in action and out

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

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

No-one is guilty...

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

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

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

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

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

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

Open Space

News off the 451 website:

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


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

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

What's (been) happening in Estonia?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

La Quaresima - the veggie story

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

schools 3: bed

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

help a little old lady across the street

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

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

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

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

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

school 2: itc

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

Le 52 gallerie

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

conformity / rhythm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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