Inking Italy

Quick: What Are All the Italians Looking At?

I'm often asked if Romans, or people who live in Rome, ever stop seeing, or appreciating, the incredible ruins and sights around them.

Here's something I saw today that might go -- partway -- toward answering that question.

Exhibit A: A crowd gathered in Rome. I'd say it's 90-100 percent Italian.

Exhibit B: What they're looking at. (Can't tell? It's one of those street artists who use stencils and spray paint to make pretty cheesy-looking scenes, usually involving some kind of sunset, really quickly. If I weren't feeling particularly expansive today, I'd probably have quotes around the word artists).

Now, I'll admit that these artists can be pretty mesmerizing. There's something about the stencils, the speed... and, let's be honest, probably about the paint fumes, too.

But is it more mesmerizing than the other sights that you could see from the very same spot?

So: Let's be honest. The Italians here had probably seen the forum and Colosseum a million times. That neat trick with the stencils, though, that's something new. (Well, newer than 2,000 years old).

Which, of course, raises an interesting point. No matter how beautiful, old, and important, those sights you see every day do, at least sometimes, lose out in the fight for your attention. Even against the most gimmicky of distractions.

A Bagel's Life

My dad used to make me this one amazing dish, the kind I ate so regularly that I still associate it with my childhood. When I come across it. Which is never.

The steps in making this meal, which were so extraordinarily complicated I let him do it even when I had reached both adolescence and the age at which one should have some cooking skills (then again, I've made it another decade and a half without acquiring those, so...), were the following.

1. Lightly toast a blueberry bagel.

2. Butter the bagel. Add chunks of cheddar cheese and turkey, thinly sliced.

3. Pop into microwave for just enough time for the cheese to melt.

4. Serve to happy, and increasingly-chubby, daughter.

Before you say ewww, remember: Fruit and turkey go together. (Cranberry sauce, anyone?) Cheddar and turkey go together. Cheddar and fruit go together. Therefore, fruit, cheddar and turkey go together. (Also, kids are weird).

Needless to say, I haven't had one of these in years. (Well. Except for when I was at my dad's house for Christmas. So.)

But I recently came across the following sign at The Perfect Bun's new bakery:

Bagels, in my East Coast opinion, are always worth getting excited about. Especially since they're just flour, sugar, salt, oil, and yeast. Or something. I mean, how could something so great come out of so few ingredients?

But if you live abroad, then you know that bagels (like Twizzlers, and Golden Grahams) are really worth getting excited about. They just don't do 'em here like they do back home. Or, really, at all.

Needless to say, I marched in and purchased my bagel.

€1.50 and a half an hour later, I was still so excited about this that I took one (okay, several) bagel portraits. (Yeah, okay, maybe I was pretty excited about my new macro lens, too).

Looking a little introspective, but maybe it's hard not to be turned inward. For a bagel.

Its fresh face thus captured, I put my bagel in the toaster. Or, really, panini press, but it's almost the same.

Then I realized there wasn't anything I could really do with my bagel. I didn't have cream cheese. Or lox. Or much at all, since my fridge usually looks something like this:

That's on a good day. And I have a roommate.

I did, however, have sliced turkey. And a rhubarb jam I'd brought back from visiting my grandparents at the Chesapeake. Ordinarily, I'd also have brie tucked away somewhere. Not today.

Still, my turkey and jam bagel was actually pretty good. If you're looking to approximate something weird to begin with. It did not, however, come anywhere close to my father's specialty.

Nota bene: The bagel, I have to say, was actually pretty darn good. And was indeed fresh.

Now That's What I Call Takeout

Pictured: Two pizzas from Li Rioni, two glasses of Nero d'Avola, and the knee of my roommate, who's totally wondering why we haven't dived into our feast yet. Did I say I live a 2 minutes' walk from where all of this came from?

Ah, Rome.

Scenes from a Roman Bus

I.

At the Largo Argentina bus stop. A crowd, as usual, spilling off the sidewalk. The buses are taking longer than usual. Maybe because it's Friday.

The number 60 pulls up, slows, and then starts to take off, never opening its doors. An Italian woman whacks the door with her large shopping bag. "Oh!" she yells, the half grunt, half exclamation that's the Romans' more-gravelly version of an American "Hey!" The bus accelerates. Her bag drops to the street. "Ma dai, che stronzo!" she yells after the driver. He doesn't stop.

There's a man in an ATAC uniform, for Rome's public transport system, waiting at the bus stop with us. She turns to him. What the hell, she asks, why didn't the bus stop? He shrugs and barely flicks his eyes in her direction. What do you want me to do about it? he says. The number 87 pulls up. He gets on.

II.

I get on the 87, too. I pull a euro coin out of my pocket and put it in the ticket machine. It rolls out. I put it in again. It's spat out once more. A young man next to me nods at it: "Fuori servizio," he says. Ah. It's out of service. Casting a nervous glance at the ATAC official, riding the bus with me, I back, ticketless, away from the machine. The official remains rooted to his spot at the railing.

III.

Two minutes later, the number 87 comes to a halt before Via dei Fori Imperiali. Polizia metropolitana cluster in their blue uniforms, waving the traffic away. The bus driver rolls down the window, exchanges words with the police. Instead of heading down the street, it starts a laborious, rocking revolution around the Piazza Venezia green. "Non va al Colosseo?" asks the woman in front of me, who's certainly not going to the Colosseum to take pictures, but to get on one of the only metros in Rome's center to continue her journey. "No, signora, mi dispiace," the driver says. The same young man at the ticket machine pokes his head toward the driver. "Va a via Labicana?" "Non so." The driver doesn't know.

Via dei Fori Imperiali is quiet, the sidewalks busy. Military helicopters circle overhead. With a dozen others, I get off the bus at Piazza Venezia and start my 25-minute walk home.

Italian Students Aren't Giving Thanks Today

 

Italy's students have taken to the streets this week, creating commotion in cities from Bari to Bologna, Palermo to Parma. And, of course, in Rome.

Yesterday, more than 2,000 students marched on Rome's Senate building, throwing tear gas and eggs until they were attacked by the police. Students also blocked the train tracks in Siena, keeping any trains from moving in or out of the city, took over the Leaning Tower of Pisa so tourists couldn't enter, and occupied 16 schools in Palermo... to name just a few of the demonstrations taking place in more than 100 Italian cities this week.

In Rome, at least, the protests today seem to be a little tamer than yesterday* -- when I saw the students march from Piazza Venezia to the Colosseum at 2pm, it looked like only about 200. But here's the interesting thing: That still was enough for the police to close off each street the students took over, completely snarling up the already-bad traffic on a rainy Rome day. Carabinieri also blocked off a section of the street to keep anyone from getting even within a literal stone's throw of Berlusconi's Palazzo Grazioli.

And for a city with so many police that on a normal day it already looks like it's preparing for imminent attack, well, today Rome looked like an actual war zone. Police cars and ambulances screamed down the streets, their sirens blaring. Huge trucks silently carried carabinieri and guardia di finanza from mysterious point A to mysterious point B. And everywhere, everywhere were uniformed, gun-toting officers, of some kind or another. Below, a blue-helmeted crew at the Colosseum, where the students stood out front, peacefully chanting and banging away at their drums. Why are students so ticked? Well, because of budget cuts, of course. The Parliament's currently debating a bill that would cut 9 billion euros and 130,000 jobs from the education sector. Ouch.

But it is -- of course -- about more than that. Anger with the Berlusconi government seems to be at a boiling point, and that's not just true for students.

So while all the police around the city right now might just be there to make sure that another government building doesn't get attacked the way the Senate did, I think there's something more to it. Because they must realize that, by putting every street the 200 20-somethings walk down under virtual lock-down, they're just making the protesters seem even more powerful. It's as if they think the handful of students protesting in Rome today are just the frontrunners, or symbols, of something much, much bigger.

And maybe they're right.

Stay tuned. In the meantime, read this for an Italian academic's take on the whole thing.

In Italy, Even the Mafia and Media Work Together

I got a glimpse this morning of the cozy fascinating relationship in Italy between the media... and the mafia. And I hadn't even had coffee yet.

Here's why:

In case you can't tell, and I know it's hard to, this is a long list of published names. They're people who wrote in as part of a petition against Roberto Saviano -- you know, the guy who's currently risking his life to speak out against mafia infiltration in Italy and who authored Gomorrah. Yes, you read that right. They're against him.

Why? Because he made the mistake of saying, on the popular new television show Viene Via Con Me, that the mafia has infiltrated northern Italy. And that high-ranking politicians, including those in the ostensibly anti-mafia Lega Nord, are in on the whole game. These signers* say that he's wrong. (That's despite the fact that there is a ton of evidence to the contrary, including facts and figures gathered by the DIA, Italy's official anti-mafia organization).

*As the article linked to above points out, the petition can be "signed" by e-mail, text or fax -- so who knows who exactly is behind the names.

What's fascinating to me isn't so much that the mafia's (almost) as pervasive in northern Italy as it is in the south, or that politicians are involved. (I'm surprised that surprises anyone, except for the most anti-southern and myopic northern Italians). It's that you would see a major national newspaper in Italy getting up in arms about somebody actually having the guts to say this. And calling for a petition against him.

Then again, it's Il Giornale. And if you flip to the back page , you see why that's important.

If you don't have eagle-eye vision, let me spell it out for you: Il Giornale is published in Milan, which happens to be both the major (mafia?) hub in the north... and the hometown of the Berlusconis. Not only that, but some of the names are pretty interesting. At the top, there is, of course, Vittorio Feltri, the paper's editor and such a longtime loyalist to Berlusconi that when he recently told a rival paper that Berlusconi "didn’t do a lot of things that he should have done," it was seen as such a sign of change that the New York Times used it as an example of how Berlusconi's allies are defecting.

Listed under consiglieri, meanwhile, are personalities like Fedele Confalonieri, chairman of Mediaset and the guy behind the quote "If Berlusconi had not entered politics, today we would all be in jail or under some bridge." And then there are the Berlusconis themselves, three of them: Paolo (Silvio's brother) and his two daughters, Alessia and Luna.

But none of this should surprise you, really. After all, Il Giornale was owned by Silvio Berlusconi until 1994, when he sold it to his brother.

And you know who really doesn't like hearing crap about his hometown of Milan... or bad things about his politician buddies in the Lega Nord or elsewhere... or anything at all about his own enthusiastic involvement in inability to root out corruption in Italy?

Yep. That'd be the prime minister.

See, I told you it would be interesting.

In Italy, the Calculus of Completing Tasks

People sometimes wonder why it takes so long to do anything here in Italy.

Luckily (?), I have an example so recent, it's from today.

I had to go to the questura, or police station, today to file a denuncia. I'd lost my copy of my permesso di soggiorno (and no, I don't need to be reminded how stupid that was), and had to fill out a form declaring it had been lost. In lots of countries, that would be a relatively quick procedure.

Not in Italy.

(Scroll right to the bottom if, unlike me, you haven't already wasted lots of minutes today and don't want to waste any by reading a blog post about wasting minutes. That's where you'll find the simple numbers involved in What It Takes To Get Something Done In Italy).

Some Darn Loud Birds

Starlings in flight are beautiful. They swoop, dive and dance, as choreographed as a school of fish, but with more elegance. Every night in the fall, they give a free show over the River Tiber in Rome. And then, mysteriously, vanish, only to be seen, again, the following October.

(I once even saw them making a fish symbol over St. Peter's. I can't remember if I saw it as an omen or not, but I must have been mesmerized, because although I thought to take a snap, I was too entranced to realize I should probably get the basilica into the frame with the fish to prove that it really had happened. But look, here's my almost-proof!).

Still, as beautiful as I knew starlings were -- and as annoying for Rome residents, particularly those in Trastevere, who have to start their commutes with ten minutes of scraping the elegant birds' less-than-elegant refuse from the hoods of their cars -- I never realized they were so darn loud.

Until, walking in Campo Marzio the other night, I heard what sounded like a loud rushing noise. Loud enough to be heard over the city traffic and strolling Italians. It sounded like a waterfall...in the city center. As I got to the end of the street, the noise was even louder. I looked up. Before me stood one, big, lonesome tree -- filled with what must have been hundreds of small, not-so-lonesome starlings. They were almost impossible to see, but not to hear. I thought about making like a character in The Birds and running for it, but I took this video instead.

Turn the volume up even louder to get a sense of what it was really like, and see if you can even make out the tiny little things rustling around in the branches.

 

A Jesuit Mass and Rome's Religiosity

 

I'm often the first to debunk the myth that Italians are, as a whole, a very religious people. Polls have shown, after all, that only about 30 percent of Italians attend mass regularly, and that's what Italians report themselves -- studies done of how many people are actually in church each Sunday show attendance even lower, around 15 percent.

Last night, though, I saw something that made me reconsider.

I've seen a lot of all-but-empty church services in Rome. Mass at the Church of the Holy Apostles, a stone's throw from Piazza Venezia and the burial place of two separate apostles, will often have no more than 10 people. And earlier last night, wandering into the Church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva (one of my favorites), I saw something that tugged at my heart: A man and a woman in a side chapel, sitting in separate benches, one reading one part of the Mass call-and-response (eek, what is it called?), the other replying, no priest in sight. That's the Rome religious scene I'm used to.

But then I walked into the Church of Sant'Ignazio. The bell had just struck 6pm. It was a Friday. And the place was... full.

Okay, not actually full. We're talking about an enormous Baroque church. But there must have been 150, 200 people. Loudspeakers blared the sermon, echoing it off the walls and the famous tromp l'oeil dome. Next to the rows and rows of seats, a line had formed; a priest sat in a side chapel, his face earnest, his hands on the hands of an older lady who sat across from him, looking as if he were giving her deep religious advice, or a cure. And people in different-colored smocks roamed the borders of the crowd, marking a firm border between tourists and worshippers. The odd thing was, there were more worshippers than tourists. (Don't believe me? Check the video).  

Something about it really struck me.

One of the smocked women must have noticed, because when I hovered at her table to try to ask what was going on, if it was something special, she reached out and clutched my hand in a half-handshake, and then, with that particular sweet smile of people who know they walk in the right path and that they can convince others to join them through their kindness, handed me a schedule. Tonight was the Mass for the Sick; it, like all the other masses at Sant'Ignazio, was held by the Jesuit order.

So maybe it's just the Jesuits. Maybe it's because it was a special mass.

Either way, though, statistics alone don't quite tell the story of religion in Rome, never mind in Italy.

 

One Moment, Three Reasons to Love Rome

A short walk around Rome this evening reminded me of why I still feel so lucky to live here. Below, three reasons that hit me at the same time:

The fact that piazzas as beautiful as this one can still be so empty, regardless of all the jabber-jawing about how inundated by tourists Rome is. (And yes, this looks quite similar in the summer, too). This one is Piazza Farnese, but don't tell anybody.

Okay, I know it might not look like much, but this castagnaccio (a heavy cake made of chestnut flour) is deceptively delicious. Like most other Italian desserts, not too sweet, but filling and just nutty enough. I bought this at Antico Forno, the bakery on Campo dei Fiori, as a little winter's-arrival treat.

Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, Rome's only Gothic church. It boasts the body of St. Catherine of Siena, a (supposed) Michelangelo sculpture, the tomb of Fra Angelico, and some gorgeous frescoes by Filippino Lippi, but I also just love the view as soon as you walk in. So different from everything else in Rome.

So: Sitting on that piazza, eating a castagnaccio, and contemplating my stroll over to see Santa Maria Sopra Minerva -- one moment, three reasons why I feel lucky to live in Rome. As frustrating as it can sometimes be.

 

 

Back...And Back on Track

For the past two months, I've been completely negligent in posting. I'll blame it on end-of-summer onset of heat exhaustion, and my focus instead on my other blog, Revealed Rome.

But I'm back, and ready to keep sharing those little fragments of life in Italy. First, some of the articles I've been working on while I haven't been working on this (particular) blog. (Hey, they're still "inking Italy," right?)

Several pieces on life and culture in Italy for The American, including:

-an intro to corruption in Italy, from cultural assocations to tax evasion -- and why it doesn't mean the Italians are "bad people."

-the problems with expecting to get a fresh perspective from travel abroad (hello, Eat, Pray, Love)

-why 2,000-year-old ruins can feel oddly familiar

A couple of travel pieces for the Guardian:

-the Colosseum reopening its hypogeum, or underground level (but please, please don't call it the "dungeon") and the third level

-exploring the Baths of Caracalla at night

And, just today, a piece on how Rome's ruins are in danger -- the reason for today's nationwide strike of museums and cultural institutions.

Now, back to blogging.