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.

el rasentin

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

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

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

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

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

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.