help a little old lady across the street

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

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

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

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.

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* 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

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.


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* 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!

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

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.