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A lifetime of needles

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I’ve been scrabbling through old boxes of folders and files, the ones that hold the history of my little family’s health through the years of our peripatetic life. Having moved to a new country three times in as many years, you would think that I – the mother – would have kept tidy the folder of “important family paperwork”.

Never mind the kids’ artwork and sports medals, what I really need to find quickly is their vaccination records. I finally find the random bits of clipped together, each one showing a list of dates, signatures and stamps from doctors and nurses who administered these life-saving injections into the thick skin of my precious babies’ legs and arms.

It seemed a lot simpler for my own mum who would just reach up the bookshelf in the front room of the Dublin house that is still the family home. In the back of her Doctor Spock book she recorded all our vaccinations, episodes of mumps and those other pesky poxes we used to get back in the 1970s.

The first of my own daughters was born 12 years ago in Ontario, Canada, but we moved around to two other provinces in eastern Canada during the first two years of her life. Childhood vaccinations in Canada are done at 2, 4, 6 and 18 months and so her yellow record card has tracked all her different visits, from health clinics in three towns thousands of miles apart from each other. The names and locations of these clinics mark the course of our lives over those two years, triggering memories of places explored, friends made, dinners shared, winters survived. This card is our only record of her early vaccinations – as each province had a slightly different schedule (see below). What’s even more amazing is that I’ve managed to hang onto it.

I don’t remember much from each of her injections, she was a tough baby, except for the last one, in New Brunswick, where I remember being generally fascinated with our impressive, charming GP who was mother to 17-year-old quadruplets: two boys and two girls, the girls becoming our (interchangeable) babysitters.

A few years later we moved to Norway and our younger daughter was born there. Naturally enough, as a country that often tops the top-everything lists, they’re big into public vaccinations. That was totally fine with me. For some reason they run on a different timeframe:  6 weeks, then 3, 5, 12 and 15 months but that wasn’t a problem as we (thankfully) didn’t go anywhere during those years. Not until she was 7 years old and we moved to Italy.

Now, this kid isn’t as tough as her big sister.

A year into our new life in Tuscany we learned there was a local outbreak of meningitis; a nugget of information I might have missed if I didn’t regularly read the local paper, or keep in with other international mums on Facebook. After checking Norway’s vaccination schedule online, and having my old GP there email me our records, I realised that she had never been vaccinated against Meningitis: a slight panic ensued.

Her big sister had had it done, as it’s part of the Canadian schedule at age one. It’s also done in Ireland and the UK – these being of interest as we might plan to move there some day, and I was starting to realise I needed to have all this straight in my head. Our GP in Florence – who we trusted and could easily talk to – advised us to go ahead and get the vaccine done. It wouldn’t be complicated, she said.

This meant I had to order the meningitis vaccine through the village pharmacy, and with so many anxious Tuscan parents doing the same, this took a couple of weeks. Once it came in and I had handed over 90 euro (the one time I’ve had to pay for any of this), I physically carried the vial that contained minute traces of this vile disease which was already killing off several young people around Tuscany up the stairs to the GP’s office next door. The pharmacist had looked at me blankly when I asked for the skin-numbing plaster which had saved this baby many tears for earlier needles. Turns out that was a purely Norwegian invention, and in Italy this was going to be done old-style.

We were the last appointment of the day and being the kind-hearted village doctor she was, la Dottoressa was well past schedule. Her kindness quota already used up, she quickly got tired of waiting for my needle-shy daughter to bare her upper arm. She cajoled and smiled and argued with her until she finally enlightened her in accented English that “if you don’t get this injection you could get a horrible disease which can make your ears fall off”. My daughter was so surprised, the point of the needle slid quietly in, but the tears when they came, were ever greater.

In the car driving home, my girl was untypically quiet. “Mummy, can we please not move country again and not have to get any more needles we missed from last time?”

So now, in 2018 we’re living in Ireland. I gather together all these records and memories to share them with our local health clinic. Hoping that the girls are both on track and haven’t missed out on some major public health issue their peers are already immune to.

Our older baby – who charmed all those Canadian doctors – is now in secondary school. As in many countries, she is getting her HPV vaccine – an amazing, potentially life-saving injection that didn’t even exist when I left Ireland as a young woman 20 years ago. This is not the year to imagine the reality of any woman getting cervical cancer in Ireland, after the scandal of the faulty cervical check programme brought to light a few months ago by some amazing women who are dying of it, and partners of women who already have.

For myself I’ll admit that I’m grateful that my own women’s health issues have been dealt with outside Ireland. And now that my daughter is at the beginning of her journey with women’s health, I’m not going to pass up the chance of her getting a vaccine that has been proven safe and able to reduce the risks of getting this cancer later in life. In an atmosphere of trust misplaced and betrayed I have to take a leap of faith that this is the right step, better prevention than cure (or in current cases) even diagnosis.

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If you’re interested, or you’ve lost track of your own vaccination records, there’s a fantastic tool to compare the schedules of different European countries.

https://vaccine-schedule.ecdc.europa.eu

A Neighbour’s Kiss

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We’ve been to lucky to set up our new home just outside Florence, a rental apartment carved out of a beautiful old villa. It’s 15th or 16th century, says our next-door-neighbour who introduced himself on our first day. Cinque o seicento. I’m not sure which. Luciano is in his mid seventies, more of a grumpy charmer than a flirt, good humoured and, soon, ridiculously complimentary of our children who can be a little noisy, even by Italian standards. Think, Walter Matthau with a twinkle in his eye and that’s Luciano.

Our gardens run alongside each other, but his is much neater and with a much-better view of the Duomo, down below us in Florence. We often hear him in his garden, pottering, talking loudly to his wife in a way you soon learn is normal for Italians.

I know that he’s the one responsible for leaving a plastic bag for my daughters on our hallway door. This bag contains some of the little plastic figures that are part of a tokens campaign at the big Florence supermarket. These figures are hot currency at school and our neighbour seems to realise how valuable they might be to an 8 year old.

It’s not surprising he keeps his gesture anonymous — the first time he knocked and delivered his offering in person he was mobbed. It was one of those rare moments when my children were actually shocked with gratitude. They even gave him a hug, un abbraccio, something they wouldn’t normally do— he is an old man, who often smells of too much lunchtime wine.

It’s been a couple of weeks since his last door-handle dropoff, so I suggest to my girls that they bring something over to him as a present. Not necessarily to remind him to clear out his grocery bags; more to thank him for his kindness.

In a rare rush of baking last night (this is Italy, who bakes?), I made a cheesecake. I suggest they give some of it to Luciano. Oh they’re all over this idea and have to be persuaded to give him only a third, not half the cake. They want to go to his apartment together and give it to him, my husband and I are not to come with them. This is their thing.

They also decide to make something for him. They attack some sheets of coloured paper and produce a little origami box and a paper swan. As we write out a card none of us can remember the name of Luciano’s wife. We don’t see so much of her, not as much as we hear over the hedge.

With cake and presents in hand, our daughters head out the door, across the cool terracotta floor, to the older couple’s apartment across the hallway. We stay near our door to listen in as best we can.

The wife — with ultra-red hair and dark mascara, also in her mid-70s, childless — hears the bell and her voice echoes from inside their pristine home. A home which has never — and never will — host a grandchild. Chi è? she asks sharply, who’s there? Siamo noi, the girls voices tumble together, it’s just us. She pauses, then realising they’re genuine, she opens the door. Her voice softens. Buonasera. Then another pause while she goes back inside to get Luciano, who is surely the main recipient of what they hold in their hands. After a few seconds, his deep bass voice joins hers and my girls are swept inside with obvious whirls of hugs and exclamations — che carino! ma che bello! siete cosi gentili!. “You’re so good!”

We can only picture the scene from our side of the hall, our hearts pounding to listen in to this moment of independence.

Just a few minutes later we hear the other door close, and they come back in to us.

Their faces are glowing. Alive from realising how one kind thought and a bit of creativity can spark absolute joy in a surprised, older receiver.

Did you remember to tell him to put the cake in his fridge? No, they smile.

I kiss my younger girl’s head and I can smell the perfume of the older woman. I kiss it again and the smell is gone.

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.

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.

 

 

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.

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.

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)

 

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.

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.

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.

485_fotobig

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!

fiesolewine

 

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.

Rosai
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:

SeahorseDoor

 

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.

img_1181

 

* 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.

img_0949
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.

img_1189

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.

img_1171
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.

ponte

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.

crucifix
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)

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.

baobab

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.

Scoop

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.

Medici

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!

Rome

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 Need to Greet

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Every country has its own culture of social politeness, often a complex system that goes beyond acknowledging another person’s presence to placing people according to their allotment on the social scale – an older teacher, a priest, the white-haired guy who gives out the parking tickets in your small Tuscan town. I’ve been very struck in Italy by how important greetings are, especially seen through the eyes of my children.

We moved here 8 months ago with our Norwegian-reared children. In Norway, one doesn’t always greet  an acquaintance when walking past and saying hello and goodbye can be brief exchanges anyway: you can get away with saying hei for either one. Or with just a nod of the head, smiling not essential. (There are also “good morning”s etc and I associate the lovely God Dag (Good day) only with our dear English friend David who, as an actor, could get away with such an extravagant term.)

In Italy, we have found ourselves at the other end of the politeness spectrum. As parents we’ve had to revert to our longer-held education in acknowledgment and greeting. And to try and gently, but firmly, encourage our children to go a bit crazier in the hellos and goodbyes department.

So here’s a little primer on Italy.

Everyone knows Ciao. It’s one word that can mean both hello and goodbye. Very handy, and cute.

However … you won’t get far by saying only that when you greet people, especially if you plan to spend more than a few days in an Italian environement. Ciao is considered casual and it’s generally fine for children to use when addressing the butcher or that white-haired parking guy. But it’s not really appropriate for many daily salutations – and this is a country that takes salutation very seriously.

Stibbert1
Photo taken at the Stibbert Museum. That’s quite the expectant look.

Salutare of course means “to greet”, both arriving and leaving. Echoing the Salute that Italians say when they give a toast, it nicely encapsulates a sense of health and of respecting the other person.

There are many ways to say hello and goodbye, most of them with the pleasurable sensation of a well-enunciated Italian word. You should try them all out, ideally after you’ve quickly ascertained what your relationship might be to the person: buongiorno (formal, universal) and its variations buonasera, buona mattina, buondì. Salve is a useful in-between for addressing the neighbour-you-haven’t-quite-met. Then there are the goodbyes (which can be long) – arriverderci, arriverderla – and the promises to see each other other again –  ci vediamo, a dopo, saluti.

To acknowledge someone’s presence and, conversely, to announce your arrival is very important here. This is a place where human contact is part of everything, and most everything is public.

This need to be acknowledged and always say hello is something I’m still getting used to. In the changing room at the doctor’s office or even the swimming pool, each person entering says Buongiorno, and Arrivederci when leaving. They’re saying it to the room in general, even if it’s full of half-naked strangers who answer dutifully back to the air. (One reason I’m slow to pick up on this habit, apart from the obvious, is that my Italian Rs are still a bit rusty to make my Buongiorno sound properly Italian).

It is impolite to not return someone’s “Buongiorno” or “Arrivederci”, especially for a child. This has been a challenge for our (as previously mentioned) Norwegian children. An entire group of people in the room might stand by the front door, expecting the appropriate response from an adult. Indeed it’s as if everyone is taking on the common cause of guiding this child on the right path to full politeness. Eyes will roll and voices might be raised – “get over there and give that strange man with the bag of sweets a hug (un abbraccio) now!“

Italian culture is renowned for its many subtle complexities of placing people on relevant levels of authority, according to profession, gender, even attitude. In his book, The Italians, John Hooper memorably describes the local barman sizing him up each day depending on his dress and demeanour, addressing him variously as dottore, professore and even capitano. And there is ongoing debate about a woman’s choice to be called a professore and not professoressa, or an avocatessa (lawyer) and not an avvocato.

The two versions of “you” are still very much in use, unlike in English where it went more democratic many years ago. One uses a different form of “you” depending on how well you know the person – lei (formal) and tu (casual) – and people will ask you ci diamo del tu? which means, “are we familiar enough at this stage to stop saying Lei?” Another potential headache, but with a smile we non-native speakers can usually get away with any mistakes.

With such an open culture of greeting amongst strangers, a greeting can quickly turn into a conversation  – to me a similar rhythm to the Irish style of chat, but with a more positive and lively feel to it. I regularly find myself in random conversations, nodding enthusiastically to the details of my locker-mate’s tango class or the fellow shopper in the pharmacy, even if I don’t really know what they’re talking about.

And it doesn’t always matter, we’re engaged in human interaction, talking about the joys of life – and in a very simple way, making each other feel more like liked, just through that moment of contact.