Casalinga

Absolutely nothing makes me feel more like an italian casalinga (housewife) than hanging my laundry out the window to dry.   I learned to hang laundry when I was a child on the farm where, in summer, it dried to a stiff crunch and exuded a glorious smell when taken down.  Some of us still prefer that experience even in the days of dryers, but I must confess that, at home, I often take the easy route to dry clothes.  

There is an art to this particular method of hanging the clothes, however, because the trick is not to drip water excessively on the floor inside and not to drop the garment down into someone else's courtyard two stories below.  This, of course, must be done while stretching as far as possible out the window to put that last pin on the shirt.  My safety net is to put one pin on the garment anywhere to secure it on the line.  Then I mess with it to straighten out the lapels and pockets.  Also, sometimes I go back to it after it has partially dried and rehang it after straightening out some of the wrinkles that my faulty hanging has created.  And then the ultimate reality is there - everyone in the court can see not only what I wear, but how I hang it to dry.  Is it just a slovenly hit or miss job, or am I worthy of the title casalinga of the laundry?  Do they care?  I'm sure not.  But I do.

Fare Una Passeggiata

Rick Steves calls Florence "a renaissance treadmill" because it is definitely a walking town.  Everything is easier and faster to get to by foot than by bus.  And, although, I see them, I don't see anyone using taxis.  But I can't treat walking here like a treadmill for several reasons:  first of all, if I don't watch where I am going, I will trip on a cobblestone, or rock, or crack in the sidewalk, or I will be run over by a bike, a vespa type vehicle, or a car, or another pedestrian; secondly, half the time I am not walking on the sidewalk because either a car is parked with two wheels on the sidewalk and there is no room left, a bike or vespa is parked there, people are walking two abreast on a narrow sidewalk, or people are walking too slowly or standing in the middle of the sidewalk consulting their map or talking with their group, oblivious to the fact that the sidewalk is primarily for walking and that it needs to be shared.

But the main reason walking in Florence is not a treadmill is that it definitely is not boring.  I have been wearing a pedometer while here and though I have not had it on every minute while walking, it pretty accurately reflects the distance I have covered on my feet.  Last Thursday I passed 100 kilometers and am starting over.  And I have to say that just about every one of those steps has taken me by something interesting.  Down our narrow little street is a Gucci store.  Who would know?  Its wrought gate and brightly lit interior are tucked deep into the bowels of the building so that you only see in when you are directly in front of it.  There is also a very discreet brass sign on the building.  But the most interesting thing is that there are always a few employees - all in black; all very thin; and mostly twenty-something - out in our street smoking.

Window shopping in Florence is an incredible experience.  On our walk to the train station (usually early in the morning or late at night), we walk past at least a dozen stores that bear the names that we know in european fashion - Hermes, Bulgari, Versace and Armani - to name only a few, and others that I have never heard of.  Some have prices discreetly printed on a card in the corner, but it seems pretty much like "if you have to ask, you can't afford it," and, of course, that's true; most of the windows also contain a sign saying, "No Pictures."  Two weeks ago, everything seemed to be white and warm beige - mostly linen - for both men and women, occasionally punctuated by a bright print dress.  And, of course, the shoes are gloriously outrageous - a few straps, or, in one case, zippers wrapped artfully around the foot and then placed atop a 4 or 5 inch stilleto or wedgie.  But when we walked to the station yesterday morning, most of the windows had changed and were showing fall stuff.  Now everything seems to be a combination of black and brown with half boots and scarves and Issey Miyake type coats with folds of grey-brown fabric, both knit and woven, draping everywhere.  Some of the clothing looks almost like World War I seriousness - a dark blue uniform-like suit - buttoned up tight - no flirtatious peplum or decolletage to break the "I mean business" look.  And the shoes are (gasp!) sensible with a capital "s."  Some of the dresses look as though they came out of Jackie Kennedy's 1961 closet - a straight sheath made of gorgeous fabric, some of it not so discreetly embellished with sequins and beads or with a panel of ornate fabric in the same color.  I was grateful that it was early morning because it has been in the mid nineties here and looking at the styles in the heat of the day would, to me, have been painful.  I was also grateful for the Hermes windows that were still showing crisp white linen worn with various shades of orange, and for Pucci whose prints are still unique despite all the zillions of copies we have seen in the last 40 years.

Last Wednesday night we went to see the Tuscany Opera Company production of Il Barbiere di Siviglia.  It was outdoors in the Giardino Boboli, the huge formal gardens behind the Pitti Palace.  They erected metal grandstand seating, so the crowd noise clomping up and down the metal stairs before and after the performance and during intermission was very different from the carpeted hush of your usual opera house.  It was a gorgeous evening (as most are here); we had center seats that were not particularly comfortable, the arena was not very large, so it was easy to see and hear; it was well sung with a lot of nice comic business, no super or sub titles, and we could understand a lot of the words, something I've never tried to do before.  So I guess some of the italian is beginning to sink in (though I don't think I will ever use the right preposition).  And what a pleasure to walk home after in the soft still warm air.

Our time here is winding down - only one more week, and still much to do.

Ciao for now. 

Provence

Once we arrived at the station in Les Arcs and our friends took us through their village and to their house, surrender was inevitable.  These are old friends who have realized their dream of retiring to the south of France.  They live about 1 kilometer out of a small village that is still almost entirely French, unlike their previous home that was near a village where almost 20% of the permanent residents are now non-French.  The terrain is craggy with many outcroppings of limestone; the village is made up almost entirely of the same stone which has a soft pink cast to it unlike the chalky white of the limestone at home.  Their property is on the top of a hill that on one side has a sheer drop of about 50 feet.  It was hot, but their house and terrace have several places to which one can navigate to keep reasonably cool.  And then there is always the pool (see slideshow).  

We went into the village that evening because there were supposed to be several musical performances.  Like small towns everywhere, the French villages are trying very hard to maintain the village without destroying its authenticity, so there are "events" of all sorts.  Their village had a ruined chateau that some hotel group wanted to buy and make into a combination hotel/condo.  The mayor and others said, "no," and, instead, they managed to get government money to build low income housing in the village and to restore the chateau which is now used for public and private events.  We almost crashed a wedding reception, but managed to skirt the edges without making fools of ourselves.  The wedding party later drove through town in a honking procession, the bride and groom standing in a lavender (yes, that's right) Deux Cheveaux.  The music turned out to be a rock and roll group that had a pretty good guitarist and a drumming group that appeared to be like the amateur drumming groups everywhere - more fun for the participants than the listener.

On Sunday, we went to market and to lunch (see slideshow), then home to a nap and a swim and a late dinner.  Somehow it truly feels like the way to live.  Up early to catch the first of several trains back to Florence.

Assistenzi Clienti

It took us nine trains to get from Florence to Les Arcs Draguign, our destination in southern France, and back to Florence.  That's not the remarkable part.  The remarkable part it that out of those nine trains, only two arrived at our destination on time and those were both in France!  Because of this, when we arrived at a station, we were constantly standing in the line at the Assistenzi Clienti (Customer Care) so that we could get a note, a stamp, a scribble or something that would allow us to take a later train without paying.  No explanation was given for the lateness, but I have a feeling that much of it had to do with the fact that Italian trainworkers strike on a regular basis or stage a "slow down," and part of it is due to the fact that Italy lost to Spain in the soccer playoffs.

But I have to say that Assistenzi Clienti was right up there.  I think it has to be because they get a lot of practice.

Ciao

Without Baedeker Continued

I felt a lot like Lucy Honeychurch when we went into Santa Croce without any guide to what was there to see.  Sometimes I think that I get so guidebook dependent that I fail to truly enjoy just being in a place, so I did not read up on Santa Croce except that I knew that the Pazzi Chapel is reputed to be designed by Brunelleschi, the same man who designed the Duomo.  

"Of course, it must be a wonderful building.  But how like a barn!  And how very cold!  Of course, it contained frescoes by Giotto, in the presence of whose tactile values she was capable of feeling what was proper.  But who was to tell her which they were?  She walked about disdainfully, unwilling to be enthusiastic over monuments of uncertain authorship or date.  There was no one even to tell her which, of all the sepulchral slabs that paved the nave and transcripts, was the one that was really beautiful, the one that had been most praised by Mr. Ruskin.  Then the pernicious charm of Italy worked on her, and, instead of acquiring information, she began to be happy."

It's easy to surrender to that charm and just let things be.  And I have to say that the cold of the church was quite welcome because summer has decided to come to Florence - hot and humid.  And since we are in school all morning, we cannot do things in the cool of the day unless we wait until evening; that limits our time too much, so we are out in the afternoon sun.  Today the nave is filled with scaffolding and men are going up and down in elevators, drilling and cutting things with power tools.  But, isn't that part of the contemporary scene in every major city where they are trying to preserve the old by using new tools and techniques?  We see it all over Florence.  In the Bargello, they are scanning the Donatello's bronze David as he lies face down in a tent erected in the center of the room, so that he can be properly cleaned without destroying the good patina with the bad.

In the Bargello, we saw much wonderful sculpture and many gorgeous Della Robbia's.  Before I came on this trip, If you had asked me if I liked Della Robbia, I would have said, "No."  I don't tend to like what I think of as Italian heaviness in claywork.  But when I see the terra cotta reliefs, it is the color that blows me away - often an intense sky blue -  and the way he has captured the expressions of the subjects.  In italian, there are three words for blue - "azzurro" - the color of the sea,  "cielo" - the color of the sky, and "blu" - a deep blue.  When you are here, the need for more than one word to describe what we label "blue," is obvious.  No pictures were allowed, and though no one was around, we decided to respect the rule.

Ciao for now.

Cortona senza sole Toscano

Today I am enjoying one of the pleasures of being in one place more than a few days. It is afternoon and I have the apartment all to myself. Our roommates are off to see David, and Sasha is climbing the 463 steps of the Duomo with two friends on a very sunny and warm day. The total age of the three of them adds up to less than my years, so I am willing to let them do that, tell me about it and show me pictures.

I have included a slideshow on this blog that has just about everything a voyeur needs to enjoy a trip to Cortona (Under the Tuscan Sun): Flags, flowers, children, a bride, narrow streets, stuffed tourists, gelato, some people you and I know, some people neither you nor I know, roasted pigs, beautiful markets, building signs, the street of little love, a cat asleep in the window (actually that's in Florence), dangerous dogs, war monuments and wonderful vistas. The weather that day was mostly senza sun (though it did come through now and then) and it was mostly chilly, though when the sun came out, it was hot. But, no matter. We took the bus from the train station and as we climbed up the winding road to Cortona, it looked and felt like the Italy that I have in my mind when I think of the Italian countryside. I think that if I had lived in Cortona before the book and the movie, part of me would be cursing the intensified fame that these events have brought; but if I were a merchant in Cortona, I would probably be dancing in the streets. One thing for sure, this is a "hill" town. No need for a gym membership if you live here. I think just getting from home to the market would be enough exercise to keep one in shape; certainly the climb to Santa Margharita (which I did do) gave me a good cardiovascular workout that maybe justified the tiny cup of gelato that I had when I came back to the center. At least that's what I told myself. The climb to the Fortress (which I didn't do) might have justified a larger cup, but I have my standards. The merchants in the market were kind and courteous, especially the lovely man slicing the prosciutto; no apparent "I'm so tired of these tourists" attitude here - at least not that I discerned.

This week has included some serious Museum crawling. The big draws are, of course, crowded, but, aside from those, the museums are mostly uncrowded, so it is possible to walk around a sculpture several times, sit and enjoy David - all 14 feet of him - contemplate a Donatello and take the time to try to figure out the Italian descriptions when there is no english translation. I am using two additional books as our guides to Florence: Room With A View by E.M. Forster and Stones of Florence by Mary McCarthy. Every guidebook has a point of view, but these books are by writers I respect and are not trying to be objective, so they give me a perspective against which I can judge my own experience. And so, Sunday evening I read the portion of Room With a View in which Lucy Honeychurch goes into Santa Croce without a guidebook after having been abandoned by her companion, Miss Lavish, who has run off with the Baedeker. While I was reading, the lights went out in our apartment and, skillful as we think ourselves to be, none of the four of us could figure out how to reactivate the circuit breaker and neither could our neighbor, who is English and a male. Consequently, we went to bed at about 9:30 - much too early to count on sleeping through the night. So at about three in the morning I found myself sitting at the table reading with the aid of one of those Sharper Image flashlights that casts an etheral blue glow over everything. Strange to be reading a book written a hundred years ago with the aid of such a ghastly glow.

More later.

"O Freedom! O My Florence!"

The words above are those of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I am no longer in the maelstrom of a college literature department, so I really have no idea what, if any, of her poetry is taught in college english classes in this post-post (who knows how many posts) - feminist world; nor do I know if she is thought to be relevant to our world. But many of her poems have long been my favorites and she has held a fascination for me because, nearing the age of forty and (supposedly) near death, she had the courage to elope with Robert Browning to Italy. It's hard to imagine a situation in which geography, politics, passion and the freedom to express it combined so fortuitously to allow a creative soul to emerge and prosper so generously as if internal and external space were alike nurtured in a way that was impossible in her father's house. Today I made a tiny pilgrimage to her house, "8 Casa Guida," the name changed from Palazzo to Casa by Elizabeth herself. Of course, I arrived on a day that the Casa is closed, but that is no matter. It is enough to walk the street and to wonder how much is the same and how much is different from mid-nineteenth century Florence. The nearby Boboli Gardens, in all their green serenity, I believe, must be very similar to the gardens that Elizabeth and her husband and son walked. The many Vespas, Smart cars, and lorries are surely different from the stomp and hurl of horses and carriage, but Florence has almost always been a popular tourist destination, so I'm sure the street was crowded then as now, though today the dress and origin of those in the street are vastly different. I was pleased to find a small plaque that proclaimed her poems as forging "a golden ring between Italy and England."

Today is Friday already. We are busy with class every morning, sometimes lingering over lunch with people from our class, all practicing our various levels of proficiency, and then off to a museum or garden - Wednesday the Duomo, yesterday the Uffizi, and today the Boboli. Each of these is too much to take in on one trip, at least for me. Fortunately, we found a pass that gets us into almost all of the major destinations, so we can return as many times as we wish. On the way home, we always manage somehow to happen upon a gelato shop and are forced to try yet another flavor.

We have been cooking simple dinners at home - spaghetti with asparagus and mushrooms, bread salad made with leftover bread that tasted much better in the salad that in its original state. Yesterday, we found a lovely "Alimentari" where we bought sausages and cheese. Earlier I had bought basil and peppers at the open market, though I was chastised for touching them before purchasing. It's interesting to actually understand the words people are using when they are upset. The basil came with the dirt still on it, tightly wrapped in plastic. Cooked all that up together with garlic and onion and served it over fusilli. It's all good.

Tomorrow we go by train to Cortona (Under the Tuscan Sun) where we will meet with a friend of Teresa's (our teacher at Cabrillo) who will take us on a personal walking tour. Sunday we plan to go to the largest market at Piazza San Lorenzo. More on these adventures later.

Ciao!

Day One

It was pleasant to wake up in Florence, to open the eyes upon a bright bare room, with a floor of red tiles which look clean though they are not; with a painted ceiling whereon pink griffins  and blue amorini sport in a forest of yellow violins and bassoons.  It was pleasant, too, to fling wide the windows, pinching the fingers in unfamiliar fastenings, to lean out into the sunshine with beautiful hills and trees and marble churches opposite, and close below, the Arno, gurgling  against the embankment of the road." 

Room With a View

It indeed was pleasant to wake up in Florence, but sans pink griffins and blue amorini (that's okay).  We did fling open the windows and viewed, not the Arno, but our lovely courtyard with a plum tree,  small decks covered with greenery and laundry hanging below our neighbors' windows.  

Made espresso - we actually have three espresso makers - one so tiny that the burner won't hold it.  It was a bit muddy, but flavor was good; hey, it's only day one.

Bought yogurt and croissants on the way to school.  When we arrived at the Piazza, the clothing and food stalls were just setting up.  Temptation to spend is everywhere.  We ate our food sitting on a stone step while drinking in the activity around us.

In the school, they gave us a placement test to determine our class level.  We will have the results tomorrow.   It seems that no matter our placement, we will get credit for Italian 2.  After a brief orientation in which they touted all the other extra classes we could take, we went for a walking tour of Firenze - in italian.  This was something of a challenge, but we have a written guide in English.

After a lunch of panini (fromaggio e prosciutto) and gelato, we came home to load photos onto the computer and nap.  It's now about 6:00 p.m. and it's raining with occasional loud claps of thunder.  When the rain stops, we will venture out to the supermarket.

Ciao.

 

Desiring Italy

L'altra vedete ch'ha fatto all guancia

Della sua palma, sospirando, letto.

Purgatorio, vii

"See the other, who couches his cheek on his hand and sighs."

I know it's a bit precious, but I thought since Sasha (my granddaughter) and I are leaving for Florence in a week, I should get in the mood by reading a little Dante.  Of course, I am not reading him in italian, though I hope that I can before we return in a month, but the above quote just seems to suggest to me the epitome of the romantic lover.  Will I see him in Florence?  I doubt it, but there will be much else to see in this very different time.

The other book I found while I was looking for my copy of "Room with a View," is "Desiring Italy," a collection of essays written about and from Italy by women writers.  Now I don't pretend to put myself in the company of George Eliot and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, but writing from Italy about Italy is what I intend to do on this blog for the four weeks beginning June 9.  I will try to write about something more than food, but then, maybe not.  The pleasures of italian cuisine are many and varied, so I hope there will be quite a lot to say about what we are enjoying.

We'll see.  Join me if you can.