Vendemia!

10 Thursday Sep 2009

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

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dump 'em

Our cousins invited us to help out at their Vendemia in Piemonte this past weekend, an invitation we eagerly await every year.  The vendemia is the annual grape harvest, and from all reports this is one of the best years ever, in terms of both quantity and quality.  There was lots of rain early in the season, and then it was dry for a couple of weeks, which made the fruit very sweet.

It’s a family affair in a big way.  Our cousins’ extended family includes three generations ranging in age from 17 months to I’m-not-telling (but I would guess early 80’s), probably about 35 people including the children who are too young to pick.

All the grapes are cut from the vine by hand.  Fortunately the vines are well managed, and most of the grapes seem to grow between knee and shoulder height.

cutting grapes

grapes (2)

We put the bunches of grapes in plastic buckets which are then emptied into the bucket loader of a small tractor.

grape ferry (2)

This in turn is dumped into the trailer. With so many willing workers, their vineyard is harvested in about a day and a half. Usually, one of the uncles told me, they collect two medium trailers full of grapes. This year there was a small load, a medium load, and a huge load:

dump 'em (4)

Later in the afternoon the vineyard manager, who takes care of several vineyards in the area, appears with his big tractor and hauls the grapes to the place where they are pressed (in this case Cascina Orsola, some 38 km distant).

tractor (12)

It’s a LOT of work (my estimate is about 250 person-hours) and while everyone loves doing it, they are also very  happy when it’s finished for another year.

Finished! (3)

Then comes one of the highlights of the weekend: the communal meal!  The older generation used to have a fish restaurant in Genova, so the cooking is outstanding.  This year they served us the world’s most delicate and light lasagna, roast beef with drippings, french fries, eggplant  that was lemony and garlicky, fruit, cheese and home-baked cake.

adults eat (2)

There are small and medium-sized family owned vineyards all through this part of Piemonte.  I imagine the scenes above are repeated a hundred-fold at this season, each with a different cast of characters and a slightly different view.  This must have been what farming was like back in the days before agri-business took over, both in the US and here.  It’s refreshing that it still exists.

If what ‘they’ say is true, there will be some superb wines coming from this years’ grapes.  So  Salute!  Cincin!  Bottoms up!

Our Clean House

05 Saturday Sep 2009

Posted by in American habits and customs, Customs, Italian habits and customs, Italian women, Italy, Uncategorized

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cleaningAccording to a 2006 article in the Corriere by Elvira Serra, American women spend an average of 4 hours a week doing housework.  Italian women beat them, hands down. Here are the details:  “80% of Italian women iron everything, including socks and handkerchiefs, 31% have a dishwasher, 2% use scrubbing brushes and 1% have a clothes dryer [Electricity is very costly in Italy, so most people don’t want a clothes dryer]. In the end, Italians devote twenty-one hours a week to household chores, of which five are spent ironing. Cooking is not included in the total.”  So, 21 hours a week for Italian women and 4 for Americans.

These figures don’t tell the whole story, either.  By and large, Italian homes are much smaller than American homes.  The average house size in the U.S. is +/- 2300 square feet.  Here in Italy, the average is 700-1100 square feet.  So Italian women are spending 4 times the hours to take care of half, or less than half, the space.

This got me thinking, of course.  Back when I had a full time job in Connecticut, we hired someone to clean the house.  And wouldn’t you know, Kathy, and later Peg,  came for 4 hours a week and took very good care of our 2700 square foot house.  When we moved to Italy we continued our practice, and Lada cleaned our house for almost four years.  (When her second child arrived, Lada retired… but she worked until 2 weeks before Daniel’s arrival, that’s how great she was.)  Lada worked 4.5 hours a week, and did a terrific job on our 1184 square foot house, but ironing was not included in her job description, just cleaning.

Why does it take so much longer in Italy?  Because in Italy a basic weekly clean includes a lot more than in the States.  In the States the job entailed dusting, vacuuming, cleaning the bathrooms (but not the kitchen – there wasn’t time), and mopping the bathroom and kitchen floors.  When I knew Lada was leaving I watched carefully to learn how to clean in the Italian style.  First she carried all the rugs outside and gave them a good shake, and left them hanging over a railing.  Then she dusted and vacuumed.  In particularly high traffic areas (kitchen, stairs) she first swept, and then vacuumed.  Then she washed all the floors, which meant moving all the light furniture around and then replacing it.  Then she carried the rugs back in and vacuumed them.   The house sparkled.  After Lada retired I took over, and it takes me about 5.5 or 6 hours to do what she did in 4.5.  But I do it all (over two days) because the house looks so nice afterwards.

Mr. CleanAnother big difference between here and there is the number of cleaning products.  (The French gentleman above lives in Italy, too.  Here his name is Mastro Lindo.)  mastrolindoIn the States we used amonia in the water to wash the tile floors, window cleaner for the windows, and, if we were feeling really fancy, some kind of spray on the dust cloths.  We also had special polish for the wooden furniture, which we polished once or twice a year.  Here there is an endless parade of cleaning products, each aimed at a very specific task – one to clean porcelain basins, another to clean tile floors and walls, another to clean stone, another to clean wooden floors, polish for furniture, window cleaners, anti-calcium cleaners (liquid for topical use, powder to add to the clothes washer) – it’s quite confusing to know exactly what to get. (According to the Corriere article, when Unilever tried to market a one-cleaner-does-it-all product it was a complete flop.)  In desperation I’ve begun to make some of my own cleansers, but just the basic ones.  I’m an American cleaner after all, it seems, a 4-hour a week girl.  Even without another job I can’t imagine spending 21 hours a week on household chores.  Nor can I imagine ironing the Captain’s socks!

Why do Italian women spend so much time cleaning?  The Corriere article answers:  “Perhaps a British poll can throw some light on the issue. The Discovery Channel Home and Health website asked 2,000 women aged from 18 to 80:  59% said that cleaning their homes made them feel in control of their own lives and 60% found housework “mentally therapeutic”.”  Well, there is a certain zen-like monotony to house cleaning – you do the same old things in the same old way every week, and then you get to do it again the next week and the next.  I guess that’s therapy of a sort.  Me?  I’d rather take my therapy in a swimming pool, at the gym or, better yet, at the dining table!

The Best Thing We Ate This Week – Melanzane alla Parmigiana

31 Monday Aug 2009

Posted by in Food, Italian recipes, Uncategorized

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antipasti

Our new friends G and G invited us to dinner the other night, along with a group of others from our palestra (gym).  What a meal we had!  Giorgio, it turns out, is a superb cook.  For antipasti (pictured above) he served grilled zucchini, onion focaccia, bagna cauda and melanzane alla parmigiana (front left in the photo).  I’ve never been a huge fan of what I think of as ‘eggplant parmesan,’ but Giorgio made his in the form of a light and delicate torta.  There was not an excess of heavily spiced sauce, or great long strings of melted mozzarella, both of which are great in the right places but better omitted here.  No, this was flavorful, but not at all heavy.  In fact, it was so good that it got the nod for The Best Thing We Ate This Week.  Giorgio has been kind enough to share the recipe, which you can find here, or over on the right under Good Recipes.

In the Old Way

27 Thursday Aug 2009

Posted by in Italian habits and customs, Italian men, Italian women, People, Uncategorized

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Our neighbors down the street still cook with wood, and, we suspect, heat their home with it as well. Their chimney tells the tale, no matter how warm the day.  Even this week, with temperatures at 37 C,  brushing 100 F, the mid-day smoke has appeared.

cooking with wood-1

We don’t know these neighbors, but every now and then we see them. She is elderly and plump and wears long skirts and a wary expression. He motors ever so slowly up and down the hill in his aged ape, frequently carrying  precariously balanced  fruit boxes with him, fuel for the stove. Where does he get them? I wish I could ask him, but they seem wary of strangers, and to them I suspect we are the strangest of the strange.

Other neighbors farther down the street seem to be laying in a good store of wood for the winter ahead. At least we are unable to think of any other reason for this massive collection of wooden pallets.

wood pallettes-2

I can’t imagine having to struggle up the narrow stone stairs on the left to carry fuel to my home (if, in fact, the collector lives up there). In fact, I can’t imagine cooking and heating using fruit boxes and wooden pallets for fuel. But our neighbors do it, and I admire them for it – no doubt it’s the way people cooked for years, using whatever fuel was readily at hand.  What a great way to recycle what otherwise might end up in the dump.

A Disturbing Sight

22 Saturday Aug 2009

Posted by in Customs, Uncategorized

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There’s a big curve on our road where the pavement widens and there’s a pull-off. When we first moved here it was a favorite dumping spot for all manner of junk – construction detritus, old appliances, anything big, clunky and inconvenient. More recently, though, it has become a place where cars mysteriously appear, and then disappear. We’ve long thought that they were stolen cars that were left on the curve and which the police then hauled away.

Then this summer a blue Fiat wagon appeared regularly, most frequently on weekends  Why?  We surmised that someone who came and went from Rapallo felt he found a good temporary parking spot.  If so, he will have changed his mind.

burned car

This is what the car looks like now.  Someone, or more likely several someones, had a little fun with matches.  I find this terribly disturbing on two counts.  First, the wanton destruction of valuable property is so wasteful.  It is also a violent expression of… of what? of something very distressing.  Anger?  Antipathy? Boredom? Insanity?  Who knows?  I can’t imagine burning up a car for pleasure, for vendetta or for any other reason.  It has stood on the corner for about a month now, a mute testament to the destructive urges of some Rapallini.  Why it hasn’t yet been towed I can’t imagine.

burned car front seat

The second reason it is all so distressing is that this particular curve has become a memorial site.  About two years ago an 18 year old boy named Matteo Vincenzo Vitale had a bit too much to drink and drove his motorcycle smack into the stone wall at the side of the curve.  His friends and family have created, and still maintain, a little shrine to him there.

Teo's memorial

The paint is fading and his sports shirt is the worse from being out in the elements, but someone replaces the flowers regularly.  To see the burnt hulk of the Fiat adjacent to where Teo met his own violent end is just overwhelmingly sad.  It shows an ugly lack of respect, not only for the property destroyed, but for the meaning that the place has to others.  It’s just a pity.

L’ICI

17 Monday Aug 2009

Posted by in Italian bureaucracy, Italy, Law and order, Rapallo, Uncategorized

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So, what did you think when you read the title ‘L’ICI?  Lice?  Itch?  Well, in a way both are correct, since  L’ICI (pronounced leach’-eee) has been a pesky little problem that’s been driving us nuts.

Rapallo coat of arms

The ICI (eetchy!) is Italy’s real estate tax.  We’ve always been thrilled at how small it is compared to what we’re accustomed to paying in the U.S., where such taxes generally pay for public education.  I’m not sure what the ICI pays for here – it is a tax imposed by the commune (the town), and is used for ‘services.’  It seems to me that we are already taxed for just about every service we receive (garbage, TV, etc.), but I digress.

When we first bought our house we went to the Tribute Office where such things are paid, and asked how much we owed.  Perish the thought that a taxing body should actually prepare and send a bill!  No.  It is up to the tax-payer to a) know that there is a tax due, b) know how much it is and c) know where, when and how to pay it.  Okay.  We can and have learned this stuff, and keep a careful calendar so we won’t miss any payments.  The trick we never mastered was knowing how much to pay, so each year we went to the office and they were nice enough to tell us.  Sort of.

Last year we received a certified letter that we had to pick up an important document at the Tribute.  It turned out that since 2002 we had been paying an incorrect amount, on two counts.  First, we were paying as if our house were still a rustico instead of a restructured habitation (in spite of the fact that our geometra filed the correct forms informing the commune of the change) and second, only the Captain’s share of the tax had been paid, and that was only half of what was owed.  So we owed in excess of E 800.  They were nice enough to understand that these were honest mistakes (and not just ours), so the accrued penalties and interest were set aside.  Grudgingly we paid – yet another unexpected and large expense.  We still don’t understand why the office didn’t give us the correct amounts due each year when we trudged in to ask.

L’ICI for primary homes was abolished beginning last year (thank you, Mr. Berlusconi), which means we no longer pay.  Only businesses and those who own more than one home now have to pay.  But the ICI wasn’t finished with us, not yet.  We received a note this year telling us that we had not paid for 2002.  We hauled out the many forms and receipts left over from last year’s adventure and discovered that in fact we had nothing to show we’d paid more than the original incorrect amount in 2002.  So back the Captain went to the Tribute Office, gathered all the materials and, once again, we will be making an unexpected tax payment.

We shouldn’t complain, I suppose.  It is still way, way less than Americans pay annually in property taxes.  It’s just the inefficiency of it all that drives us crazy.  They probably never would have cottoned to the errors if the tax on primary residence hadn’t been abolished, but now I guess the workers in the Tribute office have time on their hands.

This should be the end of our ICI Adventure, but you just never know in Italy.  These things have a strange way of being resurrected at the most inopportune times.

Chivalry – still alive and well in Rapallo

13 Thursday Aug 2009

Posted by in Italian men, Rapallo

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On Tuesday Flavio restored my flagging faith in mankind:

Flavio

I had just done a great big shopping at one of the local supermarkets.  It seemed like the day to buy everything heavy: 20 lbs of kitty litter, 6 liters of water, a dozen cans of beer, plus the usual foodstuffs.  Having gotten it all stowed in my trusty scooter, I started her up and motored about 50 feet.  Cough, cough, splutter, ominous silence.  Poor old scooter just flat out quit.  Flavio and one of his friends were across the street and watched as I fruitlessly tried to get the darn thing started again.  An old gent in a stylish fedora sporting bermuda shorts and an ace-bandaged ankle walked by and advised in passing, “spegna le luce, signora” – turn off the lights, which I did.

In frustration I parked the scoots and began weighing my options.  The Captain was engaged and I didn’t want to disrupt what he was doing.  It was, by this time, almost 1 p.m., and our scooter guy, Simone, would have gone home for lunch.  I was just about to head off to my friend Madelena’s paneficio to throw myself on her mercy when Flavio and his friend crossed the street and started tinkering.  They spent half an hour working on the scooter, to no avail.  They opined, and were later proved right, that I needed a new spark plug (‘candele’ in Italian – lovely word).

I was feverishly re-weighing options (by now Madelena would’ve gone home for mid-day) when Flavio asked where I lived.  I told him San Maurizio di Monti, and without a moment’s hesitation he offered to take me home.  “Oh no,” I replied, “It’s too far – 8 or 10 kilometers.”  He answered with a shrug and some words which I took to mean, “No problem.”

So he stowed all the groceries under his seat, and I hopped on the back of the big Burgman 400 and enjoyed a smooth and stately ride home.  It was such a nice thing to do!   How to say thanks?  I offered lunch at Rosa’s across the street, but he declined, got on his scooter and drove back down the mountain.

I don’t know anything about this man except that he’s one of Rapallo’s gentlemen, and he did me a truly nice turn that day.  I hope I can find him – we’ve got a bottle of wine with his name on it.  Thank you, Flavio!

Tom-Toms

09 Sunday Aug 2009

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No, jungle drums aren’t talking – it’s the tomatoes out in the garden and they’re yelling to be picked.  The ripening started a few weeks ago, one here, one there, then a few more; now we have the full chorus, fortissimo, and we can barely keep up.  The Captain has already started canning what we can’t eat.

In addition to his delicious canned sauce, he makes a couple of things with fresh tomatoes that are quick, easy and a joy to eat: insalata caprese:

insalata caprese

and pasta with a fabulous fresh tomato and herb sauce, about which I wrote a year ago:

pasta fresh tom sauce

The Caprese makes great use of fresh basil, which has also been growing like mad in pots on the terrace (much happier in pots than in the garden).  Which brings to mind another of the Captain’s quick and easy summer treats: the bruschetta that he learned to make from his Sicilian mother:

bruchetti

Recipes for the three dishes above can be found here, here and here and over on the right under ‘Good Recipes’.

Here’s one of my very favorite summer treatments for tomatoes:  go out to the garden with a paring knife and a salt shaker.  Find the plumpest, ripest tomato you can and pick it.  Cut it in half, salt liberally, and eat it right there in the garden.  This is best done on a hot day when the tomato has been gently heated by the sun.  Yum.  Summer tomatoes and basil.  What could be more delicious?

Surf’s Up – Ligurian Style

04 Tuesday Aug 2009

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Surf's up Paraggi-1

Some stormy weather brushed past Liguria a few days ago giving us what passes for big surf here.  This pair of hearty souls got out the surfing kayak and rode the big ones.

In fairness I have to say that  in fine weather there are bigger waves in the open sea. The photo above was taken in the protected bay at Paraggi where of course the waves are smaller.  Here’s a photo that a man named Elio from near Torino took of a surfer down at Levanto:

levanto surfer (Elio from near Torino)

And when there’s a storm, watch out!  Camogli, on the other side of the peninsula from Paraggi, gets hit hard from time to time, as you can see in this photo by G. Ron:

Camogli storm by G Ron

So, laugh at the little waves in Paraggi if you must (I do)… but respect what they become when they’re all grown up and angry!

Fire!

31 Friday Jul 2009

Posted by in Crime, Uncategorized

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4 a.m.  Not the hour at which you want to wake up smelling smoke.

Two nights ago that’s exactly what happened though.  At first I thought, Oh, those wild and crazy neighbors have decided to burn in the middle of the night.  A cursory check, though, suggested that this was not true.  There’s not a lot of light at 4 a.m., but there was enough to see that there was a large cloud of smoke trapped by the still air hanging over our whole valley and that it wasn’t coming either from our neighbors’ houses or from ours.

The next morning all of Rapallo was under a blanket of smoke and we had scratchy throats:

Rapallo in smoke

The beautiful yellow Canadair fire fighting plane arrived first thing, and spent the entire morning flying from the fire to the sea and back again to dump a load of water.  It’s hard to see the plane in this photo, but you can see the reddish spray of the water it has just released.  The water isn’t red – that’s a trick the morning light played on my camera:

Canadair

(Here’s a video of a Canadair dumping water on a fire at the Istanbul Airport.)

To fight this particular fire, which was on the next hill over from our valley, the planes approached from the north,

Canadair-4

made a steep bank, and disappeared behind the hill.  Very fancy flying.  This looks like it couldn’t possibly end well:

Canadair-8

but in fact there were no big crashes.  It is mesmerizing to watch the planes coming and going, a round trip they were making in about six minutes for this fire.  And it’s hard to imagine what skill it must require to fly like this.

I went down to the Port later in the morning to see what it all looked like from there.  There was smoke everywhere:

Canadair in smoky Rapallo

And yes!  There’s the brave little plane flying back to the fire.  They wasted no time getting to the water, dropping down right over the port and then scooping it up.

Canadair flying low over port-3

Anita, of GPL fame, lives in Zoagli and took this terrific photograph of the plane picking up the water (thanks for letting me use this, Anita!):

DSCN1769[1]

Someone should write a children’s book about these adorable planes – The Little Plane that Could (move over, Little Engine)!  I know there’s nothing cute about what they’re doing, or why they have to do it, but the size, shape and color of the planes is just plain appealing.

Il Secolo XIX reported the next day that there were ten fires set on Montepegli behind Rapallo; boys on motor scooters were seen in the area at the time, and the police are investigating with great seriousness.  We were all lucky.  There was no wind, so though the fires burned 8 hectares (24 acres), the nearby homes on Montepegli were not threatened and residents didn’t have to evacuate.

And you know what’s really crazy?  At least two people in Rapallo woke up that morning and said to themselves, ‘Hey! Great day for a fire!’

Smokey Rapallo 2 firesA

Go figure.