Category Archives: Liguria

Parking

22 Friday Aug 2008

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Have I mentioned that we live on a narrow road? Here’s a photo of the road above our house. This is not some little back road; it is a main road connecting the Via Aurelia to the entroterra, the interior on the other side of the mountain. This road is important enough to be depicted on a map of all of Italy (scale 1/1,000,000)! It is narrow and very well traveled. And most of the houses built along it were built before car ownership was common; driveways and parking areas were not part of the original designs.

These days the State smiles on those who wish to park their cars off-road. Building permits, which are impossible to get for other reasons, materialize for projects which remove cars from the streets. Constructing these projects is easier said than done in the hills.

A couple of years ago we sold our first-born and our first-round draft picks for the next twelve years in order to build a parking platform. It was a huge project, what with the many linear feet of new walls (which these days are made of poured concrete faced with stone) and all the paperwork. The file we accumulated relating the project is 3 inches thick. We needed permits from the town, from the region, from the highway department, I think we even had to get one from God himself. Because the project was built adjacent to a state road there were a lot of engineering requirements and frequent checks by the Certified Engineer that everything was being built according to plan (Giovanni, the Human Backhoe, did the work with his merry band of Romanians). The paperwork and resultant file for the parking platform is half again larger than all the paperwork for the original restoration of the house.  And according to Giovanni, it seemed to the builders that the actual work would never end. It was a really big project. Here is the captain, dwarfed by two of the new walls we had to build (he’s running water up so he can wash his beloved Mini).  And here is the platform itself, really rather small, especially when you consider the tons of material it took to construct it.

Turns out that in the universe of possible parking patooties, our project was pretty small. Take a look at these other four projects, also on our road (Via San Maurizio di Monti):

This is the simplest project, after ours. It’s a lovely new drive with not too many new stone walls, paving, tons of new dirt, and some new trees. They had to jackhammer out a lot of rock where the drive now is; that all used to be hill. We are puzzled about the stone arch over the drive – it’s very pretty but will prevent a truck from ever approaching the house.

This one, too, is a very simple project as well, though I’ve rated it slightly more complex than the preceding because not only did they jackhammer out part of the hill, they are also building a small addition up above (new baby).

This house, a pre-fab built in the 1960’s, is actually on a rather wide part of the road. Their project has been in process for two years now and is nowhere near completion. There is a small new guest cottage that will eventually be under part of the new driveway that is being constructed. Before they could begin this phase, the actual road-building, they had to strengthen (read re-build) stone walls down below. There is a tiny figure in this photo – well actually, he’s a full-sized man, but he looks tiny because he is standing by the enormous walls.  Click on the photo to see it full size and see if you can find him.

This one is the prize-winner. This project is not only cutting a huge swath through the forested hill for a new driveway, but is also inconveniencing everyone who uses the highway as the road has been made one-lane around the work. You would think that something of this scale would provide access to a small community, but the guys doing the work told me it was leading to one house, a rustico that will be knocked down and rebuilt. This explanation was accompanied by the gesture of thumb rubbing against fingers, and the opinion that money was no object, and that ‘what they want, they have.’ This is the first of at least three switch-backs that go up the hill.  They’re using an amazing amount of concrete simply to reinforce the rocky hillside they are excavating.

So I guess there are any number of ways to get your car off the road, depending on your timetable and your wallet. Our car was scraped twice during the years we were on-street-parkers. No matter how you do it, the best place to park on this narrow, busy highway is definitely off-road.

Foraging, or The Yin and Yang of Via San Maurizio di Monti

19 Tuesday Aug 2008

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Just last week I was carping about the litter along the roads.  But look at what bounty the same stretch of road provided today:

These items are all growing wild in untended patches of hillside, so I guess they are free for the taking.

I’ve been watching the blackberries for the last weeks as they went from flowers to gnarly little green berries – finally they are ripe and as sweet as can be.

The grapes are very small, as you can see, but they explode with flavor in the mouth.  They have climbed up a nespolo (medlar tree).  The nespolos around here are all afflicted with some disease that turns the fruit black and wizzened, so we never get to harvest that.

The fig is also miniature, but the tree it’s from is enormous and uncared for and sprawling.  The fruits are just beginning to ripen.  I don’t happen to care for figs, but the captain does, so this one will not go to waste.

Behind it all is a sprig of bay, the kind that we used to buy in New England to flavor our stews and soups.  We have a bay tree beside our house, but it’s nice to know that anyone along the road can have as much bay as they need from the large stand that grows there.  The road crew hacks it back each year as it encroaches on the highway sight-lines (yes, the same wide highway that you will read about soon in “Parking”… stay tuned); the annual pruning keeps it low, thick and extremely productive.

No matter the season, it seems there’s something to be harvested in the wild.  Now it’s grapes, blackberries and figs; soon it will be mushrooms and chestnuts; in the spring it’s the wild herbs and greens to make preboggion.  Probably a lot of these roadside plants have sprung up from seeds the birds have dropped or from discarded plant material. It’s the kind of litter I like.

Sporca!

13 Wednesday Aug 2008

Posted by in Italy, Liguria, Photographs, Rapallo, Uncategorized

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Recently Saretta has blogged about the large amount of litter and garbage on the streets near her home on the Adriatic in southern Italy (Aug. 2 & 10). I was feeling pretty smug, thinking to myself, ‘Well, at least here in the north there is not nearly so much littering.’

Ha.

It is true,things are not as bad as they once were. The complete kitchen, including cabinets and appliances, that was dumped over the side of our road in one of the ravines has been removed (by whom? when?) and nothing of its ilk has taken its place.

Along the road near our house

A lot of other rubbish has been along the roadside as long as we’ve lived here; I guess I hardly see it any more. But there is plenty of new garbage every day, as I was unhappily reminded when I took my walk this morning.

Not that things are much better in the States. We saw this enchanting sight outside a roadside stop in New Mexico last year.

What I love about the States, though, is the teams of eager do-gooders that get out there and clean up after others. There is no Adopt-a-Highway program here in Italy that I know of, but wouldn’t it be great if there were? I’ve decided to adopt the little stretch of road I walk along almost every day. I’m sure the neighbors will think I’m a raving lunatic, especially as I wear one of those yellow kitchen gloves while doing it (you can be too careful, but this isn’t).  ‘Look!’ they’ll say, ‘l’Americana thinks she’s a duck!!’

I don’t care. I’ll enjoy my walk more without looking at all the plastic along the verge. It would be nice if people would stop littering; it would also be a miracle.  Here’s a picture of the fruits (ha ha) of my first day’s labor as a do-gooder.  I walked less than .25 mile because my bag was filled.

You want a purse, lady?

09 Saturday Aug 2008

Posted by in Italy, Liguria, People, Uncategorized

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Haven’t you always wondered about the African guys selling purses, dark glasses and CD’s in every town in Italy? Me too! I always imagined there was some kind of Organization of African Vendors, with a capo who brought young men into the country (legally? illegally?) and then directed them where to go to set up shop. This evil capo, of course, would take all the profits, thereby effectively enslaving the fellows doing all the work. And he was probably running all the prostitutes as well.

Well, I couldn’t have been more wrong. A couple of weeks ago we were on a morning train from Rapallo to Celle. At one of the stops on the outskirts of Genova a whole bunch of Africans with bags of merchandise got on our car. The most picturesque arrival was a woman in a printed African dress, the kind with a long skirt and a top, with matching turban. She had a huge hand-rolled cigarette dangling from her mouth and an I-dare-you expression on her face – wish I’d gotten a photo (I didn’t dare). I did sneak an in-back-of-me shot of a couple of the gents.

After a pleasant day we boarded our train to return to Rapallo, and I ended up sitting next to a young man, clearly of the African vendor fraternity; let’s call him Franco. He turned out to be about the pleasantest person you could imagine, and didn’t mind my pumping him for information.

So here’s what I learned: Almost all the vendors come from Senegal, on Africa’s west coast (formerly a French colony, so French is the official language of the country and the language used in school). Wolof is the official Senegalese African language, and is the native language of about 40% of the population, though there are many other languages. Franco said it was like the different dialects in Italy – someone from the north of Senegal wouldn’t necessarily understand the language of someone from the south. All these languages are based on a different sound system than western languages – which is obvious when you hear it spoken. Franco had to get off before the language lesson got very far, but we both learned ‘man’ = I, and ‘moom’ = he, she, it. That last raises some gender questions.

There is no empire of vendors under the evil thumb of a capo. All the vendors come over independently, usually joining friends or family members who are already here. Franco chose his selling locale because a friend who had been here for 20 years said he did well there. He commutes daily from Busalla, north of Genova, to Pietra Ligure, west of Savona, for his day of work. In the winter he works in Viareggio, well to the south. Unlike sleepy, beachy little Pietra Ligure, Viareggio is still moderately active in the winter. The things he sells are almost all made in Italy, he said. (I did doubt that.)

What surprised me most was that Franco and his friends are legal entrants to the country. He said that he went to the Italian Consulate in Dakar and got a visa to come to Italy. I believed him, in spite of the fact that some studies suggest that up to 50% of immigrants in Italy enter illegally (Senegal accounts for only about 2.5% of immigrants to Italy).  (There are a lot of Pakistani vendors in Italy, too; they seem to specialize in silver jewelry, fabric items and pinwheels, leaving the dark glasses and purses to the Senegalese.)

Another thing that really surprised me is that Franco buys his merchandise from a wholesaler – actually another Senegalese whose ‘warehouse’ is his apartment in Genova. Far from being told what to sell by someone else, it turns out Franco is an entrepreneur!

He’s been here working for two years, but he does get home to visit occasionally. He would like to work and save for another few years and then return home for good.

How brave to leave your homeland, move to a distant country (though not that distant really – 2500 miles or so, about the same as New York to San Fran), hastily learn enough of the language to harangue passers-by, invest your savings (or money borrowed from family and friends) in a stock of dark glasses, and then go stand under the beating sun to sell your goods. Phew. It’s no wonder Franco has such a winning personality – he has to in order to succeed in his line of work.

Roadkill

28 Monday Jul 2008

Posted by in History, Italy, Liguria, Photographs, Uncategorized

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No, no pictures of dead animals here, I promise, so read on…

And why are there no pictures? There is little roadkill here, that’s why. It always shocks me when I go back to the States and see so many dead animals on the road, from small (squirrels) to huge (deer, moose). And how frequently the almost sweet, almost sickening smell of skunk wafts over the highway during a summer evening’s drive in New England, becoming suffocating as you get near the poor corpse on the side of the road.

Here if you see something that you perceive from a distance to be roadkill it will be one of the following, given in order of likelihood: litter (still a lot, but becoming less), a bit of foliage, squashed fruit (yesterday’s sighting: a watermelon!), an oily rag or discarded halter top. Very rarely you will see a dead animal. I’ve seen several hedgehogs on our mountain road, as well as snakes, and several cats and one dog on the autostradas. Once we saw someone’s white specialty pigeon with a fanned out turkey type tail flouncing stupidly along the side of the road. Sadly it was hit by the time we got back, and we spent weeks kicking ourselves for not rescuing it on our way into town instead of assuming it would be smart enough to fly home.

But as you can see, if we can remember specific incidents there are not many of them. I’ve asked myself why this is and here’s my theory, completely unsupported by any external evidence or corroboration: I think all the   small animals from the woods around here were eaten during the War, and they’ve never re-established themselves. (Having said that, there are plenty of wild boar – and you wouldn’t want to hit one of them – they’re HUGE – but they were introduced to the area 10 or 15 years ago).

I won’t belabor this WWII theme, or I’ll try not to – but it is something I think about frequently. It’s impossible for those of us born safely after that war, or Korea or Vietnam, to imagine the deprivation suffered by the people who are now Italy’s oldest citizens.

Here’s a pictorial example. The Captain and I had business in the town hall of Zoagli, our neighboring village, last week. They have an exhibition of photos from the December 27, 1943, Allied bombing of the railway bridge there (Happy New Year, everyone!). I can’t give attribution because I couldn’t figure out who took the photos, but I took pictures of them anyway – sorry, they are pics of pics and of poor quality, but interesting anyway. Compare the 1943 photos above of the town center and the railroad bridge to those of the same places taken last Friday, 65 years latter, below.  Perhaps if our town looked like the one above we would take to the hills in search of food…

Zoagli town center today

Zoagli bridge today

Permesso?

27 Tuesday May 2008

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From the Ragazzini/Biagi Concise Italian-English Dictionary: Permesso “(2) m 1. permission; leave.”

It’s also what polite Italians ask before entering your home, as if to be sure that you really did mean to ask them in.

Permesso di Soggiorno – a piece of paper, or this year we hope a card, that gives one official permission to be in Italy.  I can’t imagine how difficult it is for an immigrant to get permission to stay in the United States.  Here in Italy if you ask nicely and can prove that you can support yourself they are pretty good about welcoming you. They let you stay for two years, and then you must nicely ask them again.  Seems fair to us.

Until this year getting our Permessi involved several comical trips to the Questura (State Police) in Genova,  a trip of about three-quarters of an hour for us.  The first trip was the best: that was the one where, after an hour’s wait with a large group of representatives from about half the countries in the world we requested an appointment.  We had to go all that way just for that, couldn’t do it over the phone.  Two weeks later we’d return at the appointed time, wait with the United Nations again, and submit our applications.  In about 6-8 months our Permessi would be ready (that’s not a typo:  6-8 months.) and we would return to pick them up.  Oh well, the system worked, albeit slowly.

This year the application process has been given to the Post Office.  I know, don’t ask me.  But here the Post Office is so much more than in many other countries.  For starters, it’s a bank as well, and I would guess that more than half the people who visit the PO are doing banking business, not postal business.  And now of course they are doing immigration business as well.  Anyway, sharp eyes will pick out

 Louis in this photo, waiting his turn (take a number!) with the grumpy lady who gave us our application packets,  big envelopes full of confusing documents.  Even our friend Graziano, a policeman, was slightly mystified by the array of papers when we asked his advice about the application.

But we did learn something terrific.  This year Louis will have been a resident for six years which makes him eligible, we think, for a Carta di Soggiorno, which is good for six years!  As his wife I may or may not be allowed to ride on his coat-tails.  We’re still trying to find out.  He’s had one appointment at the Patronato office, which as far as I can figure from their website, is a Christian group that assists in ‘weaving the bonds of society’.  There he talked to a very helpful woman who gave him a list (a loooong list) of required documents for the Carta.

One of the documents called for a trip to the Procura at the Chiavari Tribunale (an office, not a newspaper) to get proof that neither of us has a criminal record in Italy.  To our complete and utter amazement we walked out with the needed document half an hour after walking in.  This is unprecedented in our Italian experience, and shows a degree of organization and efficiency that seems, well, un-Italian, no offense meant. It was worthy of a photograph.

We have now acquired most of the documents, pictured below, that we need to submit with our application for the Carta di Soggiorno.  It is simply too exciting.  Will it actually work for us, or will we have to put our tails between our legs and slink back to the Questura?  Stay tuned!

A most unusual visitor…

23 Friday May 2008

Posted by in Birds in Italy, Italy, Liguria, Photographs, Rapallo, Uncategorized

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This is a little off the stated theme of this blog, but as a friend told me recently, “It’s your blog, you can write whatever you want!” 

We were sitting in our upstairs studio this morning having breakfast when a movement outside caught my eye.  This is what we saw.  I think of it as a heron, the bird book calls it an Airone Cenerino, and when it sits on the top of a nearby cypress tree it is a very large bird indeed.  This one, or its kin, can frequently be found in the river that runs along Via Betti, 5 km below us on the outskirts of Rapallo proper, and while we enjoy seeing it there, we’ve never thought of it as being especially unusual.

We can’t imagine why it came to sit in a cypress tree relatively far from water.  When it left it circled higher and higher and then disappeared to the north.  Was it looking for fish in the sky?  Out joy-riding?  We like to look at birds, though we don’t seek them out or consider ourselves birdwatchers… perhaps this bird is a people-watcher and had gotten wind of a couple of Americans to add to its life-list. It just goes to show, context is everything.  In the river it’s a pleasant sight, in the cypress tree it’s astonishing.

Speaking of bird-watching, Jonathan Franzen gives a fascinating account of doing just that in China in his  ‘Letter from the Yangtze Delta,’ “The Way of the Puffin” (The New Yorker, April 21, 2008, p. 90).  I can give you a link only to the abstract of the story,  because the full article is not available free online, but if you have a library card your library may well be able to supply the full text of the story, either online or hard copy. This is culture shock seen through binoculars while searching for birds.

And on a different subject altogether, thank you all who have written comments – I am so happy you visit this site, and I love hearing what you have to say!

 

Meet me at 50.0 LMT at the Castello… we’ll do lunch

20 Tuesday May 2008

Posted by in Italian recipes, Italy, Liguria, Rapallo, Uncategorized

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Remember when the US tried to go metric?  Disaster!  Just how much is a gram, a liter, a kilo??

One of the vexing aspects of living in the EU is trying to adapt to the metric system.  Somehow 27 C doesn’t sound nearly as warm as 80 F, at least not to my American ears.  We encounter conversion woes every time we are given a recipe.  The result is that we’re living in a half-way house, marooned between metric and imperial measures.  An example is the new lasanga recipe over in the Recipes link to your right – I asked Louis to write it out for me (he made it several nights ago and it was very well received , especially by Massimo).  When he gave it to me the ingredients were in grams, for both solids and liquids, and the temperature was in Fahrenheit; fortunately a quick visit to a terrific conversion site made it easy to list the imperial equivalents for American and British friends.  Somehow I don’t think we’ll ever be completely at ease in this metric world.

Don’t even get me started on clothing sizes (bras come in 1, 2, 3 or 4… what does that mean??). And shoes (my size 39 sounds huge, but it’s really only 8.5).

At least the clock looks the same here – what would a metric clock look like?  We’d have to dispense with 2 hours on our clock face and come up with all kinds of strange names.  Turns out it’s been done!  It takes us about half a centiday (+/- 12 minutes) to drive from our house to downtown Rapallo… I think.  No, let’s stick with our present clocks with their friendly faces.  It’s hard enough to figure out how many grams of cheese to put in the lasagna!

 

 

Fill ‘er up

17 Saturday May 2008

Posted by in Italy, Liguria, Rapallo, Wine

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Some people don’t drink wine.  I know!  But it’s true.  And those that don’t usually have very good reasons for not.  But for those who do, Italy is a great place to live.  According to Italianmade.com, Italy produces and exports more wine than any other country, and according to Patrick McGovern, an expert on ancient beverages, wine may well have been made as long ago as the Neolithic age (8,000 – 4,000 BC)(how much would a 3,000 year old wineskin of Neanderolo fetch at auction, do you think??)  Italians have been making wine for a very, very long time, and they’re very, very good at it.

Mountainous Liguria does not have a vine-friendly geography, and most wines here are made by families for home consumption, though there’s some lively production down in the Cinque Terre.  But our neighbor to the north, Piemonte, though ranked only 6th of Italy’s regions in production, has more DOC zones than any other region.  Delicious wines come from Piemonte, and many of them make their way to Ligurian tables, as do Tuscan wines.  Piemonte vines include barbera, dolcetto, grignolino, freisa, cortese and nebbiolo (from which come Barolo, Barbaresco and Gattinara wines).  (All these fascinating details come from the italianmade site.)

Here’s a quick primer on the four categories of Italian wine: 

Vino da Tavola, or table wine, is just that.  It’s usually pretty undistinguished, but often pleasantly drinkable. It comes from who knows where and generally comes in one of two colors – red or white, and one of two states – fizzy or still.

Vino a Indicazion Geografica (IGT) means that the wine is from a particular geographical area.  Other than that, see above.

Denominazione di Origine Controllata (DOC) means, again, that the wine is from a particular geographical area, but there are stringent guidelines relating to its production and naming.

Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita (DOCG or DOC/G) means the same as DOC, except that the rules for production are even more rigid, the amount produced is limited, and the wine must be tasted and approved by a committee – how can one serve on that committee, I’d like to know!

You might think that with so much wine washing around the country the inhabitants would be staggering about in a constant state of inebriation – not so!  Of course Italy has, like most other countries, a certain amount of alcoholism and other diseases and problems related to over-consumption.  But in general Italians are relatively careful drinkers, and they drink far and away more wine than beer or spirits (The World Health Organization reported in 2002 that almost 16% of Italians abstain from drinking completely, and the amount of alcohol consumed has been decreasing steadily since the 1960’s). 

So, just how much do Italians drink?  Ha.  The answer might surprise you (it did me).  WHO statistics from 2003, the most recent I could find, show a per capita (over 15 years old) alcohol consumption of 8.0 liters a year, which doesn’t seem so much to someone who can put away half a liter with dinner.  The U.S. figure is 8.6 liters.  Who drinks the most?  Ugandans!  17.6 liters, and who could blame them?  Who drinks the least (and perhaps fibs a little)?  Yemen and the United Arab Emirates at 0.0.  Germans drink 12.0 liters and Irish 13.7 liters per year.

But enough facts and figures.  The whole point of this exercise was to talk about the beauties of Italian wines, from the residue-laden bottles produced at home and lovingly stored for years in dusty cantinas, to the agri-produced gleaming bottles that are exported and sold for lots of money.

You can buy your wine many places (including often at the producing vinyards themselves) – at a specialty shop, where you will find your DOC and DOCG wines along with the others; at the super market where you never know exactly what you will find; or, as we like to do, at the ‘filling station’, a store where you can buy wine in bulk and carry it away in your own container.  This picture was taken at a new cantina in Santa Margherita Ligure, and the young lady is filling a sample bottle for me with Riesling.  They have several other wines available as well.  Big Market in Rapallo (Corso Mameli) also sells vino sfuso, that is wine in bulk.

How much will you pay for your wine?  That all depends, of course.  Oddly, price is not always tied to quality.  It is possible to get some very decent wines at a reasonable cost.  In the specialty shops you are likely to pay E 4 and up, way up, for a bottle; at the super market you can buy beginning at about E 2; vino sfuso?  At the Santa Margherita Cantina I paid E 1.70 a liter for that Riesling – pretty reasonable, I think.

Wine is central to Italian culture and eating.  Best of all, it is delicious, it can make you feel delightfully giddy, and if you ask your doctor, he may well recommend one glass of red a day because of all the good flavonoids and other antioxidants contained therein.

Cin Cin!

One reason to love living in Rapallo…

11 Sunday May 2008

Posted by in gardening, Liguria, Rapallo

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Climbing roses in front of jasmineThere’s something in the soil, the air, the water, the light, or perhaps all of them, that makes it impossible for things NOT to grow here.  This climbing rose began its life in Liguria as a little branch cut from the climbing roses that cover one side of the house of friends in Piemonte.  We stuck it in the dirt and the next spring we had a small rose bush ready to plant; it flowered the first year.  Now we have to prune it severely to keep it from running wild.

The jasmine, just fading away behind the rose, is another case in point.  It was here when we bought our house, but we enlarged the terrace and were quite sure that we had destroyed the jasmine.  We were sad about that, but accepting, because having a larger terrace was worth the cost in jasmine flowers.  To our surprise the next year the jasmine reappeared, and it, too, is a wanderer and spreader.  It has moved to the neighbors’ walls below us, and it is threatening to hide completely a small faucet/sink on the other side of the steps.  There’s no stopping either of these plants.

Italians are famous for their love of life; its true of the plants here too.  Especially in spring everything is bursting, flowering, fruiting, promising much and delivering more. 

We suffered in New England with our perennial gardens, coaxing and spoiling the plants, feeding, begging them to grow, flower, reproduce.  We worked on the soil, took out rocks, added mulch, and in general treated our gardens like spoiled children.  Here the soil looks unpromising.  It is very heavy with lots of clay and is full of rocks.  Evidently it’s just what the plants want.  I guess the moral is that the easiest path is not always the most productive (groan… well, there has to be a moral, right?)