No Eating Near Rome's Monuments · Jul 23, 05:02 PM by James Martin
You’ve probably heard of the new regulation prohibiting snacking near Rome’s ancient monuments. It’s in place now, so don’t think of chowing down on a panino near the Pantheon unless you have 50 Euro burning a hole in your travel pouch.
The reactions coming from around the web are fascinating. The largest group of folks, as usual, are the people who think everyone is out to rip them off, and every government (except their own) involves itself in passing petty laws designed to make folks spend more money where they don’t want to spend it. In this case, you’ll have to spend a pretty penny at a cafe if you insist on eating in the shadow of the ruins of a civilization long exhausted—where the crap you generate will be cleaned up by someone in charge.
Jacy Meyer, in Foodie Alerts, asks:
But is this the best way to deal with the issue? Why not place more trash cans around the city and increase the fines for littering? And how exactly will police enforce this new rule; considering the number of not only tourists, but historic sites the city has?
I snapped to attention when I read these words. Suddenly it occured to me: that’s what I like about Rome, the lack of a thousand overflowing trash cans around the monuments.
You have to admit, pictures with trash cans in the borders aren’t the most attractive way to capture the timelessness of Roman architecture.
And the Police, bless their Barettas, will do just fine. I like the personal touch. Rather than placing a sign with the picture of a tourist eating some nasty bit of fast food and throwing the thirteen pounds of paper that come with each sandwich in a mound that obscures just about everything within a thirty kilometer radius, someone in a spiffy uniform comes up to you and politely informs you of your infraction while tapping his enormous pistol with a manicured index finger. What’s wrong with that?
When I went to my first ardia di San Costantino horse race in Sardinia, held at the Sanctuario di San Costantino in Sedilo, I was looking for a trash can in which to throw the paper my grilled eel had come wrapped in. My friend Antonio kept saying, “Just toss it. Toss it on the ground. There are no garbage cans. They hire people to clean it up! You’ll see!”
Like no way man.
But sure enough, come Tuesday, I sauntered over to the Sanctuario outside of Sedilo.
It was spotless. There wasn’t the tiniest bit of paper. No eel heads. Nada. Niente. It was as if the event never happened.
The results were far better than the trashy honor system that 87% of people follow in the U.S. It was better than overflowing rusty barrels, too.
But really, why do people insist on eating near monuments? Is it some ancient substitute for usurping your enemy’s strengths by consuming him? I mean, do we secretly desire a paunch similar to the dome of the Pantheon? Or are we so bored while we eat we look for diversions to make it all bearable?
It’s a conundrum. Here’s my solution. It doesn’t matter how expensive that outdoor cafe is, a carafe of the local vino will cost about 10 times less than it does in a restaurant in the U.S.
I wonder if Roman folks come unglued when they see a bottle of wine they’d pay 2 Euros for in Italy priced at $35 in a restaurant in Des Moines?
And just try to take that sucker out onto the sidewalk!
Italian Property Prices · Jul 21, 12:36 PM by James Martin
After looking at one bedroom condos in San Francisco and finding the prices more absurdly inflated than ever ($700,000 for one bedroom in a crime-ridden neighborhood! Such a deal!), we are no longer in the market for a bit of the city life. Yes, prices are falling precipitously, yet not enough to bring prices towards anything resembling reality. There was a day not too long ago where you couldn’t spend more than 25% of your gross earnings on housing. Recently, greedy investors have erased the limits—and it shows in inflated housing cost.
It turns out that Italian prices aren’t exactly falling like a rock. Italy has evidently kept a tight rein on mortgages, not letting the rich make gambling instruments out of them like the US so graciously has. So house prices haven’t really decreased except in the biggest cities, they’re just not going up any more.
“We foresee nominal prices will remain stable in 2008, and therefore real prices will decline by the same amount as the inflation rate,” states the report. ~ Italian property prices grind to a (soft) halt
Maybe it’s time to buy in Italy. Who can know?
Wine! He Said, and Make it Bolgheri Superiore · Jul 9, 08:25 PM by James Martin
It’s a good time to think about wine. Well, not where I live right now, which is northern California, with its 800 wildfires making the air smell like when a leftover smoked ham hock rolls under the couch and gets forgotten for a while. It hit something like 110 today. The red wine is in the fridge. I’ve hung the back leg of a pig outside, hoping to have Speck by morning.
Anyway, what I wanted to tell you is that you could win some mighty fancy Italian wine if you were inclined to write a bit. Yes, just leave a comment and your email address under this Italian Wine Blog post: Tenuta dell’Ornellaia Bolgheri Superiore Ornellaia and you’ll be entered. Do it before Friday, OK?
But here’s the kicker. You have to be in Europe—or have an address there it can be shipped to. Sorry. You could always ship it to my humble abode in the Lunigiana. No one will drink it. Promise.
At least the Italians aren’t in the position the French are in, where they gotta dumb down their wine and sophisticate up their marketing in order to beat Spain in the International Competition to Sell More Wine to Americans Who Don’t Like Foreign Tasting Wines.
Mmmm, globalization is soooo nice.
Language and Obnoxious Tourists · Jul 7, 05:51 PM by James Martin
Time reports on a survey that was taken by employees in 4,000 hotels in Germany, the U.K., Italy, France, Canada and the U.S. for the French travel website Expedia.fr. The French have moved into the top slot as the Most Obnoxious Tourists, according to hotel employees.
Hidden away is the fact that Americans seem to have come a long way in the language department:
American tourists fared well in some surprising ways. Despite being notoriously language-limited, for example, they top the list of tourists credited with trying to speak local languages the most, with the French, Chinese, Japanese, Italians and Russians coming in last in the local-language rankings.
Timothe de Roux poo-poos the notion by explaining that most hotel staffs speak English, which doesn’t explain the results at all.
In my experience, it’s true that most folks from the US I see on my travels do actually speak a little Italian when in Italy. This contrasts greatly with my experience in the 70s, when speaking English loudly was considered the same as being fluent in any foreign language by the average US tourist. It got so bad for a while that in every country I traveled to I learned the local lingo for “I don’t speak English” and practiced it until it sounded convincing so that these louts wouldn’t be associated with me by the natives, who probably weren’t fooled in the slightest.
So, pat yourselves on the back, American travelers, you’ve come a long way.
The Mediterranean Diet - UNESCO World Heritage Cooking? · Jun 27, 12:32 PM by James Martin
Lots of folks think there are way too many World Heritage Sites. So, UNESCO has added a new category that’s not a place. It’s called “intangible heritage” and Italian Senators are pushing for the inclusion of The Mediterranean Diet into this category.
“The Mediterranean diet is a heritage that should be protected and shared,” said the presenter of the motion, ex-farm minister Paolo De Castro. ~ Med diet bids for heritage spot
Yes, I so agree. But I’m not optimistic.
Food, make that “good food,” comes from the soul. Industrial crap food doesn’t. Spending lots of government money applying and nurturing a proposal, even if it becomes something, is unlikely to change the flow of nutrition toward cheap, easily obtained, mass-produced, sugar and salt loaded industrial food as wages head ever lower.
You can declare Ravenna a World Heritage Site and have a reasonable chance of keeping the Bulldozers away from buildings containing ancient mosaics—but what do you do to keep alive a notion of good, healthy, natural food?
Remember that the answer has to take into account the work to prepare, shop, and remember traditions and recipes. You wanna know how Italians have done it over the years? Mom did it, or maybe grandma. If she wasn’t living with you, she brought stuff over. If she was living with you, she sat in the corner and nibbled bread dipped in a little sauce while the family ate a three course meal with homemade pasta.
Good luck preserving that.
It’s not like you can legislate grandmas to cook while the family wolfs down real food, to keep them off fried Mars Bars and Coca-Cola for supper.
“This is your intangible heritage I set before you. Take and eat!”
On the other hand, I’m hoping that ever increasing fuel prices will make the onslaught of Industrial food begin to collapse. There’s only profit in crap if the company producing it can get it to you cheap. Otherwise, that great stuff growing in the back yard beats it all to hell in every way.
Italy in Trouble for Pure Chocolate · Jun 26, 06:42 PM by James Martin
Is the EC the new Monsanto?
The ‘pure chocolate’ label provided by italian laws for cocoa butter based products makes consumers perceive chocolate made with ingredients other than cocoa butter as inferior.
I don’t know about you, but I’m sick and tired of governmental agencies or big corporations telling me how I might perceive the notion of a product I’m putting in my mouth being devoid of crap put there for the express purpose of increasing profits at the expense of flavor.
I like the fact that Italian laws don’t allow just any kind of sludge to be put into chocolate. Besides, I’ve heard there aren’t enough vegetables in the world to be squeezing the oil out of them in order to water down my afternoon treat.
Read ‘em and weep:
AGI News: Italy Deferred for Chocolate Label
Guido Veloce: Hurray for (Monsanto) Steroids!
Fun With Friars · Jun 26, 09:14 AM by James Martin
When you’re from America’s Midwest, you tend to think of the religious devout as dour Puritans who’ve given up everything fun and exciting and are so bitter about it they want everyone else to jump in the same boat or die a slow, lingering death after writhing in pain in a pit filled with vipers.
That’s why I like the story of Brother Cesare Bonizzi and his band, Fratello Metallo.
An Italian Capuchin friar is gearing up to take the stage at the most important festival on the country’s heavy metal calendar in Bologna this weekend.
So, I’ll say what I always say when I’m looking at something in a market window in Italy: “Why don’t we have this?”
I can say it about lardo, of course, and also about a religious man who “twirls the end of the rope around his waist as he belts out heavy metal numbers.”
Ah, to be in Bologna’s Piazza Maggiore sipping prosecco in the cool of an evening while listening to the ethereal voice of a holy man belting out odes to Bacchus and to Mary and to all the other touchstones that would unite us if we’d let them.
Read: Friar to open heavy metal concert
Dante Alighieri, Come on Home! · Jun 17, 10:45 AM by James Martin
(Picture: Dante’s Tomb in Ravenna.)
In a rather nonsensical political move, the city council of Florence has approved a motion calling on the mayor to organize ‘‘a public rehabilitation’‘ of the author of the Divine Comedy, according to Anza.
So, what are they gonna do, drag ol’ Dante out of his tomb in Ravenna (shown above) and cane his sorry, wrinkled ass? Are they going to make him write nice things about rich politicians and how they’re bound to end up in the third level of Paradiso where all the expired and bodacious-boobed porn stars are known to hang out without aging?
Presenting the motion, centre-right politicians called it ‘‘a decisive step towards Dante’s complete rehabilitation’‘.
So, what do you think these guys are on, anyway?
Of course, there may be a method to their madness. You’ve heard that residents of a Romanian village recently voted in a dead man as their mayor, since the live one wasn’t much to talk about. Wouldn’t it be nice to have Dante as your mayor? The tourists would go nuts trying to get an 85 Euro visitation ticket to see the guy. The city could use the money for a Dante Alighieri Amusement Park with death-defying rides to the various levels of hell, each featuring a fast-food restaurant and free “food”. Winner is the one that doesn’t need the Dante Alighieri Barf Bag of Paradise.
Yes, ladies and gents, Florence could be a fun destination once again.
Wandering Italy urges a yes vote on this proposition.
Garbage in Italy · Jun 15, 06:16 PM by James Martin
Garbage is a problem all over the world. It’s quite hard to escape making garbage. Every time I buy some small item I need for the computer or digital camera, say a memory card, and even though I buy it mail order, it comes swathed in an absolutely enormous armored shield of heavy-grade plastic you need a chainsaw to rip through. Why is that?
But here’s the real question, which region of Italy produces the most refuse?
Ok, you can’t guess, can you? It’s Tuscany. According to Refusing To Go Away, Tuscany produces a staggering “704 kg per person per year” of crap that needs to get thrown away. At 2.2 kg per pound, thats…wait a minute…oh hell, I need more memory in my computer. It’s more than Rush Limbaugh and his cigar humidor combined, that’s all you need to know.
And that’s a lot of garbage.
(And don’t you Americani go away from this lookin’ all smug. Each of us produced on average 763 kg of solid waste in 2006, according to the figures from the EPA and equalized to kgs by yours truly on the back of an envelope.)
Bedtime for Unicorns · Jun 11, 05:11 PM by James Martin
What little I remember from childhood can probably be written on the head of a pin.
There are two things I remember succinctly:
1. Hating “bedtime.” All little boys males hate it. You argue with your mom, “But I’m not tired!”
Mom always replied, “tired has nothing to do with it. Look at the clock.”
(Then you get married. Lather, rinse, and most of all repeat the above. Ad nauseum. “Honey, it’s bedtime! Look at the clock!”)
One wonders how The Creator could have gotten the signals so wrong. And how could Adam and Eve lived without the mechanical ticking monster?
Finally:
2. Little girls universally like unicorns, a mythical creature at best.
So the news. There’s been a unicorn not only seen by reasonably lucid people in Italy, but photographed.
A roe deer with a single, pointy horn in the middle of its forehead was born in captivity over at the Center of Natural Sciences in Prato, near Florence. ~ ‘Unicorn’ born in captivity
Well then.
