Category Archives: Rapallo

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

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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.

Can you hear me now??

05 Tuesday Aug 2008

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Writer Michael Grant, whose blog I enjoy a great deal (he’s so cranky!) recently wrote about Italian inefficiency, especially as exemplified in the loooong mid-day break for lunch and whatever.  He observed that Italians rarely take the shortest route between Points A and B.

I have to disagree.  It’s not mainly inefficiency that slows everything in Italy to a creeping crawl.  It’s over-regulation, too much bureaucracy, and an unwillingness to let people act on their own initiative.  I can think of many illustrations of this, but here’s a recent one:

Oh, the things we take for granted! For instance, having a telephone which doesn’t sound like your callers are trying to reach you from the dark side of the moon. Lately this is what all our hard-line phone calls have sounded like:

Us: Pronto!

Caller: snap, chhhhhh, bzzt, hissssss, crack, pip, bzzt ffftttttccccch

Us: Pronto, pronto, we’re having phone trouble, can you speak up?

Caller: Crzzzzk grack, snfffff, zzzzt bfft gritz hsssss. beep beep beep.

The last three recognizable sounds are used by Telecom Italia to inform you that your call has been terminated.

The problem started almost (sit down) two months ago when the Captain was at home alone. Being a sensible and intelligent man he immediately called the phone company. They were not very sympathetic; they barked at the Captain for not having put filters on our two telephones: of course we were having trouble, how stupid could we be (never mind that everything has worked very well for five years).

Of course the filters did nothing, so again the Captain called Telecom, and this being Italy a technician moseyed on over a few days later. He opened a box, found a junction thingy (technical term) and a lot of mud. He removed the latter, replaced the former and declared us back in business.

Except we weren’t. Things were slightly worse. About the time I got home the second technician moseyed on over and crawled around on the floor under the computer (had to try again with those pesky filters – they didn’t work for him either). He then went down to an inside junction box, disconnected and reconnected a lot of wires, declared himself puzzled but confident the problem was solved, and left. Not only was the initial problem unsolved, but we were now without internet access!

Again we approached the Telecom altar, penitent and hopeful – and maybe just a little irritated. How is it they can make us feel that it’s our fault? But they do. This time the high priest was sent with an acolyte. In no time at all he found the wire his colleague had left unconnected, and we were on line again. Phew!

They went back to the outside junction, plugged our wires into a magic box. “Look!” the older one said, showing us a confusing array of numbers on his device. “The problem lies within 50 meters of the house.” Well, pretty much everything lies within 50 meters of the house, but never mind. He further said that it was not a Telecom problem but a problem that would require our electrician. Clearly our outside wires were at fault. He, at least, seemed to know what he was talking about. It’s amazing what a confident air and a magic black box can do for a person.

We summoned Enzo the Electrician, who arrived with his nephew. He looked at everything everyone else had already looked at and declared that the phone wires were not where they should be and that we would have to dig to find them, and then probably replace them.

The Captain’s trench-digging days are happily behind him, so we summoned the Human Backhoe, Giovanni, the Romanian powerhouse who has done more work around here than I can say (it was he, when we moved in, who blithely put a queen-size wooden futon on his back and carried it down 40 steps to the house.  Here he is, waving cheerfully).   He sent  a recently arrived Romanian buddy who brought along his girlfriend, because she speaks Italian.

Turns out this fellow knew something about wires, so he looked at everything everyone else had already looked at.  Then he (and the translator) dug a pair of small trenches, one near the parking platform (under which the phone line passes, we learned to our horror) and one near the house.  He, at least, figured out, with the help of a plan the Captain drew some years ago, where the wires were.

Now we had no telephone and two big holes.

Again, yesterday, Louis called Telecom.  At last, at LAST, two technicians arrived today with some scissors and a big spool of phone line.  They removed a long section of wire off our property and replaced it.  They put a junction box in a sensible place.  The whole operation took an hour.  Our phone is fine now.

Don’t you wonder what the problem was?  Turns out the sheathing had been removed from a section of wires and the wires were touching and making all the static.  Who removed the sheathing?  A RAT.  They like to eat the plastic in the winter.  No accounting for taste, is there?

So to get back to Michael Grant and his points A and B – the Italians will also go from A to B, albeit at a more leisurely pace than an American.  The real problem arises when you are trying to get from point A to point F.  In America the first phone repair guy (point A) would’ve looked around the rural area where we live and said to himself, “Well, I bet its them dang rats again,” pulled out his scissors, and corrected the problem (point F) on his first visit.  But here in Italy there is a protocol to get to point F; in this case it involved filters (point B), an inexperienced technician in the house (point C), another Telecom visit (point D), a licensed Italian electrician (point E) and finally the experienced guy who said, “Oh yeah, probably rats. Let’s fix it.” (I’ve left out the Romanian episodes because we added those on our own; maybe we’re becoming Italian after all!).

If Italy ever wants to become more efficient (and I’m not sure it does) or at least more productive, it will be necessary to cut miles and miles of red tape and allow smart people to use their wits to solve problems.

The passeggiata

25 Friday Jul 2008

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The passagiata on Via Mazzini

The passeggiata on Via Mazzini

The passeggiata is a central feature of afternoon life in Italy. Literally the passeggiata (pass-ah-jah’-tah) is the stroll that many Italians take between the hours of 4 and 6 p.m.

There is more to it than exercise. Italians gather together to talk, frequently, endlessly. If you could put a sound meter on the country, you would hear a constant undercurrent of conversation, a sea of noise that reaches high tide about 5 p.m. I once asked the Captain, “What do they talk about all the time?” He replied, “Food, family,” to which I would add also weather, politics and some good general gossip.

In Rapallo the passeggiata proper occurs on two streets: Via Mazzini (a pedestrian shopping street) for the young people, and along the Lungomare for the older people who, it must be said, frequently take their passeggiata sitting down on a bench. In passeggiata people amble along, looking and being looked at, stopping to speak to acquaintances or to admire a new baby in a stroller.

Passeggiata on the Lungomare

Passeggiata on the Lungomare

The passeggiata gives you an opportunity to strut your stuff, and to check out what everyone else is wearing. It gives you an opportunity to see your neighbors, see if they look well or poorly, see who has a new frock, a new dog (a popular accessory in Rapallo), or new tattoos.

So much of life in Italy is lived outside. The weather co-operates, of course, especially in a seaside town like Rapallo. But the passeggiata takes place in every town, every day (unless it’s raining of course; you wouldn’t want to melt, would you??). Living quarters tend to be small, so it’s very pleasant to take oneself out to the larger world, and all the more pleasant if you find a friend with whom to walk arm-in-arm down the Lungomare, admiring or dissing all the others, and catching up on the local news of the day.

Public Gardens and Parks in Paradise

20 Sunday Jul 2008

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Being a tourist town, Rapallo has a vested interest in looking pretty, and pretty it is, especially the parts of town most frequented by visitors.  I took some photos of the gardens to show you (earlier in the summer, as a matter of fact).  You’ll find them here or over on the right under photographs (Rapallo Gardens).  When you click on the link you’ll find yourself on a Picasa page; I suggest choosing the slide show.

Each season the various beds are replanted with appropriate flowers.  In  Winter it’s cyclamen, in the Spring pansies, and so forth.  Even the smallest traffic circle has a little bed of flowers around the familiar blue sign with white arrows.

Rapallo has a large park which includes a play area for children, a mini-golf (!) and the public library (Biblioteca Internationale: books in Italian, French, German and English).  There are lovely gardens all through this park.  There are at least two other parks for children, one with a pint-sized train that toot-toots around the perimeter.  There is another park near an elementary school which is largely cement, but has the advantage of having a basketball court.

Upon entering Rapallo from the Autostrada the first thing you see is an island garden, lately with a desert theme.  It has sprouted almost as many signs as cacti, but is attractive none the less.  As an aside, in the photo of this garden take a look at the traffic coming into town – a Friday afternoon in July is not the optimum time to arrive in Rapallo by car.

The area between the Lungomare and the street that borders it is planted with cactus, palm trees (festooned with lights at Christmas) and low flowers.  The benches along the edge of the gardens are always filled to capacity with ancient Rapallesi.

The Whimsicality Prize has to go to a small garden at the end of Via Marsalla.  It boasts two kayaks that have been painted yellow and white and filled with flowers.  It is about the silliest thing I’ve ever seen.

If the Polipo Fountain is the sculptural mascot of Rapallo (it is), the living mascots have certainly got to be the ducks.  There are zillions of them, some right at the shore, many more in the various rivers that empty into the Gulf.  The greatest number of them are mallards, but there are some large white ducks as well. And as if the city were running a genetics experiment, there are several pockets of very confusing looking ducks which are neither one species nor another, but are greatly speckled and strange.  The Rapallesi love their ducks; it’s not unusual to see someone with a huge sack hanging over the San Francesco Torrente tossing bread bits to the ducks below.  And oh my, in spring when the babies are born everyone keeps track of the number of chicks in each clutch and tallies the survivors weekly.

The ducks are amusing, especially when they turn up where you don’t expect them – walking along the top of a wall, for instance, or trying to enter a shop (this is where I won’t tell you the duck-in-store groaner with the punch line, “Oh I’ll just put it on my bill”) (oh all right, I’ll tell you: the duck walks into the Norfolk Pharmacy and asks for ChapStick.  Ever helpful Kevin supplies same and asks, “will that be cash or charge?” and the duck replies… but you know what the duck replies.)  Their quacking is one of Rapallo’s background noises; why is it that ducks quacking sound so officious?

What the ducks have to do with the gardens, I can’t say, certainly they are not frequent garden visitors.  They are both prominent features of the shore area, though, so they’ve ended up together here.

There are other gardens in Rapallo which I haven’t photographed or mentioned, for example the Verdi garden, where the famous Wall of the Partigiani is, and where a very interesting dog show was held last year for both pure-breeds and what the Italians gallantly call Fantasie (or less gallantly, Bastardi), which is what you and I call mutts.  The gardens and parks of Rapallo are lovely to look at, but above all they are put to great use, both casually by individuals and in an organized way for events.  Whether it is the above mentioned dog show, or movies and shows behind the Library, there is frequently something going on in one of the park areas of the town.  It’s very satisfying in a Yankee kind of way to see space not only made beautiful, but also put to good use.  Take a look at the pictures…

PS  There are two new recipes today, too – Clafoutis (no kidding, that’s what it’s called!): if you like custard and fruit you will love Clafoutis; it’s easy and yummy.  The Sicilian salad is made from oranges and onions; again, really easy, and quite beautiful as well.

Festa!

06 Sunday Jul 2008

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 Every Italian town and village has an annual festa in honor of its saint.  Here in San Maurizio di Monti they celebrate the eponymous saint every autumn, taking his plaster image from the church and giving him an airing in a solemn procession with prayers, dreadful through a loud-speaker, along the main road.  (San Maurizio is one of eight frazione, or administrative appendages, of Rapallo.)

Rapallo proper requires three days for its celebration.  The reason is that the Virgin Mary visited Rapallo once upon a time, and the miracles that have accrued (and continue to accrue?) require more than the usual amount of celebration. (For a brief account of the miraculous origin of the Sanctuary see the link to the right, “The peasant, the virgin, etc.” under Elaborations in Pages.  It is a story that demands a touch of humor; parts of it may tax your credibility.)

For several weeks before the Big Festa, July 1, 2 and 3, pilgrims daily make their way by foot from Rapallo to Montallegro, carrying candles and singing in the early dawn.  It is haunting to hear wisps of hymns drift over the brow of the hill in the barely-there light of 4 a.m.

On the night of July third there is a big parade with all the special ‘parade crosses’ from the region participating.  There are white Christs, black Christs, tinsel galore, and colorful costumes.  The men who carry the crosses wear specially designed belts with a pouch to take the base of the heavy crucifix.  They stagger along balancing the crosses against their chests without using their hands.

It wouldn’t be Italy without the politicians getting into it – all the town fathers march in the parade, easily identifiable because they are the only people in town wearing suits.

Rapallo has six sestiere, or districts, all of which compete in the annual fireworks extravaganza.  Two sestiere set off their displays on each of the three nights of the festa.   The event draws large crowds which line the Lungomare waiting for the climax: the ‘burning’ of the castello.  The castle is outlined in white flares which give it the appearance of being composed entirely of fire. 

At this year’s parade 30,000 viewers were expected, and there were 300 policemen on duty, many borrowed from nearby cities. You don’t want to try to drive through Rapallo on the night of July 3.

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!