When Life Gives You Lemons

A little slip-up at work this week has had me questioning that age-old adage we all know so well: When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

It's a proverb that, I am guessing, is easily and frequently translated in most languages. Italians have it, too: Quando la vita ti offre limoni, fai una limonata.

In other words, make the best of a bad, unexpected, or undeserved situation.

I work at a private English after-school program for children from 18 months to ten years old. As you can imagine, there is no shortage of opportunities for me to make lemonade for, because of, or despite my little ones. The school is growing, in theory, but its materials are not multiplying. This means making up games on the fly when my flashcards are missing or have been lent out to another instructor without my knowledge or consent. Sometimes, the printer breaks or runs out of ink, which means drawing up my own written exercises by hand, or finding a simple craft or drawing activity to fill up the class time I would have spent on stencils. Kids have tantrums, cry, miss classes, or have to switch sections due to competing activities in the same time slot and the curriculum needs to be rearranged. Supplies are unavailable or too expensive for our programmed activities, so they change on the spot, too. Miscommunications arise - among instructors, between instructors and the owner of the school, between the owner of the school and parents, between parents and instructors - and concessions need to be made. These are common workplace perils and just part of the job -- no real lemons here and no real complaints, just a regular day at school.

But what happens when the lights go out one afternoon and there is no way to rectify the situation for a couple of days? How do you deal with lemons when they are compounded by the fear of "fare brutta figura" - or looking bad - second only to the fear of death in this country?

Linda Falcone, among other Italo-American writers living in Italy and coming to Italian culture from a completely different standpoint, has written about "fare brutta figura." Or, better, she's written about fare bella figura - making a good impression - and its importance to Italians all over the peninsula. Looking good, more than being good, is a priority to Italians. It's what so often explains and justifies the need to make lemonade out of lemons in this country. It's what explains how I was able to work without a legally-binding contract anywhere in Florence for a year. She's qualified .... she's good at her job .... she's here ... she's interested ... but she doesn't have a residency permit .... hrm. That's a big ole lemon. Let's just put her on a provisional contract/pay her under the table/ hire her as an "intern" and give her an almost- regular stipend anyway so we save face and make a good impression. Bad in the eyes of the law and government. Excellent in the eyes of the consumer/student/collaborating entity. Lemonade. Bella figura.

But does making a good impression also mean lying to the consumer? Does it also mean admitting and accepting defeat rather than truly trying to make the best of a bad situation and going on with the show? This is where I stumble.

During yesterday's power-outage, alone with ten or so children and their teams of parents until my colleague joined me, my knee-jerk reaction was to apologize to the parents, assure them we were working on sorting out the issue, clearly stating I had no definite idea if or when the lights would be back on .... then taking the students into one of the school's two classrooms with my flashlight, three books, and a list of Christmas songs in mind to go ahead with the lesson anyway. Some children stayed for the hour or two of in-the-dark learning. Others were taken away. The decision was left up to the parents' and caretakers' discretion.

The opted-for strategy today, with lights still out, was simply to cancel all classes. Parents were called and told the problem had persisted and both class and Christmas craft hour would be canceled for the day and made up for some other time.

Both are legitimate approaches, I think. In the first case, something difficult is carried out anyway despite external commentary and potentially negative opinions of the situation. In the second, the opportunity for judgment is perhaps preempted altogether, but a difficult decision with much longer and much heavier consequences is still made: calling parents with bad news is no easy or pleasant feat. Making up classes and craft hours is nearly impossible given the restraints of the public school schedule around which all private programming is run.

Ultimately, it makes no difference for the children: those who stayed for yesterday's improvised lesson had fun and learned something. Those who didn't perhaps had fun and learned something elsewhere. The only thing that can be said with any certainty is that no one had fun or learned anything at our school today, in its closure.

So which version makes lemons out of lemonades? And which helps maintain a good impression? Does either approach do both? Does cancelling class look better than trying to move forward with the program despite the problem at hand? Or does it look better to attempt the impossible - and succeed, to some extent - when the obvious choice would have been to throw in the towel?

This, too, is a cultural construct, I think. The vast majority of parents yesterday responded to the power outage with a mixture of dissatisfaction and concern. While there was some, "let's try to fix this together. Where's your circuit board?" there was quite a bit more, "Well, we might as well leave, then. There's no point sticking around for a lesson in the dark, is there? You can read all you want, it won't bring the lights back on."

Coming from a nation with bitterly cold winters and a Catholic-school upbringing that very actively promoted and exemplified resilience and perseverance despite them, this concept is very new to me (though not so new now as it was a year and a half ago when I first moved here). Growing up, my friends and I would pray and pray endless hours for a snow day. In -30 degree weather. Under 5 feet of snow. It never came. My high school closed its doors for the first and only time in my years there three days into the 1998 Quebec ice storm that broke records and made headlines across the world, not because its power went out, but to help those whose power had. Going to school (or to work, or to an appointment, or out with your friends, even) was not something you did if all went well, if you felt like it, or in the absence of anything that might make your experience there negative. It was something you just did. Because it was expected of you. Because it was expected of your school (or work, or service supplier, or friends) to find solutions to problems when they arose. Because your parents - both of whom worked full time to maintain your peaceful and stable existence in the suburbs or in a residential area more than five minutes away from your school - simply didn't have the flexibility in their schedules required to deal with unforeseen closures or cancellations, if and when they could be avoided. Because advance notice meant 24 hours, or at least 12, not 2.

Adapting to this fundamentally different rhythm of life has been difficult for me. It continues to be difficult for me. It's a beautiful thing to be able to be spontaneous, flexible, and comprehensive of a trying situation unexpectedly. But it's also frustrating, upsetting, and demoralizing not knowing how to choose your battles, when to make lemonade out of lemons and when to leave the lemons alone - all in the interest of saving face. More than anything, learning and putting into practice the difference between looking good and being good often also means compromising any sense of righteousness, honesty, and work ethic I have cultivated up until this point in my life. Understanding that lemonade is to be made of lemons only when doing so would make the best impression means accepting that making lemonade of lemons is not a categorical imperative. It is not standard operating procedure. It does not qualify as the predictor of the best overall outcome. It can be a show of weakness in a game won by strategic withdrawal.

These are tough pills to swallow. With or without lemonade.

Shake yo' ass ... watch yo'self

I have been a semi-serious independent athlete since my CEGEP "Fitness Through Weight Training" class. For those of you counting, that's twelve years of running, cycling, cross training, spinning, pilates, dancing (all kinds), yoga (hot and cold), capoeira, half marathon training, gym memberships, and at-home programs (like Insanity and P90X). I exercise for the same reasons most (sane) people exercise (despite some claims that I am not all there upstairs): because it's fun, because it can be social, because it releases endorphins, lets off steam, staves off illness (and, often, boredom), boosts my energy, and keeps me strong.

I am currently training for a marathon (happening in March), and as all marathletes know, running every day is neither enough nor the proper preparation for a 42km race. Getting a gym membership, even if only for the use of the pool, was a no-brainer.

I've been to Italian gyms before. More precisely, I've trained (once) at one, and visited another. Neither one was a good fit for me; the first was small and crowded, the second enormous and elite. The one I settled for best represents both my fitness interests and my social class. Still, as observable in all three, this is the general demographic of an Italian gym (minus the trainers, thank goodness):

Firstly, 75% men (except in the pool, where the women dominate)
of which:
25% in their late 20s to late 30s "using" the weight room and REALLY using the spa area
25% in their early 40s to mid 50s REALLY using the weight room and pool

25% women
of which:
30% in their late 20s to mid 30s who have mistaken the gym for the club
20% in their late 30s to early 40s who stop moving just before they start sweating

and the rest, in both categories (50% of women, 50% of men), are the golden oldies, who *actually* bring it. 120%. Every time.

There's something wrong with this picture, wouldn't you say? Not least is the fact that I more easily identify with the 65+ crowd than with my own contemporaries.

I see my female cohorts arrive at the gym fully made-up, bejeweled, and in their best (often newest, tightest, and most revealing) gym attire. Their Nikes (or, recently, New Balance, since it has become *trendy* here, but we'll get to that later) have never seen an outdoor road or a drop of sweat. They spend more time admiring themselves in the locker room mirrors before class (or arranging and rearranging their carefully messied hairdos) than changing into and out of their clothes. You won't find a single one of them in the weight room or on a treadmill. You'd even be hard-pressed to find one in the swimming pool. You will find them, however, doing yoga, pilates, or following any other low-impact, sweatless class  imported from America (where it was big five years ago) whose only aim is to help them maintain the perfect bodies they inherited genetically or acquired through natural selection (and suicide diets). It's a crime to weigh more than 60kg here (per woman of average height). You'd better increase your daily downward dogs if you do.

Few of my male cohorts share these classrooms with them. They, instead, lurk outside them in the weight room, occupying machines often for fifteen minutes at a time, of which only three are spent lifting (or pushing, or pulling, or stretching), and the rest are spent in idle conversation with their neighbour, who is working at an identical pace. They needn't do anything more: like the women in their age group, they also arrive at the gym with perfectly sculpted physiques acquired, seemingly, through the exclusive consumption of a can of tuna daily, or from the time they spend in the hydromassage basin, Turkish bath, and sauna (since 60% of their gym time is spent there).

I won't fault the mothers - women in their early 40s who are likely at the gym in an attempt to escape their overwhelming daily routines for the little free time they have in a day. It's enough that they manage to commit to a fitness program, no matter its level of intensity. For everyone else, fitness is a spectator sport, it seems. (Although with no one working, one wonders what gym-goers look at at all aside from themselves in the mirror.)

I have had this conversation with my boyfriend many times. (He only recently renewed his gym membership after a long hiatus caused by the same frustrations I experience when I go there.) He maintains that Italians - especially young Italians - go to the gym to be seen and "pick up." But every young Italian man knows that Italian women neither pick up, nor let themselves get picked up. Ever. Winning them over requires months of arduous courtship: gifts, kind gestures, grand dinners, and a demonstrated ability to consistently Say the Right Thing. What's more, in cities overrun by foreign students, like Florence, young Italian men have learned quickly that the fastest and easiest way to "pick up" (or be picked up) is to aim for an enterprising and more or less independent American or Australian at any of the city's typical student-visa watering holes (the Sant'Ambrogio or Santa Croce areas, for example). In fact, the only men I see attempting to "pick up" (much younger) women at the gym are those in their middle age who have taken the experience gathered in their forty-five years of life for granted and get cocky about it.

So what gives? Why has the sauna become synonymous with fitness in Italy, while the real work remains undone?

For all intents and purposes, gyms in Italy are status symbols. For young people, frequenting one means making it in the world of fitness and beauty. You don't go to the gym to get fit or beautiful. You go to the gym because you already are fit and beautiful -- by society's standards, at least. And the more fit and beautiful you are, the bigger, brighter, and more beautiful your gym will be. I saw men enter and exit the Virgin Fitness Center in San Donato - one of the city's biggest, cleanest, and most luxurious gyms - in perfectly tailored three-piece suits and ties. It isn't a stretch to say that to Italians, the gym you attend says as much about you as the car you drive.

And fitness in general (as is the case with everything in Italy) is inherently linked to fashion and fashionability. When I lived here three summers ago and went running for the first time, even when taking an unpopulated route outside the city center, people looked at me like I was out of my mind. They could see no value in my exerting myself in that manner in the heat of the summer months without concrete incentive or the backing of a mob mentality. Three years later, running has become a "fashionable" activity here. People do it to fit it and make of it a (half-hearted) life philosophy. There are aperitivi for runners (which differ from regular aperitivi only in that the people attending swap their high heels or leather boots for their pristine "formal" New Balance shoes); running gear has gone mainstream even among only would-be runners; identifying as a runner - a deliberately solitary sport for many - now means being lumped together with a group of intended teammates. It seems Italians found the silence of the implicit solidarity among runners deafening, so they made it scream. Running here is not a sport. It's a scene.

It's the exclusion of other scenes, too: rarely will you find a "sporty" person who likes to dress up when they go out. Being sporty - without really being athletic - is its own religion.

It's a different world altogether for me, for obvious reasons. In Baltimore, I frequented the university gym or other facilities near campus which, catering as they do to a university population, boast a diverse crowd of focused athletes at all levels, from varsity teams-in-training to graduate students dealing with dissertation frustration, to elderly faculty members just trying to stay active. In Montreal, even the professional gym I expected to feel completely out of place in created a welcome atmosphere for those of us who, unlike its regular attendants, were neither bouncers or stunt doubles nor professional dancers. In both places, the gym was a place I went to to be me. Unapologetically. Unabashedly. Without concern for what others thought of me or what I looked like. I went to the gym to do me. Everything else was just a detail. My attitude toward the gym has not changed here. The only thing that has is that of those around me. In Baltimore and Montreal, gym-time was "me" time for everyone. Here, it's popcorn time.

Two summers ago, I followed a yoga class in Florence. It was meditative yoga, and the class was made up of middle-aged people. We spent more time talking about the positions than holding them; more time socializing at the end of class than participating in it. Our mouths were very fit, indeed.

Songs of Innocence

Another (overdue) bit of travel literature for you, about my travels to (and through) Basilicata. Enjoy!

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I had never been to the Basilicata, and quite honestly, had neither the interest in nor the intention of going there, ever. (I would later discover, via a memorable taxi driver who I think was called Cosimo, that both Francis Ford Coppola and Nicholas Cage, his nephew, are from the region – a fact that surely should have increased my enthusiasm about it but didn’t.) It is beautiful in a way the rest of Italy proclaims itself to be, but isn’t, exactly. Flanked by generous coast in abundant hues of green and blue, the hills of Basilicata are truly alive.

Still, if I’d had a choice, I’d have skipped it entirely. There are sheep and Sannite ruins in Molise, too, the region of my father’s origins, and I’d managed to avoid them (and his family there) for the last 26 and a half years; no sense in making the detour for Francis Ford. Basilicata was an uninformed blip on an otherwise immaculate itinerary for one.

I arrived in Policoro, a beach town on the Ionian shores, past midnight. What I thought would be an overnight train from Brindisi to Catania had turned into an overnight layover, two connecting buses to Paola and Cosenza, Calabria, and the train in to Sicily and over the strait of Messina. Were I defining the term only loosely, I could at least add Basilicata and Calabria to my list of places “visited” in Italy – a badge I wore proudly around non-Italians, and still more proudly around Italians themselves. I could colour in those blanks on my map. I could consider almost complete my tour of the meridione ten years in the making, having already hit the major hot-spots – Campania and Puglia – and on my way to the most canonical of all: Sicily. Well, to be fair (and I am always fair), Sicily is a world of its own, conspicuously.  But we’ll get there. As I did, eventually.

            In other words, Basilicata was, for all intents and purposes, a mistake. A fortunate one. One you appreciate having made, in the end. But still a mistake. Even in its splendor, Basilicata was a passing thought, an oversight misunderstood.

            The importance of research mustn’t be underestimated. As a scholar, I could say so. After six weeks and a tour of Italy’s most prestigious (and complicated) libraries dedicated to the work of a lifetime then already five years old (and still growing), I got it. I understood the precious nuances of a capricious schedule: open Mondays to Fridays, but only until 2 on Mondays and Wednesdays, only until 1 on Fridays, and up until 7 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Continuous distribution, hourly distribution, interrupted distribution; 9, 10, 11, 12; 9-12 and 2-5; open stacks; closed stacks; by permitted consultation only; see: reference section, but never after 4. Preparation was a way of existence in Italy. Precision (but not promptness, on the bureaucratic end, at least) was neither a luxury nor a virtue, but a matter of survival. Life was in the fine print, and I knew it. Still, booking my train ticket south, I hadn’t noticed, or didn’t want to after what had been a disastrous and emotionally taxing week in Puglia, the little bus diagrams beside connections that I interpreted as stops along the way. The four-hour delay had registered as a programmed pause rather than a jolt in the voyage. So at the very last possible minute, hours from my departure, when I realized I’d likely be sleeping at the station in Policoro that night, I was nothing if not profoundly embarrassed. Research was my job.

            I didn’t sleep at the station that night. I had absolutely hated everything about the Bed and Breakfast I had stayed at in Brindisi, but at the very least, it had come fully equipped with internet – a tool I more than happily exploited to book a hotel: a one-night stay in a three-star establishment on the water. I never went swimming. When I woke up the next morning (at 6am; my first bus was scheduled to leave the station a little before 7, though transportation scheduling is never quite either an obligation or a guarantee of anything in Italy), the front desk had called me a cab, and by the time I checked out, my driver had already loaded up my luggage in the trunk of his car.

            What kind of woman was I, he wanted to know? He only asked because I seemed young – too young to be traveling on my own. He liked my earrings, he mentioned, and the grace with which I wore them. They had been a compensatory purchase in Brindisi, intended with their platinum sparkle to make up for the severe lack of joy the city had brought me. Two silver balls dangled comfortably from their rectangular nestle dripping down from my earlobes like swinging pendulums. Italians appreciate simplicity and geometry: years earlier, a casual white dress plumed with an ad-hoc green pattern had served me well all summer long; did I like Pucci? He might like me, they observed.

            Anyway, I seemed young, said my cab driver, Cosimo. And from his middle-aged perspective, he might be right to say so. I didn’t mind. Happiness was a date of birth in the early 80s, or so I was later told. He took his duty (as an Italian male of any age) of catering to me very seriously: we arrived at the station early and rather than leaving me there to fend for myself, he took me on a guided tour of the village, complete with commentary.

There was more to hear than to see. Policoro is generically scenic, but otherwise unremarkable when compared with Italy’s conventional “best.” But Cosimo spoke amorously of his hometown with pride. He was giving me his land and, in those thirty minutes, his beating heart. Italians are nothing if not generous with their love.

“Did you know that there are Sannite ruins in this part of Italy?”

I knew, but it seemed rude to say so. I held my tongue as we stepped out of the car and onto the rural path that led to what were once domestic buildings, now a few piles of decadent stone.

“This is an ancient holding. You must have seen it coming out of the station yesterday, it’s just nearby.”

I felt guilty for not having noticed it sooner. It was not particularly impressive, but Cosimo was convinced of its exceptional beauty. He motioned to a short brick wall a few feet shy of the car, and shifted gears as we took our seats there for a moment, breathing in the early morning air.

 “Do you like it here?” he asked.  “I have never been married, but this place is as close to my heart as a wife would be. I hope you’ve enjoyed your stay.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him that “my stay” consisted of one night’s 5-hour sleep at a hotel fifteen minutes away that I neither had the opportunity to explore, nor to leave temporarily. So I told him I wished I’d had the chance to stay longer. It didn’t feel like lying.

“If you ever return – and I hope you do, and I think you should – you should let me take you to an olive-pressing demonstration at one of our olive oil factories. You were saying earlier that you like Tuscan olive oil, right?”

Right. I did. I still do.

“I think you’ll love our olive oil. It has a different taste, it’s not as bitter. Some say it’s a little heavier, but it makes the best savoury pastries I’ve ever had. Have you had taralli? They’re traditionally from Puglia, but we make them here as well. Those are made with olive oil.”

It’s hard to say now whether I had already known that bit of information then, having read it on a package of the savoury looped cookies my mother routinely purchased at our Italian bakery back home. I liked to read food labels; nutritional information brought me closer to the ingredients I was eating, so I appreciated my driver’s inclusion of what he couldn’t know was, to me, a particularly familiar detail. Perhaps it, or perhaps the warm wrinkles around his soft and kind eyes, or Policoro’s relative geographical proximity to my father’s Molisan village infused me with a sense of nostalgia I couldn’t understand: I’d never been here before. Most likely, I’d never be here again. Yet in this one instant, as the sun steadily lifted its rosy head over the station and shook out its golden locks over Cosimo and me wandering along the southern Italian countryside, I felt at home.

“Last summer, I took a lady on a tour of our vineyards,” he said, climbing back into the car. “She was visiting, just like you, and she was also alone. Well, she was a lady of a certain age … closer to mine than to yours. I think she’d seen her share of company over the years, and was glad to hoof it on her own. Still, she was happy to share some of her stay with me. I took her to my favourite spots, and she e-mailed me when she got home, just to thank me. She said she might come back this year or next.”

I wasn’t surprised. Cosimo seemed to me a thorough and attentive host, as most lonely people are. I understood the condition of being alone as a peaceful one, though not unambiguously. Being – and, perhaps more importantly, traveling - alone is the freedom to plan your life by the minute or not at all. It means having the liberty to seek out a deserted solarium on the outskirts of a remote fishing village and taking the risk of diving into the agitated waters before it without the constricting warning of a cautious voice. It means sharing every moment only with nature, and experiencing a heightened sense of objective (if personalized) reality. But it also means living many restless moments in the company only of your own thoughts – good or bad. It means accomplishing great feats of courage and resourcefulness without celebration or external validation. It means that the only thing separating you from the friendship of another person is a fleeting conversation – on a moonlit shore, on a highway lined with plane trees, on a hike to the summit of a long-coveted mountain – that instantly brings you together in some way that soon becomes clear to both of you. Loneliness is an easy opportunity for human connection at even the slightest sign of its potential. Cosimo got it.

He was telling me something but, my glance drifting somewhere (or nowhere) in the distance and my mind with it, I hadn’t heard him.

“If you’d like,” he repeated,  “I’ll leave you my card, so that if you come back here next year or the year after, I can take you on that tour. It would truly be my pleasure. There’s my e-mail address and my telephone number right there.”

It struck me as strange and a little funny that a taxi driver should have his own business cards. Still, I watched him as he pulled out a small stack from the old brown leather wallet he kept under the dash of his car and handed it to me tentatively. I thanked him with a smile and a handshake that seemed entirely too formal: in our short time together, Cosimo had revealed himself to be a comrade and an ally, a voice in the ongoing musical composition of my voyage.

Thinking back, he may have been my favourite part of Basilicata.

I climbed out of his cab and thanked him again as he handed me my luggage, pulling it out from the trunk where he had strapped it down with care. Would I be okay bringing this up to the bus? I would, I assured him. I had done it before, many times. He smiled and got back into the driver’s seat, but didn’t move from there: Cosimo watched me walk to the bus stop, board with my bags, and settle in. I saw his car sit motionless across the street from the station as the bus prepared to leave, and in the window behind me, watched him follow us until the road forked and his next caller took him in a different direction.           

I missed him on the bus in to Paola, although, with Daniele Silvestri (or was it Gianmaria Testa?) blaring in my ears from my even then obsolete iPod, I almost didn’t have the opportunity to. Cleaning out my wallet that night of recently acquired receipts and other trinkets, I found Cosimo’s card. I put it away somewhere I told myself I’d find it, somewhere important. I’m not sure where it is.

The Tipping Point

Last month, I directed a pre-collegiate summer camp here in Florence for (filthily rich and entitled beyond hope or reason) American students. The program itself was not the best one I've ever managed, but many of the parental complaints my staff and I fielded had little to do with its quality: "My daughter can't get chicken on her pasta;" (Nope. Sorry.) "There was no pool at the four-star hotel booked in Rome;" (Did you think all four-star hotels came with a pool, spa, and tennis courts? Oh you did? My bad, really.) "My son's photography teacher doesn't speak English;" (She does, actually. She just has an accent because - guess what? - she's ITALIAN.) America and Italy have had a difficult relationship for centuries. Americans accuse Italians of being culturally exclusive and behind the times; Italians accuse Americans of wanting to bring America to Italy without making any real effort to adapt or adjust. It's tit for tat.

Most of this blatant display of cultural unawareness I chalked up to these students' families being rich enough to buy their way out of any unwanted situation -- a luxury I have never been afforded. But there is a fundamental difference in the way Americans and Italians do business that contributes in large part to the cultural discrepancy between them. It's in the service industry -- every country's biggest batch of human resources.

In many places across the US, waiters, concierges, and other members of the service industry are unsalaried, work for less than minimum wage, and quite literally live off their earned tips. In America, where tipping is implied and recommended but never guaranteed, providing horrible service is tantamount to not eating for a few days. No matter what, the customer is always right. If he wants the Niçoise salad with salmon instead of tuna, no anchovies, his eggs scrambled instead of hard-boiled, caramelized onions instead of olives and feta and baco-bits thrown in on top, he gets it, no questions asked. He's the one paying the bill (and, for many waiters, the rent).

In Italy, where it is uncustomary (and unexpected) to tip -- a service fee is usually included in the price of a sit-down meal -- the service provider has both the final say and every right to make your life miserable if you are anything less than a model customer. Here, waiters are paid by their employers and don't need to rely on tips for sustenance. So here, if you want your Niçoise salad any way but the way indicated on your menu, you should be prepared at the very least to repeat your order several times, be openly mocked by the wait staff, or have your request flat-out refused as you are (not so) gently encouraged to select something else. It goes beyond the national appreciation of cuisine as an art of careful arrangement. It speaks to the pride of a people who will not yield to (what are often seen as) unreasonable requests.

That is not to say that Italians are not accommodating of special dietary (or other) needs. Every restaurant I took my students to last month had an option ready for celiacs, vegetarians, pescatarians, and lactose-intolerant eaters. What they did not have was a "build-it-yourself" option, an "add what meat you like," option or a "free modifier" option. Because things are not done that way here.

 It's a little difference, but it goes a long way and extends to other sectors of the service industry, to the same fundamental result. In Italian hotels, clients are asked to endure room mix-ups, late check-in (when rooms are not ready), and room service billing inaccuracies. But they should expect to encounter resistance if they ask for leniences in return (late check-out or a discounted meal). In America, patrons not given the fullest extent of hospitality are usually offered a complementary night or some kind of retributive service. In Italy, if you are being loud in your room, the concierge calls in with a noise complaint and asks you to stop, upon threat of expulsion. In the US, upper management wouldn't rouse from its extended nap if you tore your room apart.

It follows, then, the gap formed between American expectation and Italian reality -- and vice-versa. Italy wants the perfect customer; America wants the perfect service. Apologies are made for bad service in Italy: a slow aperitivo will usually be justified with a comment about the quality of the food (waiters are slow, but the food is SO GOOD IT'S WORTH THE WAIT). You might never go back to the place with slow service, but it's no harm no foul -- you've paid your bill and likely wouldn't have left anything extra even if the service had been excellent. In Italy, slow service occasionally (and not always) cuts customers. In America, if systemic, it gets waiters fired.

And strangely, when customers do choose to tip in Italy - as I did in pseudo-American establishments or places that repeatedly treated my group well despite their many (and silly) exigencies - their additional euros don't buy them better service or (often) better treatment; they get them a discount on their meal. In America, a discount is most often offered as an apology. In Italy, with few exceptions, it is most often offered as a reward. It's not so much a reciprocal scratching of backs as it is a mutual tickling of wallets. Occasionally, leaving a tip in Italy means, as a repeat customer, skipping the line, getting the best table in the house, or meeting with the owner. Seldom does it amount to a faster or more reliable rendering of service.

To be sure, there are (many) other factors that contribute to the cultural disconnect between America and Italy. The rhythm of daily life is another: where Italians are (mostly) happy to take their time (assumedly, to do things well), Americans consider haste a characteristic of efficiency: if it's not fast, it's not worthwhile. It's a tied game, as far as I'm concerned, when it comes to who gets it right more often.

Advocacy for cultural awareness and acceptance (my first line of defense) aside, I'll give you an insider's tip about how to bridge the service gap as an American expat in Italy. It goes back to Seneca (I think): you'll catch more flies with honey than you will with vinegar. Give Italian servers a show of good faith. Be complaint. Be respectful. Be easy-going. It'll pay off dividends in the long run.

That, or go only to hotel-recommended restaurants with hotel-provided vouchers and watch the magic happen.

Light clothing (even in the winter)

Read my article on I gatti mézzi's fifth album, Vestiti leggeri here.

Enjoy!

Lights, Camera, Action

It's been a culturally overwhelming seven days for me. You might expect me to want to write about Italy's (no longer so recent) World Cup match-up against England. You might think, "hey, there's gotta be a lot to talk about there from a perspective that understands and appreciates the mentality of either side," and you'd be right. But because the World Cup is being written about to death, from all possible angles, I'll leave the commentary to the pros (and wannabes -- I am neither).

(But yes, for those curious, watching the game in a piazza along the Arno was everything you might expect it to be -- loud shouts, fickle fans (their support soon turning to criticism with the team's every faux pas), massive celebration, and an unofficial but unanimously decided collective poking fun at Paletta. I'm not sure why, but I think it has something to do with his hair.)

The week's other notable if less discussed event was the June 16th inauguration of Ponte Vecchio's new lights. And wasn't that just a box of stereotypes unambiguously confirmed.

Here are the facts:

Stefano Ricci, of the Stefano Ricci House of Design (male fashion), donated 400,000 euro to Florence to replace the lights illuminating the Ponte Vecchio with LED energy-saving ones, and to clean up the bridge more generally. That meant removing all graffiti and providing general maintenance. This part, including the installation of the new lights, was done in the days leading up to the June 16th inauguration despite Ricci's commitment to the project months earlier.

The reason for the delay? As it so happens, June 16th was something of a special day both for Florentine fashion - it celebrated 60 years of facetime in the city's downtown core - and for the Ricci family itself, who celebrated an impressive 40 years of activity on the Florentine fashion scene. So this event lined up neatly with the yearly launch of the Florence Pitti Uomo celebration -- a summer-long event.

Of course, no inauguration would be complete without an appropriate party -- a party that probably cost at least twice what the restoration of the bridge itself cost and that included a water show by French troupe Iliotopie and performances by Giancarlo Giannini (an Italian actor) and Andrea Boccelli (no need for an introduction).

A party, moreover, that while masquerading as accessible and inviting to all Florentines -- the Ponte Vecchio will remain open, Ricci insisted -- in many ways came across as an expectedly exclusive event. The Santa Trinità bridge was reserved for Stefano Ricci's personally invited guests, and access to all other bridges was protected by brigades of bulletproof shield-wielding carabinieri AND police. On both sides. At all entrances.

So what does this teach us?

It teaches us that the preservation of Renaissance masterpieces -- of which the Vasari corridor is one -- is important to Italians, especially in places of rich cultural history; but that this preservation is still in many ways only secondary to an industry that has ostentatiously and perhaps aggressively claimed itself as the most representative facet of Italian culture; an industry that, for all its attempts at inclusivity and universality -- and I think Ricci's was genuine and heartfelt -- continues to cater specifically to its own.

Only in Italy would a fashion designer throw a million euro party to underline his investment in Florence's cultural patrimony and energy savings (80% or 15 thousand euro). To say thank you, he claims.

I sound cynical. I know. Apologies. What bothers me about this display is neither Ricci himself nor the scale of his show, but the piggy-backing of the Ponte Vecchio restoration on a celebration of fashion and design -- or vice versa, I'm not sure. To me, inaugurating a project of this cultural importance, but having it coincide with fashion week is like waiting months to celebrate your oldest child's graduation from medical school on your youngest child's fifth birthday party (at Chuck E. Cheese's). Why not have two separate events? Are they not both worthy enough of attention? Pitti Uomo is not going broke any time soon. What's another party? Couldn't the celebration of the Ponte Vecchio have been about the Ponte Vecchio?

Of course, I say this as a middle child (of three) and as someone who has always found it important to individuate accomplishments, projects, and events as they arise to make sure they are all given equal attention and attributed equal importance. Perhaps I am uniquely bothered by a celebration that pretends to be one thing and succeeds at being another. It was truly an impressive show. I saw little of it, but what I did see moved me. But I would love to see this kind of attention and care given to, say, the June 24th feast of Saint John the Baptist, Florence's patron saint -- and a distinctly Florentine celebration of history and culture. I have been in Florence for four San Giovanni celebrations. Never have I seen carabinieri or police at the entrance to any bridge anywhere. Never have I seen a show that even remotely resembles either what Stefano Ricci organised for his June 16th event, or even what Pisa does for its annual Festa della Luminara.

If Pisa can do it every year (without the presence of a notable fashion industry), why can't Florence?

Yes, this is a once-in-a-lifetime event (you only celebrate 60 or 40 years once), not an annual event. Yes, and after many months of austerity, it was a useful hit of colour and morale for Florentines. Yes, it was concrete evidence of an Italy that (at least privately) backs its words with actions. It just wasn't really the appreciation it should have been, in my humble opinion.

With a (projected) million euro, Florence could probably put together at least 3 decent celebrations of its own history (beyond the repetitive calcio storico and its never-changing Renaissance parade; I'm pretty sure those same costumes have been used for the past 50 years). Just food for thought.

If I were Vasari, I'd either be laughing from atop my corridor or rolling in my grave.

Burning down (or warming up) the House

Well, it has been a long while since I last wrote. Mainly, that's because I have been, in chronological order: 1) trying to procure a work/holiday visa from the Italian consulate in Montreal; 2) after much travail, successfully procuring a work/holiday visa from the Italian consulate in Montreal; 3) assembling various documents for my dog's travel passport to the EU; 4) preparing a conference paper for a panel on Italian studies in Zurich; 5) flying to and attending said conference; 6) touring Zurich and Innsbruck; 7) redecorating my Florence abode; 8) visiting with my boyfriend's family in Orbetello and Manciano/Pomonte/Saturnia; 9) taking a short detour to Capalbio to visit the Giardino dei Tarocchi; and 10) completing a course syllabus on Italian regionalism, proposing papers for panels at the RSA's 2015 meeting in Berlin, and completing a draft of an intended publication.

So, phew. That was a lot of stuff.

But I have been meaning to write about Italian housewarming traditions - or the perceivable lack thereof - since May 15, when a close Italian friend became a homeowner for the first time, in Montreal.

I have known this friend since my McGill days, and she has seen me through some of the darkest periods of my life. So when she, excited, requested my presence at an intimate housewarming affair on the night she closed the deal officially, despite the million and one things going on in my life, I couldn't say no. I had been told that it was considered good luck in Italian circles to bring salt to a new homeowner -- a friend had once brought me some when I first moved into my own place (although I was renting it) without roommates in Baltimore. I wasn't sure, however, if the tradition was bogus. The fact that I was being invited to a housewarming by an Italian friend did nothing to assuage my doubts about the validity of the tradition -- she has been living in Canada for the past twelve years. She's about as Canadian as I am at this point.

My curiosity led me to do research, as it usually does, which brought me to two items of interest. The first is this list of "Traditional Italian Housewarming Gifts." The second was my boyfriend's staunch and unflinching affirmation that housewarming in general, let alone traditional gifts associated with it, simply doesn't exist in Italy. Or at least, that it isn't really a thing in most places in Italy.

As it so happens, both things are only half right, as more research confirmed.

As anyone who has lived (or lives) in North America knows, housewarming parties are a big deal in Canada and the US: people have them all the time, as often as they can, every time they move into a new place. They usually happen when the home is already set-up and ready to accommodate guests, since the point of a housewarming party is to prepare the new home as a place of hospitality. It's a social inauguration, if you will. It's true that this particular celebration doesn't exist in Italy. As important as socialising and hospitality are to Italians, none (or few, and almost none within Italy) feel the need to underline it in the specific context of buying or moving into a new house. It goes without saying. If you're going to live in your own place, you're going to have your friends over for dinner. Repeatedly. Without need for excuses, explanations, or reasons. Just because. (This is one thing I have always loved about Italians vs. Americans. In Italy, you never need to "sell" your event or appeal to your audience's likes, dislikes, sports preferences or television schedules. If you want to have dinner with some people, you don't need to throw a theme-party, an Oscar party, a Super Bowl party, a Fourth of July, Memorial Day, or Labor Day party. You just need to call and invite them over. Un punto e basta).

But it is customary, when visiting a new home, to bring the homeowner a token for various forms of good luck. It's even more common for the homeowner to bring these trinkets to their new homes themselves. (Because when it comes to luck, Italians are on top of their game.)

Not all of the items on the list, however, resonate with Italian audiences, as both my boyfriend and my friend the homeowner confirmed. Let's go through them.

1) Wine and bread -- Nope. Never heard of this tradition. There's wine and bread at every Italian meal. Why should a "housewarming" celebration be any different?

2) Rice -- As a symbol of fertility, rice is more typically associated with marriage in Italy. It is both used as confetti at the religious (or civil) ceremony, and, more traditionally still, placed in the wedding bed made the night prior to the wedding by a team of virgins (allegedly).

3) Candles -- Yes. For light. For warmth. For fragrance. Not necessarily for change, as the list suggests.

4) Olive oil -- Nope. Read item 1. Ibidem.

5) Brooms -- Yes. Little ones to hang on the entrance door or other doorways. Symbolic brooms to sweep away misfortune. I suppose you could bring a full-sized Oskar-style broom to an Italian homeowner if you really wanted to .... would come in handy if you were going to help her/him to move in. Otherwise, I might just stick with the figurative format.

6) Salt -- Yes. And it is customary to scatter it in doorways.

My friend also brought lentils with her, despite their more customary use on New Year's eve and day. Then as always, they are said to bring prosperity.

I settled on salt (for flavour), something that I thought was my friend's favourite candies (and turned out to be chili pepper lol), beer, and empanadas. We sat around a tiny porch table, three matching chairs, and a box, and watched the little candle she'd brought over for good tidings burn.

It was a lovely cross-cultural evening -- just the way I like them :)