This is the penultimate post from Italy– I’ll try to continue the efforts in France and England, but France is going to be problematic because we’ll be there so briefly and otherwise will be moving around– Paris to Bayeux to Paris to London.
Oh, well, it’s not like France is a real country, right? I mean, France is cute and all. It’s a little anachronism of a place, a museum that likes to think it’s a country. People learn to speak French like they learn Esperanto or Klingon. Or Italian… Tourists go to France like they go to Disneyland, for the rides and the cartoon characters. French national pride is a lot like those early-round American Idol contestants who are tone deaf but think they sing well enough to be important. We appreciate their undiminished sense of self-importance in the face of all rational evidence to the contrary. It’s cute, but if I don’t get around to writing about it, no big loss. Right? (Bar? Feel free to chime in!)
So let’s get back to Italy, and put this puppy to bed. Ciao, Italia!
11/6/2016– The weather has shifted dramatically. It rained all day yesterday and last night the sky was full of lightning so bright that it shone through the dark curtains in my bedroom. Today the wind is slanting the rain nearly horizontal to the ground and stripping the trees of the remaining leaves.
The Arno is noticeably swollen, moving swiftly and carrying with it the flotsam it has picked up on its trip through the mountains to the east: branches and brush and trees uprooted and floated down like abandoned rafts. I’m not sure I remember ever seeing the river move swiftly enough to be able to tell which way the water was flowing, but there’s no doubt today.
The weather in Paris looks to be about the same, so if we walk around tomorrow night to get a view of the Eiffel Tower, it will be in weather much like this.
It’s cold and damp outside the apartment and inside I’m packing and repacking, disposing of things I don’t need or want, going through the accumulation of paper travelers inevitably acquire: tickets, receipts, notes, maps, etc. I’m supposed to meet Dawn and Noel later downtown, but if it’s like this I think I’ll pass. I hear the occasional rumble of thunder and while I love extremes of weather, I prefer to experience them when I can afterward dry my clothes. There’s no dryer in this apartment (as I mentioned earlier, Italians don’t seem to “do” dryers) so my clothes would still be damp tomorrow, which would mean either wearing them wet or packing them wet, neither being a good option.
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I’m standing in a bookstore looking for “libri in Inglese” (books in English) and chatting with a couple of young women from New York who are here for a study-abroad program. While we’re talking, a guy I’ve seen around town comes toward us through the crowd in the narrow aisle. He’s “pazzo,” crazy, one of those guys who talk to themselves constantly– a fluid, running commentary about what is going on around him and what’s in his head. He looks like one of those people who are on a bluetooth but he’s not wired and doesn’t need a cellphone to communicate with whomever it is he’s talking or listening to.
As he comes by us he slides behind one of the women, never slowing his pace or stopping his monologue, and as he heads for the door the girl turns to me and asks, “Did he just grab my ass?” and I said, “I don’t know, but probably.” She wanted to do something, but what was there to do? Call a cop? I doubt it would be the first time they’d heard a similar story about him. Beat him up? I left my shining armor at home. She was rightfully offended but about the only thing she could do was to follow him, and I suppose that seemed dangerous or futile to her because she did what I did: nothing.
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Even though this is off-season, there are still lines for everything. It begins to look as though standing in a line is the major event of most people’s day. “Hey, there’s a line; let’s go stand in it!”
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In just about every dinner restaurant in the center of town our meal will be interrupted by someone coming by the table selling roses. Some of the restaurants chase them away when they see them, but others seem to tolerate them, maybe thinking that a man who buys a woman a romantic flower will then spend more money on her in the restaurant. I had a savvy waiter once tell me never to buy the roses, though, because (he says) they are frozen before being sold, and as soon as they warm up they (and here he held an index finger straight up, then little by little allowed it to bend until it looked limp) become flaccid and no amount of Viagra will restore them.
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Old Florence is mostly flat, so it’s a perfect town for walking or bicycling. The streets are narrow and cobbled, making anything larger than a motorbike a tight fit, but somehow the bus drivers manage to squeeze their vehicles through spaces that seem impossible. There is almost no parking so people don’t have cars if they live in the center, unless they also have money for a garage, or want to spend a lot of time looking for a space every time they move the car. Bikes are common conveyances, and it’s not unusual to see a woman dressed in a business suit, including a skirt and high heels, riding her bike to work. The little bells we used to have on our handlebars as children serve a real purpose here, and the ringing gives notice that you’re in the way. Walking, though, seems to be the major means of transport. As we’ve discovered, it’s not hard to find that you’ve walked five or six miles at the end of a day.
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Che Guevara is on t-shirts in the schlock shop stalls all over the city. What’s up with that? Che? Really? I guess he’s the symbol of revolution or something, although what these capitalists are revolting against is anybody’s guess.
“What are you protesting?”
“Whattaya got?”
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Pretty much all of Florence is a museum. It’s crammed full of art and history to the point that you’re never going to see and do it all in a single trip. I’ve been coming here fairly regularly for years and still there are things I haven’t had the time to do, places I haven’t seen.
If Rome is about striking awe into the hearts of visitors, then Florence is more about the soul. It’s a balance between the grandiosity of Rome and the claustrophobia of Venice. Around every corner is a potential surprise. Here’s Dante’s house! Here’s the church where he probably met Beatrice, and in whose floor she and her husband, and Dante’s wife Gemma, are entombed! Here is Galileo’s house! There is the Uffizi Gallery, the best Italian renaissance museum in the world. Here’s the Bargello, perhaps the best statuary museum. Here is the Loggia dei Lanzi, an open-air museum in the Piazza della Signoria, housing art works that most other cities would build museums around, including Benvenuto Cellini’s beautiful “Perseo,” the bronze statue of Perseus holding aloft the severed head of Medusa, that other artists told him it would be impossible to complete in a single pour because it was too complex… so he did it. Here’s the Duomo, with the dome of Brunelleschi, and the nearby Campanile designed by Giotto, and the adjacent Baptistery with the famous “Gates of Paradise” by Ghiberti and named by Michelangelo. And down the street is the Accademia, with Michelangelo’s “David.” And here’s the Ponte Vecchio, and the Palazzo Pitti, and the Palazzo Vecchio…
It just never stops. There’s always something more to discover, sometimes by accident. And after all the famous places– the statues and the art– there are the neighborhoods and the architecture and the parks… Come see Florence!
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A busy street at rush hour. A scooter comes by at high speed. Its rider is steering with one hand, the other holding a cell phone up to his ear and a cigarette between his phone fingers. Multi-tasking in action.
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The smallest paper currency in Europe is the 5 Euro bill, so anything smaller than that comes in the form of change, coins. There are two-Euro coins, one-Euro coins, 50 cents, 20 cents, 10 cents, five cents and even one cent coins. If you’re not careful they’ll accumulate in your pockets or on your tables. I spend them regularly, just to get rid of them.
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As with most long trips, our thoughts are starting to slide toward the home front. “Homeward bound, I wish I was, homeward bound…” Things that have to be done. Tasks to perform. Responsibilities. When you first arrive you work to put them out of mind, but now they become, once again, a focus. Bills to pay. Chores. And soon we’ll be home and this trip will be a series of disjointed memories and jumbled chronologies and we’ll probably even argue about what happened and when. Maybe that’s why I’m keeping this journal.
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A few miles east of Florence is a place called Vallombrosa, Italian for “shaded valley” or “valley of shadow.” It’s probably the original source of the name of our own Chico street, and the source of one of my pet peeves: people who pronounce it “Vallambrosia.” The word has nothing to do, etymologically or phonetically, with ambrosia, the food of the gods. I correct people but fear I’m fighting a losing battle.
And while we’re on my peeves, let me add a couple more: 1. People who say, “bru-SHETT-a” instead of “bru-SKETT-a,” when they’d never say “she-AN-tee” for Chianti, or “SHWYRE” for “choir.” In Italian, a “CH” has a hard C sound.
Number 2: This is for restauranteurs. An Italian word that ends in O is usually pluralized by replacing the O with an I. Thus “panino” (a sandwich) becomes “panini.” There is no need to add an S to a word that’s already plural! Please stop writing “paninis” on your menus!
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I was just remembering standing with Crystal Palmer on the terrazzo of the apartment I was renting years ago, spitting the seeds of a watermelon we were eating on the people walking below us. Good times.
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There is one more post I’m going to make from Florence, one that I’m actually plagiarizing from myself, but this is the end of this particular missive. Buona sera, Firenze. Buona fortuna.
soggiorno13 