Category Archives: Rapallo

Q8 Rip-Off

07 Tuesday Jul 2009

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

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

, , ,

Q-8 receipt

You get what you pay for, right?  Well, sometimes when you buy your gas at Q8 you don’t get anything at all!

Here’s the story.  Way back in May I filled my scooter, which has a small tank, and paid with a E 10 note.  There was a credit remaining of E 4.11.   I wasn’t sure how to use the credit slip, though, even though a thorough explanation is given at the bottom.  My Italian just doesn’t always measure up to the fine print.  I know!  It’s my fault, I should be better at my second language.  But I’m not.  Yet.

Wanting help with this credit receipt, I kept waiting for there to be an attendant at the Q8 station, which is, it seems, a rare event.  Finally about a month ago there was a man there who explained to me that because my credit was less than E 5 I wouldn’t be able to use it without putting in more money.  Huh??  When is a credit not a credit??  When it’s for less than E 5 at Q8, that’s when.

It seemed mighty peculiar to me, but I said ok – and as it happened I already had plenty of gas that day, so I didn’t take advantage of the attendant’s presence and actual willingness to help.  I figured I’d catch him another day.

Fast forward to last week (can you believe how much effort is going into a credit for E 4.11??!).  The door to the attendant’s box was open, so I whizzed in to buy some gas.  There was a young woman there, and I asked her, is it true that I can’t use this credit without adding more money?  “I don’t know,” she said, “Can you come back on Monday when the regular guy will be here?”

“Well, okay,” I replied, but can you give me change for this E 50 so I can pump some gas?  I don’t want to put E 50 in the machine.”

“No,” she answered.  Sooo, I went to the grocery store just behind the Q8, bought a few necessities and returned to the gas station with a crisp E 5 note.  The attendant had fled.

I began the automated process to get gas, and one of the choices indeed was for a receipt number, so I punched in the number on my credit.  Immediately what came up was the original screen suggesting, ‘Go ahead, put some money in here and see if you get lucky.’  At least that’s what I think it said. I really just wanted the credit’s worth, so I tried again.  No luck.  Then I stared around in agony and asked the Gas Goddess to come to my assistance.  Then I punched in the credit code again and got a message that it was invalid.  So I just put in E 5 and got my gas, puzzled as could be.

Today my tank was low again and guess what!  There’s a GAS STRIKE in Italy over the next two days so it will be difficult to buy gas (amusingly, one of the strike issues is ‘long working hours’).  It seemed prudent to fill up, and, to my amazement, the door to the attendant’s box at the Q8 was open again, and sure enough there was a man seated at a desk within.  I went right to him and said I wanted to use my credit to buy gas.  He looked at it and said, “There’s not enough credit on here, you need at least E 5, so you will have to put more money in.” (Can you tell me what difference it makes to an automated system if your credit is for E 4.99 or E 5.01?  It shouldn’t matter one whit.)

I explained that I had tried to do that but that it hadn’t worked.  “Can you help me with this?” I asked – and I was still being extremely polite.  Can you guess what he said?  He said, “No.”  Then he said, “The instructions are written down here.”

“I know,” I said, “but when I put my credit number in it doesn’t work.  Can’t you help?”  Rolling his eyes to the heavens and heaving a mighty sigh he… you think I’m going to say he got up, aren’t you?  No, he didn’t budge his skinny ass.  He punched a few buttons on the computer in front of him and said, “This number is invalid.  Didn’t you take a new receipt when you tried before?”

“No,” I explained (and I was getting a little irritated by now), “I didn’t because there wasn’t one to take.”

“There was,” he assured me, “and you should have taken it.”

“So what you’re telling me is that Q8 has my E 4.11 and I’m not going to get any gas for it?”

“This receipt is invalid.”

“But I didn’t get anything for it.  I’m just giving Q8 my money and not getting any gas in return.”

He gave the final, infuriating, ‘tough shit’ shrug and turned away.  That’s when I crumpled up the receipt (but didn’t throw it at him – I’m so glad because now I can show it to you!) and informed him tartly that I wouldn’t be buying any gas from Q8 ever, ever again.  You know, I don’t think he cared.

As a side note, during the long wait for this story to unwind I received another credit slip from the Shell station in the middle of town, this one for E .94.  The attendant (who is there morning and afternoon, daily) took my slip and applied it to my next gas purchase.  So easy!

May I tell you what would have happened if this had occurred in the U.S.?  1) the attendant would have been there more than ten minutes a week.  2) he would have made at least a cursory effort to help  and 3) he would have believed me and would have made good on the credit.

Now you might say I’m the victim of my own ignorance, and I guess that’s true, but  I think people who are selling things should try to be helpful to customers.  You might call my wish to have the gas credit honored the typical unreasonable American sense of entitlement.  I call it honesty.

Rapallo’s Feste Patronali

05 Sunday Jul 2009

Posted by in Italian holidays, Italy, Photographs, Rapallo, Uncategorized

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

, , ,

fireworks battle-1We might have celebrations and fireworks in the U.S.on the 4th of July, but good old Rapallo celebrates for three full days, and at almost the same time.  July 1, 2 and 3 are the days of the Feste in Rapallo which commemorate the appearance of the Virgin Mary at Montallegro, 452 years ago. (You can read about that event here).  Because the holidays are mid-week this year, they have run over a bit into the following weekend as well.  The schedule of events is daunting – it would be impossible to do everything that is taking place.

It all starts the Sunday before the 1st of July, which is the first night the Pilgrims walk (yes, walk) from Rapallo up the mountain to Montallegro.  Singing.  At about 2 a.m.  In torchlight.  It’s a spooky thing to hear because the sound is not singing exactly, nor is it exactly chanting.  It’s something in between, which has monotonal parts accented by occasional semi-octave exclamations.  The sound carries, and the nearby hills send it back in echo, and the whole effect is mystical and a little scary, an effect that is, I imagine, accentuated by the flickering lights of the torches.

Throughout the feste days there are many masses celebrated, both at Montallegro and at the main cathedral of Rapallo, the Basilica of the Saints Gervasio and Protasio (an entertainingly translated link).

Things really get underway on the 1st, with the “Saluto alle Madonna” and the “Spettacoli pirotecnici ‘a giorno’ ”   The Saluto, which is repeated daily, is simply big cannon Booms which shake the ground under your feet.  The fireworks instead is a one and a half hour extravaganza that starts at 8 a.m. (8 a.m.??) and is sponsored by the Sestieri Borzoli and Costaguta.  It seems like an odd hour for fireworks to me, but that’s how it’s done.  There’s no worry if you don’t make it to this early show, though, there are plenty more fireworks to come, each one sponsored by pairs of the Sestieri of Rapallo.

Wikipedia tells us:  “a sestiere is a subdivision of certain Italian towns and cities. The word is from sesto, or sixth; and is thus used only for towns divided into six districts. The best-known example are the sestieri of Venice, but Ascoli Piceno, Genoa and Rapallo, for example, are also divided into sestieri. Sestierei are no longer administrative divisions of these towns, but historical and traditional communities, most often seen in their sharpest relief in the town’s annual palio.”  ( A ‘palio’ is usually an atheletic competition of some sort; Siena’s famous Palio is a horse race; Rapallo’s competition is in fireworks displays.)  Borzoli and Costaguta also sponsor fireworks on the night of July 1st.  On the night of the 2nd the Sestieri San Michele and Cappelletta take over, and on the night of the 3rd it is the turn of Seglio and Crisola, this one with music.  The highlight of  this display, which features a battle between sea and Fort, is the famous Lighting of the Castello, in which the whole edifice seems to be ablaze.

castello engulfed

On the night of the 3rd, before the fireworks, there is a Solemn Procession of the Silver Arc of the Madonna, a parade through the center of the town in which all the parade crucifixes from the Rapallo churches are brought out and displayed.  The Silver Arc usually resides at Montallegro, but is brought down annually to much fanfare.  Bishops put on their best lace and the politicians are all in Armani.

procession silver

The crucifixes are large and look quite heavy, though all the tinsely decorations at the top give to each an airy, celestial feel.  Some of the Crucifieds are black and some are white.  Each is carried by one man who has a leather pouch at his waist that cradles the base of the cross.  The tricky part is that he must carry his burden without using his hands, which are firmly clasped behind his back.

procession crucifix

There is a support team for each cross, and when one bearer gets tired there is frenzied activity while the cross is passed to the next.  The whole effect is heightened by the costumes they wear, something between Middle Ages and Bakery.

procession changing carrier-1

It’s a terrific event.  I can’t begin to imagine the planning and all the hours and hours of work it takes to carry it all off.  If you ever have a chance to be in Rapallo on the 1, 2 or 3 of July, jump on it – it’s an experience you’ll never forget.  There are some more photos here.  They’re not as good as I’d like, but they’ll give you the flavor of the event. If nothing else, you’ll enjoy the portrait of the Very Strong Man.

Every Inch

10 Wednesday Jun 2009

Posted by in gardening, Italian habits and customs, Italian men, Liguria, People, Rapallo, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

,

It has always amazed me how every square inch of space in Italy seems to be put to some kind of good use.  There are 60 million people living in Italy, a population density of 515 people per square mile.  In the US the population density per square mile is 80.  No wonder roads, houses, cars and people there are large – there’s enough space for everything and everyone.  But here in Italy every square inch must give the most it can.  You realize this particularly if you’re out walking on a woodsy mountainside and suddenly notice overgrown stone walls: the land on those mountains was important enough that people put in hundreds of hours of labor to terrace and farm them.

Now agri-business has arrived in Italy, too, and some of the farming land on the really steep and inaccessible mountains has gone wild.  But individuals will squeeze an enormous amount of production from whatever land is available to them.  And they have devised some very clever inventions to make the job easier.  It’s not uncommon to see a small cable and carrier system stretching across a wooded valley from one hillside to another – a way to transport cut wood.  Or to see the same thing coming down the olive-studded hill to a road below – a way to get the harvested olives to a waiting Ape (the little three-wheeled workhorse truck named for bees, because that’s what the two-stroke engine sounds like).

cable system (2)

People practice intensive gardening here – a lot of the garden maintenance is done by hand, so rows to do not have to be widely spaced to accommodate a tiller.  Down the hill in Rapallo I have watched an elderly gentleman prepare and plant his garden this spring – he did it all by hand.  First he turned the dirt with a spade, then he put in mounds of fertilizer (probably cow manure from the farm up the road), then he forked it all in by hand, and finally he was ready to plant.

garden squares-1aIsn’t it tidy and pretty?  If you get out your magnifying lens you might just be able to spot the man himself in the midst of his tomato stakes behind the tree in the center.  Or you can just take my word for it that he’s there.

The prize for getting the most out of every inch, though, goes to this man’s neighbor a bit farther down the road, another American transplant by the name of Rick Gush.  Rick is the guy that if you give him a sow’s ear he’s going to give you a purse the next time you meet.  He’s the guy who’s never even heard of the box everyone else is trying to think outside of.  Every time we meet Rick we learn of some new  job he once had.  An incomplete list of his accomplishments includes adventure game designer (Kyrandia, Lands of Lore), psychic soil analyst (easier than it sounds, he says, if you live in Las Vegas, as he did at the time), intimacy counselor (“those that can’t do, teach,” he says), artist, uranium miner, gardener and garden writer.  He took all the disparate skills suggested by these activities and put them to work in building his hillside garden.

The steep, stony land, a cliff really, behind his and his wife Marisa’s apartment building had gone completely to seed.  Over the last few years Rick has terraced it and built walls of cement and old wine bottles laid on their sides with the bottoms facing out.  Sounds weird, but it’s really pretty and a very clever way to recycle hundreds of wine bottles.  And being a fanciful fellow he has put turrets on the walls.

Rick's garden

This is a view of the right side of the garden.  There are grapes on the right and a big fig tree on the left, with a smaller lemon between them.  There’s a set of steps, invisible in the photo, above the blue car roof.  Above you can see flowers, bean poles, tomato poles and satellite dishes. Just below the uppermost wall there is a very pretty curved arbor with a flowering vine  growing over it.

Rick's garden-1

This is the left, and more recently constructed part of the garden.  More turrets, the big fig, and more poles to support cukes, squash and pumpkins.

Rick's garden-3

This pictures shows the amount of wall building Rick has done, but it’s hard to see the details of the plants.  This is a garden in the true spirit of Italy – there’s not one centimeter wasted, and, best of all, it’s beautiful.  There’s been an addition since I took this photo – up on the top fascia now sits a small, gleaming white greenhouse – heated by manure.  (To read more about Rick and his cliff garden, click here.)

Rick strangles thin air-1

The Animal Fair

02 Saturday May 2009

Posted by in Animals in Italy, Customs, Photographs, Rapallo, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , ,

In the US we are accustomed to  big annual State Fairs.  Held on sites that are specifically designed for the event, complete with permanent buildings for various types of entries, they boast everything from First Aid demonstrations to tractor-pulling contests, from pot-bellied pigs to pots of strawberry jam.  Frequently they are more carnival than agricultural, featuring as many rides, races and vendors as there are prize bulls, perfect pies and large pumpkins.

The American county fairs are much more numerous and much smaller in scale.  For instance, in Connecticut this year there are thirty-two small fairs scheduled, mostly in the autumn.  These fairs emphasize animals and produce, with fewer rides and midways.  One thing that is common to both the large and small fairs in the US is that there is always competition involved: who has the tastiest cream pie?  The largest unblemished tomatoes?  Whose horse can drag the heaviest sledge?

The agricultural fairs here in Italy tend to be more like the county fairs in the US.  They focus on a particular theme and stick pretty close to it.  For instance, we recently attended the Fiere del Bestiame e Agricultura in the Santa Maria section of Rapallo (Animal and Agriculture Fair). the-scene-along-the-river2 It is a small fair, held along the banks of the  Torrente San Maria, and it is always a delight.  The big tree and shrub fair comes to Rapallo in January.  This April fair is for buying chicks, ducks, turkeys, geese, goats and sheep; for buying flower plants; and for dreaming about a new piece of equipment for your farm.  It also gives the local woodsmen a chance to compete in various wood-cutting skills, felling temporary trees and limbing downed trees (this is the only competition I’ve seen at an Italian fair yet).

chain-saw-comp-timber

Like every fair in Italy there are also ‘bancarelle’ (stalls) selling food, fabric, hardware and jewelry.

cheese-for-saleOne of our favorites is the man who sells a sweet wafer from Tuscany.  The machine that makes the wafer is so complex, the product so simple.  It reminds us a bit of an elaborate tortilla-press.  Best of all, the vendor gives samples of his product, a delicate, slightly anise-flavored treat, Tuscany’s sweet answer to the potato chip.

tuscan-sweet-machine

tuscan-sweet-chip

I’m crazy about the animals.  The goats and sheep always look like they’ve just heard a very good joke, but they’re not going to share it with you.

sheep

Some of the chickens look annoyed, especially those wearing feather skirts, and some simply look foolish.  The bunnies are adorable, and are always mobbed by small children who want to pat them.  Baby fowl of all ilk are sweet when they’re fuzzy, yellow and young.  If you’d like to see photos of a few more of the animals, click here and select slide show.  The one picture I wanted and didn’t get was of the bee-hive between two sheets of glass, so you can see the hive being built and all the bees buzzing around.  Come to think of it, I saw a similar display the last time I visited the Addison County Fair in Vermont.  Bloomin’ Onion, anyone?

The final drop…

22 Monday Dec 2008

Posted by in Italy, Liguria, Rapallo, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

,

photo-water-dropThe Water Problem, so movingly and eloquently described here, has been resolved.  I don’t imagine anyone’s particularly happy; we certainly aren’t.  But at least it’s over.

Our lawyer looked at all the documents and told us that we must pay the c. E 2,500 that Acqua Potabili demanded.  Our only remaining recourse is to go to the neighbors for help.

The Captain called A.P. and arranged to have all documents e-mailed to us here in the States.  There will be no second shoe dropping.  The bill we received here covered up to September, when we discovered and corrected the problem.  It began in excess of E 6,000, to which Mr. A.P. applied a bewildering series of reductions to arrive at the E 2,500 figure.

It all has a bit of good-cop bad-cop feel to it.  Bad Cop – “You owe us E 6,000!”  Good Cop – “But you only have to give us E 2,500!”  This, I guess, is meant to make us feel better, and to make up in some way for the appalling lapse of time between meter reads and bills.  But in fact, the bill is about 75 times larger than what we would reasonably expect, and somehow even though A.P. has made big concessions, it just doesn’t feel all that good.

Except for the fact that it’s over.  That part feels just fine.

Italian Water Torture

08 Monday Dec 2008

Posted by in Italy, Liguria, Rapallo, Uncategorized

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

,

s_glass_of_water1

I’ve been putting off writing this account because every time I think about it I want to s-c-r-e-a-m.  I will try to keep it brief, but I shall fail. And before I start on the Tale of Woe, you should know that Italy is justifiably proud of its delivery of excellent public water. They’ve worked hard to see that safe water is universally available, and they’ve done a great job at that.  But.

In September I casually opened our water bill.  It comes twice a year and is usually in the neighborhood of E 30-40.  I almost fainted when I saw the amount due on the new bill: E 3,276.00.  Now I thought I’d seen everything outrageous that Italian utilities could hurl at us when, after five years, the electric company finally took an actual meter reading and sent us a bill in excess of E 800.  But E 3,000?  Surely this was a typo.

It was not a typo.  We had, unbeknownst to us, a leak, a ‘perdita’, from our supply pipe.

geyser1Well, ya big dummies, I hear you thinking – didn’t you even notice the ground was wet or something?  Well, no.  We didn’t.  The black plastic pipe that brings water to our house originates at a ‘contatore’  (a water meter which is also the site of the junction with the water main) about half a kilometer up the road from our house.  It crosses under the road, and then runs down a very steep torrente, a river bed which is usually dry unless there’s been a lot of rain.  The torrente is very narrow and runs between our neighbor Giovanni’s house and the property of other neighbors, the Trattoria Rosa family. It is, by and large, invisible.  The pipe then runs under the road again and then goes underground to arrive at our house.

Neither the Captain nor I was able to scramble up the torrente to look for a pipe problem – it is that steep.  We called our trusty friend Giovanni, the mighty-river1Human Backhoe, the very strong Romanian who has his own building business now.  He arrived in a couple of hours with a wiry young man who was able to climb up the rocky stream bed.

He found that our neighbor Giovanni’s wall had tumbled down into the torrente, breaking and burying our plastic pipe in the process.  Hence the water loss was never visible, nor was there any noticeable decrease in water pressure at the house.

The Water Company (Acque Potabili) has an office in Rapallo which is open three mornings a week, and there you can speak with an actual person.  Unfortunately she was unable to do anything other than give us the fax number for the main office in Torino where she instructed us to send a letter explaining the problem, along with photographs and the Backhoe’s bill (too many Giovanni’s in this story).

That’s right.  Fax number.  Acque Potabili doesn’t give you a phone number until things have become quite desperate. But they will call you, and a very helpful man did call.  What he said amazed us.  Here is the chronology of what happened, as we’ve pieced it together from this conversation:

n.b. Our normal usage for 6 months is +/- 100 cubic meters

Sept. 2007 – we received a normal bill from a normal  Feb. 2007  reading

August 2007 – the meter was read, usage showed 824 cm

Feb. 2008 – we received an ‘estimated’ bill of about E 35, in spite of the fact there  a reading had been made in August 2007

Feb. 2008 – the meter was read, usage showed 767 cm

Sept. 2008 – we received the gigantic bill

In the course of the conversation from Mr. Acque  in Torino Louis learned that, based on our meter readings, our actual bill should be in the neighborhood of E 6,500.  In that conversation Mr. Acque said they would reduce the bill to E 2,500.

We have also been in touch with neighbor Giovanni’s family (he died earlier this year) and they are willing to discuss sharing responsibility with us.  All our Italian friends have said, “But of course, it is the neighbors’ fault. Their wall fell on your pipe.  They should pay.”

Another friend suggested we should charge the water company with threatening our health because the leak was  there for so long that impurities could have entered our water, and they did nothing to notify us.

We have just received news that a telegram arrived this week threatening to turn off the water if the bill is not paid by Dec. 23.  Merry Christmas! At least this time we’ve been given a telephone number and have found their web site with contact information; the Captain will call first thing tomorrow morning. And at least the exchange rate, which was $1.50 = E 1 when the bill arrived has improved to $1.27 = E 1 today. And thank goodness we have a wonderful friend who checks the mail and alerted us to impending trouble.

falls

But still.  Wouldn’t you think a company has some responsibility to bill in a timely fashion, and especially a responsibility to alert a client to a problem?  We thought so, but evidently we were mistaken. (We must be becoming partially Italian since, in this case, ‘timely’ means six months later.)  Think of the water that was wasted, for starters, then think of the size of the bill.  It makes us both groan.  There does not seem to be any board or commission that oversees the operation of monopoly utilities in Italy – at least not one that a consumer has access to.

Me?  I’m waiting for the other shoe to fall.  This big bill was based on a meter reading from February, 2008.  What might the bill of February 2009, based on an August 2008 reading, have in store for us?

Stay tuned!

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

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

,

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.

If you see a path, take it

27 Saturday Sep 2008

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

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

, , ,

Not always good advice, but as often as not it works out well here, so if you’re planning a trip to Italy, be sure to pack your walking shoes.

We used to wonder why so many places in Italy were built in ‘inconvenient’ locations, for example San Fruttuoso, which was once a very important abbey.  Nowadays you can reach it only by boat or on foot.  But of course, we finally realized, in the 1200’s when it was built it was as convenient for it to be there as anywhere else, in fact being on the sea made it more convenient.

Italians are inveterate walkers.  You can be out in the middle of nowhere on some trail that you figure no one has been on for a century; you’ll round a corner, and there will be a middle-aged lady in her straight skirt and high heels walking towards you.  The passagiata is one style of walking, and ‘footing’ along the sentieros is another, slightly more energetic approach. After that I guess you graduate to hiking.  One reason Italians seem so much slimmer and healthier than Americans, I’m sure, is because walking is still central to life here (leaving out the Mediterranean diet for the moment).  In the town where we used to live in the U.S., people routinely drove to the Pharmacy to pick up their newspapers, then got in their cars and drove about 100 yards to the Post Office to pick up mail. The pace of life here accommodates the time it takes to walk in a way that the hurried life in America frequently doesn’t.

Almost every community, certainly every region, has  available maps of the public paths, so it is not difficult to find places to walk.  Not all paths are on these maps, however; there’s no substitute for an ancient neighbor who can tell you which unpromising looking set of steps to take to get someplace quickly. Every place in Italy is connected to every other place by these paths.  Some have been turned into roads since the invention of the automobile, but the shortest distance between two locales is frequently still the ‘sentiero’ – the path.  A good example is the connection between Rapallo and San Maurizio, the frazione where we live.  It’s about 8 kilometers by car, but it is surely not more than 4 or 5 by foot through the woods.  Now that autumn has arrived it is a lovely walk, dry scuffling leaves underfoot and cool breezes off the sea just when you think you’re becoming overheated.

I walked into town yesterday, partly for the sheer pleasure, and partly because my moto was receiving its new back tire.  Here are some photos of the journey.

After leaving our street I walked down this long flight of steps, cutting out 2 switchbacks in the road – isn’t it inviting?

Then I crossed the street and walked down a curving road through a small settlement. Now I know where all the barking we hear comes from. I’ve never seen so many watch dogs.
One house had 3, each fiercer than the last!

Continuing down the hill I arrived at the old mills, which have recently been restored. We’re told there used to be five or six mills in this narrow valley; now there is just this one, but it served double purpose, milling both olives and chestnuts. The old mill wheel between the buildings could be used for both milling operations. Now it is a civic museum and quite interesting to visit.


The stone paths here have always interested me – they’re the devil to walk on because so many of the stones are set end-up rather than flat. I don’t know why, but have decided it was to give better traction to the mules as they made their way up and down these trails loaded with goods.


It was unusually quiet walking down this path. I didn’t hear scooters, or buses honking, or dogs barking, just the occasional bit of birdsong.

You know it’s autumn when you start finding chestnuts on the ground. The ones on the ground now are a bit early; the recent big winds brought them down before they were ripe. The wild boar, cinghiale, love these nuts, so it’s a good idea to keep your eyes and ears open when you’re in the chestnut forest, even though the boars are usually nocturnal.

Amazingly there is a ‘last homely house’ well along this path. I met the woman who lives in it several years ago; she works in the hospital and has (of course!) a lot of dogs. It’s impossible to drive to her home; she parks about a quarter of a mile down the hill and uses this ingenious device to get her goods up to the house – the Modern Mule.

At last I arrived in Rapallo. It took me over an hour to make this walk, but only because I stopped to take so many photos. It was a glorious day to be out and about and hard to find an excuse to be indoors.

But I had to go to driving school…

The Best Thing We Ate This Week – Pompelmo Rosa Gelato

01 Monday Sep 2008

Posted by in Italy, Liguria, People, Rapallo

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

, , ,

Gelato!  Who doesn’t love it?  Why is it so much better than ice cream?  I don’t know, but I suspect the freshness and wholeness of the ingredients have a lot to do with it.

Ms. Adventures in Italy (Sara Rosso) writes a terrific blog which features the always entertaining writing of a young MBA who moved from Silicon Valley to Italy in 2003. She’s an excellent photographer as well; her photos of food will make you drool. Check out her blog here.

One of her fun projects is the Tour del Gelato in which various bloggers in Italy and elsewhere write about the Best Gelaterias they have found.

This week’s Best Thing That We Ate is the Pompelmo Rosa (pink grapefruit) Gelato from the Frigidarium on the Lungomare in Rapallo, which is our entry in the Tour del Gelato.

Chicco (Francesco) Barbetta and his wife Anna make and serve the best gelato I’ve ever eaten in my life. In the background of this photo of the Pompelmo Rosa cone you can see some of the fresh fruits that will soon be in Chicco’s confections. I adore the Pompelmo Rosa – it is both sweet and tart, an identity crisis that is very pleasant on the tongue. It is also not as rich as the creamy flavors. The Captain favors Malaga, which is basically rum-raisin. It’s pretty good, but to me not as good as the divine Pompelmo.

The flavors Chicco and Anna offer may vary, depending on the season, but by and large they have a stable menu.  They also have gelato cakes made on the premises, and other frozen delicacies.  Their little tables with gay blue tablecloths are likely to be filled on a hot, sunny afternoon.

Chicco does not just make gelato – he gives a lot of his time to the Croce Verde, driving patients to doctors’ appointments.  He’s also been known to visit the local golf course where he has earned a low handicap.

I wish I could give you a recipe for today’s Best Food, but I can’t.  You’ll just have to come to Rapallo and visit the Frigidarium and taste for yourself.  Let us know when you’re coming – we’ll meet you there.  There’s never a bad time to eat gelato.

Whose beach is it, anyway??

28 Thursday Aug 2008

Posted by in Italy, Liguria, Rapallo, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

“A man may stand there and put all America behind him.” Henry David Thoreau

He was speaking about the great Outer Beach on Cape Cod, which is now a  national park which includes forty miles of sandy beaches.  That’s right – forty miles.  There is lots of beach access, and if you’re willing to walk for a while you can have a stretch of beach all to yourself.  Even the ‘crowded’ parts of the beach are spacious by Italian standards – if you don’t believe it, check out the Coast Guard Beach webcam here.

If Thoreau were to visit my favorite beach in Paraggi, he might well have written, “A man may stand there and have all of Italy beside him.”  Public beaches in Italy are crowded.  With 5,310 miles of shoreline you might well wonder why. One reason could be that for every Italian there is only .47 feet of shore, whereas each American has 1.58 feet of his shore.  But the real reason is simple: most beaches are not public.

Let me correct that last sentence.  The State owns all the shoreline, and grants access to the public for 3 meters from the water’s edge (tides are not a huge issue here).  But the State also leases most of its beach property past the 3 meter mark to concessionaires who put up hundreds of gaily painted cabanas in which clients may change clothes.  They also cover every square inch of ‘their’ beach with beach beds fitted out with umbrellas.  It’s a wonderful way to go to the beach, if you like lying next to who knows whom and don’t mind paying for the privilege (in Paraggi it’s E30 for one day).  On the other hand, the amount of space given to public beaches is, in many areas, very small, so you will be lying on your own beach towel next to who knows whom anyway, but you’ll be lying on the sand (or stones) without an umbrella, unless you’ve cleverly remembered to bring your own. (It was only recently that a law was passed decreeing that there must be any free public beaches at all.)

In the photo above the public part of the beach is hard to see – it’s between the aqua umbrellas on the right and the almost invisible furled up white umbrellas.  This photo was taken about 8:45 a.m., early by Italian beach standards – but one must go early if one wants a patch of sand.  Here’s the beach an hour later:

Kind of narrow, isn’t it? It’s still early.  In another hour people will be leaving disappointed because there literally won’t be a square inch of space left in which to put one’s fanny.  Meanwhile, the private beaches surrounding this postage stamp are three quarters empty.

We’ve been told that we can put our towels down anywhere in the 3 meter ‘safe zone,’ but we have also been assured that we’ll get some very bad looks.  Anyone who’s received an Italian ‘malocchio‘ knows it’s a good thing to avoid.  Being a feisty American, though, I’m tempted to test the system.

What really seems too bad is that the public’s view of the beach is completely obliterated from the street.  Here is the view from Paragi’s seaside passagiata:

Nice cabana color – but I’d rather see the water!

The sea here is incomparably beautiful, a color somewhere between aqua and emerald, and it is full of little fish that like to show off for snorkelers.  Everything about a visit to the sea is a joy, except for the sitting around on your towel part.  And in fact, even that isn’t so awful once you’re used to it.  In general other beach-goers are respectful of your property and careful not to kick sand on your towel.  And it’s a great way to meet people. Just as everyone shares the narrow roads, they also share the narrow beaches, with a minimum of complaint or pigginess.

Disclaimer:  Paraggi is very beautiful and many people like to go there; other beaches may not be as crowded or be as encumbered with cabanas… but many are.  There are also half-way beaches – they have beds but no cabanas.  We’ve been told one is welcome to sit on the sand at these places, but we haven’t tested the hypothesis yet. We have been guests three or four times at private beaches, and it is wonderfully comfortable to lie on the beds and fun to chat with the neighboring sunbathers.