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Italy in Winter: Syracuse

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Winter is an amazing time to visit Italy, especially to the places that are lower down the tourist must-see list. Here is the first in my series of photo posts from winter trips we’ve done in Italy, when everything can feel more local, more authentic, more glowing and even sometimes more freezing than you might expect.

This week I was working on a translation a website for a hotel in Sicily (“a magical place where you can dive deep into a world of myth” etc etc). One section of text was about Syracuse and I remembered the golden afternoon we spent in that beautiful city a few years ago. It was October which is, fair enough, not quite winter but the sun had that autumnal, almost-winter luminescence. I dug out the photos from our trip and here they are.

Syracuse – or Siracusa. Yes there is a city of the same name in New York state but this one in Sicily is that bit grander. It was founded by the Greeks on the east coast of Sicily and it was actually the capital of Italian Greece (Magna Grecia) for quite a while and at one point was the same size as Athens! A few notable people were born there, like Archimedes (yes, that one) and Santa Lucia/St Lucy who died here around 300 AD in a horrible way: suffice to say she’s the patron saint of eyesight. In fact December 13th, Lucia’s feast day, is celebrated in Syracuse in great style and indeed in many parts of northern Europe too – not least Norway and Sweden. I once found myself celebrating the day while processing with a bunch of Swedish women and girls in white robes in the Florence branch of Ikea, one of the stranger experiences of my life.

I have to admit I didn’t know much of all this history when we visited, I was just absorbing the atmosphere and keeping small people from having tantrums. And now, after living for two years in Tuscany, I’d happily go back and appreciate it better, compare it to the other places I’ve come to know; like many other Italian city centres it’s a UNESCO world heritage site. And I would taste the flavours of the food more carefully (almonds, pistachio, citrus, seafood) and pay closer attention to the dialect.

The historic core is on an island called Ortigia and the centrepiece is the fabulous Duomo (cathedral) and its surrounding area.

The beautiful cathedral is most interesting in its details

And for its history. It was built on a Roman temple to Minerva, acted as a mosque for 200 years – during the fascinating Arab period in Sicilian history – and the Baroque form you see it in today is due to its being rebuilt during the early 18th century after yet another earthquake.

The piazza really is at the heart of Syracuse.

 

This fountain of Diana is worth a visit, it’s early 20th century and nicely modern.

Not unlike Venice, this intriguing city is full of alleyways, strange facades, curious faces.

Golden streets, tobacco shops, lotto-playing dogs? Yes, this could be anywhere in Italy.


We found this amazing sunken garden off the beaten track, on the mainland before you reach the main historic core of Ortigia. Part of the huge archaeological park that’s centred around the 5th century BC Greek theatre, this bit is off to the back and casually called the Latomia del Paradiso, or Quarry of Paradise. This is where the stone to build the city came from and other, later purposes for such a unique space included gladiator bouts, horse races, ox sacrifices and in 413 BC (yes, BC) it housed the 7,000 prisoners of war from the Syracuse-Athens war.   

Like many other experiences in Italy, magical moments are made when you find yourself wandering around a vast, incredibly ancient, barely-signposted or even safety-controlled space. The sharp-eyed man at the ticket office was chatty, warning the girls to put on some mosquito repellent, as if we were heading down, down into a Roald Dahl story.

Some old helmets were conveniently left lying around the stage – last used, who knows when? No-one else was around so we got to try them out, as well as the fabulous acoustics from this modern stage.

In terms of family memories from our day in Syracuse – highlights were the three separate trips to the souvenir shop to replace the snow globe that kept falling on the ground, discovering octopus in the risotto, more gelato, and popping into a pharmacy to get antihistamine for insect bites.

But that’s the great thing about taking lots of photos – you can always conjure up the ideal family day out in hindsight.

Two girls in a tree

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Two old friends climb a tree in an Oslo wood. They’re only 8 years old but these girls are fierce; in their minds anything is possible.

They haven’t seen each since two years ago, when we moved away from Norway to Italy. My girl has moulded herself into a new life and a new language. She has mostly forgotten how to speak Norwegian but she remembers her life here and her best friend from the nature kindergarten that got them out in the woods (and up trees) several times a week, all year round.

They have often talked about each other during the two years, which is a long time at this age: “Mummy when are we going back to Oslo and when can I see her and overnight and watch films on their big screen in the basement?”

And on this visit, (only our second since we left), they’ll see each other. The two mums have made a plan to spend a few hours out in the woods around Oslo, a huge element of Norwegian life that our whole family has missed.

It’s October and the sky is clear but also crisp, so we remember to bring hats and scarves but we don’t need boots. There are big grins and hugs as they see each other in person – a little taller, two years of school behind them but otherwise they’re no different.

We drive a short distance. The car doors open and like a pair of retrievers they jump out and bound off into the woods, just as they were trained to do. Within two minutes, when the rest of us get out, we’ve lost them.

We find them again, yapping away in some language between Norwegian and English. They’ve found part of a swinging rope dangling off a tree at the lake edge. My Norwegian-mother-mode kicks in, overriding my Irish-mother-mode (and well past the nervous Italian-mode that never really took hold) and I stop myself from telling them to “be careful!… forskitig!” They’ve done this more than I have, they’ll know what to do.

Moving countries and travelling with children, I’ve seen many times how children can settle quickly into a mode of play even when they can’t speak to each other.

This Norwegian friend has been learning some English – from travelling with her parents and from school – and it’s fun for her to have a friend she can speak it with.

And my girl? Who lived here from birth until six, who spoke Norwegian every day and yet is today puzzled when I use regular family words like barnehage (kindergarten) or even pølse (hotdog)?

I know her Norwegian is lodged deep inside that powerful little brain – the powers of communication, the memories and associations and feelings that come with speaking certain words, phrasing things in a particular way. When she does say something she remembers – like the phrasebook-like question she pulled out of thin air to impress the passport officer at the airport yesterday, hvem spiser brød? (who eats bread?) – even then, she says it with that perfect pronunciation I never managed after seven years living in this country.

Here up in the tree, she responds to her friend with any scraps of Norwegian that come out – some fundamental phrases like se her (look here) or nei, ikke sånn (no, not like that). But she’s also using English words, and she’s actually doing something I’ve never seen before, something remarkable. She’s speaking English to her really slowly and carefully, like an older person might use with a little child who they think understands no English. “Can… we… go… over… there…and… try… that?” and “This…bit…here…look”.

Where did she get this from? I don’t think she’s ever seen me speak like that to someone on our travels. Did her teachers in Italy speak to her like that after we had just moved there, in a way to help her clearly hear the words? I think not, as they were fast talkers.

By slowing down her English speech, it’s as if a part of her subconscious has kicked in to rationalise and slow down her words, to watch carefully her friend’s face and make sure her point gets across, when the Norwegian words have failed her.

The swing no longer provides amusement – they can’t agree on who does what – and we move on to a treehouse a local kindergarten has made in another part of the forest. Within another hour it’s starting to get darker and colder and we have to say goodbye. But just that small amount of time, and inventive communication, has been sufficient to add a little more glue to this long-distance friendship. That’s good enough for now.

 

 

 

 

That really wasn’t boring – visiting Florence’s museums with kids

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I’ve been writing a monthly column about family life in Florence with tips on making the most of the whole city, not just the obvious attractions.

For the English-language Florentine magazine I was asked to give tips on how we navigate the amazing artistic treasures of the city – amazing but still dusty, old and (let’s face it) boring. I could write a whole book on the subject, and maybe I will, but this is quick starter in less than 600 words.

Some of my tips:

Ask questions

Why does David’s hand look so big? Why do you think this picture is so famous? Is that woman laughing or crying? Why did he paint that snake like that? You will be amazed at what they’ll come out with, and that’s what they will remember. 

Patterns and symbols 

Look for key historic and religious symbols. If you read up on some of the commonly-depicted saints, your tougher-skinned kids might enjoy spotting the torture devices that usually accompany them. 

Read the full story and ideas on the best museums in the October issue of The Florentine.

Penny Farthings

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The Penny Farthing – named after the two coins, one being bigger than the other. These bikes were the speed demons of their time – the 1870s and 80s. Men (mostly) used to whizz around country roads, often keeping their legs over the handlebars so they could fall off more effectively. They were properly known as “ordinaries”, to distinguish them from the “bone shakers” that came before and from the new “safety” bikes that came after them, the ones with rubber tyres and brakes which became modern standard bikes.

This little charmer now sits along the Drumcondra Road on the northside. I passed it a week later and it was facing the other way – that’s just mild vandalism for #Dublin.

Rollerblading in Florence

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I’ve been writing a monthly column about family life in Florence with tips on making the most of the whole city, not just the obvious attractions.

For the September edition of The Florentine I tried to capture the haven we have found in the Cascine park, rollerblading along the (mostly) smooth paths under the wonderful shady trees.

As September afternoons begin to cool down and the evenings shorten, my daughter and I often feel the need to get outside after school. Living up the hill in Fiesole, it’s not easy to go for a quick bike ride here. What we crave is flatness and the only place in Florence to really get that is the Cascine park.

We are drawn to this park all year round to wheel along the straight, smooth paths, enjoying the greenery, the space and the people. From rollerblading men in Lycra to five-year-olds with crooked bike helmets, if a Florentine has wheels to spin this is where they come.

Here is the full story in the Florentine magazine, September edition.

 

 

Pure lykke

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It was a moment of joy – lykke – when I found this old tin of Norwegian skincream in yet another half-opened box from our shipment of stuff in our new house in Dublin. This is the second time we’ve moved country with kids and of course, all our worldly possessions were put into boxes (or last-minute suitcases).

Much of our belongings were shed, some of them was lost along the way (our towels?) and a fair amount is still unsorted rubbish. But when I saw my youngest’s skin starting to react to the damp Irish climate, I really hoped that I had saved this magical lavender-scented cream we used in Norway, the only one of many that actually worked and which was never used during our 2 years in the mild air of Tuscany. “Is that the nice-smelling stuff you’d put on me before I went out to kindergarten?”

It’s so Norwegian, I love it. I read somewhere that the recipe came from some nuns on a remote island in the north, and just the name is such a joy – Lykkelig som liten, Happy as a youngster.

That wasn’t so boring (part 3) – Ytalia sculpture show at Forte Belvedere

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Reflecting balls… smelly sculptures… discussion on life and death… views over Florence… one gigantic skeleton.

This is what you’ll get on a visit with your kids to Ytalia, the contemporary sculpture show at Florence’s Forte Belvedere. It’s only on for until October 1st but now is the perfect time to visit, in this cooler weather and before school gets busy. There’s even a temporary bus service running to it from outside the Pitti Palace.

I was flipping through my photos from our visit there in June and I remembered how much fun we had, all of us! I’ll share below some images and reflections on what the kids enjoyed most about the art.

This is the 3rd in my series on visiting art with kids in Florence – the others were about the Bill Viola show (now closed) at Palazzo Strozzi and tips on visiting the ancient church of San Miniato al Monte.

Forte Belvedere

High up on a hill south of Florence, you can walk here from San Niccolò, over from Piazzale Michelangelo or through the back of the Boboli Gardens.

There’s plenty of trivia to impress your kids child about this old fort along Florence’s city walls:

It was partly designed by Michelangelo and by Buontalenti (inventor of gelato). The Medici used to stash their treasure here. Galileo (whose home and observatory are on the nearby hill of Arcetri) made some discoveries here. It’s full of secret passageways, not many of which you can explore now but you can still feel the atmosphere. And of course, it’s also where Kanye West and Kim Kardashian were married in 2014.

Forte Belvedere

There is a basic bar/café inside, prices are reasonable and the surroundings pretty darn nice.

Safety

Keep a close eye on your kids here: there are some high walls and passageways and a plaque at the west entrance marks where two people fell to their death in recent years.

What is Ytalia?

It’s a show of contemporary Italian sculpture (100 pieces by 12 artists) spread all over Florence, with the main part here at Forte Belvedere.

Forte Belvedere is an ideal location for outdoor sculpture – and for kids. There are indoor and outdoor spaces, a cafe, and lots of space to move around and nooks and crannies to explore.

Ytalia highlights, according to my kids.

“The Big Skeleton”, official name Calamita Cosmica (Cosmic magnet)

How did it get here? How did they put it together again? What’s it made from? Look, there’s dust – like you get from real bones. What’s the pointing thing sticking out of its arm, is it meant to be there? What’s it got to do with a magnet? What does cosmic mean?

As we were looking at it (and at other people trying to catch the perfect angle) we watched one exhibition guard rush up to the other to point out some pigeon poop on it. They call someone on the walkie-talkie to get advice, but no-one seems to know what to do.

Gino de Dominicis – Calamita cosmica (Cosmic magnet)

The artist, Gino de Dominicis was quite a mysterious figure and died in 2007 at the age of just 51. The sculpture is 28 metres long and weighs about 8 tons.

Gino de Dominicis – Calamita cosmica (Cosmic magnet)

Jumping stones

Yes, you can step up on these and jump off them again! That’s what the artist wants you to do. The piece is actually called “Where the stars come a little bit closer” so maybe this is a humble effort to help us all reach the stars.

Once you’ve done that a few times, you’ll probably want to go on to something else. Depending on the ages of your kids.

Me, jumping. Giovanni Anselmo – Dove le stelle si avvicinano di una spanna in più

The Marble Benches

We had been watching the guards steer people away from other artworks so one of us was therefore especially preoccupied with these marble benches. They looked inviting to sit on and it was only when we looked down at them from high up inside the Fort, did we see people sitting on them. So if you go, make sure to sit on them.

Domenico Bianchi – Undici Panchine (11 Benches)

Mummy, Mummy, come and see this one!

What is it about kids and balls? Was it the reflections in this one that made it their favourite? The broken glass, the thought that someone else had got a chance to smashing something up?

Giulio Paolini – Dopo la Fine (After the End)

They also loved this coiled steel rope on the floor – called Continuous Infinite Present (though most of the titles didn’t mean that much to them). This reminded us of ropes along a harbour wall, but they’re not coiled up, they’re like rings.

“I’m imagining those biggest rings could be the rings of a giant. Imagine how big that giant would need to be?”

Remo Salvadori – Continuo Infinite Presente (Continuous Infinite Present)

We drifted past various pieces and I let the kids stop at what interested them. Most pieces had long notes beside them in Italian and English, but they were at a pretty high level and best suited to someone with a passing knowledge of art theory.

The daughter whose thumb appears below, had been doing a lot of geometry at school all year (in Italy it’s a separate class to mathematics). I could see she was trying to measure something with her thumb but she didn’t want to explain what it was.

Nunzio – Peristilio

We talked about sculpture

What makes sculpture art? How is it different to drawing or painting? Do you make it before you know how big the exhibition space is going to be? How do you build it?

 

Smelly sculpture

Are you meant to walk around sculpture or touch it or smell it? Actually this piece below did send out a smell as well as a sound – the sound of a frog. I had to read the information plaque to start explaining this one.

 

Marco Bagnoli – Ascolta il flauto di canna (Listen to the reed flute)

Me: Because the artist thinks a frog represents metamorphosis. Hmm, this is getting confusing.

Daughter: But I know what that means, when one thing turns into another. Like a caterpillar that turns into a butterfly. 

Both: But what’s that got to do with these stones and the big pointy thing?

Me: But look at that fabulous view over to San Miniato al Monte!

We enjoyed watching these two Frenchmen carefully examining this piece – and the guard shouting at them to leave it alone, in Italian and then in English, while they completely ignored him. Called Zephyr (like the god of wind) we liked how the stone looks so heavy though it’s all about wind and air.

Luciano Fabro – Zefiro (Zephyr)

This piece, a self portrait by artist Alighiero Boetti, was really popular with photographers. We talked about why it was placed right there, as if the man were walking away from the building and not towards it. Where was he going?

Because this part of the fort has the best views, Mum.

I’ve read a few comments that the 12 artists in the show are all men.

Taking photographs

This exhibition is pure Instagram fodder. It’s hard to resist pointing a camera in and around these three-dimensional creative pieces as well as the location with its fabulous views over the city and the countryside to the south. I have to admit I’d much rather see more people look first before they point and shoot, especially kids who already spend enough time with their screens. But it’s hard to deny that the outdoor space is especially good for working on some photo techniques together – light, composition, background, people, waiting for the ideal shot.

If nothing else, have fun!

The Ytalia exhibition runs around Florence until October 1st 2017. Website info here.

There’s something about Elba

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What do you know about the island of Elba? Probably that it’s where Napoleon was exiled and has some nice beaches. Anything else? Well, after a trip there both this summer and a couple of years ago I can gladly tell you that it’s a summer paradise. You might not have known that it’s actually in Tuscany, just off the mainland and one of the most popular holiday spots for the good citizens of Siena, Florence and Pisa. My article in July’s Florentine magazine tells how my own little family went from being beach novices to experts thanks to our first visit to Elba. But I also long to visit in the spring or autumn and enjoy more of the nature, less of the visitors.

Less fancy than the Amalfi coast and quieter than the holiday towns along the Tuscan coast, Elba is a jewel of an island. The waters are clear, with few unwelcome sea creatures, the light is strong and beautiful as it reaches the different types of landscapes. Even though it’s just an hour-long ferry ride from Piombino, it can feel a world away. Some areas have restricted development and many of the villages retain their old atmosphere.

Elba is actually the 3rd largest island in Italy after Sicily and Sardinia and it’s part of the “Tuscan archipelago”, a national park of seven islands. It’s quite cool to spot just over the water the tiny islands of Montecristo (not easy to visit) and Giglio (car-free, beautiful beaches and now famous for the crash of the Costa Concordia in 2012).

As well as arriving by ferry you can fly here (on very tiny planes) from Florence, Pisa, Milan and (oddly) Switzerland – which will explain why staff in shops and restaurants often start speaking to you in German.

East-West

Elba is all blue sea and beaches along the edge and hills on the inside. It doesn’t take more than an hour or so to drive all the way around it. Generally, the western part of the island is quieter, less developed and retains more atmosphere in its villages. Traditionally an agricultural and mining centre, the island started being developed in the 1950s, when the main coastal road was first built. The busier areas are in the centre and eastern parts, around the main towns of Portoferraio, Procchio and Cavo. The big resort beaches (and noisier night-time towns) are Marina di Campo, Lacona, Fetovaia and Porto Azzurro.

Elba’s coastal road winds around many edges of hills and it can be hair-raising for novice drivers not used to Italian driving styles. There are bus services but it’s easier to get around with your own car. Plenty of cyclists seem to enjoy the length and condition of the roads and there are many hiking trails. And as for water-based activities, well lucky you if you have your own yacht! But there are plenty of options for hiring kayaks, diving gear and all sorts of one-day trips.

Bakery in Marciana Marina

Towns

Elba might not offer the same insane abundance of artistic heritage found in the rest of Tuscany, but it has plenty of history – Etruscan, Roman, Medieval, Napoleonic – and some interesting archaeological sites and museums, churches and other spots to explore. The towns are worth spending time in and not just for picking up some beach towels at the markets. Here are a few we’ve enjoyed, away from the beach towns. Bear in mind that you often need to park just outside the centre and walk up, and that the lunch hour (between 1 and 4pm) seems to be strictly enforced.

Marciana Alta is the older, sister town of the seaside spot of Marciana Marina on the north shore. It’s a real Tuscan hilltown with a ridiculously-long history (founded in 32 BC), charming narrow streets, cute boutiques and it has a particularly nice terrace lined with cafes overlooking a fabulous view down to the sea. Follow the road up above to the fortress where they do archery and falconry demonstrations in summer. And if you take the main hike down from the top of Monte Capanne (see below) you’ll end up in the back streets of the town. Not far away is the even cuter town of Poggio.

Marciana Alta

 

Marciana Alta

 

Marciana Alta

Capoliveri

This handsome town dominates the southeastern part of the island and is a very pleasant stop for lunch and shopping. It also has one of the only theatres on the island (which doubles as a cinema) that hosts some interesting festivals. I really liked the dedication written on the outside wall: “to the Elbans around the world”.

Teatro Flamingo, Capoliveri

Pomonte on the west coast is a small village with lots of its old features, and it has all the basics (butcher, market, cafes, excellent pizzeria) and it’s a good location near the popular beaches of Fetovaia, Chiessi and Cavoli.

Pomonte

It also offers a shipwreck beach, called Ogliera. Look out for the crowd of diving boats gathered around the spot of a 1972 wreck, or you can swim the few hundred metres from the beach and touch the boat at 12 metres deep. More info here.

Pomonte/Ogliera

Beaches

With my stubborn Celtic skin and historic curiosity, I am not a natural beach person but Elba’s 40 or so beaches offer such a wonderful variety – sandy to rocky, very-public to almost-hidden – that it’s hard to resist them. It can be smart to ask the locals for their recommendations as some of the best ones are reached only by boat or by leaving your car on the upper road.

All the beaches are free: even if some seem to be taken over by umbrellas and bars, the strip right at the water is free and you will find even a very small public section. Have a look at my Florentine beach article for tips on how Italian beaches work.

Here are a few favourite family-friendly Elba beaches:

Sandy beach – Procchio

Often overlooked for more popular beaches along the north shore, this beach right in the town of Procchio is perfectly nice and great for small kids. In between the bagni (sectioned-off areas) after the sailing club there is a good-sized public beach. The water is clean and shallow and you could easily forget the world during an afternoon here.

Procchio beach

Rocky beach – Palombaia

When driving south along the coast road between Cavoli and Marina di Campo, park the car along the edge where others are parked and down another small road to the right you’ll find some paved steps down to this small but lovely and quiet beach. There are a lot of steps down but unlike other off-the-track beaches, this path really is easy and doesn’t involve brambles, confusion, and a steep uneven path that might put off some kids.

Palombaia

Other beaches to mention are: Patresi, Cavoli, Sant’Andrea, Le Tombe, Capo Bianco, Zuccale.

Drinking Water

When you get thirsty on Elba you can spend money on bottled water from the corner shop. Or you can do like the locals and fill up at the local water source – and some of the fresh spring water here is wonderful. To find the closest fonte, ask the locals or just keep an eye out for cars parked randomly along the road (and people carrying bags of empty plastic bottles).

This is the fountain just outside of Marciana Alta, heading towards the fortress.

Some of the fountains are nicely-decorated, like this one down a path near the pizzeria in Pomonte.

Hiking

There are tons of trails for beginner and serious walkers, there’s an excellent list on the InfoElba website.

Pomonte, trail up towards Monte Capanne

With friends and kids we tackled Monte Capanne which is – at 1,019 metres – the highest point on Elba. The easiest day out would be to take the cableway up and down, but we decided to take it up and then hike back down. With our bunch of kids and hot temperatures it took about 3 hours, but it felt great at the end and was definitely one of the summer’s best-earned ice-creams.

Monte Capanne

 

Monte Capanne

Here’s a link to the cableway/cabinovia which is a standing-only version of a cable car. It’s not for the very faint-hearted and the 8 year olds in our group were nervous as they dangled high up over the mountain, but they were very proud of themselves once they’d gone through the experience.

Napoleon’s Villa

The French emperor – born in Corsica, just over the water from here – was indeed exiled on Elba in 1814, the island having been under French possession since 1801. For the 300 cushy-sounding days he spent here, he lived in this beautiful villa, with a chosen guard of 600 men, and essentially acted as governor of the island. He did a lot of economic and social reforms for the locals (long before the hotel industry took off 150 years later), and is fondly remembered all over the island through statues, cafe names and an annual commemoration and parade in May.

Marciana Alta

Napoleon’s villa is near Procchio and though it is, unsurprisingly, quite rundown, it’s worth visiting for its location and to get a sense of the life he might have led here (and the Demidoff family who lived in the villa later on). Napoleon escaped from Elba, caused more havoc back in France and Waterloo and was eventually exiled more effectively to Saint Helena in the south Atlantic, expiring there in 1821.

According to a contemporary writer: “Though his wife kept away, his Polish mistress visited. He apparently also found comfort in the company of a local girl, Sbarra. According to a contemporary chronicler, he ‘spent many happy hours eating cherries with her.’”

Most of the furnishings are reproductions or equivalent pieces but you can get a sense of the comfort.

Elba Info

Ferries: There are two main ferry companies – Toremar and Moby – which seem to be interchangeable. There are different ways to buy tickets but in my experience the price is the same, either buying online or from the Biglietteria (ticket office) right at the port.

Local specialities: Regular readers know that I don’t claim myself to be a foodie. So for Elba I’ll just say go for fish! Plenty of good options on the menu and fresh fish at the markets. We often passed a cute local hole-in-the-wall place in Marina di Campo but never got to try it – Aclipesca. Wine – the local speciality is rosè and the sweet dessert wine Aleatico goes down nicely. Here’s some more info on Elba wine.

Markets: Each morning from Mon-Sat there is a market in a different town so you might find the same vendors in each place. Procchio also hosts a food market. Here is a list of markets.

Aquarium: There is a small aquarium just east of Marina di Campo and it’s not a bad spot to spend a rainy afternoon with the kids.

Shopping: Prices for basic goods are higher than on the mainland so you could do as many Italians do and stock your car up at a supermarket on the mainland (except for ice cream and chocolate, speaking from experience). That said, it’s good to consider supporting the small local businesses on the island that rely on seasonal business, and there are plenty of food shops, cafes, restaurants and petrol stations. The main towns for nice boutiques are Marciana Marina, Portoferraio, Capoliveri and Marina di Campo.

Other links

Here’s a nice weekend visit described by Georgette at GirlinFlorence.

And the excellent food writer/photographer Emiko Davies has some tips on the Tuscan coast in general.

The day the bomb closed the bus stop

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I was looking through photos from 6 years ago and one from made me stop to catch my breath.

It was taken 6 years ago today, on July 22 2011, on the day of the Oslo attacks. We had been living in Oslo for 3 years and that week happened to be in Dublin visiting my parents. Wherever we’ve lived I’ve still called Dublin home, but then, Oslo was the only home our two girls really knew. That afternoon we were having a rare wander around town, taking goofy photos, climbing on sculptures and at Temple Bar we stopped at a fancy sweet shop. The friendly owner was curious to hear we lived in Oslo, telling us how much he liked the Norwegian tourists, who were always so friendly. I took this photo of our younger daughter up against the silly wall chart. This particular look on her face is the look of a toddler, her look, that doesn’t really show anymore, but the seriousness in her face chills me – this blurry moment in time has become very precious when I remember what happened next.

As we stood outside eating our jelly beans, time briefly stopped when I read the first of many texts on my phone. From my mum “some kind of explosion in Oslo”, and from an Oslo friend “are you okay? we just heard about what’s going on in central Oslo”. This was our first inkling of the horrendous attacks that were just getting started, one lone man who planted a car bomb in the city centre (killing eight) in an effort to distract the security forces while he drove to the island of Utøya where he went on a shooting spree at a political party summer camp where he killed 69. Those are the facts which I’ll quickly remind you of, which still make my stomach turn. The tragedy is usually defined as the worst attack in Norway since World War II but that’s a huge understatement – to me it was one of the most horrible events I could ever have expected to live through.

But all this was still unfolding far from us while we continued our family afternoon out – I didn’t have a roaming plan so I stayed off the news sites and Twitter, and I didn’t think it sounded too serious. Maybe it was an accident or the act of some crazy angry anarchist. We quickly heard back from a neighbour that there was no damage to our street, our building, any shattered windows or general chaos. We had no idea that something much more horrible was already underway.

We had the luxury of distraction and were busy with seeing family and travelling later that weekend. That evening we didn’t want to watch much news – there were reports of the awful attacks on the island and no-one (least of all the police) had any clue as to who was responsible, or what was happening, but there was plenty of speculation online about foreign-born terrorists, about Norway’s generous social system getting its comeuppance. It all still felt at one remove, not my tragedy.

I have only experienced real shock a couple of times in my life. The kind that can take your breath away, where it’s impossible to compehend how something truly awful could happen in our lifetime, while we watch. The morning after the attacks was one of those shocks.

With my cup of tea in hand I read the BBC website and I learned how bad it was – more than 60 teenagers had been shot in cold blood during the shooting spree, probably just one man was responsible and it took almost 2 hours for him to be stopped. And he was not a stranger, he was as Norwegian as they come, from one of the nicer parts of Oslo which we knew quite well. This was in the city we called home, where our two children might grow up.

My mum and I had planned to take the kids to the park that morning. While they played I took a walk and as I sat alone on a bench watching the swans in the pond and listening to the shouts of the football dads nearby, I found myself collapsing inwards with tears, from grief for those families who were still being notified, the overwhelming awfulness of something that was already in the past, that had not been stopped. In the cafe afterwards, I tried to focus on the present. My mum said to a couple at a neighbouring table “my daughter here lives in Oslo, you know, where that terrible attack happened yesterday”. “Oh yes,” they nodded, “we heard about that. Awful wasn’t it?” Yes indeed it was, but what more could they say except that the carrot cake was quite good?

The next week kept us busy, at the beach in Youghal, visiting the giraffes on Fota island, trying to enjoy a normal holiday, but every so often I’d let myself think about Oslo and feel weighed down by it all, unable to help, feeling it was beyond anyone’s grasp. I wanted to be there, with friends, in the city we loved, but it was also good to be away from what I knew would be a difficult and very personal aftermath. Though the bomb had gone off close to our apartment we rationalised that the chances were slim of our being on that street on a Friday afternoon and we realised quickly that no-one we knew was involved. We were very lucky, but still, the place we considered our home had been attacked.

We flew back to Oslo a week after it happened. Things seemed mostly normal, but on the first evening my husband and I took it in turns to go and look at the bomb site a few blocks from our place, to check out the security situation, road blocks, see how safe we might feel. During my turn I rode my bike down to the cathedral where the news had reported that a spontaneous sea of roses had been growing over the week. I didn’t really want to go and see it as it felt too painful and private to look at other people’s pain. But what a sight it was to experience this mass of colour and light, of sympathy and love and refusal to be squashed down. This strong emotion followed into the very public marches and speeches and concerts that followed: brave and strong and normal people who stood up to declare their hope. It was the most powerful possible denial of the evil that had happened among us, especially among those of us who had grown up here and had even less understanding than I did of what caused this to happen here.

We didn’t really talk to our kids about what happened that day. Our older daughter was 5 and we had to tell her something – we told her that a bad, unhappy man had left a bomb outside one of those office buildings nearby and he killed some people, but that we was locked away in prison now, and we were not in any danger. She seemed to accept that and didn’t ask more so we didn’t tell her more.

What affected her most was the fact that the bus we took most days to kindergarten – which went through the government quarter – had to be diverted by the damage, (and it still is, as they have not yet decided how to rebuild that area). She used to get excited when the bus would announce the stop at “Apotekegate” because she would giggle and call it Potato Gate. Over the first few months she would sometimes declare on the bus, “we’re going this way, and not going to Potato gate because that man did that bad thing with the bomb. Why did he do the bad thing mummy?“ I had to tell her I didn’t know, often choking back tears. I still don’t know why, but I was never able to tell her what else that same man had done that day, how many people actually died and how horribly. She still doesn’t know the whole story – and we have never talked to our younger girl about the attacks, following general advice that you should answer childrens’ big-world worries when they raise them and not before – but they will both learn it in time, as part of history, and there are enough other stories going on in the world these days to keep us anxious.

I found that many people just couldn’t bring themselves to talk about it. I find Norwegians to be very pragmatic and even detached, and with work colleagues it felt like something you just didn’t discuss: but there was also an understanding that there was nothing to be said and after the first few months, the tabloid media came in for a lot of flak for finding any reason they could to print the attacker’s name or photo – a prison complaint, some issue with his mother. The ten-week trial was complex and heartbreaking and I often had to pass by the downtown courthouse, a beautiful modern building which was scarred by a huge black security and media tent on its front. I did my best to follow it in the papers, to watch how the rule of law was trying its damndest to deal justly with a guilty man, to find reasons for his actions and teach us what could have been done better to prevent something like it happening again, anywhere in the world.

Apparently, one in four Norwegians knew someone who was injured or killed, as the victims had come from all over the country to this summer camp. The effects lingered and will never really go away. We learned that an acquaintance was actually a dentist and had led the indentification team. A year later, while on a work project I spent an hour interviewing a Sri Lankan-born executive about why she loved her job with that company and I was speechless to learn afterwards that she had lost a daughter on the island. I wondered, how could she function, continue with her working life, not think about it all the time? I would never find that out, that was never for me to know.

Norway was scarred on that day, a sudden, deep and very personal hurt – right at its heart: its children who were meant to go on to shape its future society. Unlike other modern massacres there was no real “movement” to attach to these attacks which might give it some sense of otherness and madness. It was simply senseless, an act of self-absorption by a thoroughly-detached local boy who seems to have spent too much time playing violent video games.

In his excellent 2015 essay, Karl Ove Knausgaard wrote: “That is where we should direct our attention, to the collapse within the human being which these actions represent, and which makes them possible. Killing another person requires a tremendous amount of distance, and the space that makes such distance possible has appeared in the midst of our culture. It has appeared among us, and it exists here, now.”

We left Norway two years ago: after 7 good years it was time for us to leave. We would always be foreigners there, it was just the way it worked out. And it might seem fair to say that July 22 was not, is still not, our tragedy. But it is actually, it’s all of ours. We cannot forget to reflect on how this happened, why it happened. And to watch in amazement how the country managed to move on and absorb its grief, remembering those who are not living and those they left behind.

That wasn’t so boring (part 2) – Video Renaissance

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For a completely different family art experience in Florence – and a perfect way to cool off – check out the Bill Viola show at Palazzo Strozzi. It’s only on for two more weeks, closing on July 23rd.

Hang on, you say. Go to see contemporary video art? By an American (albeit with an Italian name)? In the city of the Renaissance?

This is the 2nd in my series on visiting Florence’s cultural sights with kids. The 1st was on San Miniato al Monte up on the top of the hill.

Why visit an exhibition at the Strozzi?

  • Palazzo Strozzi is literally a cool building which since the 15th century has been one of the most public palazzi in the city with an airy courtyard and a monumental size that kids love.
  • They specialise in interesting exhibitions of contemporary art that usually have a connection to Florence, to the Renaissance and to the building’s spaces.
  • With your ticket you can borrow a Family Kit for free, full of clever ideas to move kids through the show, one piece at a time. It’s in English! You just need to give them a piece of ID.
  • You can also borrow an audio guide, which is usually very good, and portable stool.
  • Each show is carefully designed – the exhibition staff get stylish new locally-tailored outfits and the kit bag is created anew for each show.
  • Check the Strozzi website for other family activities, like group workshops and tours.
  • If the show is popular (like the terrific Ai WeiWei earlier this year) you can buy advance tickets online, like a family ticket, and skip the queue.
  • The main exhibition is upstairs and all the extras are usually downstairs, worth including if you can.
  • Later this year there’ll be a Marina Abramovic show, which is bound to be thought-provoking.

The Family Kit

This is a bag (beautifully made by local leather maker Il Bisonte) usually containing sketchbooks, pencils, props like a flashlight, and other elements to make kids think, invent, and explore the exhibition and the space. Each exhibition has a different kit but it’s always well thought-out and has a lot to offer (and which other Florence museums could really pay attention to).

It’s meant for kids over 3 and the youngest can at least scribble with pencils and paper. There should be something for every age group in it. Boys and girls!

My two girls sketching at the Ai Wei Wei show (it was winter)

I’ll say it again, the kit is free! The kids might not use everything in it but it will be enough to let them see that they can find their own way into enjoying the art on show.

You can actually view the family kit guidebook on the Strozzi website. Useful before or after your visit.

There is also a “Drawing Kit” which the grownups can borrow, and view in advance on the site.

Viewing video art with kids

I’m an art history graduate, but video art has never been at the top of my list. Really… never. Typically at an exhibition you’ll find a video piece mixed in with paintings, sculptures, and other random pieces and when you encounter a video piece, maybe a projection in a tented-off corner, you have to make a conscious choice to stop and take the time to view it: for 3 minutes and 20 seconds, or, God forbid, 30 minutes! And with kids? It probably won’t have any kind of story and who knows what strange and scary images might appear.

But with how this exhibition was presented, I was really impressed by Bill Viola. What I learned here was how the elements of time and movement (and sound) are central to video art, making it a different but complementary art form.

Unlike so much fast-moving imagery that our kids see in animated movies and video games –where patience is not necessary, and parental hovering is often required – I love how a child who can get into this show will see and think about how the same medium, moving images, can be used in a completely different way.

Each room here contains just one artwork – typically the video piece along with its referring Renaissance painting.

Photo Palazzo Strozzi

The Family Kit made all the difference with slowing down our passage from room to room. As well as a notebook and pencils it had a fan to blow wind on your face, a flashlight, textiles to help you feel textures – to be used alongside the relevant artworks.

In the case of this show, I thought the images were all appropriate; there was no obvious violence or sexuality, and even though images included ideas like a person being engulfed by fire, my kids could see right away that it was of a different nature: a visual trick, or a different way of telling an idea. It was only after leaving the show that we noticed many of the figures were nude – but it seemed no more disconcerting that any number of paintings or sculptures at the Uffizi.

There is definitely a historical-religious element, not just the Christianity that is so central to Renaissance art, but other elements of spirituality and expression. You might need to explain or discuss some of the stories, but you’d be surprised what stories the kids have already picked up.

These are big life (and death) issues on show here, and not much that’s funny. But many kids will really relate to that and it can only make them think.

Disclaimer: my younger daughter (8) skipped through most of it with my husband, she was a little unnerved by the darkened rooms and slow-moving images. She had enjoyed the Ai WeiWei show.

Who is Bill Viola?

Bill Viola was born in New York to Italian parents. He lived for a few years in Florence in the 1970s and was involved in avant-garde video and performance art – like invading photos taken by tourists around town: an early photobomber.

Viola was also very taken by how images from the Renaissance permeate not just the museums but also churches, streets and houses. He gives the example of an old woman on his street who would leave flowers every day at a street corner altar with a Madonna, an act that had been happening for hundreds of years.

Photo Quotidiano.net

He’s one of the world’s leading video artist, is practically mainstream, and was described early on as an electronic painter. As I mentioned I’m not a video art fan but I found this work all so relevant to Florence, to our world, and very moving.

“He confronts death and the tragic anguish of life.. with projection rather than representation” – Anna Morettini, Director of Etrillard Foundation

The Strozzi Exhibition

The first thing the Viola show gets right is its size. 14 rooms are devoted to a few more than 14 pieces, making it easier to concentrate. It’s bared-down, simple and easy to see what the main focus should be and to move on. There are other pieces at locations around the city but the Strozzi is the main show.

The second thing is the concept – this show was built around Viola’s relationship to and inspiration from Renaissance art. And the inspiration, if not specific then at least stylistic, is placed in the room beside his piece.

The pictures below were taken by me with my iPhone – they’re like stills and cannot convey the movement and depth from experiencing the video in motion. But they give you a sense of the painterly quality of the works, how they give us room to discuss together how they related to the earlier paintings.

As Martin Holman in the Florentine says:  “Viola does not restage these older images. Instead he demonstrates what happens when they are absorbed and transformed in the mind”

If the kids follow the little guide in the kit, they’ll get a quick background to each work.

Here are the key pieces we enjoyed.

The Visitation

Viola’s piece recreates the meeting of the pregnant Mary with her cousin Elizabeth, slowing it down and making it even more ambiguous.

Bill Viola Studio

When he first saw Pontormo’s painting, Viola wondered what the artist had taken to create such colours.

Pontormo, The Visitation

The Family Kit includes a fan, to let you feel the breeze that you can visibly see in the video version.

Catherine’s Room

The room containing this meditation series is so lovely. Any child can see quickly the visual relationship between the 14th century St Catherine in the lower part of this painting by Andrea di Bartolo going through the motions of her day. In the four separate Viola videos, a woman is shown to us in her own private space, it could be a convent, or a prison, while the seasons changing outside the window.

Andrea di Bartolo, Santa Caterina
Bill Viola Studio

These video pieces open themselves up in a way that painting or photography is not able to, offering another dimension into the subject or the atmosphere or the story around the story.

The Deluge

Talk about knowing the ending in advance. My daughter insisted on sitting out the full 30 minutes of this – watching the people and bustle around this building build up very slowly until the expected flood happened. The last 5 minutes or so did drag as the street and building dried off. But when you think about it, there’s nothing quite like sitting in a room with other people watching flickering images on a screen…

It was interesting to see Paolo Uccello’s wierd but much-loved Flood fresco juxtaposed against it.

Emergence

This is the exhibition’s “brand image”, seen on billboards, bus tickets and airport baggage carousels.

This may or may not be the lifeless body of Christ coming out of the tomb and then lowered to the ground by two emotional women. Or they could be midwives, present at a birth. My kids were mostly amazed by the colour of the man’s skin.

Bill Viola Studio

The slow-motion contortions and positions of the three persons move slowly into recognisable positions from well-known paintings – from Piero della Francesco to David’s Death of Marat. And we talked about how they seemed to dance.

Masolino da Panicale, Pietà
David, the Death of Marat

 

Adam and Eve, Man/Woman

I loved these pieces – first of all because the amazing Lucas Cranach paintings were right there on the wall (borrowed from the Prado) and are so very beautiful in themselves. And around the corner was Viola’s take: two single narrow vertical screens, one of a man and one of a woman, each of them individually evaluating their own mortality, the woman heading towards acceptance and happiness, the man fighting against his ageing body. One could say.

Bill Viola Studio

Just as the man and woman examine themselves with a light, a child visiting the exhibition can pull the flashlight out of the kit and do the same thing.

My daughter didn’t get into this exercise and, not surprisingly, preferred the younger and more perfect Adam and Eve.

Lukas Cranach, Adam and Eve

The Martyrs series

When you read the description of these four pieces, placed on the four walls of one room like a Greek cross, they sound pretty gruesome. Each scene shows a person going through a movement through fire, air, water or earth. But my 10 year old and I were entranced by the four-sided elegiac flow of individual bodies going through what should be ordeals but which were almost a dance.

 

Kids will also enjoy the behind-the-scenes videos downstairs, which show some of the stunts, photography setup and studio “tricks” needed to create the flooded house or a submerged man.

Photo Bill Viola Studio

 

Not everyone in Florence wants to see contemporary art in such an historic city. But I say, bring it on! Those of us living here are happy to show our kids more of the world and of art than golden haloes and marble saints (wonderful as they are) and exhibitions like those put on by the Strozzi and this year’s Ytalia sculpture exhibition around town (upcoming blog post) offer something different.

The show was full of beauty, wonder at the human form and imagination, homage to many artists of the past (not just Renaissance) and an age-old questioning about man’s and woman’s place in the world and the wonder of life. I was also struck by the way women were portrayed in such a positive, human way.

And after all this life and death, you can’t go wrong with a nice cold sweet gelato!

Swimming pools of Florence

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I’ve been enjoying contributing to Florence’s wonderful English-language monthly magazine The Florentine with some stories about family life in Italy.  My latest – in the July issue – gives a taste of the outdoor city pools around Florence, which many visitors and even residents are not so familiar with.

From Costoli with its big diving board once tackled by my daughter, to the beautiful Pavoniere pool in the Cascine park in the west, these pools offer an easy way to beat the heat all summer in Florence.

Here is a link to my story in The Florentine.

If you’re travelling with kids to Florence you might want to check out some of these pools for an inexpensive afternoon to cool off and get to see how the locals live.

Costoli has one big pool for serious swimmers, a wonderful deep diving pool, and a smaller pool for kids. And of course a bar.

You can read more about how my daughter beat the local boys to jump from the top!

Functional changing room area

With the inevitable turtles

The “Magnificent Le Pavoniere” in the Cascine park is a lovely pool and restaurant during the day, nightclub by night. There is a playground adjoining it and of course plenty of space in the park outside for rollerblading, or you can enjoy the Tuesday morning market, the biggest in Florence.

 


It’s called Le Pavoniere after the peacock motif you see in the mock temples around the pool. Classy!

Hidron pool is further out from Florence, in Campi Bisenzio, further west from Ikea and the airport and not far from the huge shopping centre I Gigli. You can reach it by bus but it’s easier by car. In winter it’s a great indoor pool/water park and in the summer this fabulous outdoor pool is open – no slides or anything fancy, just a lovely big, relatively-shallow pool. I guess this nice little bar opens sometimes?

This gorgeous pool, Rari Nantes, is right on the south side of the Arno river just east of central Florence. Unfortunately it’s not usually open to the public, but reserved for members, waterpolo players, and swimming classes. My kids did a June intensive course here and I got to enjoy a bit of sun and views while waiting for them (in the bar).

The (Wet) Stones of Florence

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Florence made world news this week when it was announced that the city is to start hosing down church steps with water to clear away the tourists who have a pesky habit of sitting down to eat a quick lunch.

This was big news around here, and most everyone thinks that the whole idea is ridiculous and won’t solve the problem, that after five minutes of Tuscan sun, the water will have evaporated. Even my 8 year old – when polled – was quick to point out that the city streets simply need more benches and other places where anyone (not just the nonni, or granddads) can sit in a civilised way.

“Operation anti camp-out“

Dario Nardella, the trying-hard-to-be-popular mayor, opened his “anti bivacco” campaign (from bivouac, referring to the camped-out picnickers) and declared that the steps of Santa Croce and Santa Spirito would be washed down once or twice a day, to push off the tourists. Won’t that be a waste of water, he was asked. “Well it’s part of the regular cleaning service’s supply” he replied, “and there’s no harm in giving the sacred steps a good clean while we’re at it”.

The underlying reason for this treating of tourists like cats, is that it’s not proper to sit on the church steps, a sacred place. It indicates “an increase among those who don’t respect our cultural heritage”, according to the mayor. Well, if you have 12 million people visiting each year, maybe you should take that more seriously and improve the city in many other ways. Italy’s ex-Prime Minister Matteo Renzi made a huge impact when he, as Florence’s mayor, pedestrianised a huge section of the city centre. That has been great for tourists, but the locals are still grumbling about it. 

Street food?

Overcrowding and rubbish in Florence are more evident than ever. But why is this picnicking a problem now? In a city that has been “welcoming” visitors to admire its amazing cultural treasures for several centuries?

Five years ago a new city law permitted the opening of a greater number of sandwich shops, kebab joints and other food options for tourists who might not have time or funds to sit down and eat properly, paving the way to more street-consumed food. 300 extra businesses have opened in that time, mostly in the historic centre and most visibly around via dei Neri which runs between the back of the Uffizi and Santa Croce and where you can find/blame the NY Times top sandwich spot all’Antico Vinaio and its many imitators.

Pause and observe the Italian street scene. With the understandable exception of ice cream, you will not see Italians walking and eating at the same time. That’s what a cafe or restaurant is for, and where, not coincidentally, you are exposed to social interaction.

The city has regretted the proliferation of the street food issue, taking measures to curb it and clean up the city, to ensure that Florence does not lose its status as a UNESCO world heritage site. They recently banned the late-night sale of alcohol from places other than cafes and restaurants, and also famously refused McDonald’s to open beside the Duomo.

Grand tourists

A bigger question that comes to mind is – does this city actually welcome visitors? I would say not particularly well, and friends of mine (who know me to be of an overly tolerant nature) would be quicker to wax lyrical on the topic.

The good citizens of Florence have a reputation for intolerance, even within Italy. “The Parisians of Italy” someone once told me when I lived here as a student, referring to their snootiness and preference to stick to their own and be unhelpful. I don’t like to generalise, there are all sorts of people everywhere, but I’m not the only one with an opinion on this!

I’ll give you two examples.

Yesterday I was walking near the synagogue – a beautiful 19th building that doesn’t often make the top 10 tourist sites of Florence – and watched a young American couple approach the armed soldiers  out front and ask in English “is this the synagogue”. A non-soldier with them answered gruffly – “over there, number 6”, nodding to the other side of the large gate, seeming to hope they might go away. He could have also told them that it wasn’t actually open, that if you stood on tiptop and looked over the gate you would see there was a wedding going on. But he let the tourists keep walking and read on their own the ‘closed’ sign on the door, and then walk away, considering their options on how best to complain about this online.

Florence’s Grand Synagogue, built 1882

Last week I was on a bus and a woman called from the footpath to the driver in English, “does this go to the stazione?” “No”, he barked, and took off, exuding that feeling of annoyance from someone who doesn’t want to have to start speaking English beyond the limited amount that he knows. I think that this is what often causes the gruffness you see here, the lack of confidence to speak to people as well as you might want to – as well of course as the general intolerance of being asked questions, often rudely or in a language you don’t recognise.

The bus did of course go to the station and my guilt for not intervening followed me home up the hill. I speak Italian, imperfectly, but I find I am treated with more respect than most short-term visitors. And it’s worth mentioning that almost all the school parents I know are desperate for their kids to learn better English than they ever did, they recognise its usefulness.

Aside from language issues there is much lament among tourists, and residents, about the poor quality of public facilities in Florence, like bathrooms, water fountains, benches, easy access to information, museum opening hours, children’s activities, confusing websites. Even finding your way out of the Uffizi is still as complicated as it was 20 years ago, unless it’s closing time and they’ll happily show you out.

Hose ‘em down Dario!

Two days into the new hosing routine, is it working? I scanned the local media and there’s a mixed bag of opinion: it’s short-sighted, other measures are needed, it’s a waste of water, a bad image, and there are questionable rants online about handbag sellers and other “scourges” of the city. All agree that it’s daft, more benches are needed, as well as other options than the expensive cafes catering to tourists in the main piazzas.

One shop owner on via dei Neri claimed, somewhat jokingly, that the mayor had stolen his idea: he’s been throwing out buckets of water on the street for years to push off the annoying visitors sitting on the footpath. (Look closely and you’ll notice he’s selling tourist goods.)

La Nazione. The quote from the Prior of Santa Croce says that an intensive education programme is needed for school groups and visitors.

The local sandwich makers are trying to adapt, like this sign on one door asking customers to think about where to eat – with some inventive hashtags. They’ve also written it in English too, if the visitors can figure out what the “sagras of the churches might mean”.

Another sandwich shop on the street has jokingly put swimming rings on display as a “counter measure”.

Florence – they love the tourists, but they don’t really love them.

Do as a I say, not as I do

Up where we live, away from the rubbish-strewn historic centre, I had lunch yesterday with a friend. We took out sandwiches from a local restaurant (which I will keep nameless, to avoid inviting more hordes) and we sat with others on the wall across the street, where cushions have been set out for the many daily customers. Almost all were Italian, not a tourist in sight, and as well as a full rubbish bin, there were quite a few paper wrappers and used cans strewn around the road and field over the wall. Just as at all the viewpoints up in the hills where the locals drive to in their mopeds for sunsets with friends and lovers.

At least we weren’t sitting on a church step. Then we’d be in double trouble.

If you’re interested in more food waste issues, check out my blog post on the slow rise of doggy bags in Italy.

Here are some of the news links about this story if you’re interested.

Guardian news story

Firenze Today video interviewing sandwich shop owners

La Nazione: The mayor watching the first spraying down  

 

Learning on the Land

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I published a story about my daughter’s Montessori school in the woods in this month’s edition of the Florentine, the English-language newspaper of Florence. It’s always nice to hold in your hands a printed copy and the story is now also online.

You can read the story on the Florentine here. The school is called Elementari nel Bosco and you can also visit the Facebook page of the school which has lots more photos and information (in Italian).

Here are some extra photos to give a fuller sense of the school.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 




 

Manhattan in Florence

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I was excited silly to pass this movie poster yesterday morning at the Stensen in Florence – for shows this weekend of a revamped version of Woody Allen’s Manhattan, in English – and as my kind co-parent was with me, he agreed to mind the kids that evening so I could go to and see it. And I did!

This really is a treat for me. As a parent I don’t get to see many movies at home, and I definitely don’t get to the cinema very often. As a parent abroad I don’t get to see many films in English, that is, subtitled and not dubbed – “in v.o.” or original version. And in glorious black and white? A Woody Allen classic? On my own?!!

Italians are very serious about their cinema. Everyone seems to have studied the great masters, know all about Italy’s place in neo-realism, key directors and movements. When I studied in Florence back in the early 90s I took a course on the history of Italian film. Needing a break from Antonioni and Pasolini I felt a strong need to attend each week’s English-language programme in Florence, Hollywood specials. I had no TV then nor, oddly, any internet either – so what did I do?

On Thursday nights I’d cycle across to the other side of the Arno and join the other temporary foreigners outside the Goldoni Theatre (now thankfully back in service as a theatre). The ticket was, I think, 4,000 lire and there was a bar, which still seemed out of my studenty capacity. There was usually a double-bill and a couple of us were known to find a way to stay out of sight, with the help of the enormous red velvet curtain in the foyer, to ensure we got to see the second film.

This was 1993, the year of Schindler’s List, Fearless, The Age of Innocence, The Fugitive, The Piano, In the Name of the Father. Wasn’t I lucky?

I’m a middling Woody Allen fan and it’s been years since I’ve seen any of his films – they never showed up on Norwegian tv, are in the local library here (see my other blog post on that experience) and I’m too old to be a downloader. What I’ve been craving about him, or at least his old classics, is the New York spirit only he can endow us through his words, images and neuroses. I lived for 4 years in New York and studied some photography courses, going to many movies there too, so it’s in my bones.

So how was the film?

Someone from the cinema stood up to give the requisite Italian lecture before any public event. He was younger than me and I was younger than the rest of the audience, but he was the expert in the room. He explained that this was a digital version made from the original negative: “I can see there are a lot of movie buffs in the cinema, I’m sure you’ve all seen this classic many times on TV, but you should know the story well so you shouldn’t have any trouble following the subtitles … the people in Bologna offered us a dubbed version, and we all of course love the great Italian dubber from the original … but I’ve watched the first bit and I’m sure you’ll find the dialogue easy to follow … and the philology fits with this overall genre, such as it is …”, more waffle and then shuffling of feet “…. anyway let’s roll the film“.

Seeing a Woody Allen classic after many years, and now as a parent, I saw it in a different light. It turns out I am now the age Woody Allen was in the film, 42. Imagine! I found the story to be very tender, not much happens except relationships folding and unfolding. I’m sure many have found it dated, out of whack, hard to relate to, but I enjoyed its honesty and simplicity

“I think people should mate for life, like pigeons or Catholics.”

I was surprised to find the female characters to be just as interesting and grownup as the men, it wasn’t quite as sexist as other old movies we’ve been watching with the kids at home, although everyone in the cinema (and most of the characters in the story) seemed a bit squeamish about Woody’s 17-year girlfriend. The main supporting character is of course the gorgeousness of New York, shown off with a lush Gershwin score. The style of filming is amazing, the photography fantastic and the city is still fresh after all these years.

“Why can’t we have frankfurters?
– Because, this is the Russian Tea Room.”

No-one in the film has a cellphone or laptop, Diane Keaton (who’s amazing) has one up on Woody Allen by having a typewriter in her apartment (smoking while she taps away at it), and people went for walks, sat at the movies, got bored, and most of all – had long conversations. Do they still do that in New York? They ceratinly do here in Italy and that was the most old-fashioned thing about it. It wasn’t dated though, the anxieties, feelings, confusions of the characters feel just as fresh to me, though no doubt many other updated viewers will disagree.

“I can’t express anger. That’s one of the problems I have. I grow a tumor instead.”

The Italians in the audience chuckled as much as I did, mostly at the same jokes. They were a very appreciate audience, one of the best parts about going to the cinema. I noticed that almost all the superlatives in the film – terrific, wonderful, amazing, awesome – were translated to Italian as perfetto (perfect). That’s quite a task for a translator – Woody Allen.

“It’s an interesting group of people, your friends are.
– I know.
Like the cast of a Fellini movie.”

Call me when Annie Hall is showing.

Nothing Phoney about Bologna

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On my first visit to Bologna, as a poor student visiting from Florence ca. 1993, I visited some Irish friends and we stayed up all night, walking the long, meandering streets eating and drinking. Before we knew it, morning had arrived and I left soon after, not having visited a single museum, church, shop or market. But Bologna left an impression as a lively, tasty, interesting, real city and in the last couple of years I’ve been trying to visit it some more.

Last weekend I brought the husband for the first time, the kids staying behind with friends, and we got to explore all those streets and alleys by bike (a rare treat for us). Below are some shots of places we did get to visit, a little sense of what we saw in about 24 hours! There’s an (unusually) excellent visitor website called Bologna Welcome with loads of tips and routes and this being a young and studenty city, you’ll find plenty of visual material on Instagram.

And the word Baloney? Bologna sausage in North America is pronounced baloney, a corruption of the original pronunciation. As a term for “fake” or “low quality” it came into use in New York in the 1920s, rhyming nicely with phoney.

Bologna seems to hold great esteem among Italians all over the country – which is quite an achievement – and has a few well-known nicknames.

La Dotta (the learned one) referring to its university which is the oldest in the world and still fills the city with students, making it a very lively city with a sense of modern life living with history you don’t get in many “museum piece” Italian cities.

La Grassa (the fat one) as it’s famous even in Italy for its fantastic cuisine, offering Bolognaise sauce to the world, as well as tortellini in broth. You can’t go too wrong with the restaurant offerings here.

La Rossa (the red one) as most rooftops and porticoes are a lovely red but referring also to the strongly communist direction the city has mosty followed since the war.

These days Bologna is only an astonishing 30 minutes by train from Florence. As the rail hub for central Italy, I spent many long regional trips in and out of it 20 years ago but now it’s all fast trains and underground platforms. We’d almost forgotten that its train station was the target of an horrific terrorist bombing in August 1980, probably by neo-fascists, in which 85 people were killed. Italy’s often bloody recent history is something you’re never too far from, living here.

I spotted this in the window of a student bar/squat. A mafia version of Monopoly.

Bologna’s history is as long and interesting as any Italian city and even though it seems so close to Tuscany, it is as separate from Tuscan history as you can get, as the city was aligned with the Papal states rather than any of that Medici crowd.

 

The most famous landmark in Bologna is the wonderful Neptune statue by Giambologna, but it’s covered up for renovations at the moment – that’s it to the left of this cafe.

The historic centre is one of the largest in Europe and feels very circular, partly as there is no obvious river running through it. There are many towers to see, some of which you can climb. These two leaning beauties are  known as the Due Torri, a serious landmark if ever I saw one.

The porticoes cover about 38 km of the city streets, and I’ve heard that the locals don’t usually carry umbrellas.

Food is really the thing in Bologna.

There are any number of fantastic trattorie, restaurants, aperitivo bars. This place is a heaven for eating well. You’ll find plenty of info online about local dishes, recommendations.

We found the Mercato di Mezzo very handy – a small renovated covered market in the middle of things, and I have to admit that the pizza we had at RossoPomodoro (“Neapolitan style with the heart of Bologna”) was probably the best I’ve ever had in Italy! Just look at that beautiful oven!

I don’t usually take photos of my food, but this was exceptional! A white slow-risen pizza with little sweet yellow tomatoes (datterini gialli) and slivers of hard ricotta. Actually we just really need to get to Naples.

And we had extraordinary gelato at this little place we stumbled on, Galliera49 . We joined the queue once we noticed all the locals patiently standing around.

The main piazza is dominated by the Basilica of San Petronio – its size is a surprise when you walk in and then you learn it was meant to be as large as St Peter’s in Rome, until the building money started being diverted to building the university instead (or maybe for St Peter’s itself). The church asks visitors for €3 to pay for a paper wristband to allow you to take photos, a good idea for basic fund raising.

The chapel of frescoes by Giovanni da Modena (the €3 entrance is completely worth it for this chapel alone) contains some of the most amazing and scary images of hell: amazing what they got away with all those years ago.

 

 

My husband is a bit of an astrology nut and was entranced by the sundial running through the church – turns out it’s the longest in the world and was built in the 17th century by Cassini, famous these days for being the name of a space probe heading towards Saturn, even having a Google Doodle made in its honour. And it works! We waited until 13 minutes past 1 (we had no kids with us) and got to see the beam of sun projected through the small hole in the roof hit the meridian. Great excitement!

We also visited Santo Stefano – a charming church complex made up of several churches from different periods and which was definitely the busiest tourist attraction that day.

The Town Hall, just off the main piazza, seemed mostly busier with people grabbing free wi-fi than visiting anything interesting, but we had a poke around this charming spot and stumbled on a show of drawings by the great Italian artist, illustrator and theatre designer Luzzati.

 

I taken by this impressively high-profile plaque outside the town hall in memory of the many Italian women who die every year, victims of domestic violence.

Worth a visit is the Museum of Contemporary Art (MAMbo), a dynamic centre housed in an old flour factory which attracts interesting exhibitions, like last year’s David Bowie show from the V&A. Excellent cafe and bookshop too. Good for an aperitivo.

Other art spots include the Palazzo Albergati which had a wonderful Breughel show last year and has a Mirò exhibition until this September. I’ll just have to go back for that!

 

 

 

My Morning Cuppa

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It was lovely to see the Irish Times publish my story last weekend about daily habit of drinking Irish tea. The exact same brand of tea, for over 20 years.

Photo taken in Dublin and sent to me via WhatsApp before being treated in Instagram

The story started as a way to work out why I still drink the same tea, carrying it back with me in my suitcase or having my Dad post it on from Dublin. In whatever foreign country I’ve been living in.

Order it online and you get it nicely bubble-wrapped

Tea is a big drink in Ireland, with a history that’s similar but a bit different to that of England. There was an interesting article about it in the Times a few years ago – how the Second World War changed habits and routes.

This tattered, old tea-cosy was knitted about 20 years ago by my auntie Meldy. My mum also attempted to make one from the same pattern but it took her 2 years (and would probably take me about 5). The cosy rang a bell with an Irish friend who saw the picture, she also has one made by her Aunt, also a Loreto nun. So we figure this is a Loreto pattern and probably adorns teapots around the world. Anyway, it keeps the tea warm.

I have a few other tea cosies – maybe their history deserves its own blog post. Stay tuned!

That wasn’t so boring (part 1) – San Miniato al Monte

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“Let’s go to a museum or something today!” I say to my kids one Sunday morning. With trepidation.

We might live in Florence but that doesn’t mean we spend a lot of time visiting its cultural treasures. Our weekends are about birthday parties, supermarkets, bike rides, piano lessons, playdates, lego sessions and homework – and yet my two girls (aged 10 and 8) complain that they get dragged around the sites much more than their (Italian) classmates do.

“But … but … we don’t want to … It’s boring … It’s hot today … I have homework … We’ve seen everything already!”

I’m quite good at keeping our family cultural visits short and interesting. I’m qualified to do so: I have a degree in art history and I studied here for a bit, I have an eye for symbols and details that can keep them interested, and I can almost decipher the often-poor-quality labels and guides on the wall. In fact our doses of culture are so short that we haven’t even visited some of the main sites, almost 2 years in. But whether you’re visiting an historic place for 2 day or 2 years, it can take energy to make it worthwhile for your kids.

Today however, my older daughter is inspired. “Let’s go to San Miniato al Monte”, she says. “I was just there with my class.”

Aha, a new secret weapon – she can share the school tour with us!

Instax photo by daughter

San Miniato al Monte is one of the oldest, and most atmospheric and amazing, churches in Florence. Actually it’s a basilica and still-working abbey, with an interesting cemetery. As my daughter is studying the Romans and lots of geometry in 5th grade right now – it made sense to visit: Miniato (the saint) was a victim of the Romans in Florence and apparently studying the patterned facade is a good geometry exercise. Sounds way better than my own memories of school trips to cold Dublin parks.

You can read the full history of San Miniato yourself in any guidebook or online (and there is also a town west of Florence with the same name). The building was begun in the early 11th century. But here I’ve set out some basic tips on how you can visit it (or any site) with kids: small doses, rest and quirky details.

Tip 1. Take your time

After walking all the way up from the river (see note on practicalities below) why shouldn’t you sit and read some more of your Topolino (Mickey Mouse) comic book while your older sister talks about the history? Of Romanesque architecture, the saint (Miniato) whose head was chopped off and who then walked up the hill, carrying his head, and why someone decided to build a church here.

Tip 2. Spot the saints

If you’re going to learn anything about medieval and Renaissance art while in Italy, it’s good to start early with your saint-spotting so you can learn something from the thousands of frescoes you’ll find. Here’ s a handy list you can study up before you make a visit. And read up on frescoes too.

“Look at the huge size of this saint – Christopher maybe? Know his story?” This giant is not someone I would have noticed 20 years ago but definitely a detail we saw today.

Random little creatures and details in a huge basilica.

Tip 3. Symbols and details

San Miniato – as my daughter tells me – is full of images of an eagle, often standing on some cloth. This was the symbol of the local association (the Florentine cloth merchant’s guild) that doled out the money for the monks to build the church: so the deal was – we’ll give you the money and means to build your church up there, help you drag the marble you need from Carrara and you just need to be sure and show off how generous we are, stick an eagle all over the place. “Well isn’t that how advertising works nowadays”, I ask her. She looks askance.

And sure enough there are eagles all over, even on the top of the front. This one was in front of the altar.

“Feels like Indiana Jones in here!”  “Who’s that?”

The stone floors of San Miniato are amazing but none of our photos came out. But if they had brought a sketchbook they could have worked with lots of patterns, shapes, creatures. Like in this bizarre carving near the altar.

Tip 4. Find the messages

While Italian kids don’t learn Latin until middle school, they do start learning some useful snippets, like reading Roman numerals. When we came across this beautiful phrase chiselled into the stone along the righthand side, my daughter amazed me by mostly remembering how the teacher translated it:

Stando davanti a Dio non state con il cuore vagante perchè se il cuore non prega in vano la lingua lavora 

(more or less: Do not stand before God with a wandering heart because if the heart doesn’t pray, the tongue labours in vain)

Remember kids, they had no printers back then.

Tip 5. Bring your own camera
…and let them find their own interesting scenes. My daughter just started using an Instax camera, a modern version of the instant-print Polaroid. Here she is lining up a shot.

When she borrowed my own camera she found all sorts of odd things.

Back door to the garden
Portrait of the mother/dragger-arounder

Tip 6. Rest and necessities

We brought water but could probably have found a water fountain in the park around the church if we needed to. I had run out of coins but the nice young student minding the bathroom kindly let the two kids run in for free (be warned, they won’t all do that!).

Like many monasteries in Italy, the (Olivetan) monks at San Miniato make and sell their own cool stuff at the pharmacy shop. And they have ice-cream!

It could also be an amazing (or boring) experience to hear the church in its full use during a Gregorian chant service. Why not try it?

Monks’ Cloister. Instagram @whereintheworldisdannie

Tip 7. Pause and reflect

We always stop to light a candle in a church, the girls enjoy knowing that we’ll take a minute  and  think about other people we love who aren’t with us.

Stop in the moment and feel how your eyes and senses take a few minutes to adjust to the darkness and history inside this place.

This really is one of the most beautiful spots in Florence, we didn’t see it all, didn’t learn all of its history and stories and after less than an hour they really needed to move on – especially the younger one who had long finished her comic . But I think that the impression these snippets can make is enough to teach them something of the heritage we’re so privileged to live within and continue forward.

Getting to San Miniato al Monte

As well as being a big old dusty church the biggest drawback to San Miniato  is that it’s way up on top of that hill on the south side of Florence. But it’s just up a little from Piazzale Michelangelo which is a must-see stop for every visitor to Florence.

Solution 1: drive all the way up or take a bus (12 or 13 from the train station) to Piazzale Michelangelo.

Solution 2: It’s really best if you walk all the way up from the river – it is steep but it’s actually not that far and relatively car-free for little feet. Not so easy for strollers though.

I persuaded my two girls to walk all the way up from the river. We bought some sandwiches and cold drinks at a hole-in-the-wall panini shop squeezed in among all the restaurants on via San Niccolò, and sat and ate them on the steps of the church opposite.

The San Niccolò area is very cool, with lots of nice places to eat, shops and interesting street art on the walls – read more on how kids can enjoy the vibrant street art of Florence.

Head through the enormous old city gate, the Porta San Miniato and keep going up and you’ll come to steps – via del Monte alle Croci – and you’ll get to Piazzale Michelangelo at the top. (On another day take the walk along the wall to the right, up to Forte Belevedere and explore that area.)

The walk up to Piazzale Michelangelo is not actually far but it is quite steep. Once at the top you can see San Miniato and the steps up to that.

Some cool kid-friendly spots along the way up:

Along the walk you can still see the remains of the old Via Crucis (stations of the cross). And behind the fence on the right is an official city cat colony – you can see the cute cat houses marked with the red iris leaf of the Florence city council.

The Rose Garden is a lovely spot – views, wacky Belgian sculptures, grass to picnic on, flowers.

Piazzale Michelangelo is usually full of visitors and you’ll soon see why – the views over the whole city are superb. Underneath it you’ll find the cleanest public toilet in Florence, run by a grumpy man and his dog who listen to a classical music station.

On the other side of Piazzale Michelangelo is the Iris garden and you can walk down that way to another city gate, Porta San Niccolò.

Secret route up the hill: after the Fuori Porta restaurant, at the little watercolour shop, turn right and then before the restaurant Beppa Floraia (a favourite with locals) follow the path on the left that’s grassed over. Keep walking up and this turns into a real (hidden) road, Via dell’Erta Cantina. It’s like a little hidden village with its own great views and fun for kids. It’ll also take you up towards San Miniato.

Bribes for tired kids:

  • souvenir sticker or poster from street artist/traffic sign hacker Clet‘s workshop on via San Niccolò.
  • a good ice-cream back down at the bottom of the hill. Read my blog post to learn about ordering ice-cream.
  • a souvenir from Piazzale Michelangelo.

Comments? Let me know if there are other spots in Florence you’d like to hear about visiting with kids. I can’t guarantee they’ll come with me but we’ll give it a go!

Wisteria Hysteria

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Purple against green in the Tuscan countryside. I wasn’t prepared for this! I am in no way a flower or garden person, and unlikely to ever become one. But living in this paradise I’ve been constantly amazed.

Since Christmas we’ve been surprised by roses, nameless white flowers, daffodils. And of course an amazing spectrum of fruit blossoms – cherry, pear, apple, and (who knew) walnut, almond and others we still haven’t figured out. Then at the end of last week, right on the 1st of April, my visiting mother-in-law and I noticed this purple everywhere. Ah, Wisteria, she sighed.

It’s draped most beautifully over ancient high stone walls, along the sides of car repair shops or over the shaded areas of a supermarket car park. I’ve taken a few photos, but none can get close to conveying its gorgeousness. Wisteria is now my new favourite thing.

As I’ve grown older, spring has taken on a significant role every year – I notice it more every year and how it differs in each place I have lived. Growing up in suburban Dublin I vaguely noticed daffodils and crocuses, which always seemed to “come very early this year”. Moving to New York I thought I knew all about cherry blossoms, based on the 10 or so along my parents’ road. But then I discovered the pleasures of a real cherry blossom festival at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, which happened to be around the corner from our rent-controlled apartment and where we spent many Saturday mornings (free admission and a safe courting spot for the many young Orthodox Jewish couples). I also discovered the glories of the magnolia tree in that lovely space. Living through my one spring in Vancouver was a fuller experience, I marked the smell of lushness everywhere, as nature wanted to reclaim this modern built-up space. And then I lived almost 15 years in cold cities – Toronto, eastern Canada and Oslo – where spring still takes on immense meaning, echoed the last few years through desperate images posted on social media by friends in these places.

Blossoms in springtime – so vivid, so energising, and so short-lived. I was curious to learn so much and I’ve learned that Wisteria – actually a 19th century import to Europe from China and Japan – blooms spectacularly only for a few days but it can really take over, strangle other plants, and it’s poisonous all year round! Something to pay attention to in this country where things can appear lovely on the outside but may need further attention on the inside.

I’ve  learned that it’s called Glicine in Italian – pronounced in Tuscany with a lovely soft middle “c” like a “shhh”. A smooth, comforting word which actually belies the complexity of this plant. We recently took a trip away and stayed in a tiny movie-set of a town deep in the Maremma in southern Tuscany. We had to meet someone to give us the key to our Airbnb apartment-in-a-castle and she gave us directions to park by the bar and walk up. Which bar? I asked. Why, there’s only one bar! Bar il Glicine. We found it, one of those non-pretty, functional, very local, useful and friendly spots you want to find in an Italian town. Other spots in the town feebly indicated their status as a bar, but apparently this one won out – like its namesake it has the strongest hold on the locals’ imagination and isn’t going away.

How lucky I am to now be experiencing the refresh of nature in an old and stunning small town outside Florence. Living here 20 years ago as a student, it seems (upon recollection) that I paid attention to very little beyond museums and bars and the limited number of streets I reached on my old black 3-speed bicycle. I definitely did not notice the arrival of spring. This year we are living with a garden for the first time ever, a particularly lovely one which we have already harvested for its olives and where we can finally plant some seeds with the kids. So I guess I’m making up for it now.

(Originally posted April 2016)

 

These Crazy Celts!

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I’m Irish, which means I’m a Celt. I’m strong and bold and proud of… all the things we’re supposed to be proud of. I don’t have red hair and only drink moderately but I love the music and art and language of my homeland, all of which are widely considered to be “Celtic”. And I am charged with carrying forward all this legacy, this Celtic-ness, to my own two daughters, to teach them to stand up proud and be counted as Celtic women!

But it looks like they have their own ideas as to what that word might mean. And I might need to revise some of my own thinking – as I found out last weekend.

Celts in Italy?

We took a few days off to go skiing a few hours northwest of Florence, in the Apennine mountains along the border of Tuscany and Emilia Romagna. We discovered that the cheap self-catering place we had booked online was not only remote and hard to find but was actually a intact, restored “celtic” medieval mini-village (called a borgo in Italy) at the otherwise-uninhabited base of Monte Cimone.

Near to our lodgings there were various Celtic remains, which included a stone and thatch hut that was rebuilt to show the typical home of the assorted Celtic tribes that were living (well actually hiding) in the area around the 4th century. They were being slowly driven north by those determined Romans – who eventually succeeded in their task, pushing whatever was left of the Celts to cling on at the edges of Europe (my own homeland included). There were Celtic tribes were all over Europe and you can find traces of them in most central European countries and where the Romans didn’t push them out, they were eventually converted to Christianity and mostly disappeared.

“You know, the Celts weren’t as organised as the Romans” says our 10 year old as we climb along the interpretative path to reach the hut. “They were a bit all over the place, quite violent. And they had a thing about heads”.  She’s been studying this at school – the Celts get about 4 pages in her history book, unlike the 50 pages of Roman history she’ll be slogging through for the rest of the term.

The steps along the hut’s side were for yearly maintenance of the thatch, a tradition still going in Ireland, where similar huts were found.

Celts, Kelts or Chelts?

The hut was called a Capanna Celtica – if you pronounce Celtica the Italian way it’s with a Ch. The 8 year old in the back seat tries out the pronunciation – Cheltica – and it sounds strange to my ears. “How do you say it in English?”, she asks. My hard-wired Irish-educated reaction is to firmly tell the kids in the that in this family we use the hard C like a K, “Celtic”. Unless it’s for a football club in Glasgow. “Or the Boston Celtics”, chips in their dad.

But if you dig around a bit, on the internet no less, you quickly discover that this is a complicated issue.

The pronunciation of the word is a modern invention. Julius Caesar would have pronounced it Keltic (apparently) but in Britian it was taken up with an S back in the middle ages. The romantic Celtic revivalist movement of the 19th century, in Ireland and Britain, brought the hard C back into fashion and it has stuck.

Here’s a fantastic, and deliciously mean, quote from a piece published during the 1850s by the Celtic Union in Ireland.

“Of all the nations that have hitherto lived on the face of the earth, the English have the worst mode of pronouncing learned languages. This is admitted by the whole human race […] This poor meagre sordid language resembles nothing so much as the hissing of serpents or geese. […] If we follow the unwritten law of the English we shall pronounce (Celt) Selt but Cæsar would pronounce it, Kaylt. Thus the reader may take which pronunciation he pleases. He may follow the rule of the Latin or the rule of the English language, and in either case be right…”

A Celtic Chip

I think my sense of being Celtic was drummed into me over many years and I carried it around like a chip on my shoulder. At school we learned that the Celtic artwork of Ireland was the highest point of our artistic heritage, revered around the world. Last summer I dragged the family around the “Treasures” room of the National Museum in Dublin, to be awed by the Tara Brooch and Cross of Cong. To my eye they’re still astonishing, to theirs a little less so – as attested by my not being able to take a photo of them standing still in front of one of these receptacles of national pride.

Gobsmacked husband

I studied the History of Art at college and during a year of study in Florence in the 1990s there was a huge blockbuster exhibition on about the Celts, one of the first big comprehensive exhibitions about them. I never got to see it but I got my hands on the enormous catalogue and was horrified – on behalf of my entire nation – to see how little Irish art had been included. How could they? What wonders they were missing out on! The exhibition, I realise now, was focused on the earlier origins of these peoples – the likes of those building huts with thatched roofs to be discovered years later by tourists stopping by on their way to the ski slopes.

The golden age of “Celtic art” on show at the Dublin museum (between the 600s and 800s) really uses the term as a romantic name for a style, to call it something in contrast to the artistic void that was the dark ages in the rest of Europe. Those soft-accented, bald-headed monks who laboured for years over illuminated manuscripts and the artisans who pressed precious stones into mitres left amazing prizes behind them before the Vikings arrived and started messed things up.

Cartoon Celts

What the kids know about the Celts is a bit broader and more up to date. Apart from those history classes, this Horrible Histories book is one of a series which recently appeared in the house. It includes plenty of discussion about what they did with heads, sanitary customs and other yucky details.

Asterix books are also popular in the house, and with Italians. These long-loved stories of the plucky little Gauls (what the Romans called Celts) up in their corner of Brittany with their secret strength potion, and appetite for dancing and wild boar, were constantly beating up the Romans.

Indeed Obelix’s famous catchphrase – These Romans are Crazy! – works beautifully in Italian.

“Sono Pazzi Questi Romani”

– which nicely echoes the SPQR, the official title of Rome (Senātus Populusque Rōmānus: The Roman Senate and People). They were crazy alright, but in the world of Asterix they never quite got the better of them.

So here we are, a family of Celts in Tuscany, battling against the stereotypes and trying to make sense of it all. At this stage of my life, having lived in several places, I can claim many other identities that just the ancient Celtic – Canadian, New Yorker, Londoner, Norwegian, even a little Tuscan. And my kids even more so, with their feet in several homelands.

Maybe I shouldn’t mention to them the fact that being a Dubliner by birth I’m probably more Viking than anything else.

Carnival in Fiesole

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The carnival season in Italy is a big deal. It takes up several weeks before the beginning of Lent (starting on Ash Wednesday) and involves parties, food, dressing up – it keeps going!

Growing up in Ireland, we didn’t celebrate carnival. I’ve never really understood why it isn’t celebrated there, it being such a traditionally Catholic country. The biggest deal was to celebrate Pancake Tuesday – it seemed a huge treat to have my mum serve up crepes after school with (at the time) amazing lemon and sugar. Even in Norway, carnival is celebrated by children with special foods, parties and dressing the kids up in old Halloween costumes, if you could get away with it.

But here in Tuscany every pastry shop (pasticceria), bakery and supermarket produces the traditional dolci di carnevale – the sweet stuff you only eat at this time of year: in fact you can eat it for weeks before Lent and, strangely, the weeks after too. Lent, Easter, it’s all a bit of a blur here.

Fritelle are like doughnut balls (like the beignet of New Orleans) filled with rice, raisins, cream or fruit. Cenci are biscuity pastries laden with icing sugar and up in the right of the photo is Schiacciata Fiorentina – a plain cake snowed under by icing sugar, usually with a non-iced gap for the Florentine lily in the middle.

In Ireland we certainly had no parties and dressing up and fun before the season of Lenten hardship began. Though St Patrick’s Day was usually in the middle and that was a one-day-free ticket for fun.

The big Italian public celebrations in Venice and Viareggio are well known, but most towns have their own local events. We live in Fiesole, a small town in the hills above Florence, and it’s usually celebrated in the modern way: pile all the kids into a room in their varied costumes (some shop-bought but many homemade, even ours!), feed them up with lots of sweets and give them tons of confetti and cans of silly string and let them wreak havoc for an hour or two.

This year some enterprising parents and local associations organised a more traditional celebration for Fiesole. Our kids got involved and spent a few Saturday mornings working on crafts, masks and games for the big party which happened in the town last Saturday.

Here are some photos from the day – a procession with handmade masks and costumes, led by the town band and down to the central piazza where there were games and general mingling.

Even the regular staff at the bar/cafe at the Casa del Popolo joined in: the community space from where the parade started.

One of the organisers was a master puppeteer (and school dad), Nicola who previously worked on the carnival in Arezzo. He made the princess that led the parade and got the kids doing old-fashioned carnival features like making papier-mache-filled eggs and a giant wooden catapult.

It was cold and windy.

Some of the 50 or so migrants who are housed in the town got involved, in an effort to get to know the local community better. Mostly young African men, they came with their own handmade masks, carried the main princess and created a drumming circle which added some energy to the piazza.

Another group, from the local after-school programme (the wonderful La Barchetta) created colourful bird banners with strips of cloth fluttering in the wind. At the end of the party these banners were burnt in a ceremonial fire (by which time we had long gone home with tired kids).

Our local pasticceria Alcedo, is considered one of the best in Tuscany.

The local band were terrific.

 

Empty egg shells filled with confetti were part of the games – they still hurt when they land on your head.

The band played on.

 

Streets and piazzas all over Italy will be full with this paper stuff thrown around by the kids, over several weekends. It’s called coriandoli (though we call it confetti, which rightly confuses our Italian friends).

On the way home we met a goat coming towards us. We don’t usually see farm animals around here and thought for a second this was a strange, vaguely supernatural carnival moment. But she probably just snuck out of the farm down the road at Maiano, which is a few fields/gardens/high walls away. She seemed quite freaked out, and apparently ended up in the piazza, butting her head against the pasticceria window when she saw her own reflection and then disappeared down the steep steps by the library.

The zebra and the musketeer head home, spreading more coriandoli as they pass.

 

 

 

Street art of Florence

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It might seem strange that in this city of Renaissance art you can become an addicted consumer of street art, but that’s what has happened to me. The streets of Florence are filled with an amazing variety of images – from mysterious tiny symbols to brash murals. I’ve been keeping track of some of the artists with my phone camera and share some of the main artists below.

Having a visual bent and training I love keeping an eye out for familiar artists on a random wall or street sign – but I also love passing on the fun of it to my children and the visitors we get to show around Florence. In fact the kids are more likely to point out some Clet-adjusted traffic signs to a confused visitor from abroad than know the name of the 17th-century church we’ve just passed. For anyone visiting this uber-centre of culture, most of it of a visual nature, street art is now an accepted part of the scene and I believe it’s great visual training for eyes that are still learning concepts of style, composition, colour and communication.

Zed1, Florence (photo from italymagazine.com)

You could atcually say there has been a Renaissance of street art in Italy and many of these Florence-based artists are making their mark internationally and being recognised in more serious form at home like at the recent exhibition showcasing 18 local street artists at the (brand-new) gallery Street Levels Gallery on Via Palazzuolo.

Is street art not just graffiti? There are several big differences between the two, you can read in more detail here. Graffiti is of course an Italian word, used for centuries to describe an image scratched onto a hard surface, like a wall (Graffiare means to scratch). In modern times it’s a form of marking or statement usually on public property.

As for street art – speaking broadly you can say that it is more public than graffiti, and it’s more about images and less about (indecipherable) text and territory-marking, it’s more tolerated and usually more public though it can be just as sharp and political. Let’s say it’s easier on the eye and (frankly) more artistic.

Unknown, Florence

Street art is often associated with the huge murals present in many European cities (we used to enjoy the extraordinary ones in Oslo) though some cause more controversy than others, like the gory but artistic images that have very recently appeared in Brussels.

In Florence the streets are narrow and the history is heavy so the local artists have found interesting ways to blend their images in – on gas cover panels, wine holes (read more about them in my other blog post), underground passages or road signs.

Street art is not to everyone’s taste and because it’s on the street it gets dirty, destroyed or removed. But these artists are working in a temporary, non-secure context. Consider how much nerve it must take to pop a drawing on the wall of this Renaissance city (even if it is already dirty). The city has not always, or ever, been pristine, no doubt there’s been graffiti on these buildings for hundreds of years – indeed some think Michelangelo left some scrawls behind on the Palazzo Vecchio, read more here.

Unknown, le Cure

I’m fascinated by the originality and sheer daring of the placement and content of the street art here. And it’s quite an experience to encounter it in the streets of Florence where the artist often plays around or challenges the hyper-famous images contained/constrained inside the museums and souvenir shops. After admiring the amazing 600 year old frescoes in the city churches, (as well as the mind-boggling restoration techniques so well now explained and displayed), enjoy this modern fresco form as you wander the streets.

So if you’re planning a trip to Florence and want to explore its vibrant street life or you’re coming with kids then here’s a quick guide to some of the top street artists. You’ll find their work all over the centre of town and under Instagram hashtags like #streetartflorence, #murifiorentini and #firenzestreetart.

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L’arte sa nuotare / Blub

The artist Blub runs a series around town called L’arte sa nuotare (Art knows how to swim) and his is one of the more popular styles in Florence with visitors. Usually starting from a famous image from art history, ideally one from a museum around the corner, he places them into an underwater environment – to refresh them, make them speak to us in a new and less jaded way.

His facebook page

Blub, L’arte sa nuotare, Florence
Blub, L’arte sa nuotare, Florence
Blub, L’arte sa nuotare, Via Romana
Blub, L’Arte sa Nuotare, Florence

 

Exit/Enter

My personal favourite, Exit/Enter creates beguiling and intriguing and very simple line-drawn images with a splash of colour that make you stop in your tracks. Apparently he was frustrated by the lack of gallery opportunities for a young artist so took to a public space instead. Fully integrated into the street in which they appear, his pieces often give a sense of movement and flow to your walk through the city. Florentine disegno in modern form?

Exit/Enter Facebook page

Exit/Enter, Via Palazzuolo
Exit/Enter, Florence
Exit/Enter, Florence

 

Exit/Enter, Santo Spirito

Clet

Like many artists drawn over the years to Florence, Clet is not a local but he’s now an internationally-known name. Originally from Brittany he has been based here for many years and at his workshop in San Niccolò you can pop in to say hi and buy a few souvenir stickers of his iconic images. His roadsign interventions are a deliberate public statement about the limits of civil society, without altering the original signage and its communicative design (well maybe sometimes I get distracted when driving). The vinyl stickers he designs and sneaks onto city signs are often quickly removed but just as easily placed on again. They’re also a huge hit with visiting and resident children!

Have a look at this Guardian slideshow to see him in action.

Clet on Facebook.

Clet, Piazza d’Azeglio
Clet, Piazza dei Ciompi
Clet, Piazza Ghibellina
Clet, Florence
Clet, Lungarno Vespucci

And a few extras that have caught my eye but I know little about

Mehstre, Via Verdi

 

Unknown, Via Romana

 

Unknown – Borgo Pinti

The Le Cure passageway

A well-known dedicated space for grafitti and street artists is the underground passageway at Piazza Le Cure that crosses several junctions and the train track. Grab a gelato at Cavini on the corner and wander down into this intriguing underworld gallery, you might even hear the organ- and radio-playing local resident.

The meaning of snow

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It’s been snowing for a few days up here in the hills above Florence – delicately, sometimes with fat flakes that you can catch in your mouth. There’s not enough to stick to the ground and local life is only slightly disrupted, some people who live further out in the countryside are actually snowed in and can’t get to school. But there isn’t much panic, just patient tolerance as it surely won’t last. As veterans of hard winters we are charmed and I have to stop myself from stopping the car to take another photo of an olive tree blanketed in white. I learn the term “bufera di neve” which sounds soft and gentle but which I’m surprised to learn means blizzard. Tuscan-style.

Our 7-year-old attends a Montessori school in the woods and on Monday we meet the other kids at the start of the day, it’s slowly becoming whiter around us. One of the dads brings up that old chestnut, about how Eskimos have 40 different words for snow. “Which makes sense”, he says, “think of all the different types of snow there are”. And we do think about it: the stuff that falls out of the sky, sometimes fat, sometimes fast. The hard-packed stuff and the stuff that’s almost too fluffy to hold onto, the stuff for moving through and the stuff that has to be dug out of your way to get anywhere, the blowy blustery stuff and the snow you can use to build something, sled or ski through.

My daughter is indeed a child of snow. During the hours before she was born, to ease the labour pains I walked and walked, (yes I was tough) through the historic cemetery close to our Oslo home. It was snowing hard, the air was dampened and our (good) boots stomped tracks through the soft powder, past the graves of Munch and Ibsen and the WWII resistance fighters, feeling strangely comforted to walk among these old souls. Within a few hours we got to meet our own little Norwegian.

A few years later we walked through the same graveyard every day to her nature kindergarten, which brought the children into the woods outside the city 3 days a week. Over her 2 years with that group, this tough girl clocked up many hours of trekking through snow, sledding down hills, chopping wood, building shelters, a latrine and obstacle courses in the trees. In all weathers. She knows more about snow than I ever will.

I didn’t grow up with snow in Dublin and have only as an adult come to know and respect it. By marrying a Canadian I made a serious lifestyle choice which was further compounded by living for several years in eastern Canada and then when we starting raising our kids in Norway. But there we took it on as a part of life which affected almost every aspect of daily life 4-6 months of the year.

And here we are in the woods outside Florence, looking at this almost foreign-looking snow falling through the tall Roman pines, we almost crave it as it’s been so long since we’ve seen it. The kids open their mouths and catch the fat flakes when they see them, they’re transported with delight. A week before it snowed near us, my daughter’s friend who lives deep in the country arrived at school one morning with a cloth bag around her neck. She produced from the bag, very carefully, a glass jar. Opening it up she proudly showed us a mushy mess and declared “Snow from my garden!”

Now I watch my daughter listening intently to the young Italian dad discussing the eskimos and I realise I’m disappointed to think that her deep, deep connection to this cold white stuff in its many forms and shapes and surroundings and uses and receptacles of emotion is limited to just one word. In English we just call it snow, and in Oslo, we used the very Norwegian-sounding word snø though if you dig deeper there other words available.

And what about this whole 40 Eskimo words thing? It’s an idea that has stuck with people but it’s basically not true, a linguistic misconception and a more complex issue which I can only suggest you read up on it. Similar ideas that circulate include there being numerous Irish words for rain. In fact I just read last week in the local paper – and this was of great interest to the dad – about the dozens of  phrases for “it’s bloody cold” in Tuscan towns and villages.

I watch my girl stick out her tongue to catch another flake and run off down the road towards the school with her classmates and teachers. And I know that she and I know that words don’t really matter so much. It’s the feelings and the memories that stick.

Finding Hitchcock

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The time has come for us to start weaning our children off the films that only they want to watch. In the age of Netflix it’s so easy to leave them to their  own devices, literally, and we have to make an effort to sit together and watch a film as a family: their dad and I are reliving our own glowing memories from childhood of enjoying films as a family together on the couch (including hiding behind it as Indy battles with the snakes).

So to start our plan to watch more interesting films, together, we started with Star Wars (it took a couple of goes but then they really took to the fantastical element of it and have now seen every film), Singin in the Rain (who doesn’t love Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds?) and then Back to the Future (lots of swearing and we had to explain what a Walkman is).

But we needed a good adventure film, with spies and suspense and action. My own favourite is North by Northwest – so we thought we’d start with that. We’re unapologetically old-school and we like watching a physical movie on the TV screen, so before going jumping onto Amazon to buy a copy I thought I’d try the library. Yes, very old-school.

Over our years of living in foreign countries, we’ve become experts on making the most of the library system wherever we are, especially for browsing films. This goes back to our time in New York (around 1999-2002) when we lived close to the fabulous Brooklyn Public Library. We would indulge in raiding their film catalogue, scanning each shelf at a time and carting home our tote bag laden down with a few brick-like VHS tapes, many of which then refused to work that Saturday night. But we enjoyed catching up on some random choices like Powell & Pressburger and Kurosawa, and watching anything with music by Michel Legrand or hair by Veronica Lake. We were also lucky during our 7 years in Oslo to live close to the central library there (the grandly named Deichmanske Bibliotek) and had lots of cinema to choose from, though the foreign-language films often had no English subtitles so we no doubt missed out on a few years’s worth of Brazilian and Hong Kong blockbusters.

So here I am now looking for the 1959 Hitchcock classic to watch with our kids and I head to our local library in Fiesole – it’s a small town and we’re lucky to have a library. It actually has a decent selection of classic and modern films on DVD, and still some VHS. Because there are surely some Tuscan households that still use one.

I start to browse through the DVDs for North by Northwest. I look for the letter N in the titles. No joy, the titles are all a bit jumbled and not shelved according to any alphabet I know. I look to see if they might be organised by genre, or then by country – Italian vs non-Italian. Still no luck.

I interrupt the librarian at her desk, she looks up and smiles (as they do the world over). “How are your DVDs organised?” And she answers, “Oh they’re shelved according to director”.

Of course they are. This is after all the nation of cinema lovers: Italians take their cinema extremely seriously and worship their filmmakers as much as their Renaissance artists. Who wouldn’t know their Pasolini from their Fellini, or even their Spielberg from their Scorsese? Fair enough, I’ve actually studied some of this stuff myself and I can find them on these shelves.

But when it comes to more popular movies, what do you do? What about all those mindless action movies, sequels, random 1970s family movies? Could you name the director of any Bond movie or the auteur behind Frozen?

Still, I have an easy one and I find the Hitchcock selection.  Here’s a nice range of his titles, but they’ve changed all the names! (I’m sure they didn’t do that in Norway.) But these do sound quite nice in Italian: “I 39 Scalini” (The 39 Steps) and “Rebecca, La Prima Moglie” (the first wife). But no sign of Cary Grant in his immaculate suit. I do take home the Man who Knew Too Much (which proved to be a bit spookier than I’d remembered, Hitch uses lack of music to great effect).

With no luck at this library I check the central library in Florence next time I’m in the centre of town. It’s a relatively-recent library, in a lovely renovated old convent. But the contents are a different story. Their cinema section proves to be less organised than our own up here and it’s clear they get a lot more customers, or at least ones who have DVD-players equipped with steel teeth. The films are here organised differently: by title. Heimat sits between Harold & Maude and Heat. Who makes these decisions? Who knows?

The DVDs are shoved downwards into pull-out shelves and you have to make an effort to look through them. Still, I stumble on some fun titles I wouldn’t otherwise see, like this collection of four Jacques Tati films (which has about half the contents intact):

But still no North by Northwest and then I realise – of course they’ve changed the name of that one too! Taking out my phone I cobble onto the sickly Wi-Fi offered by the library and discover online that I should actually be looking for “Intrigo Internazionale” – International Intrigue. (Which is odd, as the film doesn’t go much further than South Dakota.) They don’t have it, but at least now I’m armed with more information.

In the end I find the movie in the Feltrinelli bookshop near the Duomo – they have a cheap DVD section upstairs. For 8 euros we can keep it all to ourselves and build up our own little library at home. And sort them however we like.

P.S. The kids really enjoyed it and had loads of questions about it afterwards, mostly about guns and kisses.

P.P.S Here’s a list of all the Hitchcock titles in Italian if you’re interested.

Women of Christmas

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Christmas has some pretty larger than life figures – Santa Claus/St Nicholas, the baby Jesus, the three Kings, and the shepherds and angels, all of whom were undoubtedly all male. But apart from the central – and rather busy – figure of Mary, we don’t associate many women with the Christmas season. When I stop to think about it though, I can say that my own little family of four has adopted a few as we have been absorbing traditions from the countries we’ve been living in over the last decade.

Living for seven years in Oslo our girls basically grew up as Norwegians. From December 1st they would open presents every day  on our homemade advent calendar, listen to Norwegian songs (some okay, some bad), bake all the right things. And every year they somehow managed to ignore the fact that all their school friends expected Santa to arrive at their door on Christmas Eve while our version of Santa showed up later that night, popping down the chimney into our chimney-less third-floor apartment to drop off his gifts. But of all the Norwegian traditions, we loved most celebrating Santa Lucia on December 13th.

Dear old Saint Lucy is, coincidentally for us, an Italian saint but arguably just as popular in Scandinavia than in the parts of Italy that still commemorate her today. In Norway every year, kindergarten children take part in a procession at daybreak (not really so early, about 8:45 am), each child is dressed in a white dress tied up with silver tinsel, and one lucky girl is chosen to wear the crown of candles (usually battery-operated though we did know of one hair-fire). The children walk around, singing the lovely Santa Lucia song and maybe afterwards eat some of the special Lucia biscuits a generous mum might have baked.

It’s a beautiful ritual of light in the midst of darkness and our two daughters just loved it. After moving to Italy I thought it would be nice to keep up the tradition. Which is how this photo came to come about.

This is me and my two Irish-Canadian daughters dressed for a Santa Lucia procession at the local Ikea store outside Florence. This is organised every year by the group of local Swedish mums who on the day, roped me in to also wearing a white dress, placing me at the front of the procession which paraded its way through the store, against the usual shopping flow and shunting the goggle-eyed Italian shoppers (and their camera-phones) into the sides as we passed. It was not an experience I would have pictured 20 years ago, nor do I plan to repeat it. But our girls had a blast and felt themselves back in Norway again, even if this was a Swedish affair – that’s close enough!

Also while living in Norway, I was fortunate to fall in with the Oslo Irish women’s association, a wonderful group of kind souls, some of whom moved to be with their Norwegian sweethearts before I was even born, and others more recent economic migrants like ourselves, all of them with much great advice on surviving in Norway. This group decided to bring back to life – in Oslo – the old Irish tradition of getting the women and other domestics out of the house after the feasts of the season. Known as Little Women’s Christmas, or Nollaig na mBan, it used to be popular in certain parts of Ireland and has been going through a revival recently. It’s a lovely tradition and we did not hesitate to feast it and raise a toast to ourselves every January 6th in the main Irish pub of Oslo. Even at those prices.

Since the summer of 2015, our home is in Italy and just before Christmas, as I was packing all our bags for our trip back home to Dublin I realised I had to organise our brand new, “other” Christmas before we left. Never mind the stocking waiting to be hung up and filled by Santa in Dublin, I also needed to fill another stocking full of sweets and goodies for our girls for the morning of January 6th. We’ll be back in Italy by then (in fact they pleaded that we would be) as that is the feast day of the Befana, the Italian witch who traditionally does the present-giving in many parts of the country.

The Befana is actually a most Italian kind of story – she is a (generally nice) witch or old woman who met the three kings following the star to Bethlehem. As one version of the story goes, when she got word of the big news, she went off to organise a present for the baby Jesus but the kings weren’t going to hang around and they took off. To make up for being left out of the most famous Christmas gift-giving ever, she has been giving presents ever since to children every Epiphany – children living in Italy. Unlike Santa, she expects a glass of wine when she lands on the roof and she might still give a piece of coal to anyone naughty. (After quickly consulting with local friends on how to manage this, I’ve learned that you can buy a plastic piece of coal in the shops for the stocking).

Funnily enough our daughters didn’t mention last Christmas that they planned to celebrate Befana – probably because we had not been here so long and their Italian wasn’t yet good enough to pick up on the comments about it from their friends at school.

This year they seem to have it sussed it out, realising that we are now technically in her catchment area.

As long as Ryanair/Aer Lingus gets us back there in time!

This story was published in the Irish Times in January 2017.

Olive Harvest

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An unexpected, and amazing, part of our experience of our time in Italy has been to live among the olive trees of Tuscany. You see them everywhere. Wise, solid and often ancient they stand firm through all weathers. They are the real natives of this gorgeous place.

The olive tree is treated with amazing respect by the people around us: for centuries they used their skin, juice, leaves, branches, bark and roots. Nowadays the main product is the oil, which is still the fuel of Tuscan life – the basis of daily cuisine and tourism, and an aid for ailments.

At school, a birthday is marked not by cake but by pane e olio (bread and oil) shared with the whole class: something my two kids are slowly adjusting to.

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The freshly-pressed oil of harvest time (October-November) is the most precious of all, ideally from your own garden. People prefer to make their own oil, enough to last the whole year, and most families have land with trees planted somewhere in the area, or they source it from a family member or friend/colleague. It’s a let-down to buy your good oil from the frantoio or market, or at worst the supermarket. Always in the background is the fear of pests or memories of the catastrophic winter of 1985 when most of the trees in Tuscany were destroyed during a deep freeze.

We have olive trees in our (rented) garden and though there was no harvest this year due to an infestation we were really fortunate to join in last year’s communal work to pick the olives. This was an amazing chance for our kids to see the whole process and be a part of this incredibly strong tradition and lifestyle.

Over the course of two weekends we got together with the neighbours we somehow rarely see and with great cheer we laboured to pick the olives by hand. (Some big farms use machines to pick them but by hand is still considered the best way).

With five other families we worked to prune the trees, pick the olives, sort them and them haul them off to the local oil press where they were quickly turned into oil to be consumed right away. The pressing part was not romantic, it’s all done by machinery now but going there with your olives and coming home with your own, tasty oil is the best part of the experience.

Olive trees and boxes
Our front garden – we filled up about 40 of these boxes

During the painstaking picking process we chatted with our neighbours, got to know each other better, picked up some useful swear terms and on the last day had a potluck lunch in the garden with plenty of wine, cake and some dancing. It was not unlike a Norwegian dugnad – that twice-annual get-together with the neighbours you steadfastly ignore to clean the street or paint the walls and drink beer.

From the 40 trees in our common garden each family came away with about 8 litres of delicious cloudy, tangy oil – which we could happily certify as being organic and fair trade. Each tree yields about a litre of oil. Our trees were only planted 30 or 40 years ago but already they show some of the amazing character of those ancient trees: they’re starting to split off into two parts, merging into the general landscape of the garden. Promising to live longer than any of us.

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I took these photos during last year’s communal harvest in our garden.

Olives
Olives are ready to pick when they’re green and purple/black – they are horribly bitter if you taste them directly off the tree. They need to be either pressed for oil or cured in salt water for 6 months.
Ladder
One by one the trees are pruned and the branches fall on the ground for the kids to pick
Picking by hand
The olives are best picked by hand – sometimes including child labour.
Nets under trees
Special nets are laid out in a circle around each tree, making sure to catch every single olive that is knocked off or picked.
Raking
Using a plastic rake to pull the olives off.
Cutting the branches
Climbing up to cut the branches. This seems to be the most-coveted job and we know of an 85-year-old-man who still does it.
Olives
We gathered about 20 boxes, loaded them into 2 cars and set off to the frantoio (oil press) 10 minutes away
Nets
Setting out the nets under the trees
Luciano
Waiting for our turn at the press, it was a busy day
Press
No quaint methods here, all noisy machinery
olivedrawings
Our younger daughter had a day of picking olives with the whole of first grade. Great material for a project and she definitely understood the process better than I did.
Final oil
The fresh oil is sent home in large plastic containers. We found some large metal containers in our garage, probably last used by our landlady several years ago. The neighbours instructed us to wash them out with water and a little soap, nothing else.

 

And how did it taste? Buonissimo!

Windows of Wine

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Some people say that of all Italian cities, Florence is the least interesting from the outside. That all its treasures and intrigue are to be found inside – in the churches, museums, libraries and palazzi. Walking around the historic centre it does indeed seem quite grey on the outside, its narrow streets go on for blocks as they wind around walled-in palazzi, villas and convents, offering few of the smaller squares and parks you’d find in Rome. These monumental buildings and walls are broken up by immense gates and forbidding doorways.

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Look a little closer at the elements breaking up the wall space and you will start to see – as I did only this year – a little hole next to some of the doors. It might have a pointed arch, and it might be blocked up or have a little wooden door. It’s a small window, just large enough for someone to pass a bottle of wine through it. Which is actually what these windows were built to do.

Built into the wall to allow the purchase of a glass or bottle of wine, these windows date back to the time of the grand Duchy during the 1500s and were in use mostly until the 1800s. Enterprising Florentine families who had a vineyard in the country and plenty of chianti or vernaccia to spare, would sell it directly from their home to thirsty city-dwellers. There are about 150 of these wine windows around Florence and about 30 more in a few other towns and cities nearby. But otherwise they are not found anywhere else in Italy.

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Customers would bring their empty bottle (often a traditional fiasco), hand over the money and receive a full bottle of quality wine. The wine window would be located close to the cantina (wine cellar) and so the servants could conduct the transaction easily without needing to let anyone into the fortress-home. A document from 1591 lists the price of a full bottle*: 1 lira, 6 denari and 8 soldi (the old Italian shillings and pence system).

Even though some of them are still used today – to hold a plate of doorbells or sometimes still as a window – many locals don’t even know their history. An association to study and try to preserve them, Buchette del Vino, was set up only last year and they are busy working to find and preserve them all. Just before writing this, I found one of the Fiesole ones right at the bottom of our road, having passed it hundreds of times!

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They are usually called buchette del vino – a buca or buco means a hole, and buchetta is a little hole. But this being a city of poets they have some other great names, indicating a very local history: finestrini (little windows), nicchie (niches), porticielli (little gates), tabernacoli (tabernacles) and best of all porte del paradiso (gates of paradise).

One wine window is in the wall of famous gelateria Vivoli, near Santa Croce and it was only discovered after the Florence flood of 1966 when some of the wall stucco was washed away. More on that in this article in the Florentine. And a local secret agent during the War, Rodolfo Siviero – sometimes called the James Bond of the art world – made full use of the partially-hidden wine hole in his river-front home to help save numerous, presumably smaller, works of art. The windows have been rarely depicted in images, but this 1920s painting by Florentine artist Ortone Rosai includes one.

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Ortone Rosai, Giocatori di Topa (1928)

Some windows still have their “original” wooden door or knocker, many are filled in and some are used to nice effect by the ever-enterprising local street artists of Florence. At least I think so:

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The association has a map marking all the wine windows of Florence and area and also some interesting documents, like an amazing photo of a delivery of wine bottles or the 1772 decree by the Grand Duchy to allow the sale of wine in all locations in the city. They can also organise guided tours, something new for your next trip to Florence?

These windows could surely tell a few stories and, more poignantly, they call to mind the setup these days in Naples where doors have holes cut into them to allow for easier exchange of drugs. The same concept: an anonymous, zero-miles transaction, skipping the middle man.

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* Note: Much of the info is taken from the Buchette del Vino website and an article in La Repubblica on 26 November 2016.

50 years after the Flood

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This weekend sees a huge anniversary in Florence. 50 years ago on 4th November 1966 the Arno river burst its banks and flooded the city – with huge consequences. More than a hundred people died and thousands of businesses were ruined and families made homeless. Even more of a milestone was the destruction and damage done to historic buildings where tens of thousands of artworks and books were damaged or destroyed by the water or the over 600,000 tons of mud, sewage and rubble. The National Library, which sits right on the riverbank, lost millions of books. Around the corner, the church of Santa Croce saw unbelievable damage.

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Foto David Lees

Immediately, thousands of volunteers started coming into the city, from the area, from the rest of Italy and from abroad. They became known as the Mud Angels, gli Angeli del Fango, forming themselves into a civic army that tackled the cleanup of the dirty, despoiled city. Experts in conservation and restoration flocked in to help and many new techniques were invented as a result – it is in fact a milestone in art restoration. A group of women artists around the world, the Flood Ladies, donated art to fill the empty spaces and their efforts were well-noted this week as well. More on that on this local blog.

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Italfotogieffe/Banca dati Archivio Foto Locchi

Next time you visit Florence keep an eye out for the markers discreetly placed in walls and arches in different parts of the city. They mark the (amazingly high) level of the river after the flood.

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When you look at these amazing photos today you can see why it was such a disaster for the city. On the radio this week I heard a local mud angel – a scout troup leader from Scandicci – describe how on this occasion the famously reserved Florentines found a way to come together as a community and save their city. Even more than today, 50 years ago Florence was a city of shopkeepers, tradesmen, teachers and civil servants as well as the home to amazing treasures that it has kept safe since the Renaissance. It is these treasures that have, over centuries, brought strangers here, often resulting in a clash of opposites. Today it feels overwhelmed by tourists – apparently 9 million visit every year – but they are mostly confined to a small part of the city centre, which these days we only rarely visit.

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Santa Croce, Foto David Lees

And I was pulled to come here too, over 20 years ago. When I was finishing secondary school and planning what to study next I set my heart on learning to be a conservator. I have no idea where the impulse came from, I had loved art at school but was a terrible artist, preferring the history of art instead. I decided to study Italian and Art History at UCD and during my degree spent a year in Florence. I knew little then or indeed until this year about the flood and the effects it had on the world of restoration – a world I soon found was not for me, all chemistry and mathematics and not so much creativity. But reading today’s Irish Times I discover that a kind woman at the National Gallery in Dublin who once let me poke around in her workshop all those years ago, Maighread McParland, was in Florence 50 years to help with the efforts.

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The city has organised an amazing number of events, exhibitions, lectures. All the Mud Angels they could find were brought back and honoured. On Instagram you’ll find hundreds of visual reflections about the river and the local English-language magazine, The Florentine, has lots of good stories. And here’s a great video of images – set to the song about the flood by local troubador Riccardo Marasco.

A nice touch of was the reopening yesterday of the piece of road along the river – the Lungarano Torrigiani – that collapsed to great media attention during the spring. (A bit of road that doesn’t really affect more than those of us who need some more parking options closer to the centre of town.)

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Photo David Lees

Last night there was a no-doubt very beautiful candlelit procession from San Miniato al Monte, that gorgeous church up the hill from Piazzale Michelangelo, all the way down to the river and across to Santa Croce, the spiritual heart of the city. We didn’t make it, due to a wisdom tooth issue and Friday night crankiness, but maybe I felt it might have been too emotional to handle.

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Wikiart

The symbol of the flood, and all that it meant for Florence and those who love it, is Cimabue’s crucifix which is now up again in the sacristy of Santa Croce. Created in around 1265 – long before the Botticellis and Michelangelos that adorn the knockoff posters and aprons in the local tourist shops – it is the symbol of the whole story, its stunningly-beautiful face of Jesus and clearly damaged state encapsulating the sometimes-overwhelming heritage of this city.

 

All photos are from 1966 and have been borrowed from the internet or the book Gli Angeli del Fango (Giunti 2006)

Sweet Halloween

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My kids are going out tonight for Halloween in our little Tuscan town. They’re joining some friends from school – and their slightly bewildered Italian parents – for dolcetto o scherzetto. Literally: little treat or little trick. It’s still a novelty in Italy, only coming into practice over the last ten years, and people feel a bit pressured into doing what they consider to be an American celebration that’s oddly similar to Carnevale but really quite foreign.

At this time of year I insist on enlightening those around me, in whatever country we’re living in, that Halloween is really an Irish festival, and a big one at that. Like so many other things, the Americans made it their own and then exported it back to us.

At a basic level I would tell you that in Ireland we (in our romantic childhood memories) would eat special food, play games, dress up and have bonfires. But my memories of it are larger than just what we did and more about how it felt, and that’s what I try to pass on to my own kids.

Trick or treat – it’s an American term, so I always tried to avoid it but it’s catchy and useful for successfully translating into other languages. As kids we would say we were “going around the houses”.

dogI like the idea of my kids declaring “dolcetto or scherzetto” at the neighbours tonight and it conjures images of charming little ghoulies jumping around with their goodie bags and spiky sticks. The houses and shops of Italian towns are noticeably empty of flashing pumpkins and witch window stickers so it is just a fun, relaxed event for kids. In Norway it is also still an imported novelty, and quite low-key, but Norwegian kids are mad keen on sweets/candy so it’s very popular. There the kids say “Knask eller Knep” (munchies or trick) – a slightly harsher and, I think, more scary-sounding phrase.

This is our second Halloween here in Italy and we’ve helped our kids enjoy it by working together on their own costumes and finding other local kids going out in a group to knock on doors for an hour or two, coming home with weekends worth of sweets. Parents have been asked to alert the neighbours in advance, to ensure no doors are slammed in faces – or, magari, that some kids might actually do a trick on them. norskWe were lucky while living in Oslo that a wonderful group of Irish mammies organised an Irish-style Halloween party every year, which gave the local half-Irish kids some frame of reference for an ancient part of our heritage.

It was a big deal that in Ireland we had Halloween and in Britain they didn’t. They had a weird (and spookily anti-Catholic) celebration of Guy Fawkes night, a week later. On our island, the kids would spend weeks setting up bonfires in each area, and people would sneak fireworks over the border from Northern Ireland (which had its own share of bonfires back then) – they were illegal in the Republic, rightly so as the hospital emergency rooms ended up busy anyway.

Halloween for me was the feeling of something being in the air, spooky and magical. My mum would prepare a special dinner including colcannon (buttery mashed potato and kale) and for dessert there’d be barmbrack, a fruit cake only eaten at Halloween and hidden inside would be a ring – won annually by my sister. Other things might be hidden inside, though not quite to the level of Mrs Doyle’s baked-in-sweater in that Father Ted episode.

The friends would come over, mixed ages and siblings all together, and we’d dress up – the girls inevtiably making more of an effort than the boys, who would have have picked up a mask down at the corner shop. One year I felt it sufficient to just pile 7 different hats on my head, just to give my mum a break from putting a costume together.

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Leaving the warm house you’d head out together into the dark streets, a sense of being together in a group, all of us dressed up strangely to scare away any spirits that are out and about. I took it seriously, perhaps because I was usually the youngest. It was always dark, often cold and you would see candles (no sign of any pumpkins back then) in some windows and know that the bigger kids were setting up a bonfire down the road, which you may or may not be allowed to go watch this year. Knocking on doors, we’d yell “d’ye have anything for the Halloween party?” and each of us would have to explain your costume – who you were meant to be, or how you made it. Some of the older residents would actually bother to ask you to sing or recite your party piece. If they approved, they’d pop a handful of monkey nuts or hazelnuts, apples, some coins and maybe some sweets into your bag. There would be tricks played on mean neighbours, eggs or worse through the letterbox and a lot of disappearing bell-ringing.

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After you had gone around enough houses and avoided the competing groups on the streets, you’d come back to the appointed house and have “the party”. You emptied out the bags of goodies and fight over sharing the sweets and getting rid of the nuts – usually to a patient parent. The apples and coins would be tossed into a bucket of water for a game of grabbing them with your teeth and almost drowning. There might be a donkey to pin, apples on a string or other once-a-year games. Many homes would hear stories told – of the devil, the púca or the banshee – but fortunately for me (always terrified of ghost stories) this did not go on in our house.

The darkness outside seemed to grow longer, the inside of the house glowing with sweet treats and fun. And security. You were home now, the door was closed to the rest of the night and to the spirits to do whatever they had to do – next day you could wake up and know that it was all done with for this year, the strange carnival happening while you were asleep, safe in your bed.  The next morning would invariably be bright and crispy. The saints were now in charge.

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Doggy bag? Sì, grazie!

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We live in Florence and so we’ve had visitors come to stay. As you’d expect we usually take them out to eat and sometimes – after a serious 3 or 4-course affair – someone might declare they’re full and suggest they bring home the leftovers. “How do I ask for a doggy bag?” “Umm… well”, I reply. “It’s not really what you, um, do here”. So they order some more wine and keep picking at their steak and grilled fennel. Which I assure them wouldn’t taste the same tomorrow anyway.

In Italy you eat what is on your plate. There is an unspoken understanding between the chef and you: that she/he knows how much you should eat of a certain dish to satisfy your taste and that you should know yourself how much you can handle today. There is still a strong current of resusing unused food in traditional recipes – like in Tuscany where old bread is used for the next day’s Ribollita soup (my preferred comfort food) or Panzanella, bread salad.

Lunch at the Mercato Centrale, Florence
Lunch at the Mercato Centrale, Florence

But recently Italians have started to admit they can’t always finish up their meals and are trying – with the help of the government – to embrace a new concept. The doggy bag.

The name – doggy bag – is thought to originate in wartime America where responsible citizens were encouraged to feed their pets only with table scraps, taking them home in wrapped up wax paper bags marked with “Bones for Bowser”. Diners soon starting asking for it for themselves and the concept stuck. This is from an interesting Smithsonian article I found.

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Courtesy of Tuscantraveler.com

While it’s easy to ask for a doggy bag in an American or Canadian restaurant it’s just not common in many parts of “Europe”. Taking care of your leftovers is popular with thrifty and conscientious hipsters as well as graphic designers, and big-shot English chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall leads a campaign called Too Good to Waste, an effort to persuade nicer British establishments to offer doggy boxes. They have a cute slogan: Be a lover, not a leaver.

But the issue goes well beyond individual diners and into the much wider global issues of food and waste management. The FAO has estimated that 40% – that’s 40% – of food produced in Europe goes to waste. France passed some fairly tough laws last year which punish producers who do not deal with the issue. The Italians decided instead to take the kinder track, to instead provide incentives and improve ease of use. Perhaps they were encouraged by the interest taken in the issue by Francesco, everyone’s favourite pope.

In August this year the Italian senate unanimously passed into law a bunch of measures to start dealing with food waste. Aiming to reduce the estimated 5 million tons of food thrown away every year, the measures include ways for companies and farmers to more easily donate unused food to charity by setting realistic rules about sell-by dates and food safety and liability issues.

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A typical sagra table

But of most interest was the inclusion of an initiative to encourage ordinary Italians to break the habit and consider it normal to take their unfinished food home rather than let it go to waste. A budget of one million euros was set aside for a government initiative to persuade people to start using doggy bags – so far it’s hard to see exactly what has been done but it sounds good.

The under-secretary responsible, Barbara Degani, declared “the family bag is a semantic upgrade of the famous doggy bag, allowing us to take the concept out of the ghetto of our imaginary modesty and ask for one at the end of a good meal. The choice to not waste must be the new way of life. So asking for a FB (family bag) is a marker of virtuous behaviour.”

The idea of the family bag is going to take some time to trickle down and will need a push to get people used to the idea. It is a big change. This week there was a news story, for World Food Day, about a  “nudging” experiment carried out in a Milanese restaurant. The diners were each left a two-coloured token on their place setting when the meal started. The token was meant to be a neutral way of indicating their interest in taking home what they could not eat. It was left on the table with the green side up, indicating the diner would be happy to have a doggy bag. They had to make a conscious change to red to decline the service. Apparently they were successfully nudged into taking the food home.

We are used to taking extra food home, especially with kids, but we haven’t done it much here apart from the occasional pizza. On a recent IKEA trip, we discovered in their restaurant they have a stack of flatpack doggy boxes. Like any other product it needed assembling and was a bit smaller than expected. I still find it odd to see Italians lunching on meatballs and daim cake (even if the restaurant does sell wine by the glass) but this might give them some ideas in the food recycling department.

Troppo buono per essere spreccato, the boxes declare – too good to chuck away. Trust the Scandinavians to start getting the message across.

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More Ikea assembly

 

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Other posts you might be interested in:

The Food is Beautiful

More about real dogs in The Life Domestic

In the Swing of Things

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My seven year old is sitting in the dentist’s chair. As dentists go, he’s young and charming, and he has nice ankles – he wears runners with no socks. We communicate in Italian about the child and her teeth. I understand most of what he says, but in a situation like this I find there will be a word or terms that I don’t know. I realize that, once again, I had forgotten to spend 5 minutes before leaving the house to check the dictionary for some other words that might come up, maybe molar or orthodontic surgery.

Living daily life in another language means you’re confronted all the time with new situations, new unknowns. Whether it’s going to a judo class or the climbing park, the pharmacy or the post office, there will be a word or a term that will throw you and you’ll be asking: “I need to get the what before tomorrow?” Or “there’s something wrong with the what in my engine?” (This does of course also happen to Italians especially where paperwork is involved: they don’t necessarily find it any easier to get simple tasks completed).

So when I can I try to prepare by checking some words, anticipating difficult discussions.  It took me a few confused yoga lessons before I remembered to look up the Italian words for hips, shoulder blades and twist gently but our teacher’s soothing voice made any position sound great – just try saying la posizione della montagna and you’ll feel yourself calming down.

Before arriving at the dentist my daughter and I talked about what we needed to show him. He was to check all her teeth, one loose tooth and another loose tooth that’s not supposed to be loose. I’m prepared with a few key words: denti da latte (milk teeth) and the evocative denti del giudizio (wisdom teeth). But “loose tooth” – maybe I should have checked that in the dictionary.

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This is from our amazing Quebec-made visual dictionary 

So there she is in the chair and I tell the dentist – she has a tooth that is …. aah … moving. “Ah”, he says, “it’s still growing?” “No, no, it’s moving … like this.” And the impatient child pipes up from the chair – sta dondolando! It’s swinging, or in this case, it’s wobbling! Wow, there she goes. My daughter has started translating for me. Of course she would know how to say it, it was probably one of the first things she’d hear from fellow 6-year-olds in the school yard. It’s a bit strange I haven’t heard it before, but I’m probably multi-tasking more on a daily basis. There’s my excuse.

Living daily life in Italian means you get to use fantastic words and expressions every day. The rolling r’s and the double zz’s, it actually feels good to speak it and being here as an older adult I appreciate it even more.

Un dente dondolando – a swinging tooth. Isn’t that wonderful? The word for me conjures a picture of a swaying ski lift hoisting fur-booted skiers up into the Dolomites. Or a cute toddler asked to be pushed on the swing – la dondola. A quick Google search manages to bring up the image of Michael Jackson dangling his child over the balcony (if you remember back that far).

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From the book we’re reading at bedtime – Heidi Heckelbeck Is Ready to Dance!

Dondolando – Swinging, swaying, dangling, wobbling, rocking, balancing. That’s indeed what we’ve been doing on a daily basis here, making it up as we go along, all of us balancing between friends and family and familiarities in our homes, old and new.

But now, a year in – and with routines in places, circles of friends and acquaintances set up, local knowledge and our own spaces carved out in this place inhabited by many others over many centuries – we’re mostly gotten into the swing of it ourselves.

Of mice and murder

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The mice of Fiesole have a plan.

MONDAY

I’ve been waiting three days for the local hardware shop to open. Three days since we came home from holiday and discovered our house had been done over by a gang of mice (definitely a gang). So as the bell tower in the piazza rings out four times, I’m here waiting with one other customer for the door to open. I want to buy mousetraps*.

Along comes the owner – I don’t know her name yet but she’s the young, busy, bustling, bespectacled type that makes you feel at ease and she has a Florentine accent you could spread butter with. We bustle in after in.

I love this shop, in fact I love all Italian hardware shops. It’s covered from floor to ceiling with stuff, and all of it is useful. There are wonderful things in plain sight which you didn’t know you needed, and others you desperately need and only she can find for you (and at a good price). In fact the shop is called a Utilità (meaning Usefulness, well in this case just Utility) which is one of the several cool names for a hardware shop, another being the even more lovely word, Mesticheria.

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In this, or any, Italian hardware shop, you can step in and embrace the visual jumble, browse the mugs and tablecloths, mango slicers and egg timers, Beatles mugs and non-stick pans, fresh-cut keys and shoe polish. Or you can just enjoy asking for something specific and watching the owner – who grew up in this family business – disappear into the back, under the counter, or up a ladder to where you thought only the wicker baskets were hanging.

As it turns out, many people come in just for a chat, it being right on the main street – the narrow part where the German camper vans have to squeeze through with confusion.

“Oh, that’s a real stink of someone’s bad cooking oil!” she says as she gets herself behind the counter. “Is it from the Indian restaurant across the road?” I ask. “Oh no, they use the right oils, there are always lovely smells coming out of there.”

Foolishly, I let the other waiting woman go first, she is of course a local and I become frustrated when I can’t completely follow the train of their conversation. My Italian isn’t always so awake after lunch. She passes over some cash and it disappears into an envelope, something is scribbled on a piece of paper: it must be to do with the town dinner in the piazza on Friday night.

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Not quite the Fiesole shop, but they all look like this

The shop door has been left open to let in air (and pungent oil smells). In the doorway a man has partly lodged himself, craning backwards to talk to someone further down the street or, judging by the volume, across the road. Maybe even the Indian restaurant owner. Living here in this country of talkers, I try my best to start up similar types of chats with the shopkeepers I meet everyday – about the earthquake all the way down there in southern Tuscany, the school schedule, their elderly father, or mine. The doorway man disappears after a few minutes without having come in for his full chat or his packet of nails.

I can tell right away I’m not the first person to come in looking for help with mice murder. The hardware lady’s tired expression gives her the appearance of a local miracle-worker – why do they all think I can sort out their household problems for them, why can’t they just get their houses in order? – and sure enough she tells me she’s all out of traps, the old-fashioned kind, the gluey ones and the little tent ones. In fact, she tells me – “Fiesole is full of mice”.

But she won’t have any more traps in till the end of next week. “Oh Dio!” I say, and mention that I’ll be in Florence tomorrow and may have to take my custom there; she surely understands the urgency. She digs around and shows me all she has left – a packet of terrifying poison tablets – but she isn’t really suggesting I buy them. “It’s much better you buy a trap that ensures you can see the dead mouse, not just guess that it went off and died its (horrible) death somewhere else.” I nod my head. Certo.

She keeps talking before I have the chance to tell her that we have, sort of, a cat on the case. We have in fact started brazenly inviting the neighbour’s cat in for a few ganders around the house and it’s becoming quite fond of one particular floormat and some of the Lego. But she’s already noting in her order book which traps she needs to get in and she tells me I should really get the tented one – “put them in this location at this time of day, make sure you touch them with gloves or your smell will put them off.“ Will the mice guess from my smell that I’m not Italian? I wonder to myself.

“Why do you think there are so many mice around these days?” I ask her. “It’s not really turning cold yet.”

“I don’t really know”, she answers. Then she fixes her eyes on me and states, “Si stanno organizzando”. I take this to mean they’re getting themselves organized, plotting something. She says this with seriousness. And of course she must be right.

As I run back to the car empty-handed, I look around me, imagining the mice mini-gangs of Fiesole and its neighbouring hamlets who are busy setting up a network underneath these streets, the ancient groves and crumbling walls, and the decaying old basements and ill-fitted kitchens, plotting a way to finally take over the three hills of Fiesole.

They’re organizing!

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Wood vs Metal

WEDNESDAY

I go to another hardware shop down at the bottom of the hill, in the Cure area of Florence. It’s a bigger shop and there are several people milling around the counter but I’m beckoned forward, the husband of the couple will help me. I tell him I need some mouse traps.

“Fine. Do you want them alive or dead?”

“Um, dead.” (Should I want them alive?)

“And are they small or big? Small like this?” – his hands relatively close together. “Or big, like this? Like a cat?” Oh no, I react, they’re not quite so big. “Right, those are the mice you get from the river.” I assure him we live right at the top of the hill, relieved that we decided against living down here.

He disappears into the back of the back, even though the front of the shop looks like it would have everything. He comes back a minute later with some fancy-looking metal traps, with little teeth on the edges. They’re made in Germany. Of course they are. He tells me the wooden ones are no good. I know that already.

As he rings them up,  the customer beside me who’s buying serious lengths of waterproof fabric takes notice. “How much are those?” she asks. “1 euro 80 each.” “Fine, I’ll take a couple of those too then, thanks.”

FRIDAY

So far I’ve caught one little mouse and I’m learning that different cheeses make no difference, nor does chocolate or honey as recommended by some. It must be all about the placement.

Now I’m off to Florence to the really serious hardware shop down near the market.

And a weekend of murder.

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*Note to readers: I offer no apology for my topocide. Having learned in several previous cities that I cannot live with a mouse in the house, I have found it best to do them off the quickest and surest way there is.

 

 

 

The Real Scoop on Gelato

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A Japanese friend who has lived in Italy for about 15 years remembers the oddest thing she noticed when she first moved here – a man walking down the street eating an ice cream.

When you live here for a while, you develop a different relationship with gelato from that of your tourist days. As a visitor to Italy gelato is a treat to be savoured – only here can you eat the genuine article, like an original cappuccino. But over the long-term eating gelato – especially during the hot months – becomes part of your routine, indeed your daily nourishment. I could almost use the word “diet” as our own family doctor recently “recommended it” my younger daughter’s sore tummy.

Cup

We have a favourite gelateria in Florence, Badiani. We discovered it by chance on our very first August night in the city, staying at a cheap Airbnb flat a few blocks from the stadium. We arrived into this oven on the night of a Fiorentina/AC Milan match and the kids were as perplexed by the noise of helicopters and bright lights as we were by the civilised purple-clad fans chatting and relaxing outside the local wine bars. Good old Google maps pointed us to a gelateria at the other corner of our block and it turned out to be not only our favourite place since then but one of the best, and least- touristy, in the city.

I am not really a big ice-cream person, perhaps due to eating too much of it during the (J1) summer I spent serving ice-cream in Boston, at the well-known local spot Emack and Bolio’s: my one claim to fame was that I served Mark Wahlberg (then known as Marky Mark).

But living here now, especially with children, I enjoy the taste and flavours of gelato in a way I never did before, with so much more satisfaction. Living here as a (clueless) student I went to the same few places over and over and had no sense of good taste – though to be fair, one of them was Vivoli, still wowing customers today. But I think the scene has improved hugely during those 20 years and gelato eaters have become more demanding.

When you get to a point in the day where you’re hot or tired or in need of a pick-me-up, the smallest sized cone will be enough to completely refresh you, as well as your palate. Eating more than 3 scoops on a large cone – that’s starting to overdo it a bit. And not what the locals would always do.

So here are some tips from me on how to eat gelato like a local.

Gelato versus Ice cream
The main difference is that American-style ice cream uses more eggs and cream and is heavier. Italian gelato – which means frozen, so it can actually refer to all types of sweet cold stuff – uses more milk than cream, contains fewer preservatives (if any) so it was probably made very recently, might have a lighter colour and it has fewer and fresher ingredients. It could still have a lot of sugar, depending on the place, but as long as you know … that’s up to you.

You’ll notice the gelato is not always scooped up into a ball and it’s not hard and icy but soft and nearly melted. The best servers will churn it gently with an oblong metal spoon before being gently piling it into your cup or cone.

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Choose your gelateria
A shop devoted to selling gelato is called a gelateria (plural = gelaterie) but a cafe or bar might advertise themselves as such too, and they may serve high-quality gelato.

Look for a sign declaring Produzione Propria – which basically means “we make it ourselves”. (In some cases that might mean they made it from a packet, but you’ll learn to spot the difference.)

Avoid the gelaterie that displays their gelato piled up really high, and with bright colours – especially noticeable for pistachio and banana. If it’s from a pre-made gelato mix you might see a little sign displaying the logo of the dairy company alongside the flavours. But some days you’re desperate and you can’t really go too far wrong!

The best gelaterie keep their gelato in steel containers, even sometimes hidden away so you have to choose from the list of flavours on the board and you can always ask to taste them. Quantity of flavours is not always a marker of quality – some of the best and most local places offer just a few flavours. And that usually suits the local clientele just fine.

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Choose your price and pay
First choose what size and price you want, pay for it at the cash desk and take the receipt (lo scontrino) to the counter and start choosing from the wonderful array. So if you want a €2 cone or cup you would ask for un cono/una coppetta da due euro.

In some places it’s okay to choose your gelato first and pay after, but this system is helpful as you don’t have to worry about paying extra to sit down, if there are seats, and you don’t have to dig around for change while holding a melting ice-cream.

Cup (una coppetta) or Cone (un cono)?
Eating from a cone is a more sensory experience and can make it last longer. Good, say, if you’re really hungry or driving a car! As for a cup, you could quibble about the wastefulness of the plastic spoon and paper cup, with no obvious method of recycling nearby. But Italians seem to go for either, depending on their mood.

The smallest size (about €2 or less) will usually be enough for you and in most gelaterie you can fit two flavours (gusti) for that. You tend to order by size and then work out with the server how many flavours you want. It’s not so much about the scoops and size, it’s actually more about the marrying of the right flavours.

If they haven’t given you a little spoon (un cucchiaino) it’s polite to ask for one unless you (or your child) can easily access the dispenser.

Taste it first
It’s fine to ask for a taste while you decide, though asking for 4 or 5 might be pushing it. You can say posso assaggiare? (can I try?) or posso gustare? (can I taste?). 

Choose your flavours carefully
Flavours that go well together are usually grouped together, in Italian they’d say they marry well (questi gusti si sposono bene).

So for example you shouldn’t really mix cream-based and fruit-based. Why? Because the textures are different; the flavours might clash; one of them is more melted than the other; or just because the server says you shouldn’t really have the mango and coffee together. Indeed I was once refused my chosen combination at our favourite place – I had to bow to their sense of propriety, though they could have been a little less stern about it!

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KEY FLAVOURS
Remember, try to combine flavours that sit close together in the cabinet.

The Chocolates
It can be very dark (fondente) or more milky (cioccolato al latte or just cioccolato) or you might find it mixed with orange (arancia) or something spicy (messicano, con chilli etc).

Vanilla
I grew up with vanilla being the standard neutral ice cream you get (if you haven’t really deserved something fancier after that day’s dinner) but in Italy it’s not always on the menu. When you do find it – it’s called vaniglia – in a good gelateria, it will really taste of vanilla.

The Creams
These are the plainer, more neutral flavours, to complement a stronger chocolate or nut. But they can be magnificent in their simplicity. You have crema (often like a bakery cream), panna (more like whipping cream) and the simple Fior di latte (milk). This last is worth ordering just to be able to enunciate such a beautiful name.

A Florentine speciality is Buontalenti, named after the local lad (well, actually an architect to Grand Duke Cosimo) who, many claim, brought gelato into the modern world around 1600. It’s a lovely creamy, milky flavour and a delicious secondary choice.

Straciatella
A simple choice, this is a creamy gelato with chocolate chips. Almost as refreshing as my own favourite, menta (mint usually with chocolate chips).

Pistacchio
Be prepared for a new taste sensation. Pistacchio nuts are the pride of Sicily and they make wonderfully smooth gelato with varying degrees of nuttiness. A good gelateria will offer several styles of pistacchio and my favourite is (of course) Pistacchio da Bronte – named after the small Sicilian town, which eventually became a variant, through the father of those Yorkshire writers, of my own surname, Prunty.

Note that in Italy it’s pronounced the other way, with a hard “c” – Pistakkio.

Other Nuts
I’m not a nut person but my kids assure me you can’t go too wrong with nutty flavours as a primary or counterpoint to chocolate. Hazelnut (nocciola) is common though as it’s an expensive ingredient it’s worth looking for a good-quality and pure version. For a more chocolate-based flavour you’ll find nutella is a common ingredient, as well as Bacio – from the (acquired) taste of the Italian chocolate brand.

Flavours

The Fruits
A good gelateria follows seasonal pattern of fruits. Some wonderful words to learn here: fragola (strawberry), melone (melon), lampone (raspberry), frutti di bosco (mixed berries), anguria or cocomero (watermelon), arancia (orange), pesca (peach), ciliegia (cherry), fico (fig).

Limone (lemon) is usually year-round and almost a category on its own, with an amazing ability to bring down your temperature and a good measure of the quality of the gelateria.

Semi-freddo and others
This is your section with flavours like Tiramisu or Zuppa Inglese (trifle) which are more like semi-frozen puddingy desserts, not quite ice-cream. Nice if you’re hungry as well as hot.

Some interesting colours are produced from sesame (sesame side gelato, which is gray/purple and considered healthy), liquirizia (licorice, green/brown, let me know if you try it), and a friend swears he once had tabacco (tobacco).

You can also find flavours like riso (rice) and cheese-flavoured gelato like mascarpone, or my current favourite which is ricotta e fichi (ricotta and fig).

Gluten

Gluten-free and Vegan
Many fruit flavours actually have dairy in them (you can tell by how much the colours of each fruit seem more fruity or more creamy). But more and more gelaterie offer gluten-free or vegan flavours and will usually advertise them. Or you can just ask.

And the best gelato in Florence?
Gelato is good all over Italy though Florence (luckily for us) is considered one of the top spots.

This wasn’t meant to be a guide, but how can I not make a few suggestions?

Downtown the perennial favourites which you’ll find in many guides are Vivoli, Carabè, Perche Nò and La Carraia. I quite like the big multinationals Grom and Venchi, though I prefer the former as they’re all about freshness and have a great location beside the Duomo. Near San Marco there’s the nice Sicilian place Arà è Sicilia that does amazing granitas and on the other side of town at the bottom gate of the Boboli Gardens, at Porta Romana, there’s the friendly and health-conscious Gelateria Yoguteria Porta Romana. But in our house, the favourite by far, even if I find them a little snooty, is Badiani – close to the football stadium and well-off the tourist track but buzzing with well-heeled locals and flat-footed football fans long into the evening. My preferred option for friendliness is further back along the road to the centre, Cavini’s – cheap and fresh and friendly. (In Fiesole I previously recommended Ferro Battuto but as of June 2017 it has not reopened. Best to stick with Le Cure for a gelato nearby.)

Vivoli

How to order like a local
Similar to the art of ordering at a busy cafe, it’s an education to observe how the regulars procure their scoop of the day. Here’s how:

After greeting a few people in the door you drop your coins of exact change in the cashier’s bowl and wander over to the display. You probably already want the same thing you’ve had the last couple of weeks – and many people go for just one flavour in their cup – but maybe you go for something new. You catch the eye of the next server who scoops up your choice in 10 seconds, you’re out the door, hovering to eat it while you chat to another regular. And you’re gone, back to work or your shopping errands or your car, in less than 4 minutes. Or if this is evening-passeggiata time you might linger to chat for another hour. Just play it by ear.

Some other links:

More on gelato in Florence from Emiko Davies
A little history
More on flavours

Happy scooping!

Wash your Language is a blog about real life and language, by an Irish-Canadian exploring the change in pace in Italy after years in Norway. I offer web copyediting and proofreading as well as translation from Norwegian to English and Italian to English. Read more.

The Midsummer Saint

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Saint John the Baptist – what a great saint he was! Source of wonderful stories of strength and piety, meeting a dramatic ending that has fuelled many gory images and theatrical overkill for years. His feast day is June 24, tonight is the Eve and an excuse for celebrations in many countries over many centuries. It’s handy that his feast day also happens to be midsummer – the middle of the year and a marking point for many. I think of it as a magical time.

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Caravaggio – Salome with the Head of John the Baptist, NGL (Web Gallery of Art/Wikipedia)

St John – Saint Jean Baptiste – Sant Hans – San Giovanni.

These are the names that have marked each midsummer through my life, and from the earliest years they have made me feel more and more at a remove from the place I still often call home – Dublin.

Our family holidays were spent in Connemara, in the deep west of Ireland, at the unoccupied house of my aunt and uncle – a bungalow perched on a small empty lake with shelves of books, card games to play, four bedrooms to be fought over, turf for the fire (yes, in summer) and no access to drinking water anywhere west of Salthill on the edge of Galway city. As the (clueless) youngest I found myself tagging along with whatever was happening and I have memories, foggy but still there, of being at the house for at least one “St John’s” and joining the local teenagers who were going strangely crazy around a messy bonfire. They were kind to let us Dublin intruders (jackeens) enjoy the moment with them, well they seemed to through their chatting to each other in an Irish I never learned to understand. They had clearly been building up the bonfire for days in a patch well-hidden away from the road, one field through the maze of stone-walled partitioned fields we spent hours navigating in the least rainy of daytimes. Those were my first moments of seeing a parallel life to my own, a glimpse into what it could be like to grow up, to live somewhere other than my world in suburban Dublin.

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My husband is from the western folds of Canada but he’s always been a Francophone and held a candle for the romance held for Jean Baptiste in France and Quebec. Always the political type, he travelled with college friends to Quebec in 1995 to persuade the locals to vote “Non!” in the referendum about leaving Canada – over 20 years before today’s vote today in the UK. The result was very tight, and the union held. (There continues to be a sense of two solitudes in Canada, though our man Trudeau junior is doing his darndest.) The main Quebec holiday is actually on June 24 – La Fête de la Saint-Jean-Baptiste, or just La Saint-Jean. This always seemed a much more festive day in Canada, those French Canadians knowing much better how to have fun than the rest of the country on the other official holiday of July 1st – Canada Day. Indeed many Quebecois would choose that day to make their annual move from one rental apartment to another – sorry, we’re busy. During our time living together in Canada we lived in several diverse places, but never managed to set up home in Quebec (or have to deal with its separate immigration process) – so for us it keeps its mystique. Another “other” place.

Quebec

Living in Norway for seven years, we were bitten by the bug of the Scandinavian Midsummer. In different parts of the country Norwegians have their own traditions but when celebrating in Oslo we were often reminded that “it’s really a Swedish holiday” – that’s where you really want to go for the hard-core celebrations, dancing around poles, fancy costumes and all. In either country it is of course a fantastic opportunity to celebrate – the longest days of the year, a reason to stay up late, be outside, breathe the air and celebrate life. When the kids were very small, we joined a Swedish-style celebration at Oslo’s outdoor folk museum and I was amazed to find myself letting them splash around in a pond with other kids well past 11pm – this was some serious hair-letting-down going on around us. Bonfires were to be found, parties were held late into the night and there was always a sense of holiday about it. Midsummer has such a resonance there, it’s in people’s blood. But it wasn’t in mine and it felt like someone else’s celebration. It wasn’t part of my upbringing, except for those hazy memories of the stone fields in the dark.

Nikolai Astrup - Midsummer Eve Bonfire (Bergen Art Museum)
Nikolai Astrup – Midsummer Eve Bonfire (Bergen Art Museum)

So here we are in Florence – where the patron saint is none other than St John. San Giovanni. And they’ve been celebrating him since medieval times, none better to do so. In Roman times, Florence’s patron was the god Mars and early Christians figured that St John was a good enough match for him, so he became the patron saint. The wonderful Baptistry in front of the Duomo is of course named for him. But what does it means for us newcomers – we have a public holiday tomorrow, we can watch a costumed parade with church celebration which includes the showing of whatever relics Florence got of St John himself, enjoy tomorrow night’s big fireworks show and – if we had the stomach for it –  watch some of the calcio storico match/fight going on outside Santa Croce. This is Florence’s less savoury equivalent to the genteel palios of Siena and other cities, a rough, no-holds-barred form of combat where four teams representing the quarters of the city fight over a ball. Maybe we can watch some online afterwards (after enjoying further reruns of the amazing goal from last night’s Ireland-Italy victory!)

Calcio
Photo from VisitFlorence.com

June 24, our first midsummer in this place, still at a remove from all the places we have lived and loved, but full of opportunity to learn more, see and taste more.

Wash your Language is a blog about real life and language, by an Irish-Canadian exploring the change in pace in Italy after years in Norway. I offer web copyediting and proofreading as well as translation from Norwegian to English and Italian to English. Read more.

The Life Domestic

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There’s a sign tacked on the wall outside our local pizzeria.

Found. Gray (domestic) rabbit. Call this number

IMG_6095And added underneath by another wordsmith: (Already eaten!)

Here in Tuscany rabbits are indeed a regular, and tasty, part of the menu. But the writer of this notice knows that a pet is a pet – hence the care given to mention that the bunny hopping around his house is “domestic”.

In Italian the word for “pet” is “un animale domestico” (a domestic animal) or “un animale di compagnia” (companion animal), this latter sounding only slightly less technical, giving some indication of the emotional value and importance of this human-animal bond.

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Italy is a very public society and as no pet is a better companion than a dog, you see dogs everywhere here. They accompany their owners into shops, cafes, church services, on the bus and in the laps of car drivers.

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These dogs were left to wait outside the famous butcher’s Falorni in Greve in Chianti – maybe their cones were a foil against the amazing smells during the 15 minutes their (German) owners were inside.

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Eating out for lunch or dinner there’s often a dog – of any size – under a table or yapping closeby.

And one gelateria near us even offers ice cream for dogs.

Ice cream? I'd love some too!
“Ice cream? I’d love some too!”

I was at a children’s sports competition recently and along with half the parents of Florence I was crammed into the stands, indeed sitting on the concrete steps of what was probably the emergency exit. One woman left just after her daughter’s performance – she inched along the row, mobile in one manicured hand, the other holding the leash of her dog, the little yapper left to navigate his own way through the pedicured feet around him.

I can’t say much about the place of cats (or rabbits) in the family home, having come across few. A notable exception was seeing one in the supermarket once, a big furry gray thing ensconsed in the arms of its owner as he moved along the aisles.

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Beware of the cat (a sign on our road)

Dogs are treated much the way children are – you don’t see them cuddled and spoiled all the time, they’re just along for the ride, even if that includes having their photo taken against the Ponte Vecchio. I haven’t done a spot check of how many Italian dogs have social media accounts (see #puppiesofinstagram) but I suspect overall it would be odder here than in other countries – many of these animals are still more for domestic purprose than simply objects of affection.

There are lots of ideas out there about how different languages interpret the bark of a dog. Scientists believe dogs can understand each other but people have different ways of hearing their bark: but what they seem to have in common is that they speak twice – such as “hav-hav” (Hebrew) or “wan-wan” (Japanese).

My husband and I have been living too peripatetic a life over the last 20 years to justify having a pet of any kind (apparently), but my 10-year-old and I are shameless dog people and share the habit of commenting on every dog we see on the street (or restaurant), especially older dogs who you might like to adopt. At a recent lunch with friends in the country outside Florence, my ears perked up when their neighbour mentioned she just had 15 pups. Marking my interest she tried to convince me it would be a good idea to take one home – well yes I have the time to walk it every day, yes we have a garden, yes half the family would love one, but it’s a really nice rented apartment… we couldn’t possibly. Oh! but it’s a dog, she cried. This is Italy, dogs stay outside!

And indeed they usually do, at least in the countryside. Over the last couple of decades more dogs get to live indoors, especially as city apartment-dwellers increasingly like to keep (dare I say) lap dogs like pugs and poodles. But many dogs around where we live are clearly less pets than for traditional jobs like guarding, or weekend-hunting, and they stay outdoors – they do like to let us know they’re there, whether it’s 4am or 4pm. The ever spot-on Tim Parks thinks this need to keep the dog outside might be a hangover from people’s lingering collective memories of living under the same roof as cows and chickens.

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The word “domestic” comes from the Latin word “domus” which means house, specifically the house of an upper-class Roman. It entered English as “dome”, or stately building. To me it feels like a formal word, indeed often with negative connotations. It can be associated with the mundane (domestic affairs), with servitude (domestics) and even with aggression and violence (domestic violence or abuse). This last is in fact an ongoing issue in Italy where societal norms deal badly with issues of partner violence, underreporting of abuse is low, and after some horrific high profile murders the media is currently talking of a nationwide emergency of “femicide”.

Un animale domestico – that’s how you say it in many languages. In English the term domestic animal is seen as a more technical term, referring to an animal that is not wild, but serves people and is dependant upon them. It’s even a legal term, have a look at this legal case I found about whether a camel should be considered wild or domestic.

But domestic animal just doesn’t sound as cosy as what we say in English, pet. What a lovely word that is! Just saying it makes you think of an animal that is not only domesticated but truly an emotional companion, for walks (in the rain), sitting in the windowsill (tugging at the lace curtain), or just for being there to stroke/pet while you sit together (and watch the cricket on the telly).

The word pet actually came from the Scots Gaelic peata, tame animal, and its softness lends to associations of affection and caring. In Ireland, where it also came straight from the Gaelic, it’s used everyday as a charming appellation for children and friends (“ah sure listen pet, she was just chancing her arm”).

We often walk up the road as far as the view away from Florence at the turn in the road. Down to our left is a high garden wall and we look down over it to say an  encouraging hello to the unfortunate mutt that lives there. He’s left to himself all day long with a small scrap of garden between the wall and his owner’s house, his dirty mess left all over the ground and with little company. He can’t stop his tail from wagging sadly even as he keeps up the pretense of barking ferociously at you.

In December we visited the cathedral of Lucca and I was taken by how many people were drawn to, (and actually drawing), this sculpture – the very beautiful funerary monument to the young Ilaria Caretto, carved by Jacopo della Quercia in the stunningly early date of 1406. At her feet sits a dog, not unlike a pug you’d find today in a flat in Kensington or Madrid. It may or may not be her dog, but it’s certainly intended by the artist to represent fidelity and undying love. What more could you ask for in a pet?

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Wash your Language is a blog about real life and language, by an Irish-Canadian exploring the change in pace in Italy after years in Norway. I offer web copyediting and proofreading as well as translation from Norwegian to English and Italian to English. Read more.

The Food is Beautiful

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You’re moving to Italy, they cried. Think of all the wonderful food you’ll eat every day! Your kids will learn to eat well, you can shop for fresh, amazing, natural and colourful food at the market everyday and absorb ancient secret recipes for the healthiest food on the planet! Washed down by good wine which will be cheaper than water!

It sounds good doesn’t it?

And yes, the whole food side of things is wonderful now we live in Italy and it’s fascinating to observe how it is completely integrated into daily life. In fact, I’m holding myself back from gushing too much – my Norwegian readers will understand just how amazing it is after years in the barren aisles of Rema, Coop and Kiwi, forced to buy overpriced, low-choice foodstuffs. Eating out with our kids in Oslo was something we could rarely afford to do and we often travelled home from a trip abroad with a bag full of  basic groceries (cheese, ham, even soap) that was cheaper abroad; even from Denmark or Germany.

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I was never ready for this food at the Norwegian supermarket.

But like any element of life in a new country, you begin to see more complexity. This is also true when you start eating like a local.

When we first arrived, we behaved like tourists (well, Norwegian tourists) who relish the thought of living amidst all this good stuff.

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Produce at Esselunga

Here we were in Tuscany at the end of summer and markets and restaurants overflowing with tomatoes, aubergines, greens, beans, watermelon, and oranges. Into autumn we got to taste the fresh red wine (vino novo), the type that’s not even corked and goes fizz in your mouth. We ate well and started to explore the local flavours, encouraging our kids to try new foods. On their first day of pre-school camp they had clearly clued into the behaviour of their new peers. What did they give you for lunch, we asked them. Oh just rabbit lasagne.

We soon realized how food is part of the conversation. Every conversation, in fact. In other places the default topic is the weather or real estate. In Italy it’s food, among strangers, friends and especially family. It makes sense, there’s so much to say, so you can see how it’s treated with great respect and interest.

A Scottish friend who’s lived here many years told me how she first found it so dull, all this chat at the office lunch table about olive varieties or fillings for tortellini or the new pizzeria up the road, but after a while she got into it and finds many reasons to talk about it. And we’re heading that way too.

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Italians love to talk and that’s what cellphones were designed for. (Smart phones are still mostly used as conversational devices here, often shoved up the side of your moped helmet just before you put it on and buzz off down the road). On the bus, walking down the street, if you tune in to someone talking on their phone, you’ll almost certainly hear it’s about food: “can you pick up some of that and we’ll serve it with the rice, enough for 8” or “how did you make that filling, it was delicious” or just “where did you book for lunch on Sunday?”

Any visitor to Italy has enjoyed the typical three-course meal imbibed over a lazy hour or two, often with friends: pasta or rice followed by fish or meat and dessert and coffee, with wine and water. It’s a wonderful way to eat when you’re on holiday, if you’re keen to try lots of new flavours in a new region. You can find strongly-held traditions when it comes to what should be eaten when, with what sauce, and in what season. When you’re living and cooking here, you find your own way to cook up all those ingredients from the market, start working through the shelves of pasta: spaghetti number 3, spaghetti number 1 or fresh pici (my new favourite). And I even tried out making pasta – so far just once.

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My ravioli

So we kept eating, but then I was posting fewer posts online of amazing pasta dishes, gelato or just the simple lunches I rustled up at home. We do sometimes make the trip to shop at the market – always an enjoyable experience – but it’s easier to get to a supermarket every day. Just as millions of Italians do. And d’you know what? Not every Italian is an expert cook – cooking classes are popular everywhere and people do buy frozen pizza!

Then after a while, you realise you’re not crazy about the unsalted butter or unsalted bread and you start to crave some hearty Norwegian wholegrain spelt. Or, much as you appreciate the fantastic artichokes appearing week after week, you never really master a way to cook them. You don’t really fancy eating tripe for lunch, famous as it is meant to be.

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And then you finally admit to yourself, that really you wouldn’t mind a curry. If you manage to find the ingredients at the supermarket, keeping your head down while you browse the corner section with international foods. Or how about some rhubarb! I can’t find that in Tuscany.

At home with the kids I often cook a normal (i.e. Irish/Norwegian) dinner of meat and two veg and recently it was a bizarre treat to cook up an old-fashioned macaroni and cheese for the kids – I barely remembered how to do it and to me the taste was an instant return to New York, and a little place off Union Square that served up single tureens of steaming, cheesy mac & cheese.

Another issue is food quality and knowing what you’re buying. Even where we live, out towards the countryside, it’s not easy to find organic meat or the best quality eggs. I’ve only begun to read about Italy’s huge industrial food industries and realise the farmers markets we have found really need more customers, like for this delicious local red wine. The woman who produced it had to remind us to pour out the top oil coating before drinking the wine. Olive oil, the original wine preservative.

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I’m still excited by most of my shopping experiences – like this handy box of basil I found in the frozen section. And I’m still trying to figure out the best ways to use an ingredients like fabulous sage (salvia) which grows profusely in our garden and yet the Coop sells a tiny packet in plastic for €1.26. I know, I should be ashamed of myself! At least I’m getting to learn more how to cook through meeting great people.

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The kids – are they learning to eat well? It’s hard to tell. They have developed a new relationship to food through eating new things and being served three-course hot lunches at school. But they’re also young and – here’s a revelation – Italian kids are picky too, and they don’t always get the best choices in food. Yes, even in Italy! More on that in another blog post.

Eating here is a wonderful experience, and all that you could imagine. It’s hard to admit it’s not perfect, many friends (and not just serious foodies) would give their eye teeth to live where we do. Believe me, we are grateful for it and the opportunity to learn how it can be such an integral part of the culture we’re living in – a bigger part than it has been for me before.

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