un'estone in Veneto

Traffic accidents, earthquakes, snow storms and other presents

2008-12-26T18:06:00.003+01:00

Life is going on quietly here. Everything has been smoothly going along towards Christmas, and now along towards New Year. Nothing much is going on, except the other day one guy ironed my car well along the left side, then another one of these days there was an earthquake and I felt my desk swaying as if on a boat, this morning I woke up with Valdagno dressed in a thick snowy blanket, and from 2009 I'll be changing my job, home and flatmates.

Is there something that won't change? No idea. I guess I should just change the haircut as well and have done with it.

There she is!

2008-11-15T19:22:00.003+01:00

You know that one slow driver that always magically happens to get stuck in front of you on roads where it's impossible to overtake? It's an every-morning tradition to guess which kind of a car it will be this time (usually a lorry, but it could also be a perfectly good BMW that just doesn't seem to be able to accelerate). I drive 40km to work each morning and I know the road by heart, most of it is either too narrow or too heavily trafficked to allow any overtaking at all. So I need to resort to all kinds of shortcuts, parallel roads, village and fieldside roads to avoid The Slow Car. Up to now I had always thought of the Slow Car as a car rather than a person, but now I finally met the Slow Person, too!

One gloomy rainy morning, waiting for the lift, I found next to me a 50-ish lady, well dressed, wearing a heavy mask of make-up and an expression that was obviously too naive for her age. She decided to pick up some conversation:
S: "Such a horrible morning, isn't it?"
m: "Mhm."
S: "Yes, and the traffic is terrible!"
m: "Mhm." (Indeed it was, I had suffered for 15 minutes behind a car that couldn't read the road signs and went along at the speed of good 40km/h until I couldn't take it any more and blew the horn to make the car wake up or pull over. No reaction.)
S: "And the people get so vexing too on days like this, they keep making such rude gestures at you when you're not fast enough! Ah, there is no patience in the world!"
m: "Mhm..."

Roma

2008-10-21T17:26:00.000+02:00

I wonder - if all roads go to Rome, how can one get out?

tutta sola soletta

2008-10-14T20:47:00.003+02:00

Being home alone is generally a good thing. Nibble instead of proper dinner, watch silly movie, no conversation. Except when being home alone is because flatmates are:
a) in Petra, Jordan
b) in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Feeling a little pathetic and quite envious. Should eat something heavy, but fridge empty. Might watch Bridget Jones to top it all off.

11° Biennale di Architettura, l'Arsenale di Venezia

2008-10-07T21:04:00.007+02:00

The delights of Mom and Dad

2008-10-03T00:30:00.007+02:00

Choosing a supermarket depends on a lot of things, but not so much on the prices or quality of the merchandise. I think the first thing is the parking lot. Then the exposition. And then, brace yourselves, you Northerners, because in Italy (or at least in the Veneto countryside, dunno..) grocery shops are closed on Wednesday afternoons on account of being open all day (can you imagine, all day without a lunch break?!? oh, hang on - yes I can...) on Saturdays. The trouble is that Wednesday is usually when the weekend shopping starts running low on essential provisions, so it's always that day I invariably find myself in front of a closed supermarket. Famila is the only one that is open that night, so this is where I go.

Today I checked the "magic points" account on our Famila fidelity card. Apparently we've spent at least 2500 euro on our shopping this year, each worth a point. The "magic points" will cancel themselves sometime soon, so everyone is invited to use them on wonderful presents proposed by the supermarket. There's this little catalogue and everything, divided into sections: Presents for Mom, Presents for Dad, Family vacation, and so on.

Family vacation would be interesting, because they offer ski passes as well, though for the season 2007/2008, so who exactly do they think they are kidding?

Presents for Mom is what one would expect - pots, pans, mugs and stuff for the kitchen, all for an excessive amount of "magic points" to be spent. What I did not expect was Presents for Dad. What would you think would be a present for dad? A drill, maybe? Well, there was a drill. One. Then, apart from that one drill that apparently will be the peak of Dad's commitments around the house, there is: a camera. Apparently only Dad is able to operate this highly complex piece of equipment. Then there is a printer for printing the high-quality colour photographs of the family. Again, for Dad, who is able to use it because he has a computer at the office, but Mom doesn't, because she probably does not go to work on account of being committed to her family. OK, this would all be very well, maybe the nice marketing folks at Famila simply didn't know where to stick the silly little camera and I'd simply be getting all indignant for nothing.

But.

The third, most distinctive Present for Dad is a rocking chair. A nice, well-studied rocking chair for Dad to relax in while Mom is cooking in the kitchen. Mom won't have time to use the chair, because she's too busy. Dad, however, has worked all day to provide a living for the family so he will need a good rocking before dinner.

I really have no idea what to choose for my 2500 magic points.

Asiago, 14.09.2008

2008-09-23T00:27:00.001+02:00

L'autunno

2008-09-22T23:06:00.003+02:00

It got cold so suddenly that it only took a day to pass from sandals to woollen sweaters. I shuddered along for a week before giving up and bringing down the winter archive. There are still things in there that I'm unlikely to ever need in Italy - the scarf I made especially for the piercing winds of Vilnius; double mittens that don't need to be taken off for anything; and the only hat in which to handle -20C. That hat is so thick it would qualify as a helmet, and it's also somewhat of a social experiment, because I used all my leftover yarn on it without much regard to the colour effect, and as a consequence I've had more than just a few people laughing behind my back on trains. It does make me look quite silly, especially when the earflaps are tied down, but that doesn't really matter, because I've seen that hat freeze over stiff and still be warm inside. I'm saying it's highly improbable that I might need all this equipment here, but you never know. My room is already improbably close to the freezing point, so maybe this will be the first true winter?

where I come from the things are different

2008-09-15T22:54:00.002+02:00

Things are getting stranger.

A few weeks ago in Bremen:
A: No wonder the Germans look ill, see what they have on the menus here!
me: Yeah, but it's not only Germany that's like this, we have something similar going on...
A: No, that's not true! OK, the gnocchi is not the most healthy, but pasta is alright, don't you think?
me: Sure, except I meant we in Estonia...

Somehow the people I know don't seem to register my saying "da noi" or "at our place" as talking about Estonia any more, but about Veneto. Am I finally being taken as domesticated?

Oh well, let's get out with it then

2008-09-15T22:50:00.002+02:00

Rather than post any pictures where it would be impossible to deny the apparent lack of looks on my part, I'll just offer a through-the-years perspective from when I was younger.

Create your own at www.yearbookyourself.com

Norge, 11 - 17 August 2008

2008-08-21T20:41:00.004+02:00

A very small survival guide to Veneto. Vol 5 - communication

2008-08-06T23:29:00.004+02:00

Eveliis asks:
5. Is there any hope of communicating in English? What should I know in Italian for getting by?

It's possible, it just requires an occasional body-language conversation here and there. In the touristic places such as Rome and Florence you shouldn't have big problems. If you're in town X, however, try your luck with younger people who are more likely to understand you, even if they might not be able to respond. One good thing to be said is that the people who don't speak any English act it out as a shortcoming on their part as opposed to accusing you of not learning their language.

Many Italians will simply speak very loud and clear Italian at you, hoping to make you understand (you'll likely want to comment that you're not deaf or stupid, just foreign, but that will hardly help). They also usually understand complicated written English quite well even if they have never studied any (Latin heritage, lucky bastards!).

What comes to a short Italian course, the ones in the back of the Lonely Planets are usually enough. If you're a fan of full immersion language learning, get a phrasebook and just start talking, however wrong it might come out. It will be appreciated in any case.

If you're not ready to learn anything else, here is what you need to know and repeat many times:
Grazie! (thanks)
Grazie mille! (thousand thanks)

if you're ready for a little bit more, then:

Ciao / Salve (informal/formal, used both for hello and goodbye)
Buongiorno (good morning/day; used for hello, but also goodbye)
Buonasera (good evening; used for hello, but also goodbye)
Mi scusi... / scusa (excuse me; formal/informal)
Arrivederci! (goodbye)
Piacere! (nice to meet you)

Basically, if you say these and smile enough (especially you, Eveliis!), I'm sure you'll be fine.

Up next: What's not worth it? Like, the dirty canals of Venice, maybe...

A very small survival guide to Veneto. Vol 4 - tipping / coperto

2008-07-29T14:58:00.006+02:00

Eveliis asks:
4. What's the deal with tipping?

Tipping is easy. It's included in the bill and there's no choice involved. The service fee is called "coperto" which basically means everything that covers the table apart from food. It'll be somewhere around 2-3 euros, though in tight tourist spots such as Venice it can be much higher than that.

Il coperto is applied only when you're eating a proper dinner. That is, not in the office-quarter trattorias that offer quick pasta at lunch hour, nor in sandwich bars. But anywhere where you have a tablecloth, a waiter and a menu with abundant choice you can be sure the final price will be a tad above the expected total. The price of the coperto will be written in tiny letters in the bottom of the last page of the menu.

Up next: 5. Is there any hope of managing with English?

A very small survival guide to Veneto (for ignorant northerners). Vol 3 - The Rhythm

2008-07-29T08:15:00.001+02:00

Eveliis asks:
Where can I get pizza and drinks at 1 am?

You can't.

There is a rhythm and order to doing things in Italy, and eating has the strictest rules of all. You'd better follow them if you want to play along.

You shall have breakfast from 6 am to 10:30 latest, and the breakfast will consist of coffee and pastries or cookies. No ham. You might get some yogurt if the hostel is in a good mood, but forget about savoury sandwiches - their turn comes later. It's not the time for ham sandwiches yet before 10:30. You're in Rome, so you'll eat as the Romans do.

You shall have lunch from 13:00 to 14:30 latest, probably a little later in the south than north, but it will be a nice healthy meal because at 16 everything will be closed and the most you'll be able to find will be a sandwich or ice-cream. What is this about a five-o'clock dinner? Are you foreign or what? This is not how things are done here.

You shall have dinner anytime from 19:30 to 22:00, probably later in the south than north, but the kitchen will definitely close around 23, and it's not only because it's not healthy to eat this late - it will be because all Italians know it's not and everyone will have their supper on the proper time. There's simply no demand for pizza at 1 am.

Oh, and no cappuccino after dinner. It'll ruin everything.

Now, this applies for real Italian cities where things still work the Italian way, and not the multicultural centres where there are so many tourists asking for absurd food in the middle of the night that there might actually be someone who offers. In Rome you might find pizza at 1 am, but it will be far more likely to find a kebab at 1 am, or any other kind of foreign food, because as I said, the rules are rules - everyone knows them, everyone follows them. The stereotype of rule-breaking Italians is a silly myth. There are rules that are suggestions, and then there are rules about food, dress, family and everything that is important in life that are followed with such care that they become the only way of doing things. The timing of food is one of these.

You might call it alimentary fascism - I know I did for a long time - but in reality it's a part of the culture and why the food is so good and why people around the world are trying to copy it. And - let's face it - it's also a part of the reason why you're coming to Italy.

Up next: 4. What's the deal with tipping?

Thiene, 27.07.08

2008-07-27T21:39:00.005+02:00

Oh, and today I went to see otherwise quite normal people throwing themselves out of a plane at the height of 4500m. I won't lie to you either - the best part was being able to stay in my seat and come down with the plane, though not a whole lot slower than the others.

I guess it's just an idea to get used to. It didn't seem all that scary either, at least before it didn't. Now I think someone will have to push me out once I'm up there.

A very small survival guide to Veneto (for ignorant northerners). Vol 2 - bringing stuff back

2008-07-20T21:06:00.010+02:00

Eveliis asks:
2. What should I bring back? How much should I pay?

The souvenirs are a trap if they're a social obligation, especially for the people who don't travel often. You need to bring back something for everyone, and I mean EVERYONE - the friends, the family, the lady at the bakery, the neighbour, the neighbour's cat. This is where you'll need a lot of something that doesn't weigh, cost or occupy a lot of space, so that you can fit in everything you're bringing back for yourself (the things that do cost, weigh, and take up space). It's a lose-lose situation though. For you, who'll have to hunt for stuff, and for the people back home who probably wanted something more expensive anyway.

The best thing to buy and take back is the food, obviously. Make a round of the cheese counter and you're all set. (Except in the summer that's a bit problematic.) The chocolate is not bad. Pesto is not bad either, though it's readily available for triple price at any Estonian village shop nowadays. It might be an idea to get some key ingredients and cook an Italian meal back home instead of buying overpriced bric-a-brac off tourist streets.

Then there are all the wines, Limoncello, Biancorosso and grappa - that's mostly what takes up all the space in my bags when I go home. You can buy all the wine you like - even really decent ones will still cost less than a crappy bottle of your average red back home. The problem is carrying them, and fitting them in your luggage, and getting them home safely. Some bottles are always in order though. Very generally in the north the white wines and Prosecco (that's Italian champagne, except that it's better than champagne) are best, in the centre it's the reds and the very south has some of the best liquors around and the wines are usually quite strong.

(The only thing that you can honestly forget is any form of bread. That's something that Italians just haven't figured out yet.)

About the prices: if you really want to save, you need time for checking on the same kind of things in a few shops and then go back to the cheapest one. That's pretty much the only way. Many of the tourist shops count on the see-grab-pay-run tourists that desperately need gifts to bring back for all their friends, so the prices differ considerably. In any case, bargaining is usually NOT in order. It's possible, but I've only ever seen it happen once here - it was a true masterpiece, that scene, but I don't think a foreigner like myself could ever get away with anything like that.

In short - if you need to get something to bring back, best get some food - that's always authentic. If you need something for yourself, well, there isn't really anything you absolutely have to buy. Some general shopping for quality shoes is great around here though, except I imagine that is sure to burn your budget quite quickly. Anyway, the tourists' now-or-never attitude to buying stuff is what takes the fun out of the whole thing. Just take it easy. What's the worst thing that can happen if you just enjoy yourself and don't worry about shopping?

Up next: Where can I get pizza and beer at 1 am?

A very small survival guide to Veneto (for ignorant northerners). Vol 1 - transports and traffic

2008-07-14T16:12:00.003+02:00

When friends of mine plan to visit Italy (but don't come to stay with me), I invariably take up the valiant role of interactive guidebook. I'm happy to: where else would they get custom information on all the Italian peculiarities from an Estonian point of view? Only that my Estonian point of view is not so Estonian any more, and my expertise more or less finishes at the borders of Veneto. I'll do my best though, and this time I'll write it down for next time. This is what Eveliis had to ask:

1. What's the deal with the transport? Trains? Scooters? Police? Is it really as crazy as everyone thinks?

Yes. The traffic is quite crazy, though for various reasons. Mostly, in all Italian territory it's just a little more lively than someone from North Europe would expect. It gets slightly more irregular towards the south, though the worst are the big cities - not because they're Italian, but because they're cities. I wouldn't suggest anyone uninitiated try driving in Naples...

By car:
In any case - Italians are good drivers. Most of them are, at least, and all of them consider themselves exceptionally good drivers, so speed limits and other such mundane affairs are more suggestions than actual rules. It would be an insult to an Italian driver's intelligence to make him/her drive exactly 50 km/h, no more, no less. Where's the romance in that? And it's not about speeding, either. It's about choice.

By "lively" traffic I mean that certain things are (socially, not legally) accepted in Italy that one might not try elsewhere, such as short-time parking in strange places, overtaking in the improvised middle lane, flashing headlights for communicating police presence or telling the slow car to get off the fast lane, etc. However, there are regional differences and best is just to say safe even if it means everyone behind you will hate your going too slow. It's especially useful to stay alert to modest little signs saying "controllo elettronico di velocità" which means, though not always, that there are speed cameras around.

What comes to the driving licence, you can use any EU one in Italy even long-term without any issues, though you should attach a version in Italian (just a small list to know which one is the expiry date and so on). The local driving licence system includes a point system: 22 points for each driver, of which some will be docked at every misbehaviour, double for a new driver, and if you run out, it's the exams all over again. This does not apply to foreigners yet, though I'm sure the carabinieri will have a way of making up for this little problem, such as giving you a higher fine or so on. Speeding up to 10 km/h over the limit isn't punishable, but more than that can cost a lot.

The Estonian police is much more strict on alcohol and driving, and for a reason, because the problems are much more evident. In Italy, where a glass of wine with dinner doesn't stop anyone from driving home, you should be ok with a little beer or wine, though I hear the times are changing here as well and the sanctions are going way up. The legal limit is 0,5 g/l.

The traffic signs are to be evaluated one by one. A small metal sign on a post somewhere is not necessarily the absolute truth, so you'll have to figure out it's true meaning. Italians do. For instance, a delightful example of Italian reasoning by B. Severgnini goes something like this: there's a red light. For most this will mean: stop. For Italians it's a call for discussion. What kind of red is it? Is it a speed-triggered red? Well, I'll go slower, so I could maybe pass. Is it a pedestrian red and the little old lady already passed? Well, I can pass then. Is it a dangerous crossing? I'll better stay put. OK, in any case it's still better to stop. But the temporary signs that are often left at the roadside months after all the digging is done, well, nobody really pays attention to those. In this case you should just see what everyone else does. Careful, though. Even if in Naples people will shout at you for stopping at a red light, it's safer to follow the rules as they are made.

There is a reason why Fiat produces tiny cars: the roads in historic city centres and in the countryside are often made for 1,5 cars, not 2. On roads that would have one-way traffic in Estonia, there is double parking and both directions. Not much room for cyclists. Not much room for big cars. You might get away with a suburban family car, but better fold your mirrors.

By bicycle:
Get a life insurance. Think well. If you still decide to do it, use the smallest roads possible, wear a helmet and reflectors.

Seriously, I really don't fancy going around by bike here. On the 70-limit country roads with considerable traffic you'll have to use the very last millimetre of paved road on the right-hand side and hope the cars don't push you off. Also, most of the roads are either uphill or downhill so it all becomes a little too exciting. As a driver I hate every last bolt on these bikes, especially when I happen to be behind one on a steep mountain road, not being able to get in second gear, but not being able to overtake either. It's torture both to the cyclists and the drivers.

By scooter:
The Vespa is Italian. Do I need to say more? In the historic city centre a scooter is the best way of getting around. It's still quite dangerous because the cars are not likely to consider you, but parking is easy and the rush-hour traffic will hardly go much faster than a scooter anyway.

Outside the cities it's a different matter. It's great to buzz around the country lanes and see places you'd never notice if travelling by car, but any roads with constant traffic are just as dangerous as for the cyclists.

By train:
Trains are good. At least in Veneto they are also mostly on time, so nothing much to worry about. You can check www.trenitalia.it for timetables and prices.

The various types of trains are:
R - reg - regionale - the local and cheapest trains. Most likely to be late because stops at every village station and might have to wait to make faster trains pass.

IC - intercity - faster trains, though not always more clean or comfortable than the regional ones. Drinks and snacks aboard and the staff will try to compensate for missing air conditioning if it should break. It's possible to book seats when paying extra, so if you're unlucky and happen to choose a booked car someone will invariably come and shoo you off your (his!) place. Better change the car when that happens and hope for better luck (I've yet to figure out a way to identify to booked train cars from free ones).

ES, CIS, etc - eurostar, cisalpino and other - the coolest, fastest and most expensive trains. Theoretically should never be late, everyone has booked seats, there are power outlets for your laptop (the Italian ones with three holes, obviously) and other comforts.

AND don't try to get smart with the tickets. It doesn't pay. In the regional trains they check the whole train once in the beginning, but in the more expensive ones the guy in the green Trenitalia uniform will pass through after each stop. The fines start from 25euros and the "stupid foreigner" routine went out of fashion decades ago, so don't even try. The smallest possible punishment is having to buy the train ticket right there from the controllore, except it will always cost 8 more euros.

You can get your tickets either online (printed confirmation code will do), from the automatic ticket machines in the stations (best, also has English) or the ticket booths. The latter will be best if you're really not sure where you're going and how to get there, but the lines are always long, so the machines are better. You should validate your ticket once you have it, either right at the machine or one of the small yellow boxes along the walls, exactly like for city transport. An unvalidated ticket means you could use it again any day, so it doesn't do much to help your cause if you get caught with a nice fresh ticket you just bought. In the south of Italy if the yellow validating machines are all broken you are allowed to write the departure time and date on the ticket yourself and you'll be fine. In the north that doesn't go down at all. If you can't validate your ticket, you should go to the head of the train and explain when you get on board.

Also, try to remember which is the central station in the city you're going to. Other ones, even if they have the name of the city, might not have much to do with the centre at all.

By thumb:
Forget about it.

Next: 2. What should I bring back? Which are the must-be souvenires? How much should I pay?

what's happening?

2008-06-07T18:40:00.001+02:00

Everything.

Holland, 2-3 May 2008

2008-05-18T22:40:00.007+02:00

buried in an offline computer

2008-05-11T22:33:00.002+02:00

I thought I had all the time in the world to present my tiny master thesis by the beginning of June. This was until Friday. Up to now I'm 8 good pages ahead, but still nowhere near on schedule. Got to get used to rejecting evening meetings, movies and long dinners: the circadian rhythms are so much stronger here in Italy that it's impossible to work around the clock. It used to be so easy in May.

I'm still having some trouble creating connections between work and study - now, finally, they're both in the same area, but I still haven't got a clue how a good theory is supposed to be practical. I can go on for hours on discourse analysis and other such nonsense, but it doesn't seem to matter much. Theories, even if directly about my job, seem to be something I should know about, but only as a background to everything else. It's like the first-year general exams that one has to pass in order to be properly initiated, though it doesn't have any connection to the following studies and no-one will ever know if you remember anything or not.

Maratona degli sportelli, or: how to go to a doctor in Valdagno. vol 1

2008-04-10T10:19:00.009+02:00

This morning I took half a day off to go hunting for Papers. Namely, what I really would like to have is this little piece of plastic that allows me to go to a doctor here. I have put it off for 2 years, having seen only the emergency rooms in various occasions, so by now I'm sure some sinister illness will come along out of sheer probability. Better be prepared, then. "ULSS", that is Unità Locale Socio Sanitaria, or the social health insurance office, is an obscure network of districts, offices and suboffices, so obviously nothing will move fast there. I don't even dare to dream of an online portal such as xtee.ee where I log on to check if my university is still covering my medical costs or not, and I know from Liina's great experience in Germany that switching from one national system to the other is not a walk in the park even in countries where the bureaucracy is not notorious for making the people run from one office to another and end up where they started. Luugijooks, that's what I call it. Hatchmarathon.

My first attempt at the ULSS was fun, because I turned up with all my papers, having been informed at the municipality before that both employees and students of public universities have a right to health insurance, and the nice lady on the other side of the glass told me that this somehow does not apply to foreigners, even if enrolled in the university as regular students. Then I asked her if I would be able to use my Estonian international health insurance card to visit a doctor for a general check-up. After 20 minutes of phone calls (among which, YES!, the standard phone call to determine whether Estonia is in the EU or not) she informed me that this card would be perfectly valid for a tourist, but the fact that I'm a resident excludes me from the system. I must have looked so perplexed that she started to laugh and said the only way for me to get assistance is probably to pretend as though she never told me the last bit and hope I can pass with the foreign card all the same. And to come back when I have a job, so I could get an Italian card.

This morning I started off with three facts:
1. I'm properly registered as a resident of Valdagno;
2. I'm properly employed from mid-February;
3. as follows from points 1 and 2, I have the right to a national health insurance card.

8.00 sleep deeply. Will not have to be at work before 2 pm.
8.30 wake with a start. Car parked in the 1h area on the wrong side of the street. Last time the fine was 25 euro. Get up, go and repark the car.
9.00 breakfast. Sorting the documents. Sure that nothing can go wrong. Armed with a list of documents to be presented: the residence certificate, job contract, Id number, passport. A feeling of absolute certainty.
9.10 looking for a parking space in front of the hospital. No idea how many sick people drive cars in this tiny town. Could they all be inside that building?
9.20 waiting for the nice lady at the ULSS office.
9.30 presenting the documents. Still smiling. Unfortunately the residence certificate doesn't pass. They need another document altogether. The certificate of residence regularity for EU citizens, or something like that. Got to see the other, not-too-nice lady at the municipality registry office that has a degree in making people feel like they're beating their heads on a brick wall. The paper will cost 15 euros.
9.40 go home for a cookie. The Brick Wall Lady will need some courage. Check bank account. 10 euros. Of course, it's the 10th. I should get paid today or tomorrow. Rummage in the purse. 5 euros and red cents. Rummage in bags and jacket pockets. Find 10 euro in coins. Yes!
9.50 municipality office. Try first with another, friendlier-looking clerk. No. Got to see the Brick Wall Lady. Wait for the Brick Wall Lady.
10.00 Brick Wall Lady arrives. I explain my situation and present my humble papers. - Job contract? - Yes. - Salary sheets? - Huh? - She needs salary sheets in order to confirm that I'm really working. - Well, as she can see, it's a new contract, so I only have half a salary from February. - And March? - It's the 10th today, I'll have it today. - Go and get it then. - Signora, I work in Vicenza. It takes 2 hours to go and come back. - Come back next week when you have March. - Can't I present the one from February? - No, it doesn't make sense, it's already April. - Listen, signora, I took a morning off to be here, I can't do it every week. Is there nothing I can present today? - No. - What else do I need? - Job contract and a full copy of the passport. - All the pages? - Yes. - Even if they're empty? - Yes. - Anything else? - 30 euros. - Huh? - A stamp of 15 euros for each copy. And copies of the contract too. And the salary sheets. And fill this form. And it will take a month before the certificate is ready. Maybe more.

10.20 go home, feeling of having beaten the head on a brick wall. Until the next time then. Surely there's nothing else they can throw at me now. I wrote everything down. I'll have the salary sheet, and 30 euros along with it, and the copies.

Next time, nothing can go wrong.

Bufala 2: destructive individualism

2008-03-30T22:51:00.002+02:00

Watching the Report's edition on the Neapolitan environmental issues, I started to wonder about one thing. It's all understandable that there is no industry, people are poor, don't pay tax, public administration doesn't work and all that, but there is something else fundamentally wrong with a society where 1) someone will openly burn car tires to extract copper and 2) nobody will stop them. No wonder that the sheep are dying and the mozzarella is no good.

That thing that is missing, I think is the understanding that they all breathe the same air and their actions have a direct impact on the life of their neighbours and of themselves. I won't even start about the planet. I'm talking about the region. Mario gets his little bit of copper and his lunch. Alright, but the guy next door, living from agricultural products, will lose who knows how many lunches for illegal amounts of cancerogenous elements in his cheese. The region and the whole country gets a whole lot of Europe-wide bad publicity, products sell less and there is even less money to go around. It sounds simple enough, so how bad does it have to be to ignore?

If people look the other way when someone is dumping rubbish in a field in broad daylight, it's that simple to close their eyes to other atrocities going on every day. I think it's just that they don't care. If they fail to understand the basic idea of a community, it can only mean that everyone only thinks about themselves and their own gain or muddling through as best they can. It's so bad that nobody has time to think of the others, but this is the very thing stopping them from struggling out of the mess their in. They just get in deeper.

Italians are always described as a collective people. From this point of view the Neapolitans are just not.

Cleaning up Campania would be a great election promise these days. But I have no idea how long it will be and how bad it has to get for the things to change.

See for yourself: Report: Terra Bruciata (in Italian)

Che Bufala

2008-03-28T17:22:00.002+01:00

"It (EC) has warned Italy to take further urgent action, or risk a ban on exports of the cheese from the Campania region.
Higher than permitted levels of dioxin, which can cause cancer, had been found at some mozzarella producers.
Italy says it has traced the farms at the source of the contamination, and destroyed their milk. (BBC News)"

Now this is really a cheesy story, isn't it? With all the rubbish that people put inside themselves at McDonalds and street corner sandwich kiosks, suddenly mozzarella is cancerogenous and all Neapolitan cheese might meet an export ban. "Higher than permitted levels" sounds very much like a game of numbers to me: something along the lines of the EU regulations on fruit size and colour. Well, with all the garbage lying around the Campania countryside, I guess the food that grows out of it will not be exceptionally healthy, but in any case the families living and working there are in much bigger danger than any Japanese person buying cheese from halfway around the world. Much ado about nothing...

PS - "destroying someone's milk" is most certainly a linguistic precedent. Never heard a phrase like that before.

The Difference: anime vs wolf&rabbit

2008-03-13T21:41:00.010+01:00

Alright, I've finally found one for-sure indicator of cultural identity. It's not a big thing, but has it's own very significant force over the cultural subconscious:

I share an apartment with 3 Italians. This is quite fun and I enjoy it very much, except on the rare occasion when they pull out that one dinner conversation topic to which I just can't relate, no matter how hard I try - the cartoons of their childhood. These are mostly Japanese translated into Italian, and if I'm particularly unlucky, then Riccardo will make me watch some of the titles complete with theme songs. He'll have a slightly manic glint in his eyes, being completely convinced that the theme songs found on the net are some sort of a treat and I could be nothing but very deeply interested in them. Obviously I can't sense the long string of innocently happy moments these theme songs have accompanied in my friends' past. I can try, but it will not work. All I will see is a cartoon from some 20 years ago.

Now, I've never really watched Japanese anime, as I was 8 when the Soviet Union collapsed and it was only afterwards that they started to be shown on TV. When they did, I was a little out of the right age group and I never really liked them, because the characters didn't move while running. I grew up with Russian cartoons, so, obviously, the songs that make me remember granny's cooking and the good old days are completely different. Once I tried to get back at my flatmates and make them listen to the Nu Pogodi scores and others of this style, but they wouldn't play along (meaning that they kept up with it, said it was interesting, and found an excuse to leave the kitchen).

I later understood that presenting someone with an old cartoon they are unfamiliar with is unfair to the extreme: stripping it from all the affectionate memories and placing it under the scrutiny of an adult of another cultural context is... well, it just can't turn out well. Here is proof:

It's a part of culture that's impossible to learn or to fully comprehend, across cultures as well as across generations. Another example of this phenomena are the fireside songs, though these are slightly less sensitive to age differences. They are not usually something that people normally listen to or talk about, but they are very present in the cultural subconscious and have an awesome force of isolating the foreigners. There are some bridges, of course, and during the night someone will come up with "Stairway to heaven" and other such songs too, but the Italian ones are buried deep and I have no idea how to appreciate them for what they are.

Nato/a a...

2008-03-13T21:07:00.000+01:00

The other day I received a piece of paper by mail certifying that my taxes are paid properly. This was good news, but taking a closer look at the paper I couldn't help but burst out laughing right there on the street:

Name: Maris
Born in: the Soviet Union

Well, it's true. Except that geographically it could mean anything from Lake Baikal to Kazakhstan to Murmansk, as the Soviet Union reached from Japan to Sweden and from Pakistan to the Arctic Ocean. It included Estonia too, of course, but "born in the Soviet Union" sounds very much like telling a 70-year-old Italian that they were born in the Italian Social/Fascist Republic. It's true, but not completely correct.

The Invisible Lake

2008-03-01T22:16:00.000+01:00

Lago di Garda, 23. 02. 2008

Calling March, 2008

2008-03-01T21:23:00.002+01:00

Last time (2006) the Chiamata di Marzo up in Recoaro was just something mildly interesting - people dressed up, a little party, some mulled wine. This year the weather was perfect and accordingly everyone acted their part with much more enthusiasm, both the procession and the audience. So it was still people dressed up, but cheering; mulled wine, but stronger; a party, but bigger.

More of my pictures on Atpic.
Vana's pictures on Flickr.
Also, it seems, I wasn't the only foreign blogger present: Rowena on Chiamata di Marzo.

Che marzo l'è qua

2008-03-01T20:05:00.001+01:00

Yesterday was another Fora Febraro night. It seems the explosions have really driven out the winter... or it was only cold here because I had guests? After Vana and Jamie left we suddenly have excellent sunny weather and 14 degrees out. Not bad.

I went to Agrizoo to celebrate and get a nice plant for the office. When I entered though, an unexplainable something came over me and it was all I could do to keep myself back from buying a full aromatic garden complete with spare pots, earth, and then some roses to grow on the balcony. Agrizoo is this shop where you can find most anything to do with plants and small pets. The back resembles a small hangar, full of flowers of all kinds and the twittering of parrots. Today it looked very much like spring and all the boring evergreens were replaced by small roses, primulas and strawberry plants. I do consider myself lucky to have got out with only a rosemary, a dragon tree and a big azalea that will probably burst into full red bloom one of these days.

I looked around in Estonia this winter and it's all off balance: the cut flowers cost half, a third or a quarter of their price here in Italy and it's exactly the opposite with anything growing in a pot. Alright, the man-size rubber trees and that sort of thing cost a lot here too, but you can get young aromatic plants, cacti or spider plants for next to nothing. I wonder where the difference comes from.

I've already potted the rosemary into something bigger than the tiny plastic pot it came in, so this post is written with a significant amount of earth under my fingernails. The urge to pot, prune and water hasn't really subsided yet, so I'm seriously considering getting some basil, a mint and a red pepper plant as well.

new year, new name

2008-02-15T08:59:00.002+01:00

Yesterday morning I found a letter in the mailbox from the Democrat Party, addressed to one Marisa Paola. The surname was right and the address too, so I have no idea where Paola comes in, but I appreciate the new name all the same. Thanks, signor Veltroni.

work in progress

2008-02-13T10:15:00.007+01:00

On Valentine's day I'll have been here exactly 2 years. I don't feel as if anything has changed from 2006 on, though a lot has. Gone are the days when I was intimidated at the thought of the post office and, unable to remember the obscure names, resulted to pointing at the types of bread at the bakery.

It's still a process, all of it: everything I've learned is missing a more or less significant piece, either due to my own laziness or because 2 years is not nearly enough. Like this:

- I've learned the language, but still miss the in-my-sleep ability of using the subjunctive and the trickier articles correctly. Long conversations and official emails* give me away.

- I've also learned the dialect, though still not able to pass as a native. Also, the locals refuse to let me practice and laugh at me instead.

- Since I've switched from English to Italian as the everyday communication language, several friends are complaining that I'm neglecting their linguistic practice. I've had to start importing foreign friends for that purpose.

- Communication is still difficult on a much more complicated level than the linguistic one. I've still got to learn to keep my mouth shut and/or cover my direct statements with foggy spiral talk as is the custom here. What is normal in Estonia is brutal here and I only have to thank heavens for having friends who can forgive my bursts of rudeness.

- I'm a Veneto resident and refuse to apply for a residence permit on principle. It's not obligatory for EU citizens, but the municipality clerks aren't used to EU immigrants: first they give me a suspicious look, make a long phone call, then agree sulkily that my passport should suffice, then look surprised at the tiny circle of stars inside, ask: but is Estonia in the European Community??? I say: yes, for 4 years already. Then they make another long phone call before they believe me. Only then, after 15 minutes and with impatient people waiting in line behind my back, can we start talking about why I'm there. It's always the same.

- I'm completing a master program at Verona University, in Italian. Luckily they let me write the thesis in English (but who will read it?!).

- I know more of job interviews in Italy than in Estonia, never having worked 9-5 up there. This is getting strange. Also, I'm starting a new job next Monday, the first one where my foreign languages have no importance whatsoever. That should be fun.

- I've finally opened a bank account, though have no idea how to transfer anything through the super-equipped website of IWbank. The bank was something I worked hard to get around, because most of the little Italian banks have sky-high commissions and absurd opening hours. Now I just have an internet bank that has none of the simplicity of the SEB group site. We'll see how this turns out.

- I've only really learned to drive in the narrow country lanes of Alto-Vicentino. My driving licence had prepared me for the one-way streets of Kuressaare, the town without a single traffic light and with perfectly level streets. Here I have mountain-training, uphill parking training and getting-there-fast shortcuts training, courtesy of my patient teacher and role model Riccardo. Driving back in Kuressaare this winter felt unbearably bland in comparison. The traffic in the centre of Vicenza on a rainy night gives me the creeps though and I still haven't mastered the subtle art of stopping the car exactly at the distance of my arm's length at the highway entrance.

- I'm also still not used to seeing movies dubbed into Italian. It's also a surprise to see movies that are originally in Italian - suddenly everything sounds right! Suddenly the actors talk naturally! What a revelation! Also, the fake voices of the dubbers seem even worse in comparison. Italians say that it's professional and whatnot. The truth is that women in American movies never have the high haughty voices of the Italian actresses and the most self-assured macho voice of John Travolta still doesn't compare to what the Italians make him sound like. Top this with bad translation, "you" turned into "Lei", and all the "fuck's" into "accidenti"** and the result is two movies of which I see one and hear the other. It makes my head ache.

Edit: Also, I've grown my hair long out of necessity. I trust no Italian hairdresser: I'm faithfully visiting mine in Tartu twice a year. Several attempts at foreign haircuts in Lithuania, Czech Republic and Turkey have convinced me there is no better. And then, of course, I couldn't afford a haircut in Italy anyway.

* grazie, Saverio :)
** "accidenti" is something that auntie Muriel might say. Whoopsie Daisy.

How to survive in Venice: a handy guide for ignorant foreigners

2008-01-30T23:46:00.001+01:00

There are some basic rules to visiting that place. I will put them in a row one by one to avoid the vague musings that might come out otherwise (see below what happened last time I tried to write about Venice).

1. Drop your ideals in a bin. This is not a dream city. It is a city. Think what you want of it, but you can be sure that the houses are not really made of gold, nobody really uses the gondolas to get around and the gondolieri will never, and I mean never sing O Sole Mio to you while you glide romantically down the canal at sunset.

2. Want to eat? Get as far away from St Mark's square as you can. West, if possible. There are some reasonable bars off the tourist centre, and, if you're lucky, you might find a few of the well-hidden supermarkets too. In any case avoid the restaurants where slick English-speaking young men offer you a fixed price deal at the front door.

Also, there is a strict rhythm and unimaginable amounts of unwritten rules to eating in Italy. The rhythm is easy enough:

- morning - 10.30/11.00: breakfast: cappuccino and a croissant or cookies usually. In any case NOT a ham sandwich or scrambled eggs. This doesn't mean you're not allowed to munch on a sausage in your hotel room... if you really want to.
- 11.00 - 12.30/13.00: aperitifs: white wine, Prosecco or Spritz. You can skip that one, but you'll definitely see groups of senior gentlemen at it in small around-the-corner bars.
- 13.00 - 14.30: LUNCH. This is important, because after 3 o'clock you'll have trouble finding a local-oriented restaurant that will serve you more than a tiny sandwich. Also, lunch is the most important meal of the day for several reasons. Mostly, you'll note, because of your Italian-style one-biscuit breakfast you'll be starving by that time. A full lunch is 3 courses: primo (pasta, soup or rice), secondo (meat or fish) and dessert or fruit, though precious few people eat a full lunch out. Get a first dish, they cost less.
- 14.00/14.30 - 15.30: digesting. Venetians return to work. (South Italy prepares to eat.) There is no siesta as such in the North. In small towns where people return home to eat (and depending on the nature of their work) the lunch break can stretch from midday to 3 pm, in which case the working day finishes around 7 in the evening.
- 16.00: you can think about a little merendina, a snack. Still no restaurants serving food.
- 18.30 - 20.00: aperitifs*. This time it's serious. You should get one. Or two.
- 19.30 - 21.30: dinner. This is when people really go out to eat. Also, single-course meals such as pizza or bruschette are only acceptable for dinner, so take your chance. Eating dinner out will invariably cost you a coperto, too (see below).
- 23.00 or before bed: herb tea or hot milk.

That much about the rhythm... the rules are a little more complex, but just don't order cappuccino after midday, don't put parmesan on seafood and you'll be fine.

3. Want to drink? Same thing: get away from San Marco. You might be tempted by Caffé Florian, the very first cafeteria to open in Europe (1720), or another of the fancy places right at the square, but enter at your own risk. The coffee will cost you 5, the milk in it 2, the chair 3 and the music 5 euros or so. In a normal bar the price of an espresso is fixed to 0.85 - 1 euro. Wine should also be ordered with care, though the presence and concentration of tourists at any given place is usually an indicator of the fairness of the prices. By the way, wine is always connected to food in Italy, so drinking as the North does - just for the fun of pouring it down - is incomprehensible; getting drunk during dinner is embarrassing. (This doesn't mean the Italians don't have their fun though.)

4. Sitting down. Remember that the chairs will cost you. There is such a thing as coperto in the Italian restaurants that literally means "covered" and is indeed a quite obscure addition to any restaurant bill. Technically it is simply service charge. It solves a lot of problems, such as ethical (for you: deciding whether and how much to tip) and financial (um... for the restaurant owner). Coperto usually ranges from 1.50 to 2 euros, but in Venice it has been developed to an art form (see previous rule). Thus, when the barman smiles at you nicely and asks you to sit down, be wary and try to get a look at the menu first: the coperto will be written in tiny letters at the bottom of the second page. Some restaurants are honest enough and write down their "bar" and "table" prices outside - they will differ considerably. In the more tranquil areas of Venice the coperto will probably not be an issue and is applied only when you eat and are served at the table (in other words, in a situation where you might consider tipping in other countries). You shouldn't, in theory, be asked to pay for service if you have simply rested your left buttock on a chair for five minutes while eating a sandwich or drinking an aperitif.

5. Forget the gondolas. The guys who row people around in them are already so rich they couldn't care less if you get your romantic ride on the Gran Canale or not. One ride costs 80 euros and, accordingly, 8 normal-weight people are able to squeeze inside. If you have your mind set on crossing the Gran Canale though (best views in town!), you can also get a traghetto (ferry) for 6 euros. The same price applies for most routes, including the surrounding islands.**

6. And finally: get lost. Prepare to walk considerable distances. It's the only way of discovering Venice, though in most cases getting lost is not completely voluntary. If you prefer knowing where you're going or steering steadily towards the train station to get away from the place, just follow the yellow signs above your head on strategic street corners. 'Ferrovia' stands for the train station. 'Rialto' stands for the Rialto bridge.

Good luck.

* It seems that aperitifs are such a very Veneto thing that going south it exists less and less. In Florence an aperitif means a snack buffet that costs accordingly.
** the 6-euro traghetto ticket costs 1 euro for Venetians and anyone resident in the region. Understandable, though a little harsh, just like everything that the tourists are expected to pay in Venice. Now they opened a locals-only line (nr 3). If you're turned back, it's because the Venetians are happy to separate themselves from chattering tourists groups. Well, we knew that already.

What is it that you want Venice to be?

2008-01-30T14:34:00.000+01:00

There are hundreds and hundreds of well-meaning tourists stepping off trains and buses at Venice each day. They are hoping for... something extraordinary, at least, because it is Venice. They will be hard put to describe exactly what it is they are looking for, but it all has something to do with vague romance, the glory of times past and indescribable beauty. They think of the San Marco* square, of the gondolas and the Carnival**; but definitely not the pigeons, the restaurant prices or the hordes of other tourists looking for their fill of digital photos and tacky souvenirs.

Some are exhilarated, willing to suffer the minor inconveniences and pay the price, because of what Venice means: it's the crown jewel of every traveller, the perfect destination! Others are disappointed or confused. The unmistakable atmosphere of a cemetery is conspicuously present in the streets where every stone has been present for centuries. The density of people in the narrow streets of the tourist belt between the train station and San Marco will give claustrophobic attacks to contact-conscious Nordics. And then, of course, there is the obvious state of neglect into which the city has fallen in the last 200 years or more. It is this, more than anything else, what shocked me at first. La Serenissima, the beauty and the biggest maritime power of all the Mediterranean once, is feeding on the scraps of its glory - the decadent hotels, the murky green canals, the tourist traps. Is it true there are people still living here?

It turns out that there are. And they are not all gondolieri, either. There is life behind these dilapidated windows, though your average Venetian is heartily sick of the tourist groups that roam the streets and consider them not too different from the bands of pigeons ruining the city with their infested presence. Of course, Venetians have their own Venice, quite hidden from random eyes*. It is this city that is truly fascinating. It is possible to catch a glimpse if you wander off and find a fruit market.

I had to understand this idea of an alive Venice before I could appreciate the place. Then I could take it as it really was - alright, it's a little dirty, it's not perfect, but why should it be perfect? The would-be-romantic gondolieri who teach dirty songs to innocent Japanese are not much different from any guy around the world who rips tourists off for living: it does get dull after a while. It's even possible to avoid the crowds: I learned to walk the long way around.

* of course, often these photos of San Marco are made by professional photographers who have taken the trouble to get up at sunrise to get a shot at the square before the crowds start butting in. Beautiful, but unrealistic.
** Carnival is one of the most characteristic periods of the year for Venice and the mid-winter high season for the hotels, all for being able to see people in elaborate baroque costumes, wearing some of the traditional masks. Anyone looking to enter by train from the mainland will have to go through a compulsory all-body squeeze if they are to fit in the train at all.
* much like Tartu the university town and Tartu the normal town (mitteakadeemiline Tartu) exist in two parallel universes that rarely cross.

solidarity wow

2008-01-25T14:08:00.001+01:00

The North and South of Italy are at it again: Naples is drowning in garbage and asking other regions to take in their stuff (to be disposed of 1000km from the original place? way to go...). Veneto has refused and not only - the region is financing TV spots in Germany, pointing out that Veneto is not Naples and there are no garbage issues in the North, so as to inform the tourists that otherwise would be scared into going to Spain instead*.

This shows some true Veneto spirit, I must say. In literature or drama, a stereotypical character speaking Venetian dialect is almost invariably a stingy merchant. It's not that far off - the people around here have always found a way to muddle through even in the worst of times and don't look well on others who don't seem to make as much effort. This is where the discord begins: in Venetian eyes the Neapolitans simply don't try hard enough. And when the president of the region is blamed of not being solidary, well, your average signor Toni will not care about not being nice: "Eloora, cosa xé che bisogna fare? Gà da svegliarse fora, no?**"

English Corriere della Sera on the matter

* I'll be thankful for a link to one of these clips. As of today none were to be found online.
** "So what's to it? Gotta snap ou' of it, yaknow..."

Where am I?

2008-01-17T10:10:00.001+01:00

I slept all the way through my flight and am consequently having trouble understanding where I am. I left the cold and gloomy Estonia only to arrive in cold, gloomy and wet Italy. Where are the benefits of the Mediterranean?

I'm also weighed down with a huge amount of materials on cross-cultural communication for my thesis, of which I will scorn some and apply others. It's a lot of fun, though it does make me think too much of anything the people say or do on the street: each action becomes an expression of underlying cultural values. I'll definitely be coming back to all that in the next months.

Estonia is strange in the winter, too. I had a little shock arriving, but got used to it quite fast and then it felt all sweet and homelike again. The truth is that though in the summer the life is beautiful and the Estonians become social enough to truly give Italians a run for their money, the winter is a depressive 8-month gloom. Some people shoot themselves when they can't face it anymore. Others, in order to survive, will construct a personal cocoon consisting of close friends and family, their favourite pubs, visits to the spa, homely tea rituals and simply shut out everything else as if it didn't exist (this is why nobody looks each other in the eye on the street). Occasionally the reality will catch up with them at the worst moments: at the 10 o'clock twilight of a a hung-over morning, or while carrying home heavy shopping bags in the perpetual darkness. At these moments the only thing to do is to pamper oneself, hoping that spring comes soon.

The Italians don't shut themselves away for the winter, though in clammy days like this one the piazzas stay empty and no-one feels like an aperitif. I'm feeling especially cocoon-like after my stint in the north and can't be convinced to leave the cosiness of my tea-cup and heater. Today, everything outside of home can wait for spring.

Documentation

2008-01-05T01:22:00.000+01:00

When my Italian friends see my Italian identity card, they are positively surprised: I didn't know they give these to foreigners too!

When my Estonian friends see my Italian identity card, they are surprised and say: but isn't Italy supposed to be a developed country?

My Italian identity card is made of paper.

It's nicely patterned, complete with gaps for hair colour, fingerprint and home address. But, effectively, yes, it's a piece of paper folded in soft plastic.

My Estonian identity card doesn't include any of this data, but does include a signature and a smart chip. The chip includes 3 library cards and can be used to sign documents and vote at a distance*.

The interesting part is that though the Italian ID card seems so unconvincing to foreigners, often it is the only identification that people have. Italians make a fuss each time they decide to travel outside the EU and have to apply and pay for a passport. Making a passport costs astronomic amounts of money and/or time. I've even heard of 70 euro for a passport if you want it faster than normal... seems like it might cost less on the black market.

I guess after a while Estonians won't be too attached to their passports either, as all the 10 EU member states who joined in 2004 are part of the Schengen area now. The land and sea borders are already open. The airports will adapt in the end of March when they change to summer season. That's quite convenient, though most of the border guards are relocated for different jobs and the only Estonian non-Schengen border (east; Russia) suddenly has a lot of guards. I do wonder what Czech Republic did with their border guards...

* the voting business is theoretical - I missed the last referendum because I couldn't install the card reader driver on Linux. I hear it works though.

Natale 2

2008-01-02T20:49:00.000+01:00

Second Christmas in Italy, and it was as Italian as expected: we decorated our 25-year-old Christmas tree up nicely, ate copious amounts of panettone and relaxed properly. But there's one thing that I still can't get used to - that's the social side of Christmas: the streets full of people and bars finishing all kinds of wine on Christmas Eve. Around here everyone just stays home with family or the respective boy/girlfriend and doesn't get out for seeing people before the 26th unless they're very close friends. In Italy, Christmas lunch is held with the immediate family and subsequent meals with various aunts and uncles, fitting a fair amount of friends and acquaintances in the middle. That's quite a run. Luckily I only have one family to visit. My feeling of being an inward northerner increased with each person Riccardo knew and congratulated. Well, the custom of giving the best wishes ("Auguri!") is usually accompanied by a handshake and this would be perfect for me. I like handshakes very much. Instead, because I'm a girl, I was expected to approach the people with each of my cheeks in turn and imitate kisses. This is an awkward business at the best of times, especially when both kissers wear glasses, but with people I had never seen before... difficult.

Any northerner who has been to Italy is probably quite familiar with the inner fight: is a friendly smile enough? should I shake hands? what if I'm supposed to actually touch faces? which cheek first?! An Englishman trying to go along with the most usual Italian hello-how-are-you kiss looks embarrassingly indecent: instead of performing with lukewarm/friendly affection they actually plant a furtive wet semi-erotic kiss on the cheeks of the unsuspecting Italian (almost always a woman) as though they had lost in the bottle game and had to do it on a dare. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad.

Hugging, the standard greeting in Estonia for friends, is a different issue. Italians might feel quite awkward if someone less than a very good friend would start hugging them all of a sudden. It's not easy to determine where are the limits of the various kinds of greetings, so the only foolproof way is to follow the locals. Lucky that Christmas is over...

The Alps are the limit

2007-12-12T20:05:00.001+01:00

I went to Austria last weekend. It's strange to think that Innsbruck is only 4 hours away and I've never taken the chance. The difference between North Italy and Tirol was simply striking: just a few hours of driving had taken me to a place where it snows continually, people make gingerbreads for Christmas, use the sauna and eat heavy breakfasts. The fact that everyone was speaking rich Tirol-German didn't even seem to matter. I felt right at home. There is more cultural distance between Vicenza and Innsbruck than the latter and Tallinn. Who would have thought?

Or maybe I'm just homesick?

We stayed in a bed&breakfast at Seefeld. The house was exactly what one might expect, thinking of the Alps, Austria, the winter. Cosy. Breathtaking view all around. Interiours bordering on kitsch, but somehow sweet all the same with the endless teddy bears, doilies and Christmas decorations. It was almost hobbit-like with all the comfort and tranquility. We arrived late, so the landlady left the keys on the door for us. Just like that!

Here December doesn't mean snow, but fogs. I leave from Valdagno each morning with a clear blue sky and find a dense opaque wall of fog halfway down to the plains. Some of the evenings the visibility is so bad that the only reason I manage to weave my way through the twisting roads is that I know them by heart. Halfway back up again towards the mountains the fog disappears though, and the stars blink down in the cold night. But the winter in Italy is not gratifying. There are none of those rare evenings that make the Nordic winter worthwhile: the ones when it snows slowly and the quiet makes bitter people feel at peace with the world. Instead there are bright days, the bare trees full of persimmons like orange lamps and no real need for a woollen hat. That's obviously very nice, but all this, and the panettone or nativity scenes have nothing to do with Christmas in my mind. I need to stock up on other accessories, such as gingerbreads from IKEA...

I'll be landing in Tallinn at 16.00 on the 27th.

Two Italies

2007-10-16T22:08:00.000+02:00

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!

2007-10-14T19:19:00.000+02:00

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

2007-10-03T22:43:00.000+02:00

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.

lo spritz

2007-09-30T15:39:00.000+02:00

I included spritz in the below right-hand encyclopedia right in the beginning because it's a constitutive part of life in Veneto - it dominates all early-evening drinking activities... well, I mean, usual socialising before dinner.

Spritz is a cocktail that was born in Veneto and is becoming more and more common in the surrounding regions. Inside Veneto, each city has their own version, of which the Venetian one is the most common and Paduan most notorious.

Usually spritz consists of Prosecco (white sparkling wine; in some areas dry white wine is used instead), a dash of sparkling water, ice and Aperol or Campari. Campari is more difficult to drink, so most of the people drink their spritz with Aperol. It makes a bittersweet glass of aperitif, complex to define at once, but easy to drink. It's the default in all bars from 7 o'clock onwards and there isn't a table sitting outside a bar that wouldn't demonstrate a high glass full of vivid orange.

The amounts of wine and Aperol vary greatly from city to city, but usually it would be something like 6cl of Prosecco, 4cl of Aperol and a little water, complete with ice and a slice of orange. A spritz Aperol can cost anywhere from 1.20 to 2.50, but if you're counting cents (or drinking several) most bars will also offer "bianco macchiato Aperol", which is basically spritz without the water and costs less (extra bonus!). In Valdagno this works well, though bar staff is so used to hearing "Aperol" that almost always means "spritz" and will: a) make a normal spritz and charge accordingly; b) make something that's called "spritz bianco" and is just white wine with water - a complete rip-off, considering that the most interesting ingredient is missing.

Paduan spritz, however, is an aperitif to be afraid of: as little as two of these might distract you from having any dinner at all and/or remembering where your home is. As Padua is the city of students, this is often an advantage and warm evenings will find the 4 central piazzas full of buzzing crowds, each person clutching a small plastic cup in their hand, filled with: 1/2 of Prosecco and 1/2 of Aperol and/or Bitter and/or Cynar and/or Campari and/or Gin. The True Paduan Spritz is said to contain each of these (!).

As much as the city authorities (namely those of Padua, but not only) try to impede the masses of spritz-lovers making noise and confusion in the centre, I'm personally not sure that they will have much luck. The appreciation of aperitifs means that all parties start earlier. Mostly, after a few drinks and a good dinner your usual person already feels so content that there isn't much need for more. Drinking full on until the morning (though it happens) is less common here. If the dinner is the centre of the evening, the people will drink aperitifs before, wine during and digestives afterwards, and this can already wrap the evening up quite nicely. Estonians won't believe this, but I've had full parties complete with meeting everyone, hanging around and being silly between 7 o'clock and midnight. Could I be getting old? Anyway, it's the same 5 hours as meeting at 10 pm and keeping on until 3 am.

el rasentin

2007-09-30T11:14:00.000+02:00

El rasentin (in Vicenza; in Venice: el resentin) is something so veneto that the whole concept carries with itself an air of mountain huts, of timelessness and of old men hanging out in front of the bars, joking in thick dialect. It's something very provincial and minutely sophisticated at once. Simple, yet genius.

El rasentin cannot be bought in a bar. The drinker has to make it himself, right there on the spot. The old Venetian verb resentar means "to rinse". In fact, making a rasentin is simply getting a shot of grappa after finishing a coffee, using it to rinse the cup and drinking it. It can be any of the various tastes of grappa, but around here plum one is most common. If the cup is still hot and the strong espresso has left some precious foam inside it, the taste of grappa is accented in the best possible way, up to the point of (they say) being truly poetic.

Now this is what I call a lateral approach to coffee...

Altavilla

2007-09-19T20:25:00.000+02:00

Each morning I take a regional train at 08:01 from Altavilla station to Verona Porta Nuova. Yesterday, however, I was still sitting on the platform at 09:30, waiting for a train that would take me to school. Each of the four train tracks had a stationary train sitting on it for at least half an hour, and all of them were towards east (Venice).

Maybe it was supposed to be a message?

cheesecake, vol 2

2007-09-18T22:28:00.000+02:00

For the ones who still remember my controversial cheesecake story, and for Liina who needs a permanent place where to find it, here is the recipe to:

Lindy's wonderful cheesecake
(as made in Tartu in 2003, one spring night at 4 am)

The base:
- 200g of cocoa cookies, broken into a powder;
- 150g of butter, melted (or less of it, depends how much you need to make the cookie powder stick, but not too much)
- 2 teaspoons of sugar (optional)

Once the cookies have been reduced to powder either in a bowl (or the student version: in a plastic bag hammered with an empty wine bottle), add the melted butter, stir and place at the bottom of the mould, smooth on top (but not pressed).

The dough:
- 500g Philadelphia cream cheese (not mascarpone!)
- 200g or 1 and a 1/4 coffee cup full of sour cream (in Estonia) or panna (in Italy)
- 1 egg
- 1 small cup of sugar (according to taste, can be less)
- 6 tablespoons of flour + a little vanilla sugar

Mix well in the given order until even, then add to the top of the base.

Bake in an over of 150°C for 30 min (or until about to turn golden on top), then turn off the oven and let the cake sit for 10-15 min for with a slightly open door.

Optional: if preferred, add 75-100g of chocolate melted along with 2 tablespoons of milk on top.

This cake always turns out too small and/or is always finished too fast. It's best when cooled, especially after a night in the fridge. In fact, that one last tiny piece you find in the fridge the next day is the best of all.

The Mission

2007-09-15T21:02:00.001+02:00

I'm currently going through a full-blown blast of eco-friendliness-madness triggered by a nice computer game called Global Warning. This attitude is not new - I've been through this before in various forms. I might calm down again and decide we're all going to die anyway, but each such spur leaves some habits into our household (see the post on M'illumino di meno from February).

Have I mentioned that Valdagno is an excellent place to be an environmentalist? It's an industrial area, so it's definitely not perfect, but the fact that this town was one of the first to start a compulsory recycling system and collect organic waste separately from the rest. I'm immensely proud about it. And equally sad because the municipality doesn't abide to their own rules - the cleaning ladies of the public schools obviously haven't been trained on the recycling system. I've seen them throwing empty bottles and paper all together in a non-recyclable tin.

It works thus: we have 4 garbage cans in our kitchen. There's the glass-and-plastic, the paper and the secco - everything that can't be recycled. And the star of it all is the umido, the organic waste. It's a brilliant thing to separate the food left-overs - it will turn into rich soil in a surprisingly short time, so it can be reused without much effort. The only issue is that the green umido-box needs to be taken out on the street on certain evenings so that the compost truck could take everything away during the night. In the winter it's two nights a week, so if we forget, we end up sitting on a stinking compost box for 3 days (lucky there's the balcony!). Umido is an integral part of our household chores and the one who gets to take it out on Monday and Thursday evenings doesn't have to do the dishes.

The international car-free day is 22 September. In Estonia it gets a decent amount of attention thanks to the work of the valiant Prussakov Bicycle Union . But around here the 22th September takes place significantly more often (how often, really? I've no idea...) as the Domenica Ecologica organised in the whole province at once. Using a car is officially banned inside the towns. Everyone else would get a fine for trying to take their car out of the parking lot, but our GPL-run little Peugeot passes just fine. GPL (liquified petroleum gas) costs exactly half the price of regular petroleum and pollutes significantly less. Riccardo and I drive at least 1,5 hours each day to Altavilla, so it does make a difference. But not every car can be adapted to run on GPL. Even worse, it might happen that the engine is not modified accordingly during the process that will cause ignition problems later. Though I have to say - if it works, it's great.

By the way - taking a bus is out of the question around here - one of the main socio-economical characteristics of the Veneto is that instead of a few big cities it has many small towns, no proper cities and no proper countryside either. Taking a bus from Valdagno to Vicenza is like driving through a 40km city - the bus has to stop on every corner. I take a train from the nearest station, 32km from home.

Then, of course, there is the shopping. We can sort our garbage as much as we want, but eventually it all comes down to what we buy. This is difficult. The eggs are all in plastic packaging - where did the carton go? The local milk-products centre has stopped producing milk in tetrapaks and introduced recyclable plastic bottles instead (yay!). We've started to buy big yogurt packages for eating at home, but for using them for a take-away breakfast the normal small ones are still the only solution. There is only one company ("Sì") that makes yogurt in glass packaging, but it's always sticky on the outside and altogether messy...

The supermarket we go to has introduced bio-degradable plastic bags (yay!), but they are hidden near the cash register and I don't think many people have discovered them yet. It would be such a good idea to price the normal plastic bags from 5 cents to 20 so that people would think about using the bags twice. I'm sure the supermarket wouldn't mind making a little more money... In the meantime I've still got to convince myself to reuse the once-used and weighed fruit-bags another time. Like so many things about saving, it seems a little grezzo - crude.

I'll check out an eco-shop in Verona on Monday to see if they have spray taps and any of those wonder soap nuts that can be used instead of washing powder. It's incredible how many of the usual household chemicals are simply bad for the health, not to mention downright dangerous. Even perfume, technically, should be avoided. But what's the alternative? I guess that's the reason why so many people just don't bother with taking care about what's healthy and what's not. It's too difficult to make sure what really is better and if there are any alternatives to the things people have come to be so used to.

OK, so there is the recycling, the domestic chemicals, the fuel, the excess packaging, the plastic bags. But there was one things i never thought about - indoor pollution from the synthetic carpets and particle board furniture. This is one of the things at which point people say - come on... And so do I - the thought that the nice cheap *KEA cupboard might give me allergies really does bother me. And there's nothing I can do with the moquette either - it came with the apartment. Frustration is still lasting, but I'm waiting to see if the new inhabitants of our home do their job well. As of today, we have:
- one red Kalachoe (Kalanchoe blossfeldiana);
- one beautiful rubber tree (Ficus elastica);
- one heartleaf-philodendron (Philodendron oxycondium)
- two ivy plants (Hedera helix)
- two tiny cactus plants.
We'll see if they can make me stop sneezing.

Now, all this might seem quite scary right now, but I can assure to be perfect normal in a few months and pour chlorine bleach down the tube like any other person. We'll see.

Once out at the Bay of Tallinn

2007-08-29T12:11:00.000+02:00

I had been out of Estonia almost a year. It was great to be back and pleasant to find the people just the same*. A number of strange new houses have been built, there are more types of soviet-nostalgic ice-cream on sale, but apart from this - well, it's enormously comforting to find everything just as it always was. I had enough time to sleep for a week, spend time doing nothing with my mom, read the new Harry P_tter book, visit friends, study some, and host Riccardo - the latter being a demanding task: he had already been in Estonia 3 times before, and we had to go beyond the usual tourist attractions and see closer.

As a part of my family's effort to make Riccardo have fun during his visit we took a ride to Naissaar (an island roughly 10 km northeast of Tallinn) in my uncle's tiny inflatable boat. We packed up the tent, food and beer until it took up almost half of the little boat and set out. The weather had been dodgy all day, but it had cleared up just as we reached the port, and the ride was great fun. The waves weren't too big, but it seemed like a good idea to agree among the four of us that we can say later they were approximately 2 metres or so. As we reached the northern tip of the island the waves rose until they really did seem to be 2 metres high - the stones at the shallow bottom were giving us their greeting this way. The waves closed with a foamy rumble behind us and suddenly one of these reached out over our little boat, the water green against the sunlight. I thought: "Wow..." and felt myself sliding down into the warm water under the overturned boat.

When I emerged and saw the others' heads bobbing around the bottom of the boat my first thought was to gather up as much of the baggage as possible. I grabbed the first plastic bag I saw and heaved it on top of the boat bottom. It was canned fish - I still have no idea how it could float. The only other thing we found was a 5-litre bottle of water (also floating). Nothing else was to be found around. As I sat on top of the boat, trying to pour water out of my sleeves, having water, paddles and canned fish with us seemed to be a poor consolation. I remembered vividly the transparent waterproof bag into which we had packed all phones, car keys and documents - it hadn't been tied to the boat as the tent and food was. I deduced it must have sunk and, between taking turns to paddle ferociously towards the shore, said goodbye to my (already second) brave camera, driving licence, id and everything that would be a mess to reapply, not to mention pay, for. The situation definitely didn't seem serious enough to take on the "earthly things don't matter" stance yet.

When the first surprise had passed and we had congratulated ourselves accordingly for having ended up in a proper modern-day shipwreck (merehäda, literally "trouble-on-the-sea"), my uncle took out his waterproof pouch holding a phone and, calm as if he would be rescheduling a business meeting, called a few of his friends living on the island. "Hey, how's it going? Are you at the island? Ah, too bad, a wave overturned my boat here at the north tip... Yeah, very strange, never heard anything like that around here... Well, I'll just call x then..." Of the people who were in a position to help us from the island most were right at the other side of it, more or less 10 km away. So, instead of making a big deal out of things, a decision was made that a few guys from the north end would come to pick us up in a row-boat.

In the meantime, paddling was serious business. The strong current kept turning us away from the shore, directing back towards Tallinn. There was no way of turning the boat right way up again - even if only half of the things were still latched to it, it would definitely have been too heavy to turn for 2 men and 2 women at open water. Also, this operation would certainly have liberated everything that had still remained inside, so the little hope of procuring our belongings from the sea with no working engine would have been lost. While paddling was doing little to take us closer to the shore (in fact, we seemed to drift farther away with each minute), it did give a sense of purpose to the situation. While wondering how long it could take for someone to set up their boat and reach us, we had time to make an endless series of jokes on how to open a tin can without any tools save a cellphone and a bottle of water; create a keep-warm boxing match and agree on telling lies to any family members until the whole adventure would be safely behind us. It must have been by the end of the second hour or so when we saw a tiny spot moving towards us across the waves.

Our saviour wasn't three men, but one - a stout fellow with the look of a weary old Basset Hound, pulling on the oars of his tiny boat with the impression of being quite somewhere else. Riccardo and I transferred to his white plastic rowboat and, having connected the upside-down rubber boat behind it, pointed ourselves once again towards the shore that wouldn't come closer.

It went on for another hour. I didn't have another chance to paddle and staying immobile soon made my teeth clatter with cold. Waving hands around just to move some part of my body, I listened to my uncle arranging for another boat to come from the other side after all - the current was too strong to row across and darkness would be coming in a while. The sky had turned a brilliant pink, contrasting the sharp outlines of the dark clouds against the sunlight that would soon be gone. It takes time for the night to come in Estonia, but we didn't fancy having to try our luck in the dark.

There wasn't much more to do than wait. Being in trouble didn't seem as much fun as it had before and the pool of water inside my pants was quite cold to sit in. As the twilight started to thicken around us, we finally saw the border guard arrive. They headed for the location we had previously communicated and passed us without noticing. Great! So much waiting and now they don't even see us! It was a relief to see the boat finally turn.

Watching from the warm inside, we saw 3 border guards, my uncle and our valiant saviour finally grab the rubber boat, its propeller still sticking out, and turn it the right way up again. At the moment they had managed it, we saw all the waterproof bags spread around over the water. The blue tubes in which my backpack and shoes were, the black plastic-packed ones with food, the yellow bundles with warm clothes and - miraculously - the tiny transparent package, most important of all. One by one, the closest bags landed in the border guard boat. I remember sighing at the irony of the situation - there it was, while the documents were floating off towards south, and they were saving the beer first...

It took some time for the boat to circle the surroundings and make sure no other bags were left. It seemed unreal - we really hadn't lost anything except some of the boat equipment. I couldn't believe our luck. As we took our course towards the south end of the island, my uncle's phone rang and for the first time it wasn't anything about boats. My mother wanted to know why I hadn't answered my phone for the last few hours. "Ah, well, you know, I switched it off until we were in the boat. We're setting up the tent... Yeah, it's nice here... Hey, I've got to go and help with the cooking, talk tomorrow..." It had been a while since I had told such outright lies to her. But the opposite would have been worse, at least she could sleep that night.

It was a wonderful feeling to set foot on dry land. A friend of my uncle's gave us a sauna and a place to sleep for that night. Arriving to the warm house and starting to unpack all the wet bags felt like being extremely rich. One thing after another that I had already believed lost emerged and I turned random things in my hands, returned to me from under the sea.

The best news of all was a mountain of food that had stayed dry (unlike the clothes). We had an excellent feast and good old traditional ways of warming up – vodka for the inside cold, sauna for the outside one. By that time we were already wondering how much planning it had taken for my uncle to arrange all that and how long should our thank-you letter to Nokia and the Estonian coast guard be. It has been a while since I have slept as well as that night.

But on the other side, I felt it was my duty to thank the sea the old way. It had gotten us in trouble, but also let us go and take all our belongings with us as well. If there is one thing that growing up on an island teaches you, it's that the sea is not always so kind. I bought a bottle of vodka and said thanks at the tip of the farthest peninsula.

* except bj, who I was glad to find looking much happier than before.

Inglish

2007-08-01T10:21:00.000+02:00

My brand-new master course in Verona includes 80 hours of English lessons. I tried to tell the tutor delicately that I'd rather prefer advanced Italian (as I doubt the professor will be able to teach me anything on the side of an intermediate group), but she didn't get my point. I'll just sit it out, then, it's not so bad either. But it does give me a lot of time to think of Italians and their idea of English.

Considering that it's a movie-translating country, it's surprising how much the Italians love everything that is foreign. The favourites are the Scandinavians (mostly Sweden - sorry, Marie), US and UK, but most other civilised places are all fine too. There is a very special way in which "the Nordic countries" are seen (north means north of Austria, by the way, though France doesn't count). Mostly this includes an understanding that anything to do with the state is definitely much better organised*, that the job market works better, that there are more women in the parliament, that the sky is more blue... **. And of course, the English language is revered up to the point of foolishness.

I thought this tendency of praying towards North-West just a slight quirk of the young population. In fact, I didn't really see it much in Valdagno. This is why I was so surprised when I suddenly heard one university professor after another sticking English phrases into their speech. When I asked for Italian equivalents, I was told that "leadership" and "mentoring" and such don't translate, so this is how they are used. Alright. Then I heard "public speaking" and "week-end" instead of perfectly Italian "parlare in pubblico" and "fine della settimana" and started to think something was not in its right place. In fact, there are:
1) English words integrated into Italian, such as "il computer", "lo shopping", "lo smog" for new objects or actions. Mostly used the same way in other languages too.
2) English words integrated into Italian, though original alternatives exist, such as "weekend", "office", "meeting", "mouse" (pronunce: mau:z).
3) English words integrated into Italian, but by a different meaning than originally; or words that look like English, but aren't. These include "mobbing" (bullying), "sponsor"(buyer, as in someone who orders a project), "pullman" (bus, but no idea why it's supposed to be English), "week" (short for "weekend"), "stage" (apprenticeship, derives really from French (I think), but sometimes pronunced as English).

Really, I'm not hoping for the 1920s back when all words of foreign origin were changed to Italian ones (and, as legends say, each bar turned into "quisibeve": "hereonedrinks"), but I can't help noticing that as the English words sink deeper into the language, they drift away from their original meaning. Where a native English speaker would remain perplexed, Italians understand each other perfectly, saying "brekk" instead of "break" and "buon wikk" ("have a good weekend").

Needless to say, these very same Italians that are so eager to pick up new words to use for making themselves look cool, don't really speak English too well. They do like the Nordic countries, but somehow still travel south. They can't manage films with subtitles as the national film-translation business has never given them a chance of reading from the screen. This is not a problem for me: I prefer good Italian to bad English. But I couldn't hold myself back from writing on the evaluation-sheet of the most eager of our non-English-speaking Inglish speaking lecturers to take some lessons so that she'd at least know how to read "outsourcing" from her Powerpoint slides. The karma will surely get back at me right when I get a sudden strange urge to use French expressions in my presentations...

*this is usually expressed as: "you know, abroad the maternity leave isn't so messed up", not really considering any places very near Italy where the maternity leave doesn't even exist or is anyway likely to be much more messed up than in the rich industrial Veneto.
**In fact the only things for which the foreigners are ridiculed are food and fashion. The gag-effect as a reaction to socks-in-sandals and midnight cappuccinos is infectious. Soon you will see me stop writing about the Italians who fuss about how much milk you can put in your coffee at which time of the day; and start fussing about Germans who ask for a cappuccino in the afternoon***.
***that's a big no-no.

the windmill's lament

2007-07-25T22:18:00.000+02:00

Managing youth projects is intensive work. More than the technical-logistic side, it's a balance between the group's most extreme complainers on each side of any issue. Keeping people happy. No group is ever, up to the last participant, truly happy about how things are going. Then the only thing that is left is to play with various levels of satisfaction that are possible in a given situation.

This tranquil way of putting things is my civilised side. Apart from this there is also another one, the straightforward, no-flowers side that says: fuck this.

I've somehow landed myself in a nasty bit of an odd-job where I've got to manage youngsters way below my usual level (the usual level includes people who already have a mindset of a reasonable human being, that is mostly 17 and up), a set of curiously diverse groups (from highly motivated right up to but-I-was-hoping-for-Hawaii type), and, as a prize on top of all this, a bureau-hierarchic set of partners, group leaders, office workers and other such people who each have their own ideal of how 70 young people should be taken care of, of which only a few actually work with people on a regular basis. The bomb is set. I imagine the last day will see a lot of unlooked-for sincerity.

PS - my EVS finished and I almost didn't notice, because I was running the previous youth-Odyssey (see post below). That turned out quite well, but all in all I've thoroughly had it with non-profit, fighting-windmills sort of work where the missing salary is supposed to be made up by positive energy and such. At least in business the devil - the money - is out in the open and everyone knows it's the driving force for everything. In non-profit it's the same, but translates into reputation, relations, keeping a face, doing good and hoping someone will notice.

in action and out

2007-06-16T15:12:00.000+02:00

I'm leaving on Monday for 10 days of facilitating a youth exchange on cultural difference. We'll be 38 people, meeting in Ljubljana and coming over to Valdagno during 10 days. I built a website that is available here: www.451net.org/in_action
The project is made to be quite a nice one: after all our experience we can be sure of it. Most of the participants are 18-20 years old and haven't participated in international events before - it promises to be quite a lot more interesting for them this way. We'll see.

It was supposed to be much bigger in the beginning, stopping in more towns and being all grand. But we're experiencing the same problem as so many other Italian NGO's - the National Agency, the office coordinating the use of EC Youth Programme funds on the state level, is effectively not working. I haven't had any local trainings the volunteers are supposed to have and at the end of my service (10th month of the project!) the money still has to arrive. For all the people who call our office and ask if we are looking for new volunteers... well, I would really like to tell them to give it up with Italy as there is no hope for small organisations in the present climate. I wrote to the Commission and they said - someone will read your letter in the future. Sigh. That's why this sector is called non-profit and my position is called a volunteer. I'm not even supposed to get anything in return for what I do. But I have to say - this sucks.

No-one is guilty...

2007-05-26T18:06:00.000+02:00

When I first came to Italy, I received a phonecall - my Volareweb flight had been cancelled. "So when is the next flight?" I asked. "Oh, well, actually we cancelled the whole line..."
I was some of the first Volareweb passengers to be stranded as they eventually cancelled the whole airline.

As exceptional as this example might be, chances are that anyone who has spent a longer amount of time in Italy will know how easy it is for trains, buses and flights to just stop moving. Transport services go on strike so often that no-one hardly pays attention anymore.

This is probably why Alitalia made a big one this time. Not only were all the national airline flights cancelled, but so were all the others, as the general flight monitoring and radars and all that were offline too. Approximately 40 000 people stranded, up to 400 flights affected. No prior notification. According to the column Italians of Corriere della Sera, neither the early-morning flights from Stansted, scheduled to arrive well before 10 o'clock - before the official start fo the strike - wouldn't fly anywhere. Nice.

My mom got her share of distress as well. She spent a great well-earned holiday here with me, but had a pile of work waiting for her back home. We arrived in the airport 2,5 hours before the flight to make sure that everything would go well. Instead we got to wait for someone to tell us that there is a strike (but we already knew it from the newsstand) and that there is no reimbursement for any costs.

Indeed, they are all waterproof - the Czech Airlines who were supposed to operate the flight said that they don't pay for expenses because none of this is their fault. Alitalia is not covering anything either, because: a) it's "unforeseen events"; and b) it's not their fault, but the government's. The previous government, lead by Silvio Berlusc*ni, apparently made some reforms that make the transport employees unhappy. So should he pay? Even though he most likely is able to, apparently it's not his fault either...

My mom had an insurance for any disruptions in the travel, but the contract doesn't mention strikes, only weather and traffic accidents. That must be because the North-European customers don't know better.

Open Space

2007-05-16T00:44:00.000+02:00

News off the 451 website:

[11.05.07] From 7 - 12 May, a youth conference "Young European Parliament" is meeting in Mestre, Venice. 451 has been giving the organisers a hand for the last 3 days by setting up a series of Open Space Technology afternoons. The participants, among Italians including people from Norway, Sweden, Greece and Bulgaria, discussed their positions and possibilities as young people on substance abuse, immigration and integration issues, and international development. The feedback from the participants has been very positive, expressing surprise at the Open Space as an incredibly dynamic and involving group working method that enables everyone to express their opinion on topics that are most important for them.

The Open Space sessions were conducted by my colleagues Riccardo, Giorgio and myself. We were asked to give the organisers a hand with holding the afternoon group-working sessions after each morning of presentations by experts. We had 50-70 youngsters, most of them arrived directly from school and expecting something quite the same as school. They were surprised to find that they were free to discuss what was interesting for them, only as long as they wanted to and - most importantly - without an expert in sight. We got back surprising reports on drug abuse, immigration and integration issues and a group of very inspired young people.

Some of my favourite lines from discussion groups:
"But you don't have to take drugs to have fun - I'll tell you a joke and you'll have fun anyway..."
"So if you go on a bus and it's full of Albanian guys, what do you think?"
"You know, this is the first time someone asks us what we think about it!"

What's (been) happening in Estonia?

2007-05-15T17:14:00.000+02:00

Disclaimer: the following piece of writing may contain subjective statements on history and politics. All specifications and counter-arguments are welcome.

Ma che cos'é successo in Estonia? - This is the sentence I hear so often in the last days that I have even developed a fast-talk-version of the happenings from my point of view:

"OK, so there's this monument that for the Russians is for those who fought against fascism in WW II, but for Estonians is for the Red Army who occupied Estonia in the end of the war; so now the monument was moved from the city centre to a military cemetery and some young people got drunk and went to the streets to riot and Russia is using the chance to develop its own interests from the affair."

Seems simple, does it? Maybe not. This is what a friend of mine emailed to me a week ago:
"Did you here about the riots in Tallinn? For my own luck I haven’t been here when it started, but my colleague and friends said that they felt like in a war. There were 60 injured and 1 dead and they destroyed a lot of shop windows and houses and cars were burning… And now we have a prohibition for alcohol… already the 2nd week… And now everybody waits for 8th and 9th of may to start all over again as it is the end of the war for Russia. So I don’t really feel comfortable at the moment…"

The riots themselves took place in the end of April. The story around the Bronze Soldier has been going on for a year now, after some Estonians talked up against having it in the city centre (or after having the Russian population waving Russian flags around the monument? Which came first?). From then on "patriots", or, more specifically, bored young people from both sides have been going around the monument to pick fights and the police set up a watch for avoiding any further problems. In any case it seemed to be something that young people spent their time with in the lack of better things to do. The riot agitators used this available energy to create thousands of euros worth of damage - cars, windows, shops, bus pavillions, anything one could find to break in a city centre. The police is certain that the riots were organised at least to some extent by individuals supported from Russia. Oh well. There is no love between the states, none at all.

Obviously the affair has brought up the issues between the Estonian and Russian population and the history of the past 100 years. They didn't have to have anything to do with the monument. Initially. But people have been fast to create the connections. As the history of the Baltic states is rarely a strong spot for people who didn't study there, here are some ideas for those who think that they know what's happening in / around Estonia:

- sometimes the Kremlin comes up with statements that suggest natural right of Russia over the Baltic states (I'll add a reference as soon as I find some of them), as the area has been theirs for such a long time. This sounds completely unreasonable to Estonians.

- some Estonian history: pagan and ununited until the early 14th century; then occupied by Germans and Danish during the Northern Crusades; from then on dominated by Baltic Germans as landlords up to WW I, as the country was occupied in turn by Germans, Polish (partly), Swedish and Russians. Russian domination lasted from 1710 - 1918, though the cultural life always belonged to Baltic Germans (apart from the Estonian cultural awakening of the 19th century and 15-20 years of russification from 1890 onwards). The Russian influences on the Estonian culture were neither strong nor deep-rooted before the birth of the Soviet Union.

- Russian politicians (and their young sidekicks, the Nashists), have repeatedly accused Estonia of being neofascist in the last months (no reference, read any public statement). In WW II, Estonians were fighting on both sides because hardly anyone could choose the army to which they were conscripted. At the present point, Estonians are anti-Communist more than anything else. Fascist ideology, insignia and literature is internationally forbidden. There is no reason why the Soviet ideology, insignia and flag shouldn't be as well.

- the Russians make up about 25% (other minorities 5%) of the Estonian population of 1,4 mln. That's a lot of people, but most of them were immigrated as a part of the Soviet demographic politics after WW II. Most of the Russians living in Estonia today are first- or second-generation residents. See also the BBC article from Narva, northeast Estonia.

- (The other side of the same policies was the deportation of 30 000 people from Estonia to Siberia by the Soviet authorities in 1941 and 1949.)

- the Russian Federation has refused responsibility for this and other human rights violations, as the Russian Federation is not the Soviet Union. This is understandable. At the same time they claim credit for the victory over fascism with the end of WW II, though the credit should go to the Red Army - the Soviet Union. Double standards?

- to date, the Kremlin denies the Soviet occupation of Estonia and claims that the state joined the USSR voluntarily.

- a large part of the Russians living in Estonia have no citizenship, neither Russian nor Estonian. This is because in 1991 the Estonian citizenship passed directly to the descendants of the Estonian citizens before WW II (or at least before the Soviet occupation) and everyone else had to apply for citizenship. A part of the process was a language, culture and history exam that is said to be unreasonably difficult. This is the main reason why Estonia has been accused of discrimination of the Russian minority.

- the discrimination that the Nashists refer to exists on gossip level only. The European Commission DG Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities and the Council of Europe conducts research on the matter: link 1: EC and link 2: CoE. The main problems have to do with the lack of sufficient legislation for preventing discrimination and the lack of effective governmental integration policies. At the same time, no serious issues are reported. Some discrimination has to do with language skills - Estonian is not an easy language and the Russian population has little motivation to learn it, but no knowledge of Estonian can still hinder a person from finding a job. I know that something needs to be done to solve this, but - honestly - in which country don't you need to know the official language in order to work?

- the Russians were the majority nationality of the Soviet Union. This granted them a number of advantages over other nationalities, starting from Russian-language schools and other facilities in each member state, guaranteed jobs, right up to shorter queues for applying for accommodation (because one couldn't just buy a flat at that time, one was given when it was free - but it could take any amount of time). At least this is what my mother tells me. These rights have been cancelled after 1991 and the contrast will at least to some extent look like discrimination.

Now, all this is politics and history. It gets me angry easily, as the historic memory is strong in me too and I can't stand hearing Kremlin asking for the Estonian government to step down. But it's only politics. I don't care if a friend of mine is Russian. I have great respect for the Russian literature and I'm sorry for my poor command of the language.

I'm already used to having to explain to well-meaning foreigners that Estonians don't speak Russian as a first language and consider themselves very different from Russians both in language and character. Their innocent question "so do you speak Russian in Estonia?", even though it intends to show nothing but interest, and is probably emerged from the only bit of information they have (that Estonia is next to Russia), will hardly make any Estonian shine with appreciation. Usually the reasons for it are too long and complex to analyse right there on the spot, so I merely give the impression of picking on details too much. Seeing from outside it's all the same anyway, I guess.

La Quaresima - the veggie story

2007-04-15T22:03:00.000+02:00

Religion is not very big in Estonia. Compared to Italy or Poland, that is. The country is predominantly Protestant, but apart from going to church on Easter Sunday there aren't too many people who would be both devoted and open about their religion (it's not socially encouraged - believing is something deep and personal). I did go to Sunday school as a child, but I don't remember much apart from colourful pictures about Moses. Thus I don't really know much about Catholicism either, apart from what I learned in history about the Reformation and all that.

The Lent is a big part of the Estonian religious tradition (in fact, the word for Easter, "lihavõttepühad", literally means "time for taking meat"). But nowadays it's hardly followed anymore. The religious Bulgarians turn vegan for the whole 40-day period. Italians merely avoid eating meat on Fridays. But I couldn't even start to imagine the Estonian way of fasting. I guess one could just make their own rules. Last year Riccardo and I challenged each other to stay away from alcohol during Lent. We did it, but it proved very difficult in societies where aperitives and beers are a social custom. This year we decided to be easy on ourselves: keep the wine, drop the meat.

I've always regarded vegetarians with a kind of reverence for being able to live without meat. Since returning from 3 weeks in Turkey last year with the only wish of never seeing another kebap again, I've started to understand that not eating meat doesn't have to be a mental effort, but could just be a matter of taste. So I welcomed the challenge.

In Italy it isn't very difficult to avoid meat, as every mealtime is divided into two courses: "the first" (generally pasta or rice) and "the second" (meat or fish). Apart from a few exceptions, the pasta is usually vegetarian and it's very easy to be too full to have anything else afterwards. Usually, that is.

The main difficulties occurred in relation to Damiana's (my Italian mom's) wonderful ragù that I had to decline so many times; the tramezzini (soft triangular sandwiches), usually made with various kinds of prosciutto or seafood that are quite irresistible; and canteen-keepers that don't understand the meaning of "vegetarian". Halfway through the Lent I visited a country restaurant with a group of 14 or so. We had ordered ahead - both vegetarian and meat pasticci (the Veneto version of lasagne) that looked tantalising indeed. The food was excellent and everyone quite content until the owner, lured into a gastronomic discussion by one of our companions, revealed his secret: of course I always put sausage in my pasticcio, otherwise it wouldn't taste like anything! I didn't know which was worse - the insult or the feeling of utter stupidity at not having recognised pork in my food. I thought of my dear friend Elina and what a scene she might make in righteous rage if someone set her up like this. And then I thought that I didn't really have a reason to lament, as I'm not really a vegetarian anyway, far from it, and even farther from being a devoted Christian. This, obviously, didn't make me feel any better.

Then there is the occasional unease at having a potluck dinner or shopping for a picnic together with a group. Shopping is exceptionally uncomfortable, as meat products always cost more than everything else and while dividing the bill it doesn't end up fair to the few people who don't even intend to touch the ham. So the choice is between paying (preferred, as it's friends after all) or coming across as overly scrupulous and/or stingy (often the only way for the coin-counting volunteer). I still haven't managed to find a satisfactory way out of these kinds of situations.

Basically any setting where I can't decide on my food is a potential problem. Flying, for example. KLM has solved the issue simply by serving two small sandwiches, of which one is ham and the other cheese. Malev, Hungarian airlines, allows meal-selection on booking and aboard I got a nice special box with my name on it, including a cheese-paprika sandwich and a muesli-snack. On the flights to Istanbul Malev's meals are equipped with a visible 'no-pork' sign, which is nice, but I do wonder about Muslims taking any other flights. Turkish airlines is very nice - they just serve salads.

It's already some time since Lent. In the meantime I've spent a week in Turkey and my meat consumption has probably made up for the whole 40 days of staying without. But there wasn't much to do - some countries are simply not habitable by vegetarians. Last year's 3 meat-packed weeks taught me that unless one wants to survive on peynir pide (cheese pie) or soups (made with meat stock in any case), there is hardly any way (at least for a foreigner) to remain true to one's convictions about meat. Though, of course, no pork is ever served. This is one thing in which I agree with the Turks completely. Pigs, being able to digest anything in a surprisingly short time, seem to be rather nature's clean-up crew (such as wolves) than animals made for eating. Though Italians have turned ham-production to an art with all their prosciutto crudo, salame and mortadella, my first culinary goal will be to avoid pork. Then, maybe, I could start thinking of any other vegetarian distances.

So here I am, a wannabe-ovo-lacto-vegetarian. I don't need meat in food and the Lent did make me feel exceptionally good, but the difficulties of being vegetarian are simply too troublesome for me just yet. I would probaby be able to put up with most issues, if I could install the label of "vegetarian" as a firm part of my identity, such as: Hello, I'm Maris, I'm vegetarian. But until then I'll toddle along with one foot on each road.

schools 3: bed

2007-04-15T19:40:00.000+02:00

The third round of our lectures in schools was going to be a challenging one, including an early start and two schools in a single morning. I was as ready for it as I could have been with all the practise, except that on Thursday morning I was feeling completely melted and couldn't neither get out of bed nor make any properly audible sound. Endless sleeping, teacups, lemons and a paperback "Return of the King" later, I'm up again. Being sick has lost its appeal after moving out of home.

help a little old lady across the street

2007-03-27T13:52:00.000+02:00

Crossing the street is serious business. In fact, it is very easy to tell a foreigner in someone waiting for ages on the sidewalk or trotting across the street in a run, only to freeze in someone's headlights. Because stopping to let someone pass is not something usual here. It's rather a personal favour and to be thanked for.

At the pedestrian crossing. Obviously: waiting for the cars to see you, then stop, then making sure that they really do stop, and then crossing... all this simply takes too much time. It is much easier to let the cars go by. Go by. Go by. Now, how should anyone be able to get to the other side without making someone brake abruptly and release a score of bad words?

It's quite simple really. All it needs to get across the street is a little synchronisation. What you should aim to do is just pass through the flow of cars with nonchalance, as though they were all standing. Spotting a gap, you should start walking directly towards the previous car to arrive in the middle of the road just as it has passed. Then the only issue is a few steps to clear off from the next car, which is no problem at all. Arriving in the middle of the road has already revealed a sufficient amount of understanding of the Italian road rules. You will live.

Now, this applies sufficiently well in North Italy (probably also in the hectic Milan, but I'm not making any promises), but Rome is a different story. In my time there I tried to make a video of the 3-5 traffic lanes on a normal 2-lane road, of the scooters swarming around everywhere, of 3rd line parking, of the locals crossing streets in some mysterious way, tourists freezing in someone's headlights... but I found it wouldn't be possible to really make it justice this way.

In this environment, all my practised nonchalance came to nothing and I found myself adopting a different pattern: walk-don't-look-pray. It works too.

school 2: itc

2007-03-22T23:10:00.000+01:00

This encounter was smaller and cosier than the last one. We also managed to avoid the demonstrations of power by overzealous professors. But I still feel it's quite hazy what we're trying to explain to them. How to put experiential learning into words if it's made to be felt? Try again after Easter.

Le 52 gallerie

2007-03-19T23:33:00.000+01:00

Bookshops are enchanting places even if one doesn't usually read in the given language. I often visit them around here, though the English selection is usually limited to a few of Jane Austen's works. Already the atmosphere gives away a lot of information. The current affairs section is full of multiculturality issues - always tantalising, though I know for a fact that it will take me months to finish one of these books. The poetry corner is neat and classical. But the true surprise was the first time that I came face to face with the history shelf. Imagine a 1x2metre bookshelf, of which two lower levels contain general Central European history, Roman Empire and everything predictable. The rest of the height of the bookshelf is full of books about the First World War. All imagineable titles along the lines of "There they fought", "1917", "In the trenches" etc. All about this particular war. Endless books about the battles that took place barely an hour away in the mountains.

The Pasubio mountain range, situated in the Southern Prealps of the province of Vicenza, has been the site of some serious military activity. The Italian-Austrian front from WW I has left its unmistakeable signs on the whole area. One of the most remarkable remains of it all is the Road of the 52 Tunnels, La Strada delle 52 gallerie, that was constructed in 9 months in 1917, as a means of transporting provisions up to the fighting soldiers on the protected side of the mountain. It reaches across 6,3 km, more than 2 of which inside tunnels (guess how many). The road rises up from 1216m to 2000m above sea level. It took us 3 hours to walk it, 2 to return on the other side of the mountain.

Now, though walking can be an easy enough word, it can cause some misunderstanding. It turns out that when a walk, the one where one walks across a town, park or riverside, is a passeggiata, then going_walking, camminare, is an altogether different thing. Once I turned up in light ballerina-shoes, thinking of going for a walk, when in fact we were going walking. I should have worn strong mountain-boots instead. Walking means walking in the mountains, getting up early for it, going with friends, bringing sandwiches, dressing especially, bringing backup t-shirts, sweating, walking slow for 3-4 hours, working hard for it, no stopping, never complaining. Arriving to the top latest before noon. Returning, tired but happy. It took me a lot of time to start understanding what it all means. That I can stop for making a photo, but that's the maximum. That all the effort will probably be repaid at the top when the clouds clear up and the panorama takes one's breath away.

Last Sunday was the third in a series of Sundays spent in the mountains, so we decided to make a serious round this time, though the weather was quite grey. The first part of the road is the most steep. Going through tunnels 1 and 2, knowing that there are 50 more to come, didn't seem like the beginning to a particularly enjoyable day. Luckily it got a little easier later, until we arrived to tunnel 19 that wound about for some 300 metres in complete darkness. As the tunnel ceiling is not particularly high nor the floor too smooth, this was no laughing matter. A light came in very handy indeed. The locals tell stories of people who have felt their way around in the dark for a full half hour until being illuminated in their unorthodox positions by another walker who has thought to bring a torch. Some way up the tunnel floors were iced. I would never have managed it without Daniele's walking sticks. In a few places there was high snow on the track and starting from nr. 34 many of the tunnel entrances were almost completely covered in snow, leaving only a small gap.

From about 1700 metres upwards the fog / clouds (technically it should be clouds if we can see them from below, but no-one believes me...) cleared up and we were greeted by the bluest of skies, arching over valleys full of white cotton fog. My only regret at these moments is that there is no way my little camera could take it all in. It couldn't. The magic is the feeling of achievement, of arrival, as well as the panorama.

After sandwiches (one of the scarce moments when the sawdust-like Italian bread is truly delicious) and a little rest in the sun we walked back on the other side of the mountain. The road arches downwards in slow elongating curves, easy, but long. The snow hadn't melted on that side yet, and though the sun was hot enough, it might have been 5 degrees in the shadow. It's only in the mountains that one can go around in a light jacket in the snow and not be cold. Going down slowly on an almost level road would probably have given us a fever though. We decided to cut straight down on a steep snowy track.

It did feel quite extreme, running and sliding down a mountainside at speed. I finished with my trousers filled thickly with snow and having tripped on young pines a few times, but otherwise perfectly happy.

Back at 1216 metres, changing shoes as fast as possible in the 8 degrees and strong wind, I thought of the circumstances in which the road had been built. The slow, winding road that we had used to return was open to Austrian fire. The Road of the 52 Galleries was built at great sacrifices for a simple task: getting food up to the fighting soldiers. There are holes for dynamite in the walls of higher tunnels incase they would need to be blown up while retreating. The fact that the road is now used for careless peaceful Sunday recreation, must be a great victory indeed.

conformity / rhythm

2007-03-19T10:17:00.000+01:00

I have come to greatly appreciate the rhythm of life here in Veneto. The day makes sense: morning lasts until 1, then people eat, then they rest a little, and the day goes on from 2-3 to 6-7pm. Then one eats and rests. Even though there are small differences between regions as to when exactly the lunchtime is (tends to be later in the South, earlier in the North), more or less all the 58 million Italians eat at the same time. This rhythm is stronger than a person. Everything grinds to a halt, not a soul on the street - must be lunchtime.

The same happens every August when all the vacations around the country are taken out all at once. It is too hot to work. All cars one sees are going either to the sea or the mountains. Cities gradually empty. Small towns stop functioning completely - the few who do stay at home in August won't even have a grocery shop to go to, let alone getting the day's newspapers. Most of the 58 million Italians are: 1) at the beach 2) in the mountains 3) abroad. But Italians travel SOUTH rather than north. They go south from their homes where it's too hot in August, to an even more intense heat. This has always baffled me. If they want to go to Morocco, why don't they go in May? Why don't people go to Norway in August, as summer is the only time to go and it's too hot anywhere south of the Baltic Sea anyway?

I often talk to Italians of the white nights of the north. They are genuinely interested and confess to not even being able to imagine the sun coming up at 3 am. Some tell me that they have a sure long-term (sic) plan to visit North Europe, just to see all this magic. But then I say - yes, then it's best to go in June, because nights turn back to normal in August. And I see their cheerful travel-dream expressions vanish: "No, not in June..."

The problem could be that people can't take vacations unless everyone else takes them (hardly makes sense). Or rather, that it would be too difficult to tear oneself out of the conformity of traditional time frames. Taking a vacation in June, but not being able to do so in August, is like eating a pasta for breakfast: non si fa, it's simply not done.

Now, I wouldn't have any problems taking this as yet another of the local peculiarities and trying to live with it. Except that the rest of Europe does not follow exactly the same timeframes - they don't follow the sanctity of the lunch-hour; they organise projects that require travelling - outside of August. Even as early as April. Ma non si fa! I used to think that the reason why we are having difficulty finding participants to our partner projects in Turkey, is that Valdagno is a miserably passive place when nothing is happening because no-one initiates anything because nothing is happening because no-one wants to participate. I've been frustrated out of my mind for having to convince people to go to see Istanbul* for a week, almost free of charge. Considering that technically it's charity, I never thought to have to spoon-feed these things to anyone. Then I thought of the same types of projects that we have coming up in the summer, for which it's already clear that we will have a competition, rather than a scarcity, of participants. The plane tickets will be more expensive, the destinations will be much hotter than Valdagno ever gets in August, and it's not even sure that everyone can go with the amount of interest we have. It simply doesn't make sense.

Then I thought of the force of social rules. So many people here would rather eat nothing at all than have a salty breakfast. The reasons for breaking the rhythm that has been lived for decades should be far greater than a small NGO trying to promote youth mobility. We're not important enough to make the Veneto change the way they have their holidays.

-------------------------

* What exactly I mean by "seeing Istanbul" can be checked in the post below. If you happen to be a miracle-Italian and want to see the best of Turkey in April after all, see www.451net.org and contact us.

school 1: ipsia

2007-03-16T15:38:00.000+01:00

A part of my work for the next few weeks is to go from one school to another and speak about European programmes that could be of interest to 17-18-year-old Italians. A lot of these 17-18 year-olds don't care much about what we have to say, but there is always a few who think along. I guess it's them we do it for.

Me, my colleague Riccardo, and the representatives of the local youth information point took on the first school yesterday. I had been asking around about it beforehand and this particular school is known as quite a rough one. "They probably won't listen." "That'll be the hardest one." And so on. There are schools like this in my home town too, and I know that as firm as these images are, they are often generalised.

We had gone through the material several times beforehand. All the presentations were ready and all we needed was 10 minutes to try out the technology before starting (showing a movie becomes noticeably less impressive if it doesn't work, is too light, needs volume or such). But it turned out that we had to start half an hour earlier than planned. The potential cable-computer-USBkey mess was saved only by the impressive improvisation abilities of Riccardo's Mac. (My Linux computer would have been quite useless in this situation.)

To be honest, listening about all various kinds of opportunities for 90 minutes in a row would be trying for me too. I too would like to comment about it to my neighbour, or gossip, or make jokes. I probably wouldn't pay much attention, knowing no-one will test me on the material later. From this perspective the students acted as any normal youngsters would in this situation and I really didn't mind the mild chatter as long as half of the people looked like paying attention. In fact, it was one of the teachers who annoyed me most.

She walked in halfway through the second half of the session and stood in the back of the hall. It was obvious that she had taken it upon herself to keep an eye on things instead of sitting down and listening to what we had to say. When I was halfway through explaining the funding issues for EVS, she interrupted me loudly and treated the students to some well-chosen and obviously habitual sentences along the lines of "the signorina is talking" and "one shouldn't allow themselves to disrespect..." and "why do you always have to make a bad impression for the whole school". I thought to myself of all the times I had heard something similar in highschool and how little impact it had made on me. When I could finally continue and started with: "So where was I...", she interrupted me AGAIN to tell me exactly where I had left off. I felt like making faces, but I smiled. After all, the Informagiovani will have to return with the same session next year. The teacher continued to walk around the audience, having apparently only started to keep the order. When someone asked if for Erasmus it is necessary to learn the local language (slightly off topic, but otherwise quite a fair question), I had barely opened my mouth when the professor drew herself up to her full height and went: "But of course you have to learn the local language! What do you think?" I was happy to contradict her - obviously it's impossible to arrive in Finland and become fluent right away. Most of the international studies will be in English and the local language gets only as much attention as one has for it*. The discussion went on in this pace for a while and we got to hear a few other annoying condemning calls to order before the end of it. In all honesty, it was quite appalling. If these young people hear that they are the shame of the class / school / town every day, they will truly become so. What else could they do if someone convinces them every day of being irresponsible, immature and disrespectful? I'm quite sure that the most likely response is to be irresponsible, immature and disrespectful.

Apart from the disrespectful teacher, the whole thing went down just as well as we could have hoped for. Next school is coming up next Thursday. We'll try to cut the talk in half and create some action instead. If possible, without the teachers.

--------------------------

* In Estonia, and for what I've seen, in any country where some percentage of people speak English (roughly means countries other than France, Spain and Germany), most of the international students have lectures in English and don't even arrive to the level of being able to have even a 5-minute conversation in the local language. This applies also for myself after one semester of Lithuanian. It's only normal - acquiring a new language in a matter of a few months would be an achievement indeed. This is one of the reasons I'm disappointed in Erasmus as a method of knowing another culture. The situation of an Erasmus student usually prevents any attempts to get to know local people, language or customs. But YFU exchange students (highschool level) who often go to small towns with no chance of managing in English, will learn faster than anybody will believe.

ALL ABROoooAD!

2007-03-08T17:09:00.000+01:00

EVS, the programme I'm here with, supported by the European Commission, is not the only kind of activity that the youth groups or organisations can ask financial support for. In fact, there are a lot of opportunities to get grants if you have good ideas. One of these kinds of projects are youth exchanges - intercultural youth meetings where one group of young people hosts other groups, shows them around, organises various activities. Everyone has fun, but most of all, learns a lot through experience.

I'd never have an idea what Turkish hospitality is like, what the Czech do for fun, how spoken Hungarian sounds or what the Portuguese mean by saudade, if my friend Laura hadn't gotten me into organising a youth exchange with her back in 2004. This event was an awakening to 3 years of vagabonding through more than 20 countries. It's also thanks to her that I'm in Italy now.

My hosting organisation (by now, my home NGO) is partner in 8 youth exhanges this summer. It's more than any of the Eurodesk offices around Veneto. Different countries, different topics. The only problem is that we're living and working in such a small town that it's difficult to convince the youth that there can be good possibilities here as well. In any case, we've now officially started our 'all abroad!' campaign. In the following months I'll go around the local schools with the people of the local youth information point, explaining to schoolkids what is Youth in Action and what the whole point is. That it's not only a way of making cheap vacations, but a good opportunity to learn languages, train yourself, manage a project - things that one generally would have to pay much more for. This in turn holds a lot of other opportunities, such as being better prepared for jobs related to organising various events or working in an intercultural context.

So now there's me going around with our flyers. The author is our web designer Anna Menti. Here's an example:

These exchanges are a magic waiting to happen. I've already seen it a few times, but it's always worth a watch. First you have to call the people, convince them, coax them with the idea of a cheap vacation, say how nice the place will be. Then, when they've made up their minds, they get all excited while discussing what kind of food to bring along and what to show about Italy; they write out small dictionaries and read travel guides. Taking the train to go to the airport is a mixture of excitement and anxiety. Then we start to receive messages: "we're arrived, things look ok, really tired, talk later"; and "ciao, it's fun here, we went around Prague, very nice!" and "this is so cool!!!". During the days after arrival the group goes around and tells everyone with bright eyes about where they've been. They stay on MSN until the wee hours talking to all the new friends. Things cool off after a while, but there is always someone with whom the contact remains. And noone will easily forget the feeling of a really good youth exchange.

Some of my friends are convinced that all this "youth projects and stuff" is a big waste of money. They're entitled to their opinion. But I have to wonder - if someone has had adventures, parties, long discussions with youngsters from completely different backgrounds - be it an ex-communist country, a Muslim country or whichever - isn't this someone less likely to discriminate against people based on stereotypes? Isn't it an achievement?

a secret home

2007-03-06T21:00:00.000+01:00

24th February is the Estonian Independence Day. It counts up from 1918, its first ever declaration of independence. Usually what happens is that everyone stays home from school/work, relaxes, watches the military parade from TV with one eye, and then the President's reception ("the penguin parade") in the evening. A casual type of patriotism.

In Italy I didn't do much anything apart from a few long phonecalls home. I guess I could have made my friends eat mashed potatoes and mince-meat sauce with me, but didn't feel the date to be too pressing. Will do later. Independence day is such a casual thing after all.

Then one of the Estonian newspapers published an article claiming that people who spend a longer amount of time abroad will become more patriotic and start to regard their home country as the best place in the world. I found it from Emigrant's blog who had found it from Oudekki's blog. My first thought was to snub the whole thing as just another of the bluntly one-sided claims one comes across in the media. I'm absolutely not going to say that the Estonian rudeness, tiny-country mentality, the President's speech or national sports will start to bring tears to my eyes just because I haven't set foot to the country for the last 5 months. It's two years that I'm in and out of the country for shorter or longer periods. The only pride that I've felt during this time for what one could call the "Estonian mentality" was in Lithuania: there the people were even ruder.

Then I started to think about it a bit more. So what is it really that would make me want to live in Estonia again? Staying abroad does give one an ability to compare and appreciate things for what they're worth; it dissolves the defaults and makes it (sometimes painfully) clear that there are other ways of living than the habitual one. This is how I understood that the sulky waitress that bangs your food on the table after having you wait for 40 minutes is only normal in Eastern Europe; but that being able to use free wireless all those 40 minutes is a rare and wonderful luck. That it's actually possible to go out in the evening without sitting in endless cigarette smoke and having endless beers. And all that.

Of course national identity jumps all the way up on the priority list the moment the person leaves the country. It's no longer obvious where they're from. Every introduction brings up an affirmation to the heritage and becomes a part of: a) how the person perceives herself;
b) how others perceive the person.

Someone who has tried not mentioning their precise country of origin will know what I mean.
A: So, where are you from?
B: Northeast Europe.
(That's never enough, ever, even if A failed geography in elementary school.)
A: Aha, which country then?
B: Estonia.
A: Ee...
B: It's in the northeast of Europe.
A: Aha...
If I decide not to reply, or be vague ("you know, around there, near Sweden"), I'll certainly feel guilty for not admitting to my nationality, and A will feel uncomfortable for not being able to tag a stereotype to me (strangely, this uncomfort doesn't extend to tags that say "country x" or "Estonia" - as long as there is a tag, A will be happy because he'll feel that he knows who he's dealing with).

Repeating this dance every few days will definitely affirm, affirm and keep re-affirming my national identity, even if I eventually might forget the taste of black bread and lose interest in Estonian news. This way, being Estonian has turned into something very personal. Not secret - here I am, tagging "Estonia" to my name with every new acquaintance - but personal in the sense that there are only a few who know more about the country than the name. Who could come close to understanding what makes the place special after all.

There's just no explaining it. If I try to describe what spring is in Tartu, I end up in an incomprehensible rant, substituting missing words with bland clichés. I try to put to words the mid-exam-session feeling of staying up until the wee hours; roaming the streets by night; feeling, rather than seeing, the sun rising at 3:30 am; the feverish energy of not having slept enough; the fresh grass under tired feet; the liberation of yet another exam passing; the blinding sunlight; feeling the city getting ready for summer and sleep.

If someone asks me what I miss, I usually turn it all into a joke and say something small. Good bread. Convenient prices. The culture media. I avoid lapsing into what I really miss. But if I return, it will be for the friends and family. Family and friends. And, charged deep into a known city or landscape, the secure feeling of memory and continuity.

fora febraro

2007-02-28T23:50:00.000+01:00

It's since noon that my windows rattle every two minutes from an explosion somewhere to the north. There is a low thud in the glass and I hear the sound rolling around the valley, bouncing off the mountains on each side. As the evening progresses, the explosions become more frequent. February is ending.

Fuori febbraio (out February) is an obscure mountain-people North-Veneto-and-Trentino festivity, hardly heard of down in the cities. It is said to originate from ancient Greeks who celebrated the birth of Aphrodite at this time. In Roman and Venetian calendars March was the first month of the year. This particular custom, "throwing out" February and "calling in" March, probably originates from the Germanic people colonising the Dolomite mountains area since medieval times. The songs and traditions differ from one village to the other. In some the custom is to burn the figure of an old lady (old year) as a part of the festivity (Befana!).

In Valdagno people go out on the streets with pots and pans, bang them together and sing:

fóra febraro
che márso l'è qua
se non l'è márso
mar-si-rá

[fuori febbraio / che marzo è qua / se non'è marcio / marcirá]
[February get out / 'cos March is here / if it isn't rotten yet / it will be soon]

This way of making mayhem will apparently wake up the nature and remind the year to get a move on.

Every other year a "chiamata di marzo" (March-call) is organised in nearby Recoaro where, instead of banging pots, people are dressing up like a hundred years ago and march through the town, accompanied by wagons of model old-style smithies, bakeries, pasta- and laundrymaking, and such. And some drinks, too, considering the cold. Well, this historical workday demonstration doesn't seem to have much to do with the coming spring, but at least everyone has fun and the children will learn that the pasta didn't always use to come in blue Barilla packages.

...

2007-02-26T19:51:00.000+01:00

By the way, the comments are now open to anyone, not only blogger users. I just discovered it and am hereby apologising for anyone who has been itching to discuss but hasn't been able to.

Vicenza: baxi si

2007-02-25T18:54:00.000+01:00

The time for carnivals and other general mayhem when "everything goes" was almost over when Italy came to show open signs of a party-mood and finally threw a sizeable manifestation on the Dal Molin issue. For the past weeks, "Vicenza" has become the synonym of the leftist-pacifist event that took place on the 17th of February.

So what's the deal? Well, it's been going on for a bit of time already. Very simply said, the mayor sold the city's airport to the Americans who were planning to double the already existing military base in Vicenza. At first, noone knew about it. When the government changed, the issue came up along with the first doubting voices - the airport is remarkably close to the city centre and having F16-s depart from behind their houses didn't go down too well with people who don't approve of the US foreign policy. People started to manifest - there was one public protest after another in December, but the information didn't reach many. Vicenza voted yes on the political level, but few of your usual people-on-the-street would admit to approving the base-enlargement. The potential economical benefit and good relations to the US weighed up other arguments and the government, though carefully, said yes too. This simplified version is what I've gathered from the scattered opinions around here. Valdagno is situated 32 km north of Vicenza.

It wasn't until all the big newspapers had gone on about it for a while when Vicenza started to get real attention from all over Italy. Thus, coaches and reservation trains from Milano, Rome and Torino were organised; information blasted around the streets and websites; and the media did their bit of confusion. Three completely unconnected events taking place within a week of each other were all mixed into one: 1) the pacifist manifestation in Vicenza; 2) the arrest of 15 extreme-left terrorists; 3) the death of a police officer in the hands of Sicilian football-hooligans. The simple conclusion from all this would be that pacifism is almost as bad as terrorism, or that there will certainly be someone of this opinion ruining the whole thing. This scared a considerable amount of people off attending.

This was the reason why our small company arrived as late as 5 o'clock. We had spent the day relaxing, checking on the news and hesitating whether the whole din was worth it or not. Well, all in all it was much like your usual student day party where all kinds of leftsy* people come out to the fresh air - hippies, woollies (est: kampsikud), tree-huggers, punks, students, young political/ pacifist/ intellectual idealists and all others. (I do believe that only this kind of societal labelling will pass on the impression of it.) It was as peaceful an event as anyone could hope for and we saw nor heard of anything violent. That said, in my humble opinion the manifestation was rather an assurance of emotion than a political voice - coming out on the streets only after all the decisions had been made was never going to make a practical difference, though obviously it was worth something to show how 150 000 people feel about the base at Dal Molin.

But it was fun. In addition to providing a good picture of all kinds of political activists in the area, the event demonstrated some true playfulness. For example, in the photo on the left the sign reads: "BAXI SI ma co la lèngoa. no militari!" It's a play on words: baxi [read: ba:zi] in venetian dialect sounds similar to basi, (military) bases; but means baci, kisses. So - "OK to the bases/kisses, but only with the tongue! no soldiers!" My flatmates are illustrating how it goes.

----------
*leftsy - anyone not voting to the political right. In generalised stereotyped terms anyone who: doesn't devote their lives to earning money, and/or thinks about third countries, and/or wears colourful scarves, and/or relaxes, and/or doesn't mind reading Marx, and/or gives out communist leaflets, and/or is pro-choice, etc etc etc. This division is something new to me, as my life in Estonia has been blissfully apolitical (being certain that politics will corrupt any good ideas in no time and that in the end they're all the same and so on). By these Italian standards I'd categorise to the left -- all the more strange as I usually don't even know who to vote for, and regard the blue-eyed Italian communists as people who should reform their offensive flag and take a field trip to the nearest Eastern-European country.

m'illumino di meno

2007-02-19T08:45:00.000+01:00

16 February was the all-Italian (international?) day of risparmio energetico - energy saving. A popular radio show, Caterpillar (pronunced Cat-eR-pi:ll-aR) on Radio Due, has done a good job talking of hybrid cars and simple everyday energy saving techniques; come up with a beaty little song; and created a strong slogan that is likely to come up every now and again. The name of the campaign, M'illumino di meno, literally means "I light up of less" and refers to Giuseppe Ungaretti's famous poem Morning (1933):

M'illumino
d'immenso.

In translation it says: "I flood myself with light of the immense". Caterpillar's adaption of it is witty, easy to remember and utter, and most importantly of all - strikes some note in any Italian that ever went to school.

From 6 pm to 6:05 pm, ENEL - the Italian electricity network - registered the decrease of energy use by the amount of 300 megawatt (approx. 5 million light-bulbs) as cities switched off the lighting on their main squares, people shut down their computers and our own humble flat was cooking in the light of a tiny IKEA saving-bulb.

We organised a candle-light dinner for our closest friends for the occasion. It had to be Friday, though the usual party-night is Saturday. (Due to long lunch-breaks, people leave work no earlier than 6 or 7 and bearing in mind to visit someone after a week of these evenings might not be easy.) We sent out the invitations and sat down waiting. By Friday afternoon only one person had excused himself, as his way home would be half the length of Italy. Another left the country in a flurry of fresh love and he was excused too. The others made no sign because:
a) they didn't check emails;
b) they did, but thought our invitation was a Caterpillar announcement;
c) knew there was something, but preferred to have their usual Friday-evening relaxation instead.
It often happens here in Veneto, but it still baffles me: it is the exact opposite of my first stereotype of the Italians. I was delighted to think that they value their friends and the time spent together much more than the Estonians do (not that the Estonians don't love their friends - they do - but the habitual everyday goings-on, studying, and work generally tend to take the first seat). In fact, I might have been mistaken due to the holiday-like nature of my first encounters. Or then again, I might have mistaken the Italians for the Portuguese.

Regardless of our company being the usual 4 instead of a merry 12, we enjoyed ourselves immensely over the food and the ceremonial feeling of candle-light, three courses of dinner and two kinds of wine. It was so good that it took us two days to do all the dishes.

What comes to saving energy, I don't think that 5 minutes of darkness on Piazza San Marco will change much; but if there were people who spent all the evening being fussy about turning on the TV, I guess it will have at least some kind of an impact for the next weeks. Then, of course, we'll go on using the tumble-dry, the lift and leaving lights on in the interest of atmosphere.

lezioni d'italiano per stranieri

2007-02-13T09:23:00.000+01:00

Every Tuesday and Thursday morning I spend one and a half hours studying Italian. But it's not a mere session of grammar or vocabulary. The language class is much more than that. In fact, it is not too far from a kind of a zoo.

I owe a lot of thanks to Vides, an NGO that coordinates (among their other activities) the twice-weekly classes made specially for the numerous local foreigners. The differences from your average training-firm sessions are considerable. First of all, it's free. The teachers are volunteers - retired Italians that don't mind explaining alphabets, grammar rules or catholic traditions to immigrants of all shapes and sizes. The students are almost all women (the men, if there are any, go to work and can't spare mornings in classes). The didactic materials are anything that comes up - improvised conversation, photocopied grammar exercises, fiction books, Italian textbooks from Asian countries, and - always - world maps. Usually a study-group will involve as many nationalities as there are students and the cultural, geographical, linguistic and what-not differences give the teachers an inexhaustible amount of conversation material. This is what I mean by a zoo: making a usual introduction round can, and usually will, resemble a ride around the world.

Ciao, I'm Maris, I come from Estonia. Ess-too-nii-aa. It's in the northeast of Europe. (Pointing on the map) here, near Finland. No, not Latvia. Estonia. I live on this island here (interested nods and smiles at the mention of an island; luckily Saaremaa is big enough to be visible). And so it goes on. I'm unique in not having moved for work, and in coming from an EU member country (with the new exception of the numerous Romanians).

There is usually someone from India, someone from Moldova, one or two Romanians, a Russian, someone from South America, someone from Morocco, someone from Ghana or other parts of Africa. Africans tend to be quite advanced, though the accent can be quite strong. Indians and the Ghanese speak good English - this usually makes the teacher a little uneasy, because the opportunity to explain things in their language seems to be in reach, but is yet too far (few local Italians older than 40 will know English). Some of the women speaking only languages that use alphabets other than the Latin one are in for a difficult stretch of learning the letters the toddler-way: having the alphabets spelled out to them in a high voice accompanied by a mimic normally used to keep babies from crying (but then again - how else could it be done?). The Brazilians and also, Romanians, are greatly advantaged as their own languages work in much the same way as Italian does; they move along fast, but often retain the melody of their native language. Great numbers of Muslim women have only come to Italy to tend to the family while the husbands work, and usually don't interact with Italians (the same is true for many of the Indians I see) and this slows down their learning process considerably. I've always seen them as intriguing puzzles - you never know what's inside.

Then there are the Eastern-European women who have come to work as nurses to the elderly or housekeepers; not because this is their calling, but because ironing bedsheets pays so much more in Italy than being a lecturer, teacher, or even a dentist does in Russia. Often their families back at home have no other source of income, sometimes the husband is ill (or worse, likes to drink), and the teenage children need a lot of support without being able give much input of their own yet. These women (badanti they call them here) tend to live alone, devote themselves entirely to work and send as much money as possible back home. This is not very difficult to understand for Estonians. Despite all the economic growth and the pretense of being a developed "Western" country, the same amount of money still buys three times more food in Estonia than here in Italy; the difference in salaries compared to Finland not too many kilometres away is quite striking; and all the time more people leave for a shorter or longer period abroad. But seeing the other side of this migration is a very stark contrast to what I've gotten used to thinking when I hear "work abroad".

One of these badanti from Moldova - let's call her Ana - is 42, has lived in Italy for 10 years already and calls home every day to her pride and joy: her 17-year-old son. She learned to use the email to see the photos he sends her. I hear how much she pays for his education, all the necessary books and materials (it's an appalling amount of money), how long she hasn't seen him and how well he does in school. It's enough to make any woman feel a little sad.

Then there is the 6-year old Indian girl - an unbelievably sweet little being - who used to come to the class with her mother for a while and speaks better Italian than she does. I wonder who, or of which culture, she will consider herself to be in 10 years' time?

This exciting and mysterious carousel of colourful saris definitely makes up half of the reasons why I go. The second (or should I say the first?) is my own learning process. After spending some time in a fun, but too simple group, I'm now the single student of a former lawyer who knows Latin and French, is fluent in Esperanto and considers English to be a wacky language where people say "apple" and write "banana". I insist on translating random pieces of text to start getting a grip on how Italian could sound nice when written down; on going through explanations of the passato remoto (a scary grammar dinosaur that is yet alive and well in the South of Italy); and discussing the grammatical aspects of the dialects. He insists on explaining the Latin roots of important words (sometimes ones that exist in English and I learned when I was 10); describing how the grammar used to look a long time ago; and dismissing the dialect-issue. I think we both appreciate ending up together though. People who go to the language classes are generally practical and busy (why else did they move?) and I'm likely to be the most bookish one. Or at least the one with most time to muse over passato remoto.

Even if I miss out on a number of lessons for various reasons (the silliest one was last time when I missed a plane and didn't make it back from abroad on time), it's comforting to know that there is a way to follow what my language does. Before I discovered the classes, I was quite lazy with learning, as most people around me spoke English. By now I've switched to Italian as an everyday communication language, but talking to friends doesn't help me remember the gender exceptions (la foto; il problema) or get the hang of the subjunctive properly. Without the classes I'd most likely end up in an embarrassing situation where I talk as a local, but am completely illiterate. Well, to some degree this is already the case. But I'll keep trying. More delightful info on the passato remoto to come!

Friday

2007-01-31T12:55:00.000+01:00

Valdagno is a quiet town of 30'000 inhabitants, situated at the foot of the Southern Alps. It's a midway between the industries, highways and pollution of the bassa Padana (the foggy northeast part of the Po valley) and the peace of the tiny mountain villages. Even the mornings are moderate - though the streets will see groups of elderly ladies entering the cafés for their morning cappuccini and pastries, though there will be young mothers walking their dogs and an occasional office worker dashing across the street - the place will still be at it's own measured pace compared to the bustle of, say, Padova. But all of this changes on Fridays.

Friday is the market day. Indeed, as Veneto is an area of few big cities and many small ones, the market is economically divided between the number of towns in the neighbourhood and travels to a different place every weekday. The market arrives early in the morning - trucks after trucks of clothes, fruit, shoes, cheese, kitchen utensils, carpets, fish. (Even the beggars arrive with the market, always the same ones. Do they hitchhike?) The cars pack out tables, a roof, and an unimaginable number of various articles, and the day can begin. Suddenly each open space in the centre is packed with people eyeing the goods, bumping into each other, seeing everyone they know, trying on sweaters, counting out coins, choosing between various types of oranges. The town is unrecogniseable. Streets around the centre buzz with cars: little old ladies driving their twice-a-week round in their tiny Fiat 500-s; irritable drivers finding the usual streets closed and traffic slowed down by the little old ladies; cargo trucks stopping at all imagineable places to unload; streams of people crossing the road apologetically...

Someone making a proper market round should start at the north end, near the statue of Marzotto (the legendary creator of the local textile industry and with it, Valdagno) and browse through the tables of yarn, buttons and endless shoes before crossing the road to the clothes section. The clothes section holds an array of inexpensive more or less fashionable items, quite enough for people not looking for famous trademarks, or with children that grow out of their new pants in a matter of days. The clothes are set conveniently next to the drills, saws and other tools to give a chance for the men to entertain themselves while the women shop for socks. The movement between the tables is slow, giving the people a chance to get a good look at the merchandise, but also passers-by, the weather, their companions, and the like.

The passers-by are indeed something to look at. One can rarely appreciate just how multicultural Valdagno is, but the market is one of these occasions. There are the locals, talking to each other in broad dialect, but then there are the colourful Indian and Bangladeshi women in small groups, dragging their pretty children along from one table to another; the relaxed Ghanese; the serious Russian women chatting in low voices; the Chinese, selling scarves at 3-8 euros apiece.

Moving along from one table to another, buying a little bit of this or that, one arrives to the underwear (finally something frill-free!), the belts and bags of dubious origin, the baby clothes, the carpets. Passing from the Piazza del Comune to the last part of the market, the tone of selling and buying changes completely. It's the food. The atmosphere changes from a multicultural bustle into clearly Italian, and differences between the shopping Italians and others are increasingly visible. The pace of the walkers, so tranquil and dreamy before, goes through an abrupt change. It's not a question of mildly planning to or not to buy something. The routes are clear and habitual - which of the three fruit-stands to go to, how many oranges, how many paprikas, what kind of salad. Olive oil should be extra virgin. The yoghurt should be local. Orders pour out, the saleswomen pick, weigh and pack the vegetables in an instant. Anything else? Hands fill with heavy bags. Finding the wallet and the correct sum becomes increasingly difficult. But we're still missing the cheese.

The cheese! Going to a market can be a ritual, but nothing can compare to the full process of buying a week's cheese. There are two cheese-trucks. In time one learns to prefer certain kinds of cheese from one and others from the other one (because there is a difference). First, approach the cheese stand. It will already have a number of people in front of it, so one can get a good look at everything. But it's always the same. Italians love their stability in food. (The only seasonal change are the fresh malga-cheeses from the dairy houses in the mountains at the end of the summer.) Thus, on a usual Friday, one would order some mozzarella or stracchino - very fresh, almost not even cheese; then something generally light, maybe 200 grams of Asiago latte intero? Or cacciotta... Some of both, then. Asiago is a highlands barely an hour north of Valdagno that produces all levels of Asiago cheese. The maturing process makes all the difference, so it means a true variety. So, for something mid-aged it will be Asiago again, for mezzano dolce is the best. (An adventurous-feeling Valdagnese might try Provolone or something instead, but this would be something rare.) Moving along - how's about something stronger-tasting? Gorgonzola makes a perfect addition to all kinds of cheese-sauces. And most of the pasta dishes don't go anywhere without an addition of grated parmesan. Cheeses as old as this (aged 2 years as a rule) should be ceremonially tasted before decided on. If it goes (and it always goes), the clerk will pry a chunk off the stone-hard cheese wheel with a short knife. By this time the pile of cheese on the counter will be considerable, but usual. Paying will leave a hole in one's budget, but it's worth it.

Gradually the crowd disperses - from half past 12 onwards it's lunch-time. The mothers hurry to cook and the rest of the families hurry to be on time for the food. It takes some time for the market to pack itself neatly into the cars again, but they will soon be on their way, leaving behind only a pile of cardboard boxes. At early afternoon Valdagno is again as sleepy a place as can be: everyone will be at home, quietly digesting their lunch, and the town centre is left empty for a random wanderer observing the shadows on the walls.

280m

2007-01-25T15:13:00.000+01:00

It's snowing!!

venessián

2007-01-24T14:57:00.000+01:00

In a way, Veneto is an unlucky place for foreigners, especially the areas outside the cities.
What I mean is the linguistic variety so typical to Italy. Veneto is one of the regions where the local dialect is still in booming everyday use. As the standard Italian is the one once used by Dante, more or less the Tuscan way of talking (without the particular "h" that they like to pronunce in every word), your average Venetian will speak something only remotely recogniseable. True, most of them will switch to Italian when they understand they're not talking to a local. But not all of them, and most of what is said will have passed already.

Among locals, Italian is used only as a written language and in highly official situations. Everywhere else from the marketplace to the bank, the things will be done in venessián. It's not political, though it might seem so. Simply, the people will use their first language by default unless something suggests otherwise. Italian connotes a distance, and thus will seem strange to speak in one's kitchen. Then, regardless of the education system and the media being all in Italian, without a regular speaking practice this average Venetian (if aged over 40), won't be able to speak the official language even if they tried.

I'm sharing a flat with two Italians. As cosmopolitan as they are, speaking Italian to each other merely due to my presence is too strange to do. Thus, even though everything spoken directly to me will be in Italian, I get a lot of passive venessián practice from day to day - from my flatmates, their families and friends. By now I understand almost all of it, am able to pretend to speak it to some extent, and have started to mix some words into my Italian without noticing. It was only a matter of hearing it enough - what at first sounded like a smooth babble broke into understandable words and phrases at one point with no effort whatsoever. I do think of this as my greatest linguistic achievement to date. And I've come to appreciate that a local talking to me in dialect is his/her way of introducing familiarity into the conversation, and to be taken as a compliment - it means I'm not acting the part of the stranger in the situation.

So what is the difference? Linguistically, venessián is closer to French (of 200 years ago) and Spanish than Italian. Obviously, with the influences of the media and everything else, the differences are smaller nowadays. But the heritage is still visible in a Venetian that speaks English with a hint of Spanish pronunciation and understands much more of spoken Portuguese than a Milanese would. Mainly, what happens to the official Italian in Veneto is that everything is softened down - ch (k) turns into ci (ch), z (ts) turns into ss; o is dropped off the end of the nouns (veneziano - venessia:n), the l and r is pronunced only halfway, the sharp past participle ending "-to" disappears in elongated vowels. I guess one has to hear it to know what I mean. By other Italians this is considered as one of the ugliest dialects of the whole country. I think of it as a sign of diversity and authenticity.

Then, apart from mere regional or linguistic differences, there is the half-political pride of the 1000 years of the Serenissima - Republic of Venice that still lives on in the Veneto. After all, once upon a time the Venetians controlled the market, a large part of the Mediterranean coast and the international communication of the time (venessián!). But this is something else.

The main possible practical value of the venessián is visible in the tourist-ridden money-making Venice. A ride in a gondola negotiated in English will cost x euros (depending on the mood, weather, season etc). The same ride negotiated in Italian will cost 2/3 of it. But if you know how to approach the gondoliere, and say in a stretched intonation, half-rolled r-s and with an air of not really caring about the response: "ció... mi porti to a San Marco?", you'll probably end up paying only a third of the tourist price.

Why would I mind learning a language that allows me to roam a place like Venice without the mark of a foreigner?

cheesecake!

2007-01-20T18:39:00.000+01:00

During my time spent in Italy I've understood something interesting - even though it can be acceptable to be late anywhere to some extent, it is intolerable to be late for lunch. Food is what one should be on time for, no matter what.

Well Italians are famous for their food. The simplicity, the taste. It's wonderful, and everyone can understand why it's being copied everywhere - even a copied version of Italian food will be good. (This is excluding the pastas boiled for 20-minutes and pizzas made with ketchup, which is another category - una bestemmia, and will be described later.) The way to keep this standard all through the country is a complicated set of rules and categories that any self-respecting Italian will cling to. For example, the strict rhythm of dishes in a meal - pasta first, meat later, and not together, but separately. The all-around ban to capuccino after 10:30 in the morning. The necessity to keep the salty and the sweet strictly apart - milk is sweet, rice is salty, so no milk soups, no rice desserts. Obviously this will become an obstacle while tasting some foreign foods (the Portuguese sweet rice, the Norwegian caramel cheese, etc) and turn to seem stubborn.

Once an American friend of a friend of mine taught me to make the cheesecake. It was the way she was used to making it and it was exquisite. So I've never taken to change the recipe, as it was perfect the way it was. When I took to making it in Italy, it was nothing more than an attempt to make a nice cake for the others to try.

As I mentioned that I want to make a cheesecake, the first reply I got was - but let's make tiramisù, it's much better! When I was looking for Philadelphia cheese in the supermarket, my friend said - but why should you use Philadelphia? Use mascarpone, it's much better. And you know, people won't want to taste the cake if they know it's made with Philadelphia. It's strange, because Philadelphia is salty.

Obviously I was convinced that the sour Philadelphia is what makes cheesecake proper (because mascarpone is rather a texture than taste, and the cream they use here, panna, is rather sweet though used with salty food) and that otherwise it would simply be just an oversweet cake with no special qualities at all. Thus I entered in a series of discussions over what a 'cheese' means (because ricotta is a cheese too, and not salty, and used in cakes), what 'a recipe' means (under which conditions should it be changed), and most of all - what Italians feel about their food.

What Italians feel about their food is most of all security. Things are done in a certain way because this is how they have been for centuries. It is allowed to try strange things, but in any case black bread or other foreign elements will never integrate with a real Italian. Try it - find an Italian that has never lived abroad and had to put up with strange food on a daily basis. Offer this Italian something coming from another country, but something that doesn't have international prestige - nothing like Swiss or Belgian chocolate, that is. Take cookies from the Netherlands (classifies as 'the north', hence means 'bad food'), or candy from an obscure Eastern-European country, and offer these to your Italian as something you seriously consider worth trying. The Italian, being a polite person, will have to accept. He will nibble a little bit off the edge of the cookie or candy, with an expression not unlike one tasting wine, decide on something, and then remark (if it's good): 'ah, si, we have something similar...' or (if it's not good) 'well, hm, it's particular / strange / we're not usually putting these things together this way... Is it typical to your country?'

This trying-session will undoubtedly be the last time this particular thing will be eaten by the Italian. It's obvious. Italy already has everything one needs to eat.

edit: I added the recipe too - Lindy's cheesecake.

to Alitalia!

2007-01-14T14:26:00.000+01:00

This is a true story of our amazing adventures as Alitalia passengers on our way to and back from Prague for the new year. We were supposed to fly out on the 27th of December and return on the 5th of January. The way it eventually turned out will definitely beat all of my Ryanair/Easyjet adventures and give a valuable insight into Italian organising.

At first, it seems a bit too careful to leave home at 1pm for a flight leaving at half past 6 in the evening. But with the country-line bus usually taking at least an hour to reach civilisation, and the trains moving as it happens (75 minutes late, and the only way of reaching Venice), we arrive in the Marco Polo airport barely in time.

The three queues don't seem to be in a particular hurry, as the huge clock over the departures board is showing 40 minutes until take-off. For the first half-hour we don't move at all. 10 minutes to take-off. The poor Japanese guy is still standing, humble back turned to us, at the first check-in desk. The Russians in front of another queue need a translation by phone. Restlessness show in every face. Will we catch our connection flight? Do we have to sleep in the airport? People meet each others' eyes in search of news, or just a comforting eye-roll – yes, I too think it's outrageous. The tiny Dutch woman in front of me keeps dashing off to the information desk, turning more and more red every time.

Some talk of fog reaches the end of the queue. 5 minutes to take-off. The “estimated time” so politely added to every check-in notice board is still 18:30 for the flight to Milano Malpensa, an airport roughly 4 hours away by train. Malpensa, the most important transport centre of half of Italy, the biggest airport of Milano, serving the sprawling mess of a city with the official population of 1,3 million (same as whole Estonia), has happened to be built in an exceptionally foggy area. This means that the airport's strict schedule rules apply only for the passengers, but not for incoming or outgoing flights. Because of fog. Or something else that can be called fog. The rumours moving along from person to person is the only news we receive.

At departure time, a strict-looking woman in a uniform appears to divide the line. The ones whose flight is still scheduled to leave from Malpensa, and the others. - Where are you flying? - Milano. - And then? What is your final destination? - Prague. - (she checks her list) Alright, stay here. It's clear that we won't fly anywhere tonight. In the meantime, the official-woman has found the Russians, and keeps repeating: fiiinnnaaalll destination! Milano, yes, and then?? I see a nerve going in her temple, as she shakes her papers with white knuckles. Apparently the poor Russian woman doesn't understand a word, shakes her head helplessly and repeats to each question: Miljano... Miljano...

Half an hour after scheduled departure time, we have tickets to another flight for the next morning and a promise of paid accommodation for the night. Along with a Greek tourist group and two queues of delayed passengers. The tension has fallen a bit. Nervous as everyone is, they know there is nothing left to do but wait. People are sorted into double and triple rooms. A bus comes. There aren't enough seats, and we are given a taxi instead. It's definitely more comfortable, and the driver is talking in a broad Venetian about all the eccentric tourists he's transporting. We arrive before the bus and park next to a Ferrari on the hotel's driveway. Our accommodation is a five-star 18th century villa, with doubles for 255 euro for a night.

Villa Condulmer

As all the passengers file into the elaborate hall, the anxious faces change. Expressions of indignation turn into curiousity, and then disbelieving smiles. The place is something we've never seen before. The elaborate walls, Murano glass chandeliers, gold-lined mirrors, soft sound-muffling carpets. I, and most likely most of the group, would normally never set foot in a place like this. And, indeed, we do look remarkably out of place. The pot-plants spill some leaves in surprise. Glancing up at the carved ceiling, we lower our voices and straighten our backs, half-heartedly wishing to have worn something smarter than travelling-sweaters. Many will rush off to their rooms to change for dinner.

Considering they could have had only an hour notice of receiving 50 people at once, the kitchen performs admirably. We have a choice between a fish-menu and a meat one, the skinny waiter informs us in the best standard-Italian. The fish-menu is an insalata di mare (sea-food salad) for a starter, the first course a taglierini con frutti di mare (long pasta with assorted seafood), and the second course a branzino con verdura al vapore (fish and steamed vegetables). The meat menu is culatello con verdura (the most tender of Italian hams, with vegetables), tagliolini con anitra (a long pasta with duck), and tagliata di manzo con spinaci (tender beef with spinach). We get an excellent sparkling white wine to start. From the appetizer onwards, my Italian companions go through every detail of the meals and find it to be at least one of their best dinners ever in sense of preparation, quality and style. It's true. The food is wonderful, and I see even the lamentuous Dutch woman looking happier.

The boys round up the culinary experience by ordering some French cognac from 1938, paying 9 euro for each glass, and staying to enjoy all their money is worth for as long as the wide glass allowes them to. To Alitalia! To a good night's sleep! To Alitalia! To Le Corbusier, 1938! To Alitalia!

The flight goes on

We take the bus to the airport at 5 in the morning. Yawning, we check in, nap until the boarding time and find the flight delayed by half an hour. This cuts our time for changing flights in Malpensa fine indeed. But the airport is still foggy. We're delayed for another 10 minutes. Is that how long it takes for the fog to blow off? Apparently it does – we finally take off from Venice. I'm sure to miss our second flight, as we run a record-breaking 5 minutes across the terminal from arrivals to the gate. The second flight is delayed by half an hour, and our queue mixes with people hoping to fly to Delhi – old men in turbans, forever-young hippies in flip-flops, huddles of brown-eyed children. But even this flight takes off eventually. We're amazed.

The time spent in Czech Republic moved by fast enough. It was a great chance to enjoy some snow, ski, sleigh, drink beer and do other things people generally do for relaxing in the winter. By the 5th of January we were quite tired from it all and the thoughts of our own beds seemed more and more appealing. Until the check-in desk tells us that our flight to Milano Malpensa is delayed by two hours. As it's hopeless to catch our connection flight to Venice this way, it means a night in Milano, and probably not 5 stars either. The information desk says they can put us on another flight to Rome. Yes, please, this way we could at least arrive by midnight.

But Rome is notorious for it's transfer flights. As the trip itself hardly takes any time at all (though the noisy Napoletan family right behind us makes it feel much longer), we arrive in good spirits, happily looking forward to arriving home. We finally leave an hour later, after Daniele has reported his missing backpack. It was to be expected, and we were lucky to retrieve the other bags – after all, Rome is a mess in the best case, a black hole in the worst. But the luggage is found in a few days and despite having flown 4 flights, not even one of them without a delay or some other problem, we are left excitedly telling anyone who would listen about villa Condulmer.

La Befana

2007-01-11T15:46:00.000+01:00

I used to be quite impressed by the fact that the Italians still have strength to keep partying on the 6th of January. (The only thing that happens in Estonia for the 6th of January is that people throw out their Christmas trees and stop calling the new year new.) It seemed to be another reminder of the main difference between Protestantism and Catholicism - the latter have more parties.

As the day has come and gone, I'm left wondering if it's really a festivity in itself or just a piece of Christmas gone astray.

Befana is an old woman, represented as a kind witch, who enters the houses through a chimney to bring the kids candy if they've been good, or a piece of coal if they've been bad (or a representative black rock-candy as on the photo). As the tradition is older than Christianity, Befana might have been a local version of Santa Claus and originally celebrated for the Winter Solstice, 21st of December. The fact that after delivering the candy Befana will be burned as a vaguely anthropomorphic wood statue placed in the central piazza, gives the whole event a slightly morbid feel. So what is it, a pagan tradition that couldn't have been discarded completely, has thus been postponed to the Epiphany instead and fitted with an Inquisition-style stamp to make it theologically correct? One of the explanations is that burning the figure of an old woman is a representation of leaving behind the old year and starting with the next. Fire seems to have a direct connection to the Sun that will start to gain strength again after the lowest extreme.

In Estonian terms this could be a combination of Santa's little helpers (päkapikud) that bring (or don't bring) candy to the slippers of the children all through December until Christmas and the bonfires of the Summer Solstice celebration (jaanipäev) and a generic a-reason-to-drink day as, say 30th of April, volbripäev (something similar to Halloween). But I can't think of any festivities that would actually include a witch or burning it.

The modern Befana-celebration bears the unmistakable marks of being a clearly non-Christian festivity. Rather than the last chance to take a look at the elaborate preseppe (nativity scene) in the local church, it seems to be a chance to take a day off work, meet everyone at the piazza, take a vin brulé (mulled wine) or a frittella (a type of thick pancake) off the street stands, discuss the past holidays, make plans to go skiing and warm your backside at the burning Befana.

As for the tradition of calling the holidays finished - our plastic pine is still firmly standing in the living room. After all, it's still allowed to wish people a happy 2007. There's no rush.

Natale

2006-12-20T22:44:00.000+01:00

this is me spending the Christmas in Italy. it has come as a surprise to numerous friends all over Europe (especially the ones who are going home from abroad themselves), some work colleagues, my relatives and the guy from the fruit shop downstairs. as strange as it seems, it does make sense for me to take advantage of a chance to spend a completely different holiday this year, after 22 of them being properly with the family. after all, the celebration itself is not so special really, apart from the family itself. we eat until we can't eat any more. we make gingerbreads. we wear granny-made woolen socks and gloves, all of us. and usually there is at least some amount of snow outside. we stay in and do things that we usually don't have time for.

in Italy things are different. snow exists only in the mountains (not too far from here, but not close enough). no-one knows anything about gingerbreads or glögg. i didn't even get a chocolate christmas calendar this year because they were all finished from the shops. our Christmas tree is a pine instead of the traditional fir, or rather, it's a collection of green bottle-brushes. the decorations cover most of it up, but even thus it's not exactly the nicest tree around. not that we see it too much, as instead of obediently staying at home with the older generation, evenings are all for bars and seeing people who have come around for the holidays from far-away places. the midnight after the Christmas Eve is celebrated similarly to that of the New Year, if maybe on a smaller scale. the bars are alive, hot wine flowing, old rock-n-roll songs blasting from the speakers and the waiters dancing with the bottles of Prosecco.

along with the Christmas trees put up everywhere, and the same old cheesy christmas songs ('all i want for christmas is you'; 'last christmas', 'jingle bells' etc) all around (including our discovery of the month, the accuradio), there are a number of novelties to make up for the lack of snow and family. the first of them is undoubtedly the Panettone / Pandoro, the ultimate sweet-tandem of Italian Christmas. the main change on TV at the approaching holidays is the odd red hat here and there, and the endless flow of advertisements for Panettone (or its Veronese counterpart, the Pandoro). the TV spots usually start with something completely different - a family, children, Christmas tree, mountains, jewels, expensive cars, beautiful women, etc etc, until the Panettone comes along. in fact, as Panettone is synonymous to Christmas, then all these things are highly relevant. it's not only a Christmas cake with raisins and dried fruits that is being promoted. it is the whole idea of Christmas, and the celebration of the Italian way of life.

as I haven't been able to track down the most stupendous of all these commercials, a spot where someone burns himself while fixing the electricity cables and then a Panettone jump out of nowhere (obviously); here are some of the more mainstream ones offered by YouTube.

(Maina panettone 2006 - "go slow like Maina - we let our panettone ferment for two days")

(Pandoro Bauli - "good - just like you")

other than the Panettone and the time spent in the bar during Christmas, something completely new for someone coming from a mainly Protestant background are the nativity scenes, preseppi. there is one in front of the main church and one in every home with the slightest sense of tradition. basically it's just the set of figures of Maria, Joseph, the three kings, the shepherds, the sheep and, added at Christmas, the baby Jesus of course. as the plan was to have as typical a Christmas as possible, we were planning to make one too, though we didn't really want to spend a fortune on the plastic figurines. R assured me that making them of origami would definitely not be the most unorthodox way of making the preseppe. we got as far as making two extremely ugly Santas out of paper, and then slopping down to watch a movie instead.

my attempt to make gingerbreads from scratch hasn't gotten anywhere yet, as simple syrup (without the mint, lemon or apple taste) is nowhere to be found and I should spare a whole day to gather the courage to overcome the fear of creating another one of my post-cooking warfields in the kitchen. but thanks to all the mammas, we've been eating well enough. eating, drinking, breathing in. half of the Christmas day was spent sneezing, wheezing and sniffling, after D spilled a boxful of pepper on the floor. the rest was spent:
a) trying to find out if the presents were satisfactory to the others;
b) properly appreciating all one's own presents;
c) slopping down to watch a movie.

obviously the snow and family make a great difference for the celebrations. but I've had some of the next best people, and, of course, the Panettone.

il nord

2006-12-19T14:00:00.000+01:00

The North, seen by the italians, is a concept perceived both in an admiring and a ridiculing way. from one side, The North is a place where all the women are tall and blond, the trains are on time and the politicians don't punch each other in the parliament. the other side is the stereotypes of bad food, the bad fashion and extreme coldness in communication. The North starts from germany towards the north, and the stereotypes are greatly influenced by the germans and british. french are not nordic. the swiss are. norwegians are so nordic that they must be wearing patterned wool sweaters and viking helmets all day, and it's very difficult to imagine.

my brother was visiting me here a few weeks ago. he entertained the italians as the blond 'viking' guy who drank a lot and didn't talk much. by estonian standards he has brown hair, not blond; he didn't drink much at all; and was very talkative. (only the 'viking' part was party correct, as people from the island where we're from, Saaremaa, indeed were pirates once.)

over and over again i find myself explaining to people the difference between public and private context and why the strange nordic estonians, after frowning for weeks, can suddenly turn into the biggest party animals and do everything for their friends. it's just a question of switching from 'public' mode where it's necessary to seem as cool and uninterested in anything as possible, to 'private' mode, where much more is allowed than normally in a mediterranean company. the knowledge that there is fire under the ice might make it easier to endure the formality of usual communication in a nordic country. it takes a lot of time (during which you might stop trying), but once you're considered 'inside', the people will become unrecognisable.

the stereotypes i've encountered vary greatly. often i have to explain, for example:
- why i'm not blond, and that not all estonians are.
- not all estonians act comatose in company (many of them do though).
- a cold room will be cold for both italians and estonians, no matter which outside temperature we are used to (note that cold is supposed to be outside, not inside).
- how the people manage to stay in a straight line in queues.
- how people manage without the bide's (we have showers).
- if we have orange trees / edible chestnuts / lemons / watermelons / grapes / wine (no, we don't).
- if we have reindeers (no).
- how we survive sauna, and that a 100 degrees won't make your blood boil.
- that yes, we eat pasta (but most people don't know how).
- that we don't use the window covers because we're not used to them and we can sleep with light.
- that we don't hate russians, we just think they don't respect us.
- that we speak estonian, which is not russian, and not related to russian, and don't you ever forget that.
- that yes, we drink a lot (must be all the cold and darkness).
- that yes, the women look very nice (but men generally not).
- that we're an independent country.
- that we're not in war (Baltics & Balkans).
- that we're in the EU.

what noone has asked me about:
- how do we survive the -25 C weather (wearing double hats, pants and gloves, drinking double shots of vodka).
- the temporary ice-roads between the islands and the mainland (1m thick ice will carry up to a 1 ton car).
- the wonderful and healthy black bread.
- the white nights - with only 2 hours of twilight between 12 and 2 am.
- tartu.

edit: I'm aware that in the attempt to avoid going into too many details, I haven't given a satisfactory answer to the burning question of the bidé. In fact what I meant was that a shower can be used instead, though, yes, the bidé will definitely be more convenient. It's just one of these things that exists in some countries and not in others, much like the window blinds (tapparelle), pedestrian reflectors (carta rifrangente), or the gesture of taking off one's dirty shoes while stepping into someone's home.

to be continued

self-creation

2006-12-06T00:17:00.001+01:00

this blog has been waiting to happen for a while now. living abroad creates a whole new world of impressions and for a period of time the mind seems to be like an extremely messy room, the kind where under the things is another layer of things and the walls are not visible for they are covered with other sets of layers of things. as confusing as it is, the things keep moving around a lot and there are moments where it seems that there is some kind of self-established order in the mind. this, obviously, is a temporary illusion, and as time goes on, the necessity for fixing things, sort something, or write down gets more persistent.

starting from the beginning is not easy. the story would have to go back two years and describe a lot of people for whom it's too early to surface yet. it's enough to say that for a considerable period of time i've regularly ended up in Italy for one reason or another, and thus spent quite a lot of time in Veneto before i officially became an EVS volunteer here. i will be staying here until the end of July next year. living here more or less permanently is something completely different than being a visitor. i've had to face learning how the bread-shop works. why the post-office resembles a market, and why the market is only in town for 1,5 times a week. i've found myself glimpsing the endless labyrinth of the Italian office system and been bored, surprised or irritated a lot of the time. i'll hope to get to everything in turn.

i'm staying in Italy, in the region of Veneto, county of Vicenza, in the town of Valdagno. i'm here with a youth-oriented non-formal learning programme called the EVS (see Encyclopedia), and working for an organisation called Association 451 that is creating youth projects with a general aim of cultural awareness. what i do every day will vary from writing this blog (as it's a part of the reflection process for the project) to telling people who we are and why does the EC pay for youngsters to go to Portugal for a week for almost no money at all. i've found life here relatively relaxing (despite being the stressed northeast), at least in comparison to where i come from, and i'm sure the people know how to enjoy life much better here.

so from which angle am i saying all this? i'm coming from Estonia, which is a country, (currently very cold, dark and depressive), and anything i observe here is inevitably filtered by my being from a completely different background. the texts here, rather than being straightforward honest accounts of life in Veneto, will be a comparison - only as a stranger would it be possible for me too see the things this way. i will be writing about silly little everyday things that i will probably stop thinking about after a while. then it will take another stranger to remind me that it's not the only way to do things. this blog will be an attempt to write everything down before my mind organises itself and i forget to be surprised.