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

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?

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

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..."

Documentation

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

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...

Two Italies

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

wow! I could vote!

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

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

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

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

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


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

A small dictionary of coffee

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

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

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

A small dictionary of coffee in Northeast of Italy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

lo spritz

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.

No-one is guilty...

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.

La Quaresima - the veggie story

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.

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.

fora febraro

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.

cheesecake!

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.

La Befana

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

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.