When in Rome, as they say…
Sadly, this saying doesn’t seem to apply to Americans. Rather than doing in Rome as Romans do, we often behave as if the rest of the world were colonies of the US, there simply to serve us. We travel to foreign countries where people don’t speak our language -- and we make scant attempt to communicate in the local tongue. Sure we can say “buon giorno” and “grazie,” but that’s as far as it goes. We expect them to speak our language.
Witness: I was in a café one morning about 9, when a woman walked in and asked the cashier in perfect English what time the Burger King next door opened. The cashier was gracious and explained (in English) that it opened at 10am, but could that lady have been any more disrespectful? To walk into a local café, make no attempt to understand or speak in the language of the country where you’re a guest, or to understand or appreciate their culture -- and then to inquire about, of all things, a Burger King! Is it any wonder Americans have acquired the reputation of being insensitive and uncultured?
Of course, I didn’t do much better. I butchered the Italian language over and over again. I often found myself in situations in which I had no idea what was going on, what was being said, what I was supposed to do. I’m sure I insulted people unknowingly. And I have no doubt that people I talked to must have had a good laugh at my horrible accent or inexplicable questions -- as when I asked a lady if the bus stop I was standing at was a bus stop.
And to be fair, I can understand the impulse to use English in Rome. For one thing, it’s everywhere. Signs are usually in both Italian and English, and a surprising number of billboards, ads, and names of stores are only in English. Also, most people in restaurants and stores speak both languages, if not more. So you can hardly be blamed for assuming that anyone you approach will understand you and reply in English.
Plus, as I discovered many times, it’s very hard trying to communicate in a language you’re barely familiar with. It’s exhausting. Every night when I returned to my hotel I was mentally wiped out, and my already meager attempts at Italian got worse and worse as the day went along. If in the morning I could say, “Mi scusi, dov’e la fermata dell’ autobus? Vorrei andare alla chiesa di San Paulo entro le Mura,” by the evening I was lucky if I could say, “Buona notte.”
Learning a language is a lot of work. You make a ton of mistakes, which is embarrassing and humiliating. Like the time I tried to ask the taxi driver taking me to the airport how much would it cost (“Quanto costa?”) and instead asked, “Quanto costo?” -- “How much do I cost?” It would have been so much easier to just ask in English -- but probably not nearly so entertaining for the taxi driver.
Dov’e il Starbux?
Before my first trip to Europe, my friend Lisa kept telling me how good the coffee was. She was not exaggerating. Especially in Rome, the coffee can be sublime.
“Can be” is key. Like everything else, coffee varies from café to café. I never had a bad cup, but I often had an espresso or cappuccino that was just okay, not great. On the other hand, on at least a couple occasions I had an espresso that was better than any I had ever had in the US. As I learned, to understand coffee in Italy is to appreciate the expression, “Great things come in small packages.”
Here’s how it’s done. First walk into a good café. The man or the woman behind the bar greets you with “Buon giorno” or “Prego.” Prego means welcome, among other things. For example, when you say “Grazie,” the usual reply is “Prego” (“You’re welcome”) although it could also be “Grazie Lei” (“Thank you”). But it seemed to me that prego can be used in situations where we might say “Hi” or “Can I help you?” or “What would you like?” For instance, it might the first thing a waiter says to you to you when he comes to your table. Unless I’m mistaken, it’s a sort of a catch-all greeting and, to my mind, epitomized the way Italians embrace you as their guest. Welcome!
So you step up to the bar, the barrista (for lack of a better word) says “Prego,” and you say: “Prendo un caffe” (“I’ll take a coffee”). Now, caffe in this case means “espresso.” I believe you can also say “caffe naturale” or just “naturale.” For example, you and two friends walk into a café and you order all the drinks: “Un cappuccino, un cafelatte, e un naturale.” (If any of you know for sure, feel free to correct me, but that was my impression.)
My point is this: coffee = espresso. Starbux, as far as I could see, has not arrived in Rome, and I doubt it would be successful. I don’t think the Italian culture could accommodate a Starbux, except maybe in pockets that are heavily American. Interestingly, as Morgan and I discovered, the English have no such compunction. We found Starbux all over in London.
But Rome isn’t London.
So you’ve ordered your caffe at the bar -- and that is very important. You haven’t gone to sit at a table to order your coffee, unless you’re in a group and you’re having more than just coffee. No, you stand at the bar, order your espresso, and in a minute or so it arrives. It’s in a tiny cup, maybe half full, maybe less. If it’s an excellent espresso, half of it is “crema,” that light brown airy part of the coffee that floats on top and signals a barrista who knows what he’s doing. By contrast, a weak espresso will have only the thinnest layer of crema, which disappears the moment you stir it.
And stir it you must -- with a minimum of one packet of sugar, but up to three if you have a particularly sweet tooth. (I usually add two.) The point is that espresso is a thick, sweet drink, one meant to be consumed in a moment. It’s usually 0,70 euro, but I paid as much as 0,90 euro and saw it as high as 1,20 euro. You stand at the bar, you order it quickly, you drink it quickly, you leave a few cents for the barrista, and you leave. You don’t wait in line. You don’t add half & half. You don’t hang out. You don’t use your Starbux card. You don’t give your name so it can be written on the cup. You don’t say “Venti soy decaf no foam latte.” In Italy, it’s simple: “Un caffe.” You order, you drink , you pay, you leave.
It’s a beautiful thing.
PS. How cool is this. I'm connected to the Internet while flying at 35,000 feet somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean?
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Saturday, October 28, 2006
Links (October 28, 2006)
I realize that I've been remiss in one respect. I should have been sending you pictures to look at along with my long-winded journal entries. So...
Here's a photo of the most important part of the ceiling of Il Gesu:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:IlGesu_Ceiling01.jpg
Here's another photo of the interior:
http://www.usc.edu/schools/annenberg/asc/projects/comm544/library/images/033.html
An article about Gesu can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Il_Gesu
Here's the hotel I'm staying at:
http://www.hilton.com/en/hi/hotels/index.jhtml?ctyhocn=ROMHITW. Click the link for "Take a Tour of our Hotel."
Here's are two links to the Villa Miani, which I mentioned in my second dispatch:
http://www.relaislejardin.com/eng-ver/ville/miani.html
http://www.villamiani.com
Here's a photo of the most important part of the ceiling of Il Gesu:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:IlGesu_Ceiling01.jpg
Here's another photo of the interior:
http://www.usc.edu/schools/annenberg/asc/projects/comm544/library/images/033.html
An article about Gesu can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Il_Gesu
Here's the hotel I'm staying at:
http://www.hilton.com/en/hi/hotels/index.jhtml?ctyhocn=ROMHITW. Click the link for "Take a Tour of our Hotel."
Here's are two links to the Villa Miani, which I mentioned in my second dispatch:
http://www.relaislejardin.com/eng-ver/ville/miani.html
http://www.villamiani.com
Postcard from the Eternal City (October 28, 2006)
Not that any of you care about this, but I got a great night's sleep last night. I think I'm finally adjusting to the time difference. The rule of thumb is that when traveling it takes 1 day to acclimate yourself for every hour in time change. Rome is 9 hours ahead of Sacramento and I've been here now for 7 days. Which means I should be fully adjusted by Monday. Perfect. Cause I'm returning on Tuesday.
For those of you who have not traveled abroad, what the time change means is that your sleeping pattern is f'ed up for the first few days. People who travel a lot all have their own theories about how to get acclimated quickly. I've heard people say that you should not sleep on the plane so that when you arrive at your destination you're really tired and thus you'll sleep very well and get caught up and acclimated right away. It's a good idea -- in theory. If you're like me, you don't sleep on airplanes anyway, which means I should be a good test case.
It works like this: You leave SF in the afternoon. You've been up since, say, 7am. The flight is about 10 hours and you arrive around 10am, meaning that you've flown through the night and arrived the next morning. At this point, your body feels like it's 1am. Now, you stay awake all day and you go to bed at, say, 11pm, whis is like 2pm back home. You should be really, really tired because now you've been up for 31 hours straight. In fact, you are really, really tired. But when you go to sleep, naturally you wake up at 2am. Because even though you're exhausted, you're body thinks it's 5pm and you've just had a little afternoon nap. You try to go back to sleep, maybe you get an hour or two of sleep, and bling! you're wide awake again at 4:30, by now absolutely exhausted but completely unable to go back to sleep.
That's what happens to nearly everyone.
Other people have different theories: Some say you should take Tylenol PM (or other sleep aid) and sleep the entire way on the plane so that when you awake at your destination you're rested and ready to start the day, now on European time. Others say you should try to adjust your body's clock before you leave by changing your sleep patterns and even your diet.
In my opinion, there's no secret recipe. The key is how much you travel. If you travel a lot, going back and forth between the US and Europe or the US and Asia, I think you have an easier time adjusting because your internal clock just get used the idea of being screwed up. For those of us who are infrequent travelers, the time change is a bitch, and there's no way to avoid it, no matter what theory ascribe to. But I don't mean to complain; it's a small price to pay for the opportunity to go to foreign lands -- and make a fool of yourself as a stupid American.
Speaking of which, I have a retraction. In my last dispatch, I misspelled "sera" as "serra," which pretty much invalidates my comments about that word. But you could substitute "oggi" for "buona sera" and draw the same conclusion. Like formaggio and regazza, oggi (which means "today) has that "double letter / let's pause for a moment and smell the roses" thing going on. And that seams somehow fitting for a culture that gave the world the notion of carpe diem.
On Thursday afternoon I finally got a chance to walk around the city center. From the little walking tour I did, which basically spanned the distance from the Spanish Steps to the Colosseum, I was amazed by the sense of history and, for lack of a better word, the enormity of Rome. The city has a scale unlike anything I've seen in the US or other cities like London and Barcelona. Without coming here, it's not possible to fathom how magnicent the ancient city of Rome must have been, how rich, how grand -- and how complex it is today with layer upon layer of history. By way of example you can look at the underground. Unlike many major cities in Europe, Rome has a very simple underground metro system. There are only two lines, which don't go very far, and which are basically useless if you're trying to travel around the city to see different sights. Compare that to London's tube, which goes in a million different directions all over the city center and out to surrounding environs. There's no point in walking around London or driving, because the tube will get you wherever you want to go so much easier.
Not so here. But the reason that the underground metro is so simple is that there are so many layers of history below the surface of modern-day Rome. I talked to a woman about it yesterday and she told me that there actually have been attempts recently to add more lines to the underground, but every time they do they run into buried history and have to stop digging.
Here's another interesting fact I learned while here: the first city in the world to reach 1 million citizens was Rome, and it achieved that size around the time of Christ (or slightly before, if I remember correctly). Here's what's really amazing about that: No other city in the world reached a million inhabitants until the 19th century.
Today, Rome is a chaotic, teaming mass of people -- and life. The city is very alive in every sense of the word. Everywhere you go -- down the main thoroughfares, through the winding narrow side streets, across the numerous plazas scattered randomly around the city -- there are people, cars, and especially scooters. When you walk around the city, as I did all day yesterday, you are constantly bumping into people. People don't get out of your way. This is a concept that surprises Americans, and it's not just my impression. My tour guide through the Vatican yesterday, an expat who is studying Renaissance art and working on her PhD dissertation, told me that it's one thing she is tired of. In the US, she said, people walk carefully around each other, politely moving out of the way if a pedestrian is walking toward you on the sidewalk. A friend of mine from Germany had the same observation about the US, and also said that the US is unusual in this respect (at least compared to Europe). She told me a story about how one time when she was in New York, she tried an experiment. She walked directly against the flow of people who had just gotten off the subway or a bus or something like that. She walked straight into the crowd, like a fish swimming upstream. She said that without exception, everyone parted around her and no one bumped into her at all. Like Moses parting the red sea.
My own experience here in Rome hasn't been quite that dramatic, but probably in part because I carefully avoid hitting people myself. I think by and large Americans are a polite and considerate people. Sure, we'll invade your country, take down your government, and attempt to establish our own way of thinking, but we're polite about it. At the end of the day, after we've bombed the shit out of your infrastructure, we want to make sure you still like us.
When you're walking around the city center, one thing you'll notice is that there are churches everywhere. Some are humble neighborhood chapels, stuck between buildings and overlooking tiny plazzas. But many churches in Rome are amazingly ornate structures. You would not necessarily guess that though from the facade, which is often comparatively simple, composed of white stone with a few words in Latin to signify the saint or the patron to whom the church is dedicated. But when you walk through the doors, the churches can take your breath away. The Basilica di San Pietro (St. Peter's), where I went yesterday, is of course the most incredible Catholic church in the world. Its sheer size is impossible to comprehend, even when you're standing in the middle of it. It contains an incredible array of art, including the Pieta by Michelangelo, one of my very favorite pieces of art, and a stunning mosaic based on a powerful painting by Raphael. Of course, the church itself is a work of art, one that in sheer beauty surpasses almost anything ever created by man. Being in it, one cannot help but feel its divine inspiration.
Before I went to St. Peters, I walked into a number of smaller churches and basilicas, in part to get a better sense of what I would be looking at when I went to the Vatican. One of the churches I went to was the Chiesa Nuova. Its actual name is Santa Maria in Valicella, but Chiesa Nuova, or "New Church," is how it's generally referred to. I'm assuming it's the "new" church because it was built recently, which is to say it was built in the 16th century. Now that's history for you.
One of my favorite churches of those I saw was Il Gesu. As my guide book says, it was started in 1568 and was meant to be austere, but had a baroque makeover in the late 17th century. I liked the baroque character of the church, which in a way echoed (for me anyway) the baroque quality of Rome itself. The church has an amazing abundance of gilt, marble, painting, and sculpture: everywhere, gold and marble, a blaze of color that is almost overwhelming. It is over the top -- and by that I mean WAY over the top -- in its artistic extravagance. It's as if the artists tried to cram every possible square inch with vibrant color. The art itself on the ceilings and on the walls spills out of the canvas and onto the frame as sculpture, fresco painting literally becoming 3 dimensional, in a sense leaping off the background to become almost real. As if the art were irrepressible. As if the art were somehow touched by the dvine spark and made living, the way Adam is brought to life by God in Michaelangelo's painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chappel.
That sense of the irrepressible is how I find Rome. It's the Eternal City, a city as alive as any I've been to, with all the energy and chaos that make life the strange and wonderful thing it is.
Alla prossima.
For those of you who have not traveled abroad, what the time change means is that your sleeping pattern is f'ed up for the first few days. People who travel a lot all have their own theories about how to get acclimated quickly. I've heard people say that you should not sleep on the plane so that when you arrive at your destination you're really tired and thus you'll sleep very well and get caught up and acclimated right away. It's a good idea -- in theory. If you're like me, you don't sleep on airplanes anyway, which means I should be a good test case.
It works like this: You leave SF in the afternoon. You've been up since, say, 7am. The flight is about 10 hours and you arrive around 10am, meaning that you've flown through the night and arrived the next morning. At this point, your body feels like it's 1am. Now, you stay awake all day and you go to bed at, say, 11pm, whis is like 2pm back home. You should be really, really tired because now you've been up for 31 hours straight. In fact, you are really, really tired. But when you go to sleep, naturally you wake up at 2am. Because even though you're exhausted, you're body thinks it's 5pm and you've just had a little afternoon nap. You try to go back to sleep, maybe you get an hour or two of sleep, and bling! you're wide awake again at 4:30, by now absolutely exhausted but completely unable to go back to sleep.
That's what happens to nearly everyone.
Other people have different theories: Some say you should take Tylenol PM (or other sleep aid) and sleep the entire way on the plane so that when you awake at your destination you're rested and ready to start the day, now on European time. Others say you should try to adjust your body's clock before you leave by changing your sleep patterns and even your diet.
In my opinion, there's no secret recipe. The key is how much you travel. If you travel a lot, going back and forth between the US and Europe or the US and Asia, I think you have an easier time adjusting because your internal clock just get used the idea of being screwed up. For those of us who are infrequent travelers, the time change is a bitch, and there's no way to avoid it, no matter what theory ascribe to. But I don't mean to complain; it's a small price to pay for the opportunity to go to foreign lands -- and make a fool of yourself as a stupid American.
Speaking of which, I have a retraction. In my last dispatch, I misspelled "sera" as "serra," which pretty much invalidates my comments about that word. But you could substitute "oggi" for "buona sera" and draw the same conclusion. Like formaggio and regazza, oggi (which means "today) has that "double letter / let's pause for a moment and smell the roses" thing going on. And that seams somehow fitting for a culture that gave the world the notion of carpe diem.
On Thursday afternoon I finally got a chance to walk around the city center. From the little walking tour I did, which basically spanned the distance from the Spanish Steps to the Colosseum, I was amazed by the sense of history and, for lack of a better word, the enormity of Rome. The city has a scale unlike anything I've seen in the US or other cities like London and Barcelona. Without coming here, it's not possible to fathom how magnicent the ancient city of Rome must have been, how rich, how grand -- and how complex it is today with layer upon layer of history. By way of example you can look at the underground. Unlike many major cities in Europe, Rome has a very simple underground metro system. There are only two lines, which don't go very far, and which are basically useless if you're trying to travel around the city to see different sights. Compare that to London's tube, which goes in a million different directions all over the city center and out to surrounding environs. There's no point in walking around London or driving, because the tube will get you wherever you want to go so much easier.
Not so here. But the reason that the underground metro is so simple is that there are so many layers of history below the surface of modern-day Rome. I talked to a woman about it yesterday and she told me that there actually have been attempts recently to add more lines to the underground, but every time they do they run into buried history and have to stop digging.
Here's another interesting fact I learned while here: the first city in the world to reach 1 million citizens was Rome, and it achieved that size around the time of Christ (or slightly before, if I remember correctly). Here's what's really amazing about that: No other city in the world reached a million inhabitants until the 19th century.
Today, Rome is a chaotic, teaming mass of people -- and life. The city is very alive in every sense of the word. Everywhere you go -- down the main thoroughfares, through the winding narrow side streets, across the numerous plazas scattered randomly around the city -- there are people, cars, and especially scooters. When you walk around the city, as I did all day yesterday, you are constantly bumping into people. People don't get out of your way. This is a concept that surprises Americans, and it's not just my impression. My tour guide through the Vatican yesterday, an expat who is studying Renaissance art and working on her PhD dissertation, told me that it's one thing she is tired of. In the US, she said, people walk carefully around each other, politely moving out of the way if a pedestrian is walking toward you on the sidewalk. A friend of mine from Germany had the same observation about the US, and also said that the US is unusual in this respect (at least compared to Europe). She told me a story about how one time when she was in New York, she tried an experiment. She walked directly against the flow of people who had just gotten off the subway or a bus or something like that. She walked straight into the crowd, like a fish swimming upstream. She said that without exception, everyone parted around her and no one bumped into her at all. Like Moses parting the red sea.
My own experience here in Rome hasn't been quite that dramatic, but probably in part because I carefully avoid hitting people myself. I think by and large Americans are a polite and considerate people. Sure, we'll invade your country, take down your government, and attempt to establish our own way of thinking, but we're polite about it. At the end of the day, after we've bombed the shit out of your infrastructure, we want to make sure you still like us.
When you're walking around the city center, one thing you'll notice is that there are churches everywhere. Some are humble neighborhood chapels, stuck between buildings and overlooking tiny plazzas. But many churches in Rome are amazingly ornate structures. You would not necessarily guess that though from the facade, which is often comparatively simple, composed of white stone with a few words in Latin to signify the saint or the patron to whom the church is dedicated. But when you walk through the doors, the churches can take your breath away. The Basilica di San Pietro (St. Peter's), where I went yesterday, is of course the most incredible Catholic church in the world. Its sheer size is impossible to comprehend, even when you're standing in the middle of it. It contains an incredible array of art, including the Pieta by Michelangelo, one of my very favorite pieces of art, and a stunning mosaic based on a powerful painting by Raphael. Of course, the church itself is a work of art, one that in sheer beauty surpasses almost anything ever created by man. Being in it, one cannot help but feel its divine inspiration.
Before I went to St. Peters, I walked into a number of smaller churches and basilicas, in part to get a better sense of what I would be looking at when I went to the Vatican. One of the churches I went to was the Chiesa Nuova. Its actual name is Santa Maria in Valicella, but Chiesa Nuova, or "New Church," is how it's generally referred to. I'm assuming it's the "new" church because it was built recently, which is to say it was built in the 16th century. Now that's history for you.
One of my favorite churches of those I saw was Il Gesu. As my guide book says, it was started in 1568 and was meant to be austere, but had a baroque makeover in the late 17th century. I liked the baroque character of the church, which in a way echoed (for me anyway) the baroque quality of Rome itself. The church has an amazing abundance of gilt, marble, painting, and sculpture: everywhere, gold and marble, a blaze of color that is almost overwhelming. It is over the top -- and by that I mean WAY over the top -- in its artistic extravagance. It's as if the artists tried to cram every possible square inch with vibrant color. The art itself on the ceilings and on the walls spills out of the canvas and onto the frame as sculpture, fresco painting literally becoming 3 dimensional, in a sense leaping off the background to become almost real. As if the art were irrepressible. As if the art were somehow touched by the dvine spark and made living, the way Adam is brought to life by God in Michaelangelo's painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chappel.
That sense of the irrepressible is how I find Rome. It's the Eternal City, a city as alive as any I've been to, with all the energy and chaos that make life the strange and wonderful thing it is.
Alla prossima.
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Parla italiano? (October 25, 2006)
Buona serra. Today's dispatch from Rome is all about words.
More to point, it's about language. If you didn't know it already, it probably will not surprise you to learn that I was an English major in college. That would seem a natural fit for someone who writes a lot, wouldn't it? But let me pose this question: did I choose to be a literature major because I love to write, or did I become a writer because I fell into the major? I started out in college studying biology, and my strongest subjects in high school were science and math. Especially math. So, do the clothes make the man?
What does this have to do with Italy? Only this: I'm fascinated by how a culture is shaped by its language. It seems to me that language is not merely the expression of a people's culture or a record of it. Rather, I believe that language actually shapes the way people think and interact with the world. In Italy, for example, the pace of life seems so much more gentle and relaxed than it is back in the Bay Area, and this is reflected in the way their lanuage is spoken. Consider the phrase "buona serra," for example, which means good afternoon or good evening. It's pronounced sort of like this: "boo oh na say ra." There's a little bit of a pause between the last two syllables of "serra." That's partially due to the double r, which is also rolled as in Spanish. Similarly, "una regazza," which means "a girl," contains a pause, like this: "oo na ray gaht tsa." If it had only one z (una regaza), it might be pronounce without the slightly extended pause. The double letter functions to create that pause -- as if to say, stop here for a moment before going on. Ditto with a word that most of us are familiar with: formaggio (cheese). In the US, we would read this as "for mah jee oh," cruising through that word the way Italians cruise through a red light, barely stopping to take notice. But in Italy, people pause at the double g: "for mahj jee oh." As far as I can tell, the double g has no other function in the word. It doesn't otherwise change the pronunciation. It's as if the Italians want to linger just a little, just for a moment, before completing the thought. "Ah, formag gio." You pause. You contemplate the taste of fontina or a little Reggiano Parmigiano. You savor it for just a second. And then you go on.
After all, what's the hurry?
Now, I realize that this interpretation of the Italian language stands in contrast to my interpretation of they way Italians drive. To which I say: God works in mysterious ways. Look no further than the Basilico di San Pietro, a glorious cathedral devoted to a religion started by a man who proclaimed that the meek shall inherit the earth.
I learned something else about speaking Italian. While it's true that people are pleased when you make the effort to speak in their language, you must be careful. For example, yesterday morning I approached the front desk of the hotel to ask the location of the restuarant where breakfast was served. Trying not to sound like a typical American, I said, "Buon giorno. Dov'e il ristorante?" The lady at the front desk immediately replied at length in Italian, as if I would understand every word she spole. Of course I had no idea what she said and had to reply, rather sheepishly, "I'm sorry, could you say that in English?" It was embarrassing.
While we Americans can barely speak a word of any language other than our own, people in Europe are fluent in numerous languages. For example, at one gelato place we stopped at, I spoke to the girl behind the counter in Spanish. She also happened to be fluent in Italian, English, and French. And she worked in a freakin ice cream store!
That's all for now. In a little while, we're all walking over to the Villa Miani, an exquisitely beautiful mansion that sits on the hill next to the Hilton Cavalieri and has an even better view of Rome and the Vatican. We're having dinner there and pretending to be dignataries visiting from abroad. Ci vediamo!
More to point, it's about language. If you didn't know it already, it probably will not surprise you to learn that I was an English major in college. That would seem a natural fit for someone who writes a lot, wouldn't it? But let me pose this question: did I choose to be a literature major because I love to write, or did I become a writer because I fell into the major? I started out in college studying biology, and my strongest subjects in high school were science and math. Especially math. So, do the clothes make the man?
What does this have to do with Italy? Only this: I'm fascinated by how a culture is shaped by its language. It seems to me that language is not merely the expression of a people's culture or a record of it. Rather, I believe that language actually shapes the way people think and interact with the world. In Italy, for example, the pace of life seems so much more gentle and relaxed than it is back in the Bay Area, and this is reflected in the way their lanuage is spoken. Consider the phrase "buona serra," for example, which means good afternoon or good evening. It's pronounced sort of like this: "boo oh na say ra." There's a little bit of a pause between the last two syllables of "serra." That's partially due to the double r, which is also rolled as in Spanish. Similarly, "una regazza," which means "a girl," contains a pause, like this: "oo na ray gaht tsa." If it had only one z (una regaza), it might be pronounce without the slightly extended pause. The double letter functions to create that pause -- as if to say, stop here for a moment before going on. Ditto with a word that most of us are familiar with: formaggio (cheese). In the US, we would read this as "for mah jee oh," cruising through that word the way Italians cruise through a red light, barely stopping to take notice. But in Italy, people pause at the double g: "for mahj jee oh." As far as I can tell, the double g has no other function in the word. It doesn't otherwise change the pronunciation. It's as if the Italians want to linger just a little, just for a moment, before completing the thought. "Ah, formag gio." You pause. You contemplate the taste of fontina or a little Reggiano Parmigiano. You savor it for just a second. And then you go on.
After all, what's the hurry?
Now, I realize that this interpretation of the Italian language stands in contrast to my interpretation of they way Italians drive. To which I say: God works in mysterious ways. Look no further than the Basilico di San Pietro, a glorious cathedral devoted to a religion started by a man who proclaimed that the meek shall inherit the earth.
I learned something else about speaking Italian. While it's true that people are pleased when you make the effort to speak in their language, you must be careful. For example, yesterday morning I approached the front desk of the hotel to ask the location of the restuarant where breakfast was served. Trying not to sound like a typical American, I said, "Buon giorno. Dov'e il ristorante?" The lady at the front desk immediately replied at length in Italian, as if I would understand every word she spole. Of course I had no idea what she said and had to reply, rather sheepishly, "I'm sorry, could you say that in English?" It was embarrassing.
While we Americans can barely speak a word of any language other than our own, people in Europe are fluent in numerous languages. For example, at one gelato place we stopped at, I spoke to the girl behind the counter in Spanish. She also happened to be fluent in Italian, English, and French. And she worked in a freakin ice cream store!
That's all for now. In a little while, we're all walking over to the Villa Miani, an exquisitely beautiful mansion that sits on the hill next to the Hilton Cavalieri and has an even better view of Rome and the Vatican. We're having dinner there and pretending to be dignataries visiting from abroad. Ci vediamo!
Monday, October 23, 2006
Rome (October 23, 2006)
There is something about the feeling of waking up in a European city that simply can't be beat.
At this moment, it's a few minutes before 7am in Rome. My hotel, the Hilton Cavalieri, sits on top of a hill that overlooks the entire city. The sun is not up yet, but the sky is just picking up some color, and lights of the city are sparkling below me. Off to the right over the trees I can just see the top of the dome of the Basilica di San Pietro in Vatican City. If you go up a couple of floors in the hotel (I'm on the 4th), the view of the Vatican and St. Peter's Cathedral is even more impressive. The Vatican is no more than a kilometer away, also situated on this hill overlooking Rome. I haven't been there yet, but you can be sure I will before I leave.
The door out to my room's small veranda is open, and the air is cool and fresh. You can hear the sound of Rome waking up, but there are also several birds singing outside. It's an experience I can recommend.
Rome is definitely a city to experience -- the sounds, the sights, the smells. Everything you've heard about it (if you haven't been here) is true. For example, it's very true that the Italian people like to express their creativity when they drive. As we've discovered, traffic laws are guidelines -- suggestions merely. For example, a red traffic light is a "suggestion" to stop. Maybe you'll heed that suggestion, maybe you won't. The dotted lines that represent lanes? Not a bad idea, but a little restrictive. Why confine yourself to one lane or the other when you can fit three or four cars across the width of the road? And I have yet to discover if there are actually speed limits on any of the streets.
To get the full of experience of driving in Rome, catch a taxi going anywhere. You may feel afterward that rollercoasters are a tame and insipid way to spend your time. In one cab we got into I started to put on my seatbelt before my driver gently reprimanded me. And he was right of course. First of all, why would any policeman fine you for such a petty violation? And second, why would you want to restrict yourself? Life in Italy is meant to be experienced with all of your senses fully awakened. When driving that means the heightened sensation of the buildings and passengers racing by at breakneck speed.
It's also true that there are scooters everywhere. When I say everywhere, I mean everywhere. You pull up to a stoplight (on those occasions when you actually do stop), and the scooters all move to the front, weaving in and around the cars as they jockey for position. At one light we must have counted at least 30 scooters dodging the cars and lining up toward the front. Picture a jar with 4 or 5 good size stones in it; now start to pour in some gravel and watch it settle to the bottom in and around the rocks.
That's what it was like. The cars at the light were packed in and surrounded by the scooters so that every possible inch of the road was occupied. And when you're driving down the road, it's much the same with scooters weaving in and around the vehicles, everyone moving in a completely random but also completely fluid way. You'd think there would be more accidents, but our driver (the one who advised me against the seatbelt) said that they're rare. Accidents, that is. To me it was kind of magic -- perhaps not unlike that "magic" feeling of seeing your life flash before your eyes.
Where there aren't cars and scooters, there are people. You walk around the cobblestone roads of the city center and people surround you. The streets seemed filled all the time, every hour of the day and evening. God help you if you're in a little car driving through one of the narrow roads and you're in anything like a hurry. Tiny gelato cafes occupy every corner and people spill out them continuously. In the piazzi (okay, plazzas), restaurants and cafes all put their chairs outside and they are all filled. The sound is of voices, the general chatter of humanity. And it's not sotto voce, believe me. Everyone eating, drinking an espresso or glass of wine, passing the time.
The food itself can vary. We went to one restaurant that was okay, not spectactular, and we went to another where both the food and the wine were excellent. Italian wine can very good, which was a discovery for me. In California, it seems, most of the Italian wine we get is Pinot Grigio or Chianti, and most of it pretty mediocre. As it turns out, in a country where wine has been made for several thousand years, there are a few winemakers who know a thing or two about the craft. In addition to cafes and restaurants, there are little pizzarias and tiny walkup panini places where for 3 or 4 euros you can grab a fresh tomato and mozzarella sandwich on foccacia for a quick meal. I've had very, very good Italian food in San Francisco, and I've worked in some of the top restaurants in the Bay Area, a place known as one of best -- if not THE best -- restaurant areas in the world. So I can be a little critical when it comes to food. But there is one quality that the restaurants in Rome all have in common that no restaurant in San Francisco can claim: they're in Rome.
The sun is now fully up. A little while ago the bells of a nearby church where ringing, peacefully announcing the day. Did I already say that there's something about the feeling of waking up in Europe?
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