Category Archives: Italian habits and customs

Permesso, Part the Third

13 Thursday Nov 2008

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In May and August I wrote about our efforts to renew our permessi di sogiorno, this time with 6-year permits (you can read about it here and here).  In addition to the phone call we received in August instructing the Captain to report to the Questura in Genova, we each got a letter telling us when to appear.  Unfortunately my date was yesterday, his today.  Sigh.

So yesterday we jumped in the Mini and tore off for Genova in the rain. We arrived a little early and were doing some window-shopping when suddenly we heard a great babble of voices, accompanied by police sirens.  We ran across a highway to catch sight of this:

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The students were on strike again yesterday!

There have been nationwide strikes since Prime Minister Berlusconi proposed and the Parliament passed a budget which contains massive cuts for education  (E 9 billion).  The elementary schools have been hardest hit with the new legislation as 130,000 jobs have been cut, but all schools will suffer, from primary through university.  You can read a bit more about it here.  Maria Stella, the name in the top photo (“Maria Stella, where are you?”), is the minister of education.

And what of the Permesso process?  We went to the United Nations waiting room again but there were only about 40 people this time.  My appointment was for 11:47 (yes, they’ve got it down to the minute!) and promptly at 12:15 my name was called with several others.  We reported to sportello #6 as instructed, and then had to wait another half hour or so, but this time with few chairs (why is it that in Italy if there are 3 chairs and 40 people who might want to sit down, mothers immediately put their small children in the chairs?  Is it the same in the States these days?  Back when I was a girl…. grumble, grumble, grumble…)

Part of the wait was due to the computers going down.  To his credit the police officer on the other side of the sportello’s glass was embarrassed – “It’s a shame,” he said in excellent English, “The Italian system is a shame.”  I don’t actually agree with that assessment, but it was nice he was so sympathetic to those who only stood and waited.

Finally at 12:35 I was called to the window and given two pieces of paper.  On one I had to print my full name; on the other I had to print my full name, phone number and e-mail address. Then I had to wait again.  The computers came back to life and I was summoned in my turn to show my passport and my present permesso, which expired some months ago. Then the big moment: Fingerprints!  They take them electronically now, and I was so looking forward to it.  Everyone before me got to leave all ten prints.  In my case, though, I gave only right thumb and index finger and then was told, “Basta!”  I don’t know if the machine broke again or if I simply look innocent (darn), but that was the end of the whole thing.  All that time and energy expended for two printed names and two fingerprints.  It is all a great puzzle.

The nice officer told me to visit the Questura web-site in 2-3 months and there I would find some information about my permesso.  I hope I remember to do it.  I hope I live that long!!

A Pressing engagement – Olives, part 2

05 Wednesday Nov 2008

Posted by in Food, Italian habits and customs, Italy, Liguria, Photographs, Uncategorized

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Saturday, the day we took our olives to the press, was a gorgeous day. It turned out we had 99 Kilograms of fruit, not the 111 our funky scale told us (we weigh using the unreliable technique of standing on the scale with the olives, then without, then subtracting the difference; it’s kind of comical, especially the shocking ‘without olives’ part).  Mixing ours with T and J’s 75 K gave us a total of 174 K from which we got a total of 26 K of oil.  My trusty calculator tells me that almost 15% of each olive is oil.

We came home with 16.3 liters of oil, and T & J came home with 12.3, giving a remarkable liter of oil for every 6 K of olives picked, a very good result.  We were all happy except for T & J who had picked only half their trees.  Fortunately they were able to pick the rest the next day during a brief respite from the rain, and got them pressed with a batch of another friend at a different frantoio.

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The frantoio is in the teeny little building above, squished between San Pietro church and a building housing a delightful restaurant where we ate an enormous lunch (don’t even ask).  The olives are weighed, dumped in a chute, washed, and then disappear into a vast array of machinery with pipes, hoses, gears and belts.  Eventually one is told to put a container under a nozzle and, as they like to say here, Wah-Lah!  Olive oil, golden green and slightly bitter, arrives.

The bits that don’t come back to you as oil are pumped off into a big truck just outside the building.  All this muck is taken off to another kind of mill where it is heated and somehow even more oil is extracted.  What we received is the Virgin (or, I suppose, Extra Virgin) oil.  What is made from the leftover is ‘olive oil.’

Now the oil will sit in its demijohn for about 4 months.  Impurities will sink to the bottom, and somehow the bitterness will disappear and we’ll be left with the mellow, rich oil for which Liguria is justly famous.  It’s hard to wait!

There is a series of photographs of the process available here. Some of the photos look very hazy.  That is because the interior of a frantoio IS hazy – it must be from tiny particles of olive oil floating in the air.  They get into the back of your throat when you walk in and you wonder if you’ll be able to continue breathing.  It must be very good for the complexion.

So the Olive Adventure of ’08 is over.  Our trees will be pruned rather severely this winter, so it may be a year or two until we pick again – unless we can help our friends pick, which is always fun.  It was a Banner Year.

Olives!

02 Sunday Nov 2008

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‘Tis the season to be harvesting olives.  All around us the hills are festooned with colorful nets, principally orange and yellow.  They are wrapped around the trees and are attached one to the next making the steep terraces look like a brightly colored slopes.  The olives drop into pockets in the low parts of the nets, whence they are easily collected.

Our friends T and J have 51 trees which have been beautifully pruned and cared for.  They do not use nets, but instead hand-pick the olives, which is easy to do with their trees, none of which is much taller than we are.  The pruned and umbrella-shaped trees are much more productive than trees which are ‘let go.’

Our trees are in the latter category, very much in need of a pruning, which they will receive this winter.  They had been untended for at least 20 years when we bought our place.  Just after we moved in a friend sent a friend over who pruned some of the trees, but none of them very dramatically, and we’ve done nothing about it since.  This means the trees are huge.

We use a system that falls somewhere between the Old-Timers’ and T and J’s.  We have one net, which we carry from tree to tree (we have only about 15 trees).  Then we spend a very long time positioning poles to hold the net in place and form a bowl under the tree we’re working on.  There’s usually a fair amount of good-natured discussion about the placement of the poles, but eventually the net is positioned in a more or less stable way.  Then the Captain takes a long, thick bamboo stick and whacks the trees to make the fruit fall.  This is a time-honored way of removing fruit, but it’s fallen out of favor with modern olive-culturists.  The preferred method for removing fruit these days is the olive rake, a plastic rake with tines spaced just less than the average olive.  You attach the rake to the weapon of your choice (bamboo stick for us, this year as in photo) and comb out the branches.  The tines pull the olives off and send them spraying all over the place.  With luck a large percentage of them end up in the net.  The Captain alternates whacking with a stout stick and whacking with the rake on a long pole.  Meanwhile I use a rake on a small pole and wander around looking for low branches to strip.  I’m also crazy about finding olives on the ground and putting them in my basket – treasures!

This year the weather has not co-operated with many Ligurian harvesters.  We’ve had heavy rains and very strong winds, the heaviest since the great storm of 2000. A lot of olives have come down, and the weather for several days was just too nasty for gathering those that are still on trees.  Those who got their nets up in a timely fashion are doing very well (it’s a stand-out olive year).  Those who waited will have lost a lot of the crop unless, like me, they like to creep around on their hands and knees under the trees – not an efficient way to gather.

Once the olives are collected it’s good to get them to the mill, the ‘frantoio’, within three days.  Our favorite frantoio over the mountain in Val Fontanabuona went out of business while we weren’t looking last year (there was no olive harvest for anyone in Liguria last year – no olives). So instead yesterday we went to a different mill here in Rapallo.  Stay tuned for the report.  In past years we’ve gotten a liter of oil for each 7 or 8 kg of olives.  We had 111 kg this year (we also didn’t get all of our fruit picked before the weather turned on us).

If you’re really interested in olives, Mort Rosenblum has written a delightful book called ‘Olives’ and subtitled “The Life and Lore of a Noble Fruit,” which is stuffed with history, culture and even some recipes.  If you enjoy Life-in-Italy tales, Extra Virgin by the Englishwoman Annie Hawes is an engaging account of her purchase of a rustico and grove of olive trees above Imperia some twenty years ago; she writes appealingly and amusingly of her neighbors and of the land itself.

Icing the cat’s nose

31 Friday Oct 2008

Posted by in Animals in Italy, Cats, Italian habits and customs, Uncategorized

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Luciano is an old cat, but at 16 not exactly ancient. He has, however, a panoply of interesting ailments that keep us in frequent contact with his doctors. He has three: Ralph Siegal, Fausto Finetti and Veronica, who is a brand new vet and whose last name we have not yet learned. Ralph has been waiting for Luciano’s kidneys to carry him off for three years now, but the cat keeps cashing in his extra lives and fooling all of us. Luciano’s other main diagnosis is hyper-thyroidism.

As prescribed, Kitty eats special food that is kind to kidneys – high in fiber and relatively low in protein.  It is available commercially for E 2 a tin, of which he can eat two a day.  Rather than bankrupt ourselves any sooner than absolutely necessary, we decided to make our own cat food, using an excellent recipe we found (of course!) on the internet. Here is a link to a site with cat food recipes for cats with various ailments.  We’ve been making a variant of the Hills kidney diet food.

There is no perfect cure for the thyroid problem, according to Dott. Ralph, but there is a pill that can help.  Unfortunately it is not available in Italy, but can be found in France.  So we have prevailed upon our friends who travel that way to carry back the cat’s medicine.

Which brings me around to the subject of medical care, the approach to which is much the same for animals as for people: caution! don’t over-medicate! wait and see!  Poor Luciano developed a big bump between his eyes last week.  When we took him to the vet (Dott. Veronica this time) she suggested that since the cat is pretty much blind (left that out, didn’t I) he had probably run into something and had a great big bruise.  So we left the office with instructions to ice the lump and administer cortesone pills.  Have you ever iced a cat’s nose? It’s interesting.  Actually, Luciano is quite patient with it, but I sure wouldn’t want to try it on a cat with teeth (I forgot to mention he’s toothless, didn’t I).

I believe that had we been in the US that an X-ray would have been taken on our first visit.  Instead we spent five days icing the cat’s nose and watching the lump grow.  Then we took him back and Dott. Fausto recommended an X-Ray, given the following day in a different office.  So, after three trips the cat’s lump, which proved to be an abscess, was X-rayed, opened and cleared up.  I’m not in any way saying that we don’t all receive excellent medical care here, but sometimes I think the caution is less than helpful.  The poor old cat had to make three trips to accomplish what, in the States, would have been done on the first trip. And if it had been a bruise?  There would have been one wasted X-ray.  And that’s one difference between Italy and the US.  Here waste is anathema – you don’t want a test unless it’s 99% certain to tell you something really useful, and only if other less expensive approaches have failed.  Is it dangerous?  No, because doctors and vets here are just as smart and well-trained as they are in the US, and they are careful.  Is it inconvenient?  Frequently. Is it frustrating?  Absolutely! We’ve been back for one aftercare visit, and will return again Monday for another, making a grand total of five visits.  We haven’t been billed for anything yet, but one aspect of cautious care is that it does seem to be less costly.

We’ve seen the same approach in our own medical care here.  Problems are discussed for ages and curative steps are incremental.  But then, Italian doctors don’t have to worry about the malpractice suits that threaten American doctors.  Eventually (so far!) we always get better.  And I have to add that when one of us had a very serious acute condition the initial care was immediate and excellent. Once danger was past, however, caution was again the watchword, and a condition that was treated in three days in a US hospital took twelve days for the exact same outcome in Italy.

I’m not sure what any of this proves.  Socialized medicine certainly has its pluses and minuses, and this is not an appropriate forum for that topic.  I guess if we’ve learned anything new from the last week’s experiences it’s this: it’s really hard to ice a cat’s nose.

The Best Thing We Ate This Week – Slow Food

26 Sunday Oct 2008

Posted by in Food, Italian habits and customs, Photographs, Uncategorized

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The opposite of fast food.  That’s the premise behind the organization Slow Food, which was started in 1989 in (of course!) Italy.

Every two years the organization sponsors a Salone Internazionale del Gusto in Torino which, for the first time, was joined this year by Terra Madre, an organization that promotes sustainable agriculture and food production, with a focus on the small producer and preserving taste and biodiversity.  The two groups have much in common in that they both have an interest in the responsible production of delicious food.  Terra Madre focuses more on the agricultural side of the equation, Slow Food on the side of finished food products.  Terra Madre had a much smaller group of exhibitors than did Slow Food, but they were much more interestingly attired (see web album). One theme of this year’s Salone was environmental protection.  Everything was recyclable or made from already recycled materials.

The Salone ran from Oct. 23-27 in the Lingotto Fiera, a HUGE group of pavilions which are a part of a former Fiat manufacturing site.  The whole Fiat plant there has been redesigned as a exhibition center, including the Fiere halls (70,000 square meters) and an auditorium, museum, and exhibit spaces.

Imagine two long aisles of nothing but cheese producers!  A beer hall with at least 10 different beers on tap.  Aisles and aisles of meat products.  Chocolate!  Pasta!  There’s not much that you can eat that wasn’t at the Salone del Gusto… except fast food. And there were not many fresh foods on view; some fruit, not many vegetables, and the meat was all cured in one way or another. One aspect of the Salone which we didn’t take advantage of (nor did many others I’m sure) is the great number of classes, conferences and so forth on various aspects of food, its growth, its preparation and presentation. Over 250 Presidi (chapters of Slow Food) from around the world had exhibits (or something?) – we never got to that pavilion.

Many of the exhibitors were from Italy, but there was a good representation also from Germany and Austria and even someone from Mexico.  And almost all of them gave little tid-bits of their food to taste (except for the caviar and chocolate people, darn it).  You can eat enough for a week on your E 20 admission ticket (and if you’re very lucky, as we were, friends will give you a brace of tickets).  Even the wine was available to taste in small amounts. (Mysteriously all the wine-tasting ground to a halt between 12:30 and 2:30, a great inconvenience to our friend Frank who had developed a powerful thirst.)  Beer of many types was on tap for E 3 for a generous glass.

I truly can’t single out what the very best thing we ate was, it was all fabulous.  We were very careful though, and came home with only one salami and one cheese.  It got easier to resist temptation as the day wore on and our stomachs filled with all our tasting.

Two years ago there were 160,000 visitors at the Salone.  It felt like they all came back on Friday when we were there – it was mobbed.  I can’t imagine what Saturday and Sunday must have been like.  The food people were all unfailingly friendly and pleasant – big smiles and no hard-sell.

It was a fabulous day, but a sensory overload.  There was entertainment in the background almost constantly, and the pavilions are not designed to cut down on sound bouncing around.  There was so much to look at, and to taste, that it was hard to take it all in at once (literally and figuratively).  Will I go back in two years?  If you’d asked me on Friday I’d have said Never!  Too exhausting.  Today?  Well I’d certainly be tempted.  It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen in my life.

Here’s a photo album you can look at if you’re interested.  It only scratches the surface of what we saw, but it does give… the flavor.

Riding in Style

18 Saturday Oct 2008

Posted by in Customs, Driving in Italy, Italian habits and customs, Italian men, Italy, Liguria, Photographs, Rapallo, Uncategorized

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Many of our friends deplore the number of scooters on the streets, and the abandon with which they are driven.  To which we reply, Think how crowded our already crowded streets and parking areas would be if every one of those scooters was a single-occupant car.  It would be day-long gridlock – a nightmare.

Having said that, there are some scooter drivers who give the rest of us a bad name by being reckless and thoughtless.  And there are scooter practices which car-drivers find annoying; for instance, all scooters will move to the front of any line of cars, and will pass any slow-moving column of cars.  Personally I think irritation at this practice is just envy on car-drivers’ part! I was stranded in a long line in down-town Rapallo a while back; here’s a photo of a few of the scooters who made their way past me and up to the front of the line:

We’ve been making a years-long study of the various driving styles of the Italian Scooter Drivers, and herewith we present our findings.

First of all there are the Wild Young Men who ride with their helmets on the back of their heads, sometimes unfastened (though this is illegal so you don’t see it so often), and always, always, their elbows bent out.  What is it about leaning forward and sticking your elbows out that makes you go faster?  I don’t know, but they all do it, so it must work. You know if you see someone coming at you on a scooter with arms akimbo that you’d better watch out, because he won’t be. And yes, it’s always ‘he.’

The counterpoint to the young boys is the Straight Young Girls. They seem always to be reed-slim, and they sit absolutely erect, with their knees and elbows tucked demurely in. They don’t necessarily drive more slowly than the boys, but they make a neater package. I have to say here that I had a hard time getting the photos to illustrate these styles – the scooters go by quickly, so many of my attempts were blurred failures. The example of this riding style is a woman a little older than the teens of whom I’m speaking, but she has not lost her youthful Style.

Then there are the Young Bucks out cruising. They’ve learned to keep their elbows in, but haven’t yet learned to watch the road all the time. There are more important things to look at!

Time passes, young men age, and through some bizarre rule of body physics the elbows go in and the knees go out. I was able to capture a rare elbows AND knees out gent. This is uncommon; usually the Old Guys simply put their knees at right angles to the scooter and hold their arms in.

Smoking levels are down in Italy, but many people of both genders enjoy smoking as they scoot along. The Captain has noted that most smokers like to light up immediately after putting on their helmets but before they’ve started the motor. (Only yesterday I watched a man put on his helmet, then pull out his papers and tobacco and proceed to roll a big fat cigarette before setting out; that was a first for me.) The Captain wants to invent a ‘sigaretta finta’ (fake cigarette) for those trying to quit – something they could keep in the scooter and put a match to when they set off, and then clench between their teeth as they drive. He thinks it’s an idea with real financial potential; I think we should keep our day jobs. I was unable to capture the not unusual sight of someone driving, smoking AND talking on the cell phone all at the same time. It’s a rather terrifying sight.

Another oddity of the older gentlemen riders is the One Foot Dragging style. I’m not sure what this accomplishes – maybe it serves as a sort of outrigger in case balance should suddenly vanish.

I felt very fortunate to be able to capture a photo of the almost-never-seen Two Foot Dragger:

Perhaps this driver had an especially wiggly passenger?

Before showing you the last two photos, which are of everyone’s favorite scooter style, I want to mention three important styles I was not able to document with pictures. The first is highly illegal, but still often seen. It is the Entire Family of Four on One Scooter. Dad drives; Mom sits pillion; between them, smooshed to near invisibility, is the smaller of two children. Standing between Dad’s legs and arms, between him and the steering handles, is the larger of the two children. Phew!

The Chat is an amusing illustration of the Italian national past-time of sharing information. It’s not unusual to see two scooters zooming along side-by-side as the drivers engage in animated conversation involving, of course, lots of hand language.

You go years without seeing something and then, boom, three times in one week: last week I saw the ever-rarer Side Saddle Passenger, not once, but three times. This style gives me the jim-jams because having tried it once or twice myself I know how completely unstable the side-sitting passenger feels. And if you’re wearing a slippery skirt it’s just a short slide from the scooter seat to the pavement. Ick. Give me my jeans and let me straddle that seat, please. This riding style is favored by older couples, the woman in her sweater and matching A-line skirt, which is too tight to allow her to ride modestly in any other way.

Everybody’s favorite motor-scooter sight has to be the Dog on the Floorboard. We frequently see the older men up here on the mountain transporting their hunting dogs to the woods for a good run. These dogs seem all to be liver-spotted spaniels, and they are excellent passengers.

The other day I rode behind a scooter which had an unwilling lab as passenger. It was hilarious; the dog was all over the place and howling at the top of its lungs. It’s owner was driving very cautiously, but it was still all too much for the dog who sounded more like an air-raid siren than a dog. Perhaps they had come from the vet; or perhaps it was a training exercise. In any event, it had Fail written all over it.

Of course, the smaller your dog, the easier it will be to carry it on your scooter:

If you don’t trust your pooch to balance on the floor, and he’s small enough, you can always tuck him into a basket:

This last is a bit of a cheat because the scooter is stationary, but it’s clear they will soon be on the move:

Have I left anything or anyone out? Let me know if I’ve missed any Moto-Riding styles and I’ll update the catalog.

Driving me Crazy!

12 Sunday Oct 2008

Posted by in Driving in Italy, Italian habits and customs, Italian men, Italy, Uncategorized

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There has not been time to post fascinating entries about Life in Italy because of the time-gobbling demands of Learning to Drive in a Foreign Language (foreign to me, that is).  To make up for it, I have added two recipes on the right (Fish in the Ligurian Style and Adriana’s Fruit Torta) and have added to the Driving School Diary in Elaborations.

Above you see my present nemesises.  These four lads sit behind me and chatter away through each lesson.  Professoressa Elena intersperses her lecture with many a  “Silenzio!” but to no effect.  These guys have a lot to say and it’s all really important and can’t wait 30 minutes until class is dismissed.  Evidently it is all hysterically funny, as well, because it is all punctuated with frequent snorts and giggles.

The Italian word for ‘chatter’ is wonderfully onomatopoetic – it’s ‘chiacchiera’ (kee-ah-kee-yehr’-ah), and that’s what it sounds like behind me during driving school classes. I’m not really grumpy about it, to tell the truth.  I remember giggling for about 4 years running when I was their age.  In fact they seem like really nice kids. I just wish it weren’t so distracting as I try to focus on what Elena is saying; my problem, not theirs.

The text for the driving exam is 250 pages long. I think it’s kind of pathetic that the first book I’m reading in its original Italian is the Driving Manual, rather than, say, The Divine Comedy or the poetry of Montale. I have managed to read 200 of the pages; what lies ahead?  First Aid – that will be fun!  I have already learned from practice exams that we do not want to peel cloth off burn victims and that we do want to immerse their limbs in cold water if possible to alleviate pain.  I can hardly wait for my first accident!  Then, last but hardly least, there are the engine parts – that will be a sort of maze for me, I think – there are lots of parts that run with oil (brakes, engine), and other parts that run with water (radiator, window-cleaning), leaving out gas for the minute. Fortunately the questions on engines are rather basic, and Elena has already told us that any question including the words ‘change the tire pressure’ is false.  A useful clue.

Let me leave you with the most interesting thing I learned in my reading yesterday (insurance (which was incomprehensible), and driving under the influence (equally dangerous in any language)):  we really do not want to get behind the wheel of a car if we’ve just eaten a heavily spiced meal, or one heavy in fats or fried foods.  Who knew?

Zoom Zoom

01 Wednesday Oct 2008

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Sunday in Japan Valentino Rossi won his sixth Moto GP Championship.  That’s motorcycles, and a happy result for Italy.  And in Singapore Filipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonon did not win the Formula One race for Ferrari.  That’s cars, and cause for a national day of mourning in Italy.

Should you care?

Well, that depends.  If you live with or are going to talk to one of the 90% of all Italian males or 60% of the males in the rest of the world (and who knows what percentage of females) who follow motor sports closely, the answer is Yes.  You will want to be at least familiar with the main players so as not to appear a complete dunce.

Personally I stopped watching Formula 1 when Michael Schumacher retired.  There was something about his utter focus, determination and single-mindedness that warmed the cold northern cockles of my heart. (If you haven’t heard of Schumacher, he was the Tiger Woods of Formula One.  If you haven’t heard of Tiger Woods you need a subscription to Sports Illustrated.)  The new Ferrari ace, Massa, is a cute kid, but he doesn’t seem to have the killer instinct that Schumacher had.  And I never did watch the motorcycle races; those boys lean over way too far.

If you live in Italy, however, there’s a more pressing reason for you to keep abreast of at least the racing schedule, if not the results.  Within half an hour of the completion of either of these races the ordinarily gutsy driving of the Italian male becomes downright lunatic.  Sunday morning as I coasted sedately down the hill to Rapallo, shortly after the completion of the MotoGP, a young kid on his all terrain bike came screaming around a car in the opposite direction on a blind curve; he was in the middle of my lane, and very fortunate I wasn’t driving my gravel truck today.

We were on our way to the beautiful city of Chiavari just down the coast from Rapallo.  There is a Mercatino dei Sapori (a food market!) on the last weekend of each month; vendors come from all around the country with absolutely delicious things to eat. Over on the right you can find a link to an album of photos of this delightful event.  This week, however, my interest strayed from the comestibles to the sky, because there was a Canadair flying from the sea to an inland fire and back again, over and over.

The Canadairs are small 2-engine airplanes with big stomachs.  The pilots, who must have to pass an insanity test for the job, skim over the sea and pick up a belly-full of water which they then carry back to the site of the fire, on which they dump their load of water, back and forth, back and forth.  Again on the right you’ll find a link to photos of the Canadairs fighting fire – both from Sunday and from a couple of years ago when they were flying over the hill just behind us.  They engage in amazing feats of flying prowess, aiming right towards a hillside, for instance, and pulling up at the last possible moment, at the same time releasing their water which inertia carries forward to the burning hillside.  It’s incredible to see, much more exciting than either of the races that were on TV that morning.

There’s a great urban myth about the forestieri finding the charred remains of a swimmer, in full scuba outfit, high on a burned out mountain.  He must have been scooped out of the sea by a Canadair and dropped right into the heart of the fire!!  I believed this entertaining tale the first three times I heard it; then the penny dropped.

The pilot this morning flew back and forth low over the city of Chiavari instead of over a less-populated area.  We could hear the low grumble of his engines as he neared the city; the sound growing to a roar as he passed low over the narrow streets, which sent the sound bouncing back and forth till we weren’t sure from which direction it was coming.  The Captain, who should know, says he was between 300-400 feet above us, which sounds like a lot until it’s an airplane flying over your head.  Then it doesn’t seem like nearly enough.

As we were scooting home we watched this hot dog fly parallel to the coast up towards Rapallo.  He then banked sharply and flew directly at a cruise ship in the bay outside Portofino, banked very sharply and flew between the ship and the land, banked again in the other direction around the Portofino lighthouse, and headed back up to the airport at Genova where the Canadairs are based (rather poor pictures of these maneurvers, blue tinted for some reason, on the right).  Anyone on the ship or at the lighthouse will have had a more exciting morning than they had planned. The Captain says that the pilots eat in the cafeteria at the Genova airport at 12:30.  As it was 12:10 I’m sure this fellow was on his way back for lunch.  But he couldn’t resist giving the folks on the land a bit of a thrill.  No doubt he had watched the motor cycle race that morning.

License to… drive

09 Tuesday Sep 2008

Posted by in Driving in Italy, Italian habits and customs, Italy, Uncategorized

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Many years ago I passed both written and practical exams for a driver’s license in the US.  It was easy.  Of course I was only 16 years old, and things that went in my brain actually took root there rather than drifting away on the air currents like a dandelion seed puff, which seems to be what happens now.  As I recall the written exam had a lot to do with the safe distance to be behind the car in front of you (1 car length for every 10 mph you are traveling – see??  I still remember!) and how far away from a fire engine you could park (75 feet? Well, okay, I don’t remember everything).  The driving test was also easy.  Obey the speed limit, signal before a turn, parallel park and there you go.

A group of us were in the class of a man who was either very stupid, very brave, or both; he not only ushered us through the theoretical aspects of driving, he also took us out on the road to learn how to move an actual vehicle in actual traffic.  I don’t remember his name – I guess we could call him Mr. Silly.  He instructed us to ‘hug the center line’, the theory being that this would give us the greatest amount of space to maneuver should we have a problem.  Of course it also scared the bejesus out of anyone coming in the opposite direction.  Mr. Silly had two verbal quirks.  One was that in his lexicon ‘curb’ became ‘curban,’ as in “Watch out for the curban!!” usually delivered at full voice just moments before he snatched the wheel from one of us.  He also had a great deal to say about “historical women drivers,” by whom I think he did not mean Betsy Ross and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Eventually the Big Day came; we all passed our written exams, we all passed our practical exams and we were given Driving Licenses and set loose.  It was huge.  Freedom!  The open road and our parents’ car!  And gas that cost less than .50 a gallon.  A lot less.  Then came the part when we really learned how to drive – which was harder on some of us than others, unfortunately.  My own lessons were relatively gentle, the worst being the Driving on Ice Lesson which fortunately resulted in only minor damage to car, tree and girl.  I got to go to court (‘driving too fast for existing conditions’) and if memory serves my license was suspended for two weeks.

Quick forward about 30 years.  The Captain became an avid amateur race driver after a three day school at the Skip Barber Racing School.  Being a kind soul he decided to give me the one-day Better Driving class so I could share the fun.  And it was loads of fun, sashaying around cones, skidding on the pad, learning that you don’t gain anything by lane-shifts in slow highway traffic.  It was an excellent day and I recommend it to anyone who is within shouting distance of one of Skip’s schools (no, it’s not cheap exactly, but costs way less than an accident). The climax was zooming around the Limerock Race Track at what felt like, but wasn’t, break-neck speeds in a Dodge Viper, which is way too much car for me.  I left feeling I had become a modestly better driver, and that I hadn’t been a terrible driver to begin with.

All this is lengthy preamble.  After all this time I’m back to square one: studying to take a written exam for a driver’s license.  Citizens from other EU countries can trade their country’s drivers’ licenses for an Italian one.  Not so the hapless American.  We can drive on our US licenses for one year after taking residency in Italy; then we are obliged to get an Italian Patenta.

So last Monday I went to the Gilberto Scuola di Guida and signed up.  I received a 258-page book detailing rules and regulations of the road.  In Italian. *

There are lots of pictures, but the print is small.  This is not easy!  I was also given  a larger book with 301 pages of practice quizzes.  Also in Italian, of course; this is Italy.  Here’s the thing about the questions though: they’re sneaky!  They try to trick you by using a negative where you would expect a positive, by changing one word just a little bit to change the meaning (‘al meno’ vs. ‘a meno’).  This book was not written by the helpful, considerate Italians I’ve come to know and love over the past few years.  It was written by insane people sitting in cramped offices who want to torment others.

The Captain went through this process about five years ago.  He says two things worth repeating.  One is that in his whole life he’s never encountered a greater chasm between theory and practice than with Italian driving.  The other is that he thinks that after you pass the driving exam they take out your brain and give you a license.  It’s true.  The best way to describe Italian drivers is Wild and Crazy.  But when you read the book you realize that the actual rules are precise, logical and designed to make for safe highways.  Ha.

Over in elaborations on the right you can find a weekly recap of the Great Driving School Adventure.  (Not the one under ‘pages,’ the one up above.) I am far and away the oldest person in class, most of the others seem to be in their 20’s, with one teen-ager and one woman who is perhaps 40.  Here’s the thing that cracks me up.  I assume we’re all there because we need driving licenses.  After class we all go out, hop on our scooters, and disappear in clouds of dust.

*Disclaimer ~ the text is available in an English translation, and one may take the written test in English.  I was told the School would not take responsibility for the accuracy of the translation, however. hmmmm.