with wheels and pull-up handle which dissolves into a 1970’s plaid bag of ungainly proportions.

For my high school graduation in 1976 I received a set of American Tourister luggage (just like they gave away on The Newlywed Game!) My mother, who gave me this gift, was very proud of the fact that the suitcases had wheels. And they did. Except that the wheels were the size of olives and became useless on any terrain that was rougher than the surface of an ice rink. This was before the widespread use of the pull-up handle, so my suitcases each had a leash. It was exactly like a dog leash so there really is no other term one could use to describe it. If it was not lost by the airline, which would be a miracle, the user could pull the suitcases with it. This made carrying the luggage as effortless as pulling a stack of cinderblocks. Pulling two or three of these suitcases at once was absolutely impossible. It was almost as though the designers at American Tourister were just daring you to succeed, knowing all the while that you wouldn’t. As soon as I’d get one rolling at a nice clip, the other would tip over, its wheels unable to fulfill their purpose. Then I would right that one and in doing so I would knock over the first. Usually a nice man in a business suit would take pity on me and help me with the bags. Maybe that was the entire purpose of the design come to think of it: sort of a lure for good samaritans.

I used these suitcases for many years. Most memorably I took one of them on a trip through Devon in southwest England. My goal was to see the moors, but I was to find out that there was no bus that would simply pull up to the moors and let me out. So there I was in the little hamlet of Bovey Tracey, pulling my red and blue checkered American Tourister by its leash, thumbing for a ride. Did I bring the small suitcase ? No of course not. I brought my middle-sized one which would have easily clothed a family of four for a week. In a surprisingly short period of time an elderly woman picked me up. I guess I looked trustworthy and hapless, and I suppose few serial killers are accoutred as I was. She took me back to her house which was adjacent to the moors. After feeding me lunch she provided me with a map of the moors and I left for an afternoon hike. How much easier it was to maneuvre without my suitcase ! This all happened in December of 1978. That afternoon began one of the largest snowfalls in the history of Devon and so I was snowed in with this very interesting, very kind woman and I spent New Year’s eve doing a jigsaw puzzle with her by the fire. I think I stayed there for almost a week. When my mother visited me a few months later (I was studying in London for the year) we all had lunch at her son’s house in a suburb of London. It turned out that her family had been much relieved to know that somebody had been staying with her. They’d been worried about her being alone during the storm and were glad that she had somebody to help her bring in coal for the stove. We kept in touch until her death in 1985.

This experience proved to me that chance and opportunity are closely related in travel. And I have to say that if my luggage was not the smartest choice for the journey I always think that it must have made me look so ridiculous that all the other wonderful events ensued as a result. I looked so ridiculous that it was possibly inevitable that a total stranger would take pity on me. I’m glad it was her.

Grandma Ruth's Grand Tour

2009-08-22T13:55:00.008-04:00

Here it is, the middle of the day and it has been raining for hours. I’ve been puttering around and having gotten bored with my life at the moment, have decided to delve into another’s: my grandmother’s. Grandma Ruthwas not only intelligent and observant; fortunately for posterity, she was very organized. She documented several of her trips across country through letters, photos and other ephemera which she mailed home and assembled in meticulously labelled and dated scrapbooks. In fact she even wrote the date on which she assembled the scrapbook.

Grandma Ruth was born in Chicago on December 30, 1903 which was the night of the Iroquois Theatre Fire, one of the deadliest blazes in history. Amazingly, her two aunts had been planning to go to the Iroquois theatre that night, but due to her birth they stayed home. They both lived to be elderly, very lady-like ladies.

In August 1931, at that time an unattached woman of 27, Ruth travelled to Yellowstone and points beyond with her friend Diana. Here is an excerpt from a letter she wrote from Manitou Springs, Colorado. I especially like her description of the sunrise and what she wore to “rough it.”

Tuesday, 7:30
AM

Dear Bill [her brother],

Just got back from a beautiful trip to Pike’s Peak. We left here at 2 o’clock this morning and oh! the sky was gorgeous. I never saw so many stars in my life. We arrived up at the Peak, a distance of 23 miles, at a quarter of four. Then we watched the sun rise on the horizon. It was magnificent. We could see little towns lighted up way down in the valleys. Th lights sparkled like diamonds. Then it started to get light and we started back at about 5:30. It was all light by then. And was it Cold ? Well I wore my suit skirt with a jersey, blouse, my suit coat, my white coat and rented a man’s sheepskin coat which I wore over all. I had on my woolen hose and golf shoes and my feet were so cold as they get in zero weather. The temperature up there was said to have been about 33 but on account of it being 14,000ft. above sea level and having such dry air it feels very very cold.

I guess I was about the only one in the party who didn’t get dizzy or sea-sick. I felt fine and still do. Diana was pretty dizzy tho. She is upstairs fast asleep now. I’m going to have breakfast first and then hit the hay for the rest of the day (Poetry).The trip costed $6.00 but I enjoyed in spite of all that.

In her later years my grandmother visited Egypt, China, Australia and many countries in Europe, but she never kept the detailed notes that I have of these early trips. Sadly and inevitably perhaps, the ease of photography and the affordability of long distance calls, made such documentation unnecessary.

When You Can't Afford a Villa

2009-08-21T13:37:00.006-04:00

As a rule, we tend not to take three months off of work and daily life to go to Italy and do nothing. I certainly would have no objections to doing so every year, but realistically, we are self-employed artists with bills that need to be paid. So, finding an affordable place to live was the most important part of this adventure. Since many people have asked me how we found our place, here are some things I have learned so far.

1. Be clear about the goal of your trip. Yes, I know that our long-range plan is to do nothing, but we want to pursue this goal in an interesting place. Another way of saying it, the way I say it when I want to sound respectable: we want to immerse ourselves in a lively yet manageable city. That put Rome out of the running. (There is such a thing as being too lively).
2. Be flexible. When I started researching places to live I had a group of possible cities: Mantova, Bologna, Verona. Affordability was important, as was a place in a neighborhood with proximity to buses and shops. If I couldn’t find those attributes in city A, I would have crossed it off my list and gone on to city B.
3. Everybody wants to live in a villa, but not everybody can. We scaled down our ambition and looked for an apartment. In any event, I am petrified of driving in Italy and many villas would be out-of-the-way and require a car.
4. The leads in guidebooks are not that useful. Just about all of them list companies that specialize in villa and apartment rentals. I e-mailed several of these with specific requirements and got no personal responses. What I did get were weekly SPAM e-mails informing me of various properties throughout the world.
5. Ask your potential landlord lots of questions just for the heck of it. I googled Bologna and apartment rentals and found an associaton of local property owners with a variety of apartment to rent. Once we found one with the number of bedrooms we wanted and a neighborhood location, I e-mailed the owner with lots of questions. That is the important part—the asking. The main point is that you want to see if the answers are timely and specific. Also make sure the landlord gives you a direct phone number, not just the number of the agency.
6. Like much in life, paying deposits is a risk. We had to paypal one-third of the three-months rent. Yes, it’s a risk, but so is buying a house, getting married and seeing movies starring Jim Carrey. Once I paypalled the money I took a deep breath and then I stopped thinking about it. After all there are so many other things to worry about !

What's with the title ?

2009-08-11T21:36:00.003-04:00

Would people think less of me, I wonder, if they knew that my secret ambition is to coin a catch-phrase ?

Many years ago, Bill and I were having a conversation about another person who was, in my opinion, something of a wimp. To make my point that life is tough and that this person should just deal with it I said, “This ain’t no marshmallow factory !” The “this” in question was essentially “real life.” I thought it was an amusing little phrase but I didn’t have any particular ambitions for it at the time and so it languished for a decade.

Recently, I took it out of my metaphorical language cold storage. (It was right next to “Cool Cat,” the nickname I’d chosen for myself that nobody would use). Surprisingly, when I said it to Bill, not only did he have no recollection of the phrase--he thought it originated on Seinfeld ! Of course I was flattered. That show did have a certain amount of success as I recall. And yet, I wanted credit. I googled “This ain’t no marshmallow factory” and Seinfeld just to make sure. There was no reference to this phrase anywhere. It's mine, I tell you ! I hope you will use it in good health and often. After all, a catch-phrase unspoken is just a phrase. (Hey ! That’s a pretty good catch-phrase right there!)

Love and Butter

2009-08-09T23:42:00.006-04:00

Walking into the Carmike Theatre last night, I was surprised to find a long line spiralling in a rather aimless way between the concession stand and the ticket-taker. “Well, that Harry Potter certainly has legs,” I thought to myself. Then I noticed that the line contained a lot of women, many of whom were, like me, “of a certain age.” "Well maybe they're here for that 3-D movie about the guinea pigs," I thought. They were, of course, waiting for Julie and Julia as I was.

Well, I shouldn’t have been so surprised at the size of the crowd. Charlottesville is a foodie town after all and the commercials for the movie have been irresistable, with Meryl Streep capturing the awkward and endearing Julia Child in the older black-and white segments of The French Chef. Oh the guilty pleasure my mother and I used to experience when we would see Julia Child mess up a dish ! (It really wasn’t until I started teaching art classes in which I had to demonstrate techniques that I realized it’s not so funny when it happens you )

I was fascinated by Meryl Streep’s portrayal of Julia Child. I would not say that she dissolved into the role. Rather, she was somehow simultaneously Meryl and Julia. It was a little bit like a dream in which your aunt suddenly turns into Ethel Merman but it’s your aunt and Ethel Merman at the same time. (Well, my Aunt Blossom was the Sophie Tucker of the North Side of Chicago so maybe it wasn’t such a stretch after all. Now if my Uncle Bill turned into Ethel Merman that would be weird. He just didn’t have her vocal range.)

One of the things I learned from reading Julie and Julia was that Veal Prince Orloff, which is central to that classic Mary Tyler Moore episode in which she throws a small dinner party for a congresswoman, (the one where Mr. Grant takes half the platter of food), was a featured dish in Mastering the Art of French Cooking. It was almost like a “final exam” dish, a showstopper. It is a veal roast au gratin with mushrooms and I believe there is also a cream sauce. I considered making it recently, maybe with a Mary Tyler Moore themed party, but the idea of veal and cheese made me feel nauseated.

Seeing all those people in line for the movie made me think of how each of them had his or her own memory of watching The French Chef or being influenced by her books, or being the beneficiaries of somebody who cooked from her books. Last night after the movie I remembered a special and indirect influence. In 1988 I went to Italy for a six-month stay. My mother accompanied me on the flight and we travelled together for two weeks. Having seen a PBS show in which Julia strode through Parma’s wonderful food markets, my mother suggested that we spend a few days there and so we did. What I remember most about Parma is my first encounter with the passeggiata, the ritual of the evening stroll in which couples and groups of young people walk around the central square. On our first night we were wondering if there was some kind of festival going on. Where was everyone going ? After seeing the same groups circling again and again we realized that they were not going anywhere. They were out to see and be seen. Nevertheless, we were surprised to see the same thing the following night. I still don’t know when we finally learned what the ritual was called and that it was a nightly occurrence. One of us must have found the appropriate entry in the Fodor’s or Frommer’s when we got back in the hotel room. The passeggiata became something that we looked forward to, an incentive (as if one were really needed) to find a table with a view and to have a glass of wine. Or maybe I was still sticking with Campari and soda before I realized that I loved the color but hated the taste.

So, while others may owe Paris to Julia, I owe her Parma. It seems only right that I should follow Julie Powell’s lead in leaving a tribute at the Smithsonian reconstruction of Julia’s kitchen. But it won’t be butter; it will be a block of Parmesan cheese.

Why in the world Bologna ?

2009-08-08T00:26:00.003-04:00

Ten years ago Bill and I spent two weeks in Italy. I had lived in Florence many years before that and on this, my second trip to Italy, Bill’s first, I never tired of saying that I was going to show him “My Italy !” It was actually Bill’s little phrase, and we loved to pair it with a dramatic gesture when, say, we were waiting for an hour at the bank. On our trip we hit the major cities: Milan, Florence, Rome, Venice. Although we also visited Bologna and Vicenza, our itinerary was a typical one. We took the trip that everybody took. Not that I’m complaining. When we returned and friends would ask which places we visited, I would tell them that we found a wonderful, little, out-of-the-way city that had…get this…WATER INSTEAD OF STREETS !! When they would tell me (as invariably they would) that they too had been to Venice I would exclaim in disbelief, “WHAT ? You‘ve been there too ? That is so amazing ! However did you come across it ?” Pretty quickly people stopped asking me about our vacation.

This trip is different because Bologna is a city less travelled; unless you have been there, you probably do not have a ready mental image of it. The due torri (two towers) simply do not have the worldwide recognition of other, more famous tall edifices. Handsome though they are, I have never seen paperweight versions of Bologna’s towers in anyone’s home although I can think of several who employ miniature Eiffel Towers in just this capacity.

Certainly Bologna’s architecture, with its miles of porticos, is beautiful and it is a great walking city. It also has great food and a prestigious university. What it does not have, which to me is a real plus, is a great museum. Well, I’m sure it has some darned fine museums, although I don’t remember them. But there is no Uffizi , no Vatican Galleries to make the city a “required” stop. The difference between Bologna and Florence was obvious to me when I was there. Most noticeably, we didn’t come across people waiting in lines to see things. And if, for argument’s sake, there is less to see, I don’t think I’ll miss it.

Starting Out

2009-08-06T14:43:00.000-04:00

In less than a month my husband, ten-year old son and I will be travelling to Bologna, Italy where we will live for three months. We have rented an apartment in a neighborhood a short bus ride from the city center. Other than our arrival date and tickets for an opera in October, we have no particular plans. Basically, we want to take a look around and eat a lot.

As was to be expected, I am nervous about virtually every aspect of this trip. One day I turned to my husband Bill and said, "I'm worried about things you've never even dreamed of." Strangely, he did not look in the least surprised. I try to imagine one of my grandfather's sisters, Belle or Fanny, telling me, "You know, there are lots of people out there who would give their eye-teeth just to have a chance to worry about such a lovely trip." Not that this helps.

At least this blog has given me a more immediate focus. It is hard to write and worry at the same time. Right now I am pondering a new title. It is just possible that “This ain’t no marshmallow factory” is less poetic than it should be. Since “Under the Tuscan Sun” has already been taken, perhaps I should go with “Through the Bolognese Portico.” The preposition plus suggestive Italian detail definitely has possibilities. Yet, considering the many rainy days in Bologna (hence the existence of said porticos), maybe a better title would be, “Where is the Bolognese Sun?” Another approach, and it must be a terrific one since so many writers use it, would be to pair a food characteristic of the country with a container that is equally evocative: “A Bowl of Olives,” “Un Cestino of Figs”… “A Schmear of Butter.” I can see that whichever way I go, it will be necessary to pepper my entries with lots of italicized Italian phrases, and I will try to amaze everybody by the ease with which I switch back and forth between the two languages, not to mention the plain-text and italic buttons on my keyboard.

I promise this blog will be about something and not just a blog about blogging. Mostly it will be about my areas of interest that I hope will be interesting to others: art, food, travel and homeschooling. A presto.