Two Italies

or: "Oh, that's all the way down in Terronia, that is..."

Estonia is a small country roughly the size of Denmark. It's possible to drive from one side of the mainland to another in 4 hours. The population is so small (1,4 million) that it is a piece of cake to set up complicated telecommunications-systems years ahead of other countries. Yet there are a few dialect areas and enough differences between different parts of the country to create a system of labelling - the islanders, the yuppies from Tallinn, the hippies from Tartu, the mulgid, the vòrokesed, the setod (the two latter ones have distinct dialects and traditions of their own). If this is possible in a country as small as this, what does it mean for Italy, long, mountainous and historically divided as it is?

Mostly it means that they have a hard time understanding each other. More specifically it means that for example:
- each small town competes with the other small town 10 km away - which is better, Valdagno or Schio?
- the next province is like another world: ah, the veronesi, they're all strange...*
- no-one likes the milanesi because they're city folk
- the north doesn't like the south because their economy is non-existent and they look lazy;
- the south dislikes the north because they work their life away and think themselves better because of it;
- the veneziani call everyone else land-folk, dirty shoes etc;
- the trentini aren't considered Italian as they're too far north;
- the sardi neither - they're too far from the mainland;
- the napoletani must be the strangest of all the Italians, with their passion, good food, dirty city and high crime rate.
And so on and so forth. A few kilometres here or there will change not only the accent, but the dialect to a considerable degree. It's not only the language that is different - it's proper cultural differences we're talking about. Sicily is a mix of local, Roman, Arabic and Normandian cultures. Rome... well, we've all studied that in history. Genovese have their own great sea odysseys. Venice has it's mix of Byzantium merchant culture, Armenian, Austrian and whatever was roaming the Mediterranean at that time, plus the pride of a thousand-year republic throughout the middle ages. Tuscany has its glory of the rolling hills and grape fields as the prototype of the fictional idyllic Italy (while Napoli is the prototype of the fictional non-idyllic crime-infested dirty Italy).

All these differences are to be expected, considering the geography of the country and the long history of each province being governed by its own dynasty. These differences are no laughing matter. The politics is directly influenced by the northerners who would like to separate from the south and roll in the money they think they'd have this way. The south lives its life like years and years before, not hurrying for much anything and will hardly be able to understand the frantic Veneti who work their lives away without (apparently) being able to enjoy it enough. They say that even though the south wouldn't have any public money to manage themselves without the north... but then again, the north wouldn't have any pizza-chefs or barbers without the south.

North and South recalls something I've grown to consider fundamental if one is to understand how anything works in Italy: the underlying duality of everything. Everything. If there is a rule to something, there are also a series of counter-rules and exceptions. It's forbidden to have cappuccino in the afternoon, but it's allowed if it's cold outside or if you're just strange like that, but in any case a macchiatone is better. It's bad tone to let oneself go and be rude to someone without bothering to hide the insult between lines, but it's allowed and completely normal in traffic, but in any case "Lei" (official form of address) rather than "tu" should be used**. And so on and so forth. This is why the foreigners will hardly even scratch the surface when they spend a nice sightseeing week in Italy. As B. Severgnini puts it: there are two Italys. There is Italy - what the foreigners think Italy is like - all rolling hills, wine and small boys with black curly hair; and then there is Italia that is a mess and has nothing whatsoever to do with Italy.


* Venexiani - gran signori
Padovani - gran dotori
Vixentini - magnagati,
Veronesi - tuti mati...
(Venetians - all great lords; Paduans - great doctors; Vicentians - eating cats, Veronese - they're all mad...)

** this would sound like something along the lines of: "You, sir, are the biggest ass I've ever met" or "You, mister, are an unfortunate dimwit". Cursing in traffic often needs to be so fast that no form of address can really be used, in which case everyone understands "Lei" to be implicitly included in the "Coglione!" shouted out the window of a passing car.

wow! I could vote!

that's right... one of the many elections taking place each year was today and since it's a small, almost a private one (for deciding who'll take the post of the leader of the Democrat party), they let foreigners vote too. Nice, now I have some right to complain about the politics here.

Make no mistake - I don't care particularly much about politics. If anything, I'm annoyed by the duality of everything in Italy and how the right automatically opposes anything the left comes up with and vice versa. If the left is about supporting culture (human rights, helping the poor and whatever), then the right is against it. What would happen if the left would start holding up national ideals, talk about state security and legalizing money laundering*? Would they be stealing Berlusc*ni's agenda?

This duality means that if the parents make their children go to church the children get back at them by joining a communist or socialist party. As it seems, asking around: left is cool because left means intelligentsia, culture, human rights, attention to Burma and whatnot. Right are the yuppies who don't care about anything farther than their own wallet. The youth who listen to reggae are automatically the left. The middle-aged accountants are automatically of the right. I still don't know how to wrap my mind around this concept.

As the government changed one and a half years ago, I started hearing people say that the state TV suddenly has much interesting programs. This was new because the Italian TV must be one of the worst I've ever seen. Why? Because before the change the TV was made for earning. The masses don't care about documentaries, they care about reality shows. So why doesn't the right care about general culture? Answer: because it doesn't earn. This is the most plausible explanation I got out of my friends. And quite an appalling one, too.

It's (still?) quite different in Estonia, where being active in politics is mostly uncool and the uncoolest of all is the left-ish party who likes to call themselves "the centre". In Italy it's possible to hear someone declaring oneself to be Communist and proud of it. In Estonia this would be political suicide. I wish the naive young men handing out leaflets with the hammer and sickle in Padova would ever happen to go to Eastern Europe and try to convert someone. This should be fun...


* as a second thought, I think that's already legal.

A small dictionary of coffee

When food is the heart of life in Italy, then coffee might easily be its soul. Coffee is the proper round-up for any proper meal, the centre of any proper breakfast. The fact that most Italians are blissfully ignorant of the delights of fine tea becomes irrelevant in comparison.

In the European countries that miss their own coffee culture the merry-go-round of different kinds of coffee is often reduced for reasons of simplicity, dividing coffee into "normal/black", "with milk" and "latte" (large milk with coffee), leaving the fancy titles of Turkish coffee, espresso, latte macchiato and other such for the few knowledgeable ones. Or the show-offs.

Thus, for all who have ever wondered whatever might be the difference between latte macchiato and caffe macchiato, here is:

A small dictionary of coffee in Northeast of Italy

caffè normale - this is what you get when you walk into a bar and ask for a coffee. Also called caffè liscio (straight coffee) or espresso. You enter a bar, say: "Un caffè, per favore". The bar-keeper will ask: "Liscio?" ("Straight?"). This is your last way out of ordering a coffee with some quantity of milk, because you can either say: "Sì" (yes, I want an espresso) or specify any of the milk-coffee versions listed below.

Espresso is not only a tiny cup of very strong coffee. It's made in a specific way: the water is heated up to the point of evapourating in the machine and pressed through the fine powder. Contact with cold air makes the vapour liquify again. This is espresso. All other Italian coffee types are based on espresso (unlike the French coffee that is based on strong filter coffee that has a different production process).

Espresso is rarely good outside of Italy (except Portugal, where it's better) and it's inadvisable to order some without milk when the quality is not guaranteed. It seems a mystery - even if an Estonian high-end cafeteria buys an exclusive Lavazza espresso machine complete with coffee beans and uses bottled water from the Alps, the espresso will still not taste the same as in Italy. It's simple really: the quality of the espresso depends on the amount of coffees made each day. The more, the better. For this reason the best coffee is often found in railway station bars and not in isolated mountain restaurants.

Espresso is ok to order at any time of the day, though not too usual right before a meal. In the mornings most people order coffee with milk, such as:

Caffè macchiato (read: caffè mak:iato) is espresso with a little bit of milk. It's still a very tiny cup of coffee for those who don't have time to lose over their coffee but don't want to drink it black either. The added milk can either be cold (caffè macchiato freddo) or hot (caffè macchiato caldo or just macchiato caldo).

Macchiatone is a bigger version of caffè macchiato for those who want to enjoy some more milk foam, but don't want to get a full cappuccino. It still costs the same as espresso (85 cents in the North, less in the South).

Cappuccino (also called cappuccio for short) is served in a cup about the size of a "usual" (Nordic) coffee and is espresso buried in milk foam. This is the ideal morning coffee as it's easy on the stomach and very delicious together with a nice brioche (often filled with cream or marmalade; similar to the French croissant*). But - attention! - cappuccino is ONLY a morning coffee. Having it at any time after 11:00 in the morning will automatically shout of being a foreigner who is not initiated into the Italian ways. The exception can be made if you happen to be an elderly lady and it's a very cold day. The worst that one can do is order cappuccino after a meal. This will make everyone from the waitress to the dish-washer snigger under their breath. Why? Well, having coffee after a meal has a stimulating effect on the digestion that doesn't really work if the coffee is served with a significant amount of milk. It doesn't make sense to add hot milk on top of a full stomach. Exceptions are made for caffè macchiato, however - that's a way out for those who don't like black coffee.

Latte macchiato is not the same as caffè macchiato. As the latter literally means "marked coffee", then latte macchiato is, obviously, "marked milk" - hot milk with a little (half a cup of) espresso. This is not a usual drink for Italians to have in a bar, though at home this can be quite common. A cup of hot milk is a morning classic**; variations include milk with cocoa powder and milk with coffee. Latte macchiato is often intended to be the same as caffè latte that Estonians just call "latte"*** and drink at any time of day. Mostly the difference between latte macchiato and caffè latte is that the former contains half a cup of espresso, poured in after the milk (so there'll be a mark on top of the foam) and caffè latte includes a whole cup of espresso on which milk has been poured. In Italy, both latte macchiato and caffè latte have its specific rules similar to cappuccino.

That's more or less it with the milk. Any of these can also be served with some cocoa on request (this produces even more different names). What comes to coffee itself, there are a number of variations:

Caffè americano - yes! this is it! That's what you need to ask for if you are a tourist in Italy and happen to have had enough of the world-class espresso and would just like to enjoy a cup of "normal" coffee like at home. Only that it will not be coffee like at home. As the only way of making coffee that the Italians recognise is the espresso-method, your caffè americano will just be espresso with added hot water. Sounds disgusting. Better bring your own pack of Paulig from home and do it the student-way in our hotel-room with a paper filter. Or just cave in and learn to drink good coffee.

Caffè ristretto is a double-strength, half-size espresso for strong men who aren't afraid of a challenge.

Caffè lungo is a 1,5 size espresso. This is what the Portuguese should ask for while in Italy (an Italian espresso is about 2/3 the size of a usual Portuguese coffee).

Caffè doppio is a double-size espresso and will most likely be served in a cappuccino-cup so that the espresso looks sad and lonely at the bottom.

Caffè shakerato is espresso with ice, well shaked. Perfect on a hot day.
Other coffee types exist, of course, but they are less likely to come up during a usual day at your average bar. Knowing the differences between these main coffee types would keep a tourist out of any big-time embarrassment though. Good luck.


* In Calabria (the toes of Italy) a brioche is a large, quite generic bun, often eaten with ice cream. In Veneto, however, a brioche is what the French call a croissant. There will surely be other regional differences too.

** In the morning or before going to bed is also the only time of day when drinking milk is normal. In any case, milk is always served hot and cold milk is something barbaric that only the Nordic peoples know how to appreciate. Neither is milk ever seen on the table during meals, as it classifies as sweet! Estonian (savoury) milk-soup would surely make any Italian sick.

*** This habit of calling latte macchiato "latte" classifies as another of these foreign words that are imported into the language and then shortened for comfort, though in the original language the meaning changes. It's strange, but in any case as long as in Estonia everyone understands what a "latte" is, there is no problem.