How Do You Say Privacy in Italian? · Jul 12, 06:23 PM by James Martin
There is something Italians seem to always do when they enter a restaurant. Most of the time they’ll look around a bit, then take the table nearest other Italians. It’s not unusual to see a restaurant with 5 tables filled out of 30, and they’re all stuffed into the same corner.
How tables at a restaurant are populated by Italians is in direct opposition to the course taken by Americans, who will look for the biggest amount of open space they can find and choose a table smack in the middle of it.
Face it, we seem to need “privacy” at every moment of our lives, in private and in public.
Here’s the thing: you might be surprised to know that there is no word for “privacy” in Italian, according to cross-cultural guru Elizabeth Abbot.
Even from what I’ve observed in Italy, that revelation sort of stunned me. So I checked. Yes, The Italian Institute for Privacy is really Instituto Italiano Privacy.
And the Instituto is new.
Much of Italian life takes place in the public sphere, where “privacy” isn’t what you came for. Cafes, restaurants, and other Italian institutions facilitate interaction. Sure you can make coffee at home, but it won’t—or really can’t—taste better than the cup you get standing at a cafe surrounded by your friends and neighbors.
When I was living in Sedilo, Sardinia, I looked out at the landscape outside of town and asked someone why there weren’t houses built to exploit this natural beauty and the privacy that would come from houses set apart from each other.
“But there’s no one out here! I’d be afraid to live out here! Everybody would!” came the reply.
In some ways, this is one of the big reasons I like the European life. While there is certainly a whole lot of distrust of “the other” in Italian society, there is also the inherent belief that if enough people are around, the majority of them will be decent enough to help someone who might need it. It’s about balance. It’s also about recognizing the common good that can be achieved without nasty government intervention.
So you can walk in a big city ‘round midnight by following the glow of light from the bars and cafes where good people, no doubt, will be sitting outside, nursing a glass of wine. You don’t worry (excessively) about the couple of thuggery-looking kids on the corner because people have an eye out, and most petty thugs just don’t like a big audience.
There’s a lot going on in the example above—but in some ways it points out the differences between attitudes in the US and Europe. In the US, bars are bad, because the only people who frequent them want to drink to excess and then either drive home or kill someone by other means. So, the supply of bars that families or other “good people” can go to becomes limited, and the prophesy becomes self-fulfilling.
In Italy you can get a sandwich, coffee or an ice cream in most bars. Families go there. And where good people congregate, bad things are certainly less likely to happen.
Perhaps the problem is that the English word “privacy” has come to be applied to all conditions. We want privacy from our neighbors, from strangers, from the government and from institutions. From everybody under all conditions. (People ask me, “where is the best place to go in Europe?” When I ask them their preferences so that I may answer the question logically and personally, they usually take this to be an invasion of privacy and never write back.)
Italians, on the other hand, have already taken the time to erect huge barriers between themselves and Government. This construction wasn’t about “privacy”, it was about distrust of agents most likely to harm them in a big way if too much became known about them. It was simply “the way things are done and will always be done.”
And there’s a little bit of frontier justice to it all. In Italy the tax man carries a gun. There is probably need to do so.
(I have an Italian checking account. There are lines I’m supposed to fill in on the checks I don’t understand. You see, I don’t ever write checks because no one takes them. Paper trail? Bad.)
Despite the loss of personal freedom that comes with social responsibility, I like the Italian way. Privacy should be the barrier between you and the government that you have responsibility as a good citizen to distrust. It should also be the barrier between you and the big businesses who finance and benefit from the illicit corporate state.
I figure the latter is the growing problem that made Italians go fishing for a word to use. It’s that globalization thing.
Excess Baggage · May 27, 04:01 PM by James Martin
I’m telling you, it’s culture shock all over again.
I’ve only been back in California two days and already I’m pining away for Italy. No, it’s nothing romantic—it’s about bagging groceries.
You see, in Italy, when you go to a supermarket and load your stuff onto the moving belt, the scanner babe goes and scans things just like they do in the US. Ok, I shouldn’t have said “scanner babe.” How sexist. Better to call her “the checker.”
Then the “checker” pushes everything down into one or two holding areas, where you—yes, you the consumer—bag it yourself.
And you better have your own bag, or they’ll charge you.
Why do I like these subservient acts of baggage? Well, for one thing I don’t have to yell at the bagger boy for using 17 bags when I’ve only bought 15 items. No, the triple-plastic-wrapped soap that I will need a chain saw to open is not likely to poison the chicken. Well, not in my lifetime anyway.
Of course, the chicken is also poison and needs its own bag. But it’s a different kind of poison. So the bagger boy puts the chicken in a bag into another bag. Sure, chickens in the US have the toxicity of nuclear waste thanks to the government’s idea that regulating chicken processing is purest evil, but even two bags are unlikely to ward off the health problems we imagine we’re saving ourselves from, right? “Yes,” sayeth the government gleefully, “cook your 3 pound bird for 7 hours in a 450 degree oven, then remove and use for a doorstop—and you will have no health problems at all from your standard-issue industrial chicken.”
Anyway, I like just throwing everything in a big, old sack and walking away knowing that I’ve saved landfills from the scourge of excess baggage. And I’ve just come back from Naples and Campania, so I’m, you know, sensitive about that sorta thing.
But really, the thing is—I just hate having to carry those 15 bags to the car. It looks goofy. The figura isn’t bella, if you catch my drift.
The Last, Bittersweet Gelato in Aulla · May 20, 09:41 AM by James Martin
Today we paid the internet bill. High speed internet, just a dream when we bought the house in the Lunigiana, is not only a reality now, but one that truly does make a travel writer’s life a whole lot easier.
Unfortunately, we stopped in Aulla for our final gelato before buttoning up the house and heading for California via the Rhone Valley of France tomorrow morning. I had the “new” flavor that’s hit the streets, the chocolate fondente, a bittersweet chocolate. It fit the mood.
One of the last things to do was have lunch with an expat at C’era Una Volta on the outskirts of Aulla. €12 for the worker’s lunch. The Amatriciana was full of that Mediterranean pork flavor that you don’t get with “the other white meat” that’s had the flavor wrung out of it in America. The bollito di manzo was far better than the one I had in Bologna, the capital of cucina Italiana, or so they claim.
I’m gonna miss this place.
Eating Local in the Lunigiana · May 10, 02:48 AM by James Martin
As an American who grew up in the fertile Midwest and now resides in alternate three month periods on the west coast and in the Lunigiana region of Italy, I am often quite amazed at the degree to which Italians eat local foods, especially here in the Lunigiana.
We had dinner with our Italian neighbors last night. There were nine of us. When we entered the dining room, we noticed two huge cups of the type you might expect to win if you were the owner of a major sporting organization—except the larger one had a little pig on the platform that held up the whole structure, which included two half-naked babes intertwined to elevate lasciviously a cup that would have held the salad for all nine of us.
What did Armando and Francesca do to win such enormous monuments to perfection?
Salami.
Yes, they not only won a prestigious contest for their salami, they came in second as well.
So we sat down for dinner. Out comes a big pot of polenta. Who’s polenta? Alcedes. He’s sitting across from me and lives in the apartment adjacent to us.
The hunter that brought down the cingiale, or wild bore that makes up the topping for the polenta isn’t at the table, but everyone knows him.
For desert we have salami from the king of queen of salami, but it’s chocolate salami, so you don’t have to gag at the thought of ground and spiced pig for dessert. Then there’s the homemade mirto, or mirtleberry liquor, made by Angelo, the Napoleatano on my right, whose wife was born in Sardinia, where mirto is one of the most popular liquors.
At dinner everyone complains about the bees that have taken to swarming the village. They make the DOP Lunigiana honey we eat with our yogurt at breakfast.
They also complain about the water. Every once in a while it runs reddish brown. Then folks start taking out their cell phones. Alcedes has a picture of the brown water flowing like wine in the kitchen sink. Angelo tops him with a movie (with sound) on his cell phone, documenting the number of minutes the rusty water runs into the bathroom basin before it clears. There will be a revolt soon, I figure. It is claimed (I think; by this time the wine was severely interfering with my limited Italian) that some folks have refused to pay for water.
Eating local. Eating sausage fatto a casa. Sometimes I don’t think life can get any better, even considering the occasional spurt of brown water.
Then we start talking about Berlusconi and Bush.
Beautiful Baldness and Bizzare Foods - Horrors to Try · May 9, 12:29 AM by James Martin
Michelle over at Bleeding Espresso confesses--
Do you know the television show Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern? We love it, and I may or may not have a secret crush on the host.
This confirms a thought bubble that had dropped in on me unannounced a few times as a youth losing his hair: You can’t just depend upon baldness to make you desirable, you have to have one other distinguishing characteristic.
Like you eat fried hamsters on television, for one.
I have to confess I’ve eaten Sardinian Maggot Cheese, pecorino con vermini, on countless occasions. Not to mention the other things Americans think of as odd foods because the animal is cute, or jumps for a living, like rabbit or frog for example.
I’m not sure why a considerable percentage of the population will only consider ugly animals as good to eat. It sure wasn’t drilled into my head. Then again, not a whole lot of useful information has remained there over the years either.
But I digress. Here’s the thing: Michelle gives us a list of Calabrian dishes that you probably don’t get at your local eatery. This is great stuff. The first on the list is:
u suzzu: random pig parts (tongue, lungs, heart, stomach, etc.) in gelatin with peperoncino and vinegar. I like my gelatin in Jell-O thankyouverymuch.
I learned in the fifth grade that gelatin was (back then at least) made with ground up horses hooves. Mr. Schmidt wouldn’t lie to us, I’m sure. Why would a ton of sugar mixed with some ground up horses hooves be though of as comfort food when the tongue of a pig is revolting to the standard sensibilities of a proud and noble people is beyond me.
I mean, think of how the pig feels. He can’t convey his pathos, of course, because Calabrians are eating pig tongues like they’re going out of style…
(And if you haven’t had the stuffed pigs feet at Au Pied a Cochon in Paris, you haven’t lived.)
In any case, I now have the urge to go to Calabria and taste all these things on Michelle’s Calabrian Food List
Maybe in the fall. You coming?
—-
Footnote: Here’s an idea for foods you might not think you like: cover them with every kind of pepper you can think off, especially the hot ones: Pampanella. Actually, the pictures make this molise dish look quite scrumptious. I want some.
It's Always About the Food · May 8, 01:02 PM by James Martin
I dropped my mom off at Linate airport yesterday. We had a nice visit. I don’t know what it is, but being surrounded by women for 10 days or so has brought the “macho me” to the surface. I found myself writing about guys weekends, as if I could singlehandedly stem the tide of girlie vacations currently bombarding the market. There’s nothing like a group tour for those long, solitary walks on the beach.
Ok, so it’s not just that the bathroom in our humble abode was unavailable for hours on end. Nor was it the incessant shopping for trinkets we had to do. The problem must have run deeper.
After we dropped mom off at the airport, we went to the town of Soragna to visit the Rocca Meli Lupi. That’s a castle. Lots of towns in Italy have them.
The Rocca Meli Lupi is near the birthplace of Giuseppe Verdi. Much of what’s inside is from the Baroque period. I found myself looking at the portraits of folks who sported those curly wigs 17th century French men weren’t ashamed of wearing but should have been, and couldn’t help thinking, “who in his right mind would have though that was attractive?”
Thankfully, the thing that got me out of my macho funk was lunch at the Bar-Trattoria Al Voltone in Soragna. We got there just after noon. The place was filling up. 10 minutes later they were turning people away.
I ordered the tagliarini with sausage and cream. Yes, you heard that right: sausage and cream. When it came to the table it looked as heart-clotting hideous as it sounds. You’d probably recognize the sauce as something you might have left in the neighbor’s hedgerow after a bender.
But it was good. Extraordinarily good. And it was something your mother wouldn’t ever recommend you order in a restaurant. Maybe it was just the thing I needed to turn me around. In fact it was. I feel like a new man now.
Shoe shopping anyone? I saw some nice pumps in Busseto…
Italian Speed Traps and Those Clever Chinese · May 8, 12:19 AM by James Martin
The Italian countryside is clotted with boxes that gleefully photograph your “speeding” car and its license plates. By “speeding” I mean going over the ridiculously low speed limits imposed these days on Italian country roads. There are also two systems that automatically ticket drivers on the autostrada.
There are some low-tech ways to try to obscure your license plates in order to avoid detection (the shame!). But as far as I know there are no clever ways to avoid detection.
Until now.
It is the Chinese—a country of people hungry for innovation and wealth without large, industrial companies out to stifle either—who have found a clever answer.
Speeding drivers in south China are getting clear away thanks to machines which switch the numbers on their license plates in seconds, state media said on Tuesday. (Reuters)
What’s next for the Chinese, hurdles that disappear when a Chinese Olympic contestant jumps them? I can’t wait to see what they come up with…
Chioggia - and Why I like It · May 5, 01:45 AM by James Martin
I don’t know what’s wrong with me. The problem is that I can’t get with the program by learning to love places everyone agrees are fabulous.
I usually meander through a town while asking myself the question “would I want to live here?” I did that recently on a short trip to Venice. The answer was “not on your life.” It was a holiday weekend, so maybe the crush of tourists was the reason I recoiled from the thought of putting down roots in the sinking city. After all, frustrated residents couldn’t go about their business. Narrow alleyways were clotted with tourists in shorts and tee shirts with obnoxious messages printed on them, all looking for something glistening, something golden…
Yet upon waking up in nearby Chioggia early on a weekday morning, grabbing a coffee and heading off to the vaunted fish market to see the glistening, absolutely-fresh-off-the-boat seafood, I was left muttering to myself like one of those apparently demented people who can’t walk the street without talking to someone on a hidden cell phone, “dang, I really, really want to live here.”
Chioggia is rapidly becoming a tourist town, but there remains a vestige of real life that’s compelling to me. That’s why I’d consider renting an apartment and staying a while on my vacation. I could still take a trip into Venice. It’s obligatory. But then I could imagine also the prospects of a seafood feast that starts with negotiating for the best fish at the best price with an expert fishmonger. Heaven, like red mullets, doesn’t have to be far away as you think.
Need convincing that I’m stark, raving mad? See my Chioggia Fish Market Pictures
Hairspray - The Italian Edition · Apr 30, 08:16 AM by James Martin
50 years ago most Italian farm houses didn’t have indoor plumbing, I’m told. Now, most of them are Bed and Breakfasts or Agriturismi. Lots of things have changed in 50 years. Can you think of something that hasn’t?
I can. It’s the nauseating, fetid and malodorous stench of hairspray.
Yes, my mother is visiting. How did you guess?
Here’s a tip for those of you with mothers. Have them visit you in a month in which the weather is good enough for you to stand without shivering in front of a wide open pair of shutters leading to a garden loaded with flowers that give off a sweet perfume. This month is not April.
I mean, I can’t believe that the egregious stench of hairspray hasn’t been changed one iota in 50 years. I understand why they’ve altered the odor of the gas you cook with. It’s hideous for a reason—you smell a gas leak and it makes you think something is really, really wrong that requires your immediate attention.
But why should a similar noxious odor accompany a product made for the purpose of gluing your hair together in entirely unnatural ways that appeals to folks of a particular age? This is what I don’t understand.
Get inside a car with a woman devoted to the sticky goodness of hairspray and the ensuing process is not unlike the dreaded “endless do-loop” in programming; if you open the car window so you can breath normally, then her hair (the “do”) becomes unglued, and there needs to be more hairspray applied, which means the window needs to be opened more or the car driven faster to get more fresh air into it, which necessitates even more hairspray…
But hairspray works wonders along the byways of Italy, Sardinian bus drivers have told us. A generous cloud of the stuff aimed toward the license plates makes them just glossy enough to be difficult to read by those automatic ticketing machines that are popping up alongside Italian roads faster than poppies lately.
Bet you didn’t think I could turn this story back to Italy, did you?
Moncigoli - Sagra di Cigola · Apr 25, 07:02 AM by James Martin
Ok, so today, Liberation Day in Italy, we went out to lunch at the Sagra di Cigola in nearby Moncigoli. On the way back home our neighbors were out on their steps and called us over for some coffee. We told them where we had been.
“But where can you eat in Moncigoli?
“We went to the sagra.”
What sagra?
“Um, I don’t know.”
Then Armondo piped up, “onions!” he bellowed.
“No, that’s not it.”
“Yes, onions!” he repeated.
“I’m pretty sure that’s not it. Ah, I know! Cigola.”
“Onions!” he said.
Well, if you Google long enough, you’ll find that cigola is dialect for a particular kind of red onion found around here, also called Cipolla di Bassone, that is good in Pinzimonio, the other thing being celebrated at the sagra. We, of course, finding all this out after the fact, did not order the Pinzimonio, but admired it from afar, where people munched on all manner of raw vegetables including little red onions called cigola.
Here’s some of the stuff we ordered and took a picture of, an extra step which amused the locals no end:
In the center is chiodo di maiale, a kind of pork sausage cooked on a hot terra cotta plate called a testo. It’s in the picture still sitting on its testo. Our neighbor tells us that this is what you are supposed to eat in November and December when you slaughter your pig, not in springtime. She mimicked gagging just to make sure we understood that this dish is simply not eaten by folks of reasonable intelligence outside of the slaughter season.
Moving on, the dish to the left is something that stumped me when it came to the table. Fave con pancetta e formaggio, Fava beans with pancetta and cheese. I had imagined a steaming bowl of favas flavored with bacon and dusted with cheese. What I got is what you see. This was, after all, a celebration of the raw…
(An interesting side note here: raw favas are especially toxic to a small number of Mediterranean people who suffer favism. Yet they are revered by most around here. Interestingly, if you suffer favism, you are probably immune to malaria. The world is in balance in ways we sometimes don’t recognize.)
On the right you’ll recognize simple bruschetta with tomatoes.
What’s missing is the goat and polenta. Imagine that, and the whole spread you see in your mind cost us €23.
I hope you ate as well as we did. Even considering the out of season chiodo, we didn’t gag a bit.
