All's Well

“It's easier for a rich man to ride that camel through the eye of a needle directly into the Kingdom of Heaven, than for some of us to give up our cell phone.”  ~ Vera Nazarian

Oh, I wish the above statement weren't quite so true, but I have long been and continue to be a slave to the digital world. Just like I have an addiction to coffee, I have an addiction to electronics.  I freely admit I am a technology whore. I need want my iPhone, iPad, MacBook Air.  (I also need want, by the way, cool covers for my little digital toys. I have a white Zagg cover on my iPad right now, and I constantly wish it were lime green or hot pink or floral or something.  But, I digress...)

This morning I was mentioning to Barb (one of the Group Two-ers) that Mike had lost his cell phone a few years ago.

"I've never lost mine," I bragged.  "I have misplaced it in the house several times, but I always call myself."

You know, I should know better than to say stupid things like that. The last time I did—about seven years ago—I said that I have a lead foot and have never had a ticket. Not two days later, I was lead footing my way on I-40 in Nashville and got stopped for going a little too fast to get out of the way of a speeding semi. (The ticket never got recorded, so I never had a problem.  That is quite another story, though, and it's not right for right now. Remind me sometime to tell you how I avoided traffic school, points, and a fine.)

A few hours later, we were at a wonderful hermitage up in the mountains, and I wanted to take a photo of a pool of water that formed from run-off by a mountain stream. It was crystal clear. I could see straight through to the bottom. I took a drink from the stream and reached for my camera which, you have probably surmised, was not there.  I didn't panic immediately.  

Oh, crap. Why lie? My heart started racing, and I opened my purse and yanked everything out.  No phone.  Peppe and I ran back up the hill to the van and looked.  No phone.  I retraced my steps down the hill to the stream.  No phone. Everyone else came up and started looking.  No phone.

"Did you switch with someone?" I think Nancy asked.

"No."

"Did you put it in the back?" someone else asked.

"No."

"Did you do this?"  "That?"  "The other thing?"

"No."  "No."  "No."

I tried not to cry.  Peppe dropped Novelia and everyone else off in Raiano for gelato, and he and I headed back to the last place we had stopped.  I knew I had used the phone in the car before we stopped there to look at photos I had taken at the stop before.  We got behind a Fiat Panda that puttered down the two-lane road, and as soon as he could, he passed.  Onward we hurried until we ended up behind the carabinieri (a type of police) and had to keep the speed in check.  I was trying to be calm, but I was on the verge of tears. I told Peppe about talking to Barb this morning about not having lost the phone before.

"Stupid me," I said. "I cannot live without the phone. I need it in case someone in the groups needs me."

We finally turned onto the street where we had pulled over, and I scanned the street.  I saw nothing but asphalt and stone.  Peppe stopped the van and I got out and looked back to where I was standing.
Nothing.  My heart sank.

"It's not here," I tried not to whine at him. "I have no idea what happened."  I noticed that he was bending down, and the next thing I knew, he had my phone in his hand.

"You found it!" I was ecstatic. "You found it!" I hugged the stuffing out of him.

When we stopped earlier for people to take a photo, I must have had the phone on my lap, and when I got out, it fell without my noticing it.  If you look closely at the photo, you can see that the face of my phone did not fare well.  Someone or ones must have run over it.  But, the darn thing works fine. I just have to be careful because the spider cracks are a little sharp. Until I get home and get a new phone, I'm going to have to either tape the phone or put a screen protector (if I can find one) over it.  But it works.

" Tutto è bene quello che finisce bene. (.All's well that ends well)," Peppe told me as we headed back.

Indeed.

PS... The pork chop was 30 euro. 

I Have My Reasons

Venetian Traffic Jam #1

 "Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go." ~ Truman Capote

If you were to ask me to name the five Italian cities I like best, you would not hear Rome.... nor Florence.... nor Milan... nor Venice.  As a matter of fact, the cities that I like best are probably cities of which you've heard little—or maybe even nothing unless you're of Italian descent.

Please don't get me wrong. By saying that those cities are not my favorites doesn't mean I don't like them (except for maybe Rome), but I don't go out of my way to go to most of them every time I come here. I also won't stay in any of them overnight.   I completely understand the attraction of all of those cities I mentioned.  Rome has the history. Florence has the art. Milan has the fashion. And, Venice has the intrigue.


What bothers me about all of those cities and more is the fact that they have become caricatures of themselves because of the tourists that flock there and how the cities have responded to those hordes. Since we visited Venice yesterday, let me explain using it as an example.

Venetian Traffic Jam #2

Venice is not a large city, and more than 60,000 people visit it daily.  Daily, not weekly or monthly.  60,000 people daily.  As more tourists flock to the city, more of its citizens move away.  Once a city of more than 150,000 residents, Venice today has fewer than 60,000.  Increasing numbers of cruise ships come into the port—sometimes four or five a day—and do more damage than good. But how is it possible, you may ask, that tourists who spend money can damage to a city?  Good question.

 Look first at the environmental impact that the cruise ships alone have on Venice.  In the first place, the ships contribute to air and water pollution just by their nature. Moreover, the strong tides they produce contribute to the erosion of the city's buildings' foundations. 

Moreover, the influx of tourists causes the prices for everything from coffee to condominiums to be outrageous. At some point in the day, tourists need to eat, and restaurants can charge exorbitant prices for mediocre meals because they have a captive audience.

My pork cutlet and roasted potatoes

Take, for example, the meal I had yesterday while my group was touring the Doge's Palace.  I ordered a pork cutlet, roast potatoes, and a glass of Coke Light. The chop looks to be a decent size, but it was very thin, and the bone, fat, and gristle took up about 1/3 of it.  The only lettuce on the plate was what you see. There was more lemon than lettuce, and my Coke was about the size of a can. The best thing that i ordered were the potatoes, and they were the right size for a side dish.

 Would anyone like to guess what I paid for that lovely meal?  I'll tell you tomorrow if anyone wants to try. By the way, don't forget to add in the espresso that I had after the meal.... And I got free wifi while I was there.

3.5 curo for a can of Coke Light & three ice cubes

On my way to the lagoon after lunch, I passed store-after-store that sold Venetian souvenirs, many of which I can find in kiosks at the outlet malls in Las Vegas because they came from PRC, not Venice. It's sad.

My sadness extends to the gondola rides.  Once an important part of Venetian culture, today the gondolas are important to many tourists who visit.  For around 35 euro per person (45 if you want the gondolier to sing), you can get yourself into one of them-there gondola thingies and ride it around the canals just like 40,000 other people do every single day.

"Kind of takes the romance out of it, doesn't it?" a woman standing next to me as we stood on the bridge and watched the gondola traffic jam below us. I just shook my head.

The worst thing, though, is that so many tourists have no respect for the history or the culture of the city.  Ed and Jerry, the two guys in this group, told me about a group of idiots who toured the Doge's Palace the same time that they did. They were in a large room in the palace, and the floor bounced a bit. The idiots started jumping up and down to make it move more.  Who in his right mind would jump up and down on a 14th century masterpiece to see what would happen?

Give me Sulmona, Bologna, Ravenna, Pettorano sul Gizio, or Santo Stefano Sessanio any day.  If I want a gaggle of tourists to smother me, I'll go down to the Las Vegas Strip.

Coffee Mugged

Lavazza coffee machine at Bologna Centrale

 “It is inhumane, in my opinion, to force people who have a genuine medical need for coffee to wait in line behind people who apparently view it as some kind of recreational activity.” ~ Dave Barry

I blame Starbucks and my husband for my addiction to coffee.  Seriously.  I didn't start drinking he stuff until we moved to Nashville in 1995, and it was those stupid fake cappuccinos that got me in the beginning. Then Starbucks introduced peppermint mochas, and I was toast.  Not long after that, I started drinking regular coffee with peppermint in it.  Toast, I tell you, although I used to say I liked a little coffee with my cream.

Coming to Italy made the whole thing worse because I fell for the real cappuccinos, and, in the end, espresso.  Black.  No sweetener.  I am not one of those Americans who drinks and Americano or, as the Italians like to call it, "dirty water."



My problem is that I get severe headaches if I do not have coffee in the morning. I know I have a severe caffeine addiction, and instead of trying to alleviate it, I feed it....every morning....

This morning we left for Verona around 7:00, and my favorite bar was not open, so I didn't get a cappuccino.  I thought that I'd be okay, though, because there are Lavazza machines all over the train stations in Italy.  80 (euro) cents gets you coffee, espresso, mokaccino, te, whatever.

My usual morning cappuccino

We got to our platform, and I ran for the machine. In went my money, and I pressed the button for cappuccino.

"Item chosen not available."  I pressed the button for cappuccino a second time.

"Item chosen not available."
I pressed the button for espresso.

"Item chosen not available."

 For mokaccino.

"Item chosen not available."

For espresso lungo and macchiato.

"Item chosen not available," times two.

The machine would not give me my money back, so I finally hit the "tea" button, and the machine kicked into gear.  Okay.  Tea has caffeine.

Of course, the tea in the Lavazza machine was green tea...decaf green tea.

By 9:30, I was starting to feel the effects of withdrawal. I thought Coke Zero would help. Nope. Neither did aspirin.  I finally, around 1:30, had to find a cafe and get an espresso.  Drinking HOT espresso when it's 90+ degrees out is not exactly fun, but it was that or have my head split in two large pieces.  I played real Italian and gulped it down in about 30 seconds.   Bingo!  Within 30 minutes, my nerves were stitching my head back together.

Tomorrow morning we're heading to Venice on the 7:20 train, so we have to leave the apt. by 6:30. Cesar promised he'd be open at 6:00 and that he'd give me a cappuccino in a to-go cup.

I'm ordering a double.

Food, Part Something....

 “The passion of the Italian or the Italian-American population is endless for food and lore and everything about it.” ~ Mario Batali

I swear it's bound to happen sometime, and today was the day for Group #2. They are  finally tired of pasta and pizza. (I tell you, there are a thousand kinds of pasta (and pizza), and everyone has the same ones.

I guess the whole thing started earlier when we went to Ravenna and had lunch at a little café I know from my other times there.  We all had salads or a  piadina (a typical sandwich of the Emilia Romagna region).  A piada is an Italian flatbread, and mine (above) included proscuitto, pancetta, swiss chard, and buffala mozzarella cheese. One of the others had a veggie piadina (zucchini, eggplant, and peppers) on a multigrain piada (photo below).

 "Can we go out to dinner tonight?" one of the group asked me tonight.  We've been eating in most nights, and the monotonous cured meats are getting to us.

"Of course," I agreed. "What are you craving?"

"Meat and potatoes," she said.  That sounded good to me, but finding them is not an easy thing in Bologna.  Luckily, Group #1 and I had tried Regina Margherita last week, and I remembered that they not only served meat, but that the food was good.  And, contrary to most Italian restaurants, they include a small salad, potatoes, and grilled vegetables with the meat dishes.  So, we went.

 Our orders included scaloppina, bistecca, some kind of mixed fish appetizer, and pasta with tuna. The steaks came out first, and I swear that they weighed about a pound each (See the photo.). Both people who ordered them said they were great.  Two of us ordered the scaloppina—one veal and one pork—and both of us loved the dish.  I could have it again tomorrow. Nancy, who ordered fish, said hers was good and offered me a taste of the tuna and pasta.  I shook my head.

"Thanks, but I don't eat any fish."

"It's tuna fish," she chided me. "You ate it growing up all the time."

"Yeh," I responded, "But I got sick on it when I was pregnant, and I haven't had it since.

"Try it. It's been ages since you had Jason."   I realized that, my dear friend, but it won't change my mind.

"Nope," I finally answered.  "I cant deny you your dinner."  I can be so magnanimous when it comes to fish.

As a side note, there was no lasagna on the menu, nor was there tagliatelle bolognese.  The restaurant is Napolitano (from the Naples area), and lasagna and bolognese are dishes from this area. 

Tomorrow, the blog's going to hell in a hand basket.  Stay tuned....

That Vinegar is HOW MUCH??

Our plate... The 25-year vinegar is on the spoon.

 "He wants only to rest and have a little peace." ~Luciano Pavarotti, native son of Modena, Italy

I think Modena must have heard that I'm not to wild about the city and has it out for me. I just do not have good luck with the place.  If you've read the blog, you might remember my story of the dude who tried to grab me or something last year (here). I took the group back there today, and, well, Modena is nothing but trouble.

Long back story short:  I had looked at websites to find out about vinegar and Ferrari tours, and I found the Happy Circle Bus that drives tourists from the train station around the *area* and delivering them to various museums (Ferrari, Pavarotti, Maranello, vinegar factory, vineyard, etc) and back.  The cost, according to the website, was 22.50 euro per person.... Good deal.

We headed to Modena on a short respite day, and grabbed the Ferrari Museum shuttle (a Mercedes van, by the way) that would take us to the Happy Circle (HC) Bus office.  Easy peasy.  HAHAHAHAHA.

Once we got to the office, the gal there told me that she could, indeed, sell us the HC tickets for 60 euro per person. The ticket would be valid 48 hours and would include entry to all of the above plus a few more things. I did not misunderstand her as she repeated it in English.

"The website says it's 22.50 per person with drop-offs at all those places," I told her.

"What website did you use?" she asked me.

I don't know what it is with Italians and licorice.

"I don't know," I replied a little more forcefully that I would have liked to reply. I was hot and upset. "I googled 'Happy Circle Bus,' and whatever site came up is what I used."

"Can you show me?" she asked.  "Was it this?"  She indicated the Ferrari Museum site.  I won't bore you with the entire conversation, but that wasn't the site, and she wasn't budging on the price of the tickets.  We were still discussing this when the HC bus arrived.  "If you want to go, you must get on now or wait another hour," she snapped at me. 

Long story short (again): We were not paying 60 euro per person for a four-hour tour (basically the time we had) when we wanted to see the vinegar and Ferrari things.  The HC bus left without us, and I walked back to her.

"Look," I said to her in Italian, "I am guiding these American tourists here, and I know what I saw on your website. This is not right. I want your card, please. I will send you a link to the site when I get back to Bologna."  I'm not sure what got her, but her attitude suddenly changed.

"If you want a ham, vinegar, and cheese demonstration, you can go to the palazzo in the giardino."   She indicated on a map how to get there, and we left.

The main piazza in Modena

So, we got to the palazzo and found out that they had some appetizer plates.  We tried the prosciutto, two parmesan cheeses (aged 12 and 30  months), tigelle (flatbread), amarena jam,  balsamic vinegar (aged 2 and 25 years), and Lambrusco wine.

"That vinegar is nothing like vinegar at home," my good friend, Nancy said. "There is no way I would drink it at home. I drank it here."

She's right.  Real balsamic vinegar tastes nothing like the balsamic stuff we usually have in the States. The real stuff is fruity and not so acidic that it strips your throat clean.  And, it doesn't come cheap and is definitely not something you  would throw on plain, old lettuce leaves.  A 100 ml bottle of vinegar aged 12 years costs 40 euro. The same-size bottle aged 25 years costs 90 euro.

I haven't bought any.... yet.

Food, Part II

"What the hell is that?" ~ Chris Cutler

 I wrote a perfectly wonderful blog entry yesterday while we were in Firenze, and it disappeared into cyberspace.  Therefore, you are stuck with this one until tonight. Sorry.  I wrote it quickly to make up for the Internet's failures.

I've mentioned that I can quickly tire of pasta, so I try to eat some sort of protein other than cold cured meats every few days.  When we were at the Vatican a few weeks ago, we chose to eat unch a self-serve restaurant close to Vatican City.  The food looked pretty good, and while I usually think of self-service as a place where I get the food I want myself, this was a place where you looked at the food in a case, said, "Che é? (What is it?)," and ordered.

I immediately ordered a caprese salad (above left), and saw a sign reading, "Salccicia e patate al forno" over a covered hot roaster.  One of my favorite things! Sausage and roast potatoes. Two of us ordered it, and the guy who sloshed the grub onto our plates practically threw them at us before turning to the person behind me and saying, "Next-a."

If you look at the photo of the food above, it might not look too bad to you, but the sausage I was expecting was Italian sausage, not what we got.  Bologna in a casing (aka hot dogs) may fall under the category of sausage in some books, but let's get real. It's a hot dog.  Würstel. Sausage. HOT DOG.
I wager the guy thought, "Stupid Brits won't know the difference" before he threw the wieners on the plates. (You may remember that people here always ask if I'm British.")

No, don't get me wrong. I like hot dogs once in a while, but not when I'm in Rome and especially not when I have my heart set on sausage and *especially* when I don't have ketchup, mustard, and pickles for it. I ate the equivalent of one (There were three and a half cut up on the plate.) and left the rest.

Here's my big "TIP O' THE DAY:" Don't buy sausage and roast potatoes anywhere near Vatican City.  Don't. Just don't.

What A Bloody Mess....Al

Alessandro pointing out something in Piazza Maggiore today

 “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.”   ~ Dr. Seuss

"I tell you, Alessandro," I said to my friend today, "every time I take a tour with you, I learn something I didn't know before."

"That is a good thing, right?" he answered.

I first met Alessandro Guidi last summer when he conducted a tour for CulturaItaliana, the school where I studied Italian. He took us on two tours that covered a few of the places I'd already been, but he showed us—and explained to us—much more than what other guides had.  I knew, then, that I had to have him introduce my groups to Bologna.

The porticoes in the Archiginnasio

One of my favorite places is the Archiginnasio, the first and former main building of the University of Bologna. No longer a part of the university campus, it now houses the Archiginnasio Municipal Library and the Anatomical Theater.  (SAY WHAT??)

 Let me step back one second and explain that the University of Bologna is the oldest university in Europe, and there is a lot of thought that it is the oldest in the world. Prior to the building of the Archiginnasio, students and teachers held classes in homes or churches.  Because Bologna was part of the Papal States at the time, the Church was concerned about what and how the instructors were teaching. What better way to control all that than by building a place for them to hold classes?

Coats of Arms

Pope Pius IV commanded construction of the building in the 16th century, and it took just one year for the Bolognese to complete the 140-meter structure.  Contained in it were the School of Law and the School of the Arts (which included everything but law).  There are two levels to the building, the lower one containing an inner courtyard while the upper one contains the classrooms and library.  Allied bombs destroyed parts of the building during WW II, but artisans were able to restore most of it using old photos and paintings.

Apollo in the Anatomical Theater ceiling

Coats of arms line all of the walls in the courtyard and upper hallways.  Former students and professors put them there to commemorate themselves.  (You can see them in a few of the photos.)  The big draw, however, is the Anatomical Theater.

Unlike most of the rooms in buildings in Bologna, the anatomical theater is wood.  The statues, the seating, the ceiling, and the floor are all wood.  Apollo is front and center in the ceiling, and other lesser gods surround him.  Statues of famous physicians such as Hippocrates (below) line the walls.  The marble dissection table was in the middle of the theater, and students sat on wooden benches around the room. The head professor taught from a lectern, and his assistants did the cutting and such. 

"This cutting table is not the real one," Alessandro tells each group.  "Marble absorbs liquids, like blood, so that would not be good to show visitors."

"Do they still have the original?" I asked him today.

"Yes," he replied. "It's at the university, and it's pretty gross."

I bet.  Gag.

Hippocrates

The most interesting thing to me about the whole theater, though, is that there is a "secret window" in the room. It's near the ceiling on the wall opposite the lectern.  Anyone glancing at it would think it is just a framed saying posted in that spot.  Look harder, though, and you can see the split in the center where the panel slides apart.  Remember I said that the Church wanted to control the instructors and what they were teaching? What better way than to have a secret window from which a sneaky cleric could poke his head out to catch someone saying or doing the wrong thing.

(SIDE NOTE: That brings to mind, by the way, my high school biology teacher, Sr. Barbara, OSU [May God rest her wacky soul.]  One morning, Sister was not in class when the bell range, and most people in the class sat and talked to someone nearby while we waited...and waited... Finally, about 10 minutes into the class, Sister jumped up from behind her desk [It was one of those big lab desks that was at least waist high.]  "AH, HA!!" she shouted.  "I CAUGHT YOU ALL TALKING."  She then ran to the windows and started asking the birds if they wanted to learn because her students were too busy talking.)

I can't imagine one of the spies running to the windows, but I do have visions of a beady-eyed Franciscan quietly opening the window and slowly poking his nose, cheeks, eyes, and finally head out of the window. Did the professor stumble over words? Did the students straighten up? Did anyone even care?


Today's students would probably hit him with a high-flying book.  When I was in high school and college, I would have been too afraid to try anything, but today I might just take out a pea shooter and bean him.