Milano For Beginners

Ladies Who Lunch a Milano

2011-07-27T13:20:00.002+02:00

I left the lake on Wednesday morning and caught the train from Varenna back to Milan. When I lived in Milan, time spent outside of the city was golden, but having left, I was anxious for a dip back into my old life.

My first stop was the Mondadori bookshop on Piazza Duomo, where I picked up a couple of books by Niccolo' Amaniti and Lidia Ravera and mused at the fact that, although Mondadori is currently embroiled in a major corruption scandal and has just been ordered to pay a 560 million euro fine for its misdeeds, everything felt clean, normal and calm, almost to the point of being un-Italian. I left with my books in an eco-friendly paper bag with a message encouraging me to use energy-saving lightbulbs and save the planet.

After that I walked back across the piazza, giving bracelet-sellers and pooping pigeons alike my best Parisian glare, and met my friend, who took me to the Californian bakery on Via Larga for lunch. Lesson learned: if you would like to sit in a shaded outdoor garden eating a bagel topped with fresh, healthy ingredients, this is the place for you. If you would like to eat large quantities of delicious baked goods, rest assured, this place is genuinely American in its attitude to dessert. If you would prefer your delicious cake to be accompanied by equally delicious coffee, think again. While my friend may have been a little mean in her condemnation of our espressos as "sock juice", they were definitely more USA than Italian in style too and, in my book, this is not such a good thing.

My last hour in Milan was spent in a rapid raid of the three fabulous floors of my favourite Italian clothes shop, Nadine, whose flagship store is located at San Babila. While the quality is sometimes not quite high enough to justify the price, the clothes have a definite Italian style that is hard to find in France (There is colour! There are chic little details that you don't have to be a Parisian fashionista to notice!) and I picked up a sweet little bag, reduced from 45 euros to 20 to take home with me. Happiness is ...

Bellagio and Lenno

2011-07-26T13:12:00.003+02:00

For my final day at Lake Como, wanting to save my hiking strength and enthusiasm for my upcoming trip to the Pyrenees, I decided to doss around the lake doing very little. (And to be honest, apart from mountain and watersports, sitting in the sun eating gelato and admiring the beautiful surroundings is pretty much all there is to do at Lake Como. This is not a criticism.)

I took the boat from Menaggio to Bellagio, one of the prettiest towns on the lake, which sits at the end of the Triangolo Lariano between Lake Como and Lake Lecco. Being stubbornly un-lemming like in my natural behaviour, I avoided the lakefront next to the ferry terminal and headed straight up the hill and down the other side, where I discovered the other, much quieter shore and port.

Very few of Como's towns offer great possibilities for swimming, but it can be done either from the small beach south of the Villa Melzi or from the steps near the garden out at the very point of the triangle. A creepy man with his T-shirt pulled up to reveal half of his chest appeared to be following me at this point, however, so I ran away as fast as my flip-flops would carry me and hopped on a boat to Lenno for my swim instead.

From Lenno, I decided to take the bus back to Menaggio, which turned out to be a good decision, as around 6 o'clock thunder started roaring and the heavens opened, so the hour long boat trip would not have been particularly entertaining. Instead I had the fun of standing at the bus stop without an umbrella next to a slightly nutty Italian lady who seemed to feel that the lateness of the bus (by 15 minutes) combined with the rain was evidence that the wrath of God was being targeted in her direction* and stood beseeching the sky to tell her what she had done to deserve this until the bus finally swung around the corner.

* I suspect that if you jump to this sort of conclusion every time something fails to happen on time in Italy, you are well on your way to suffering from some kind of a divine persecution complex.

Alta Via dei Monti Lariani

2011-07-24T22:44:00.003+02:00

On Monday, I learned my lesson from Sunday and took the C13 bus 750m up the mountains to the village of Breglia to start my second hike. I was planning to go up to the Rifugio Menaggio, our over-ambitious goal from the day before, and continue on to Monte Grona and beyond, but when I got to the fork in the path leading to the refuge, I decided that "beyond" would be more exciting and set off along the ridge, following the Alta Via dei Monti Lariani.

The one flaw in my plan was that I had meant to fill up my water bottle at the refuge and, by bypassing the highest tap on the mountain, I left myself with limited supplies, which, given that the temperature down in the valley was about 30 degrees, was not very clever. I knew there were some water fountains on the way down, so I decided that I would carry on for as long as my water lasted and turn back as soon as I had drunk the last mouthful. Luckily, this turned out to be the summit of Monte Bregagno, which was about as far as I wanted to go anyway, especially as I had a bus to catch.

As well as having stunning views, the ridge was actually pleasantly cool and I enjoyed myself hugely, stopping for lunch and to admire the views of Monte Grona and Lake Lugano at Sant'Amate before carrying on the the highest point at Monte Bregagno.

It was only as I strode back down the mountain in search of water and the bus, with the temperature seeming to increase by several degrees with every step I took, that I realised how hot the weather actually was. I finished the day with a well-earned gelato from the shop on the main piazza in Menaggio (great ice-cream but very grumpy service!) and a dive into the lake to cook down.

Barna and the Valle della Senagra

2011-07-14T18:26:00.005+02:00

Varenna from the Ferry

After a Saturday evening of catching up with friends in Milan over some good old spritz Aperol aperitivo and mispronounced cocktails, my friend and I dragged ourselves out of bed early on Sunday morning to head up to Lake Como for some hiking. I was staying at the hostel La Primula in Menaggio, so we caught the train to Varenna (using a free weekend ticket that they've been handing out at the stations recently!), then the boat across the lake. and I was able to drop my suitcase off before we set out on our hike. The Menaggio tourist office publishes a booklet of walks in the area, but many of them require you to take a bus to the starting point and buses on a Sunday are few and far between, so using a hiking map which I had (luckily!) bought in Milan a while back, we combined a couple of their itineraries to make a route of our own, starting at the town centre and aiming for the Rifugio, which was a somewhat optimistic 1400m above the town.

We didn't make it all the way up, mostly because my friend had to get back to Milan that night to go to work on Monday, and in the end it turned out to be a good thing because an enormous thunderstorm began roaring soon after we had turned back and the storm clouds chased us right back down the valley. We did have a good day out though, and saw some interesting sights:

Scary Rock Face in the Valle della Sanagra

I wasn't planning to!

Dinky little Fiat

Barna

Monte Grona

Barometer. The text reads, "If the cord is dry, it's nice weather; if the cord is wet, it's raining; if the cord is stiff, it's cold; if you can't see the cord, it's foggy; if the cord is moving, it's windy and if there is no cord, it's been stolen!

Storm Clouds over Lake Como

Linguistic Slip-Up Nearly Causes Culinary Confusion

2011-07-14T14:26:00.003+02:00

Back in Milan for a few days over the weekend in an attempt to get my Italy fix for the summer, a friend and I went out for drinks at Il Coccio, a bar with a big outside terrace and a highly dangerous staircase if you need to go to the toilet after a couple of drinks on the corner of the Naviglio Grande and the Naviglio Pavese. The waiter came to take our orders and I told him the name of the cocktail I wanted.

"But we don't serve pizza here," he said.

Because, ladies and gentlemen, the cocktail is a margarita, the pizza is a margherita, and in Italian you can actually hear the difference.

My New Favourite Expression:

2011-07-12T19:22:00.001+02:00

'ha alzato troppo il gomito"

Literally, "he's raised his elbow too often".

Figuratively, I'm sure you can guess!

Discovering Niccolo' Ammaniti

2011-06-22T20:36:00.002+02:00

A while ago, when I was looking for Italian books to read and films to watch, a friend recommended Niccolo' Ammaniti's Ti prendo e ti porto via. The next time I was in Italy, I bought it, I read it and I loved it. When I finished it, desperate to experience again that feeling of reading such a great book that you can't wait for a boring train journey so that you can find out what happens next, I bought Io non ho paura.

I love reading in Italian. I would much rather read in Italian than French, even although in theory my French is far better than my Italian. However, because I learned Italian largely by speaking rather than studying literature, it's important to me to find books that are at the right level, and Ammaniti's definitely fit into that category.

At the same time, I remain an English literature graduate at heart and if the quality of the writing is too trashy, it bothers me, even if it is in a foreign language. Ammaniti does use language well (as far as I can tell) but really it's the characters and the plots that I appreciate in his stories. In Ti prendo e ti porto via, he describes personalities which are greatly flawed but, with the insights that he gives into human nature, manages to maintain the reader's sympathy for the characters.

Another thing I appreciated about the books was the insight into Italian culture that they gave to me. In the UK, we tend to associate poverty and its terrible consequences with living in the inner cities, but Ammaniti shows how the Italy that many people consider to be a rural idyll is home to great deprivation and all its associated problems.

For anyone who wants a thought provoking but manageable read in Italian, I would definitely recommend the two books , and, having finished the second one, I'm off to look for his other works on Amazon!

More Dark Heart of Italy

2011-02-02T18:17:00.001+01:00

When I was in Italy last summer, I was inspired to write about so many things. In the space of two weeks, I was constantly struck by endless examples of what an Italian writer (I think it may have been Beppe Severgnini but I might be completely and embarrassingly wrong) called the difference between “your Italy and my Italia”. This is the difference between the Italy that tourists see (the magnificent scenery, the richness of the history, the art, the food, the fashion, the musicality of the language and the generousity and sociability of the people) and the complicated, illogical, confusing country of endless paradoxes that Italians actually live in. I felt guilty, enjoying the hospitality of my Italian friends and the locals in the village who shared so much with “le ragazze inglesi” and the desire to probe into the depths of the “confusione”, to criticise and to write.

In the end, only a couple of these posts got written, and less eloquently than I would have wanted them to be. Last night, however, a programme about Berlusconi’s Italy on Arte, the Franco-German TV channel, inspired me to say some more.

The programme began by describing the rise of Berlusconi and I recognised many of the events that I had already read about in Tobias Jones’ wonderful Dark Heart of Italy: how Berlusconi’s early political career began with the corruption scandal surrounding the Milano 2 residential complex that he built as a property developer and how he initially dodged legal procedings by exploiting the statute of limitations. The programme talked about how terrorism was exploited to create a fear of communism (“communism” and “fascism” are current political terms in Italy), making voters believe that the only “safe” government was one which subscribed to neither of these philosophies and instead promoted the development of the country and the gaining of wealth. It revealed how Berlusconi’s masonic connections enabled him to borrow enormous sums of money and build his media empire until it became a monopoly and how Mediaset then ignored rulings by the European Court in favour of a rival television channel.

All of this I knew already, and I would highly recommend Jones’ book if you would like to know more. The thought that the programme left me with however, was not outrage at the corruption itself but a sense of the terrible tragedy that all of this has been for Italy itself. Berlusconi came to power on a promise to promote prosperity for “the good people” instead of the political extremists, but it is clear even travelling around Italy today that there is an incredible rift between the wealthy and the ordinary people (never mind the poor). Public facilities such as swimming pools and libraries are rare in Italian cities. Much of the country’s beauty spots have been “privatised”, so that you have to pay to go to the beach and you can’t swim in the lake unless you own a villa on its shore. Italy’s cities, towns and villages traditionally belong to their peoples: socialising takes place during the passeggiata through the streets and sitting in the town square, but as someone who likes to wander around at liberty, I can testify to the general absence of public parks, spaces and places to go. While the rich have their fast cars, their yachts and their multiple holiday homes, there are places where graduates and professionals earn 500 euros a month and have to live with their parents even when they are in their late 30s. A young lawyer in Milan can earn as little as 1000 euros a month – when I lived there my rent alone, in a smallish flat on a dodgy street was 850 euros.

Many of these educated people know to protest but the combination of what was described as the “lobotomisation” of the Italian people through dumbed-down media, the labyrinthine nature of the country’s politics and a head-in-the-sand attitude to what is actually going on among many of the country’s ordinary citizens make it very difficult to bring about change. This indeed is the dark heart of Italy.

Draquila

2010-11-14T20:35:00.002+01:00

I've just been to the cinema to see Draquila and, as with most things concerning Italy, the experience left me with an irrepressible urge to blog.

The film is a documentary which tells the story of Berlusconi's involvement in the aftermath of the earthquake in L'Aquila in April 2009. It's central claim is that, as well as using the tragedy as a useful way of distracting the public from the more dubious aspects of his personal and political life, Berlusconi also exploited the situation to further the construction industry interests of himself and his cronies. According to the film, instead of efforts being directed towards restoring the centre, letting people back into their homes and saving the numerous architectural and artistic treasures of the town, the earthquake was used as an excuse for massive building projects which included both hotels along the coast of Abruzzo which were used as temporary accommodation and hundreds and hundreds of new apartment blocks which will eventually have to be "given back" in the pristine state in which they were provided. The authorities did everything in their power to convince, cajole or force people to move into these apartments instead of back into their own homes.The documentary also shows how Berlusconi manipulates the public into believing that he is a hero and a miracle-worker who has nothing but their best interests at heart.

The L'Aquila earthquake happened when I was living in Italy and but, 19 months later and living in a foreign country, I find myself shocked by my lack of reaction to the disaster at the time. But at the time, I suppose what I saw was what the Berlusconi government wanted me to see - that something terrible had happened but that everything was being taken care of. Given that I used to avoid Berlusconi TV like the plague and take everything I read his newspapers with a pinch of salt large enough to give the entire population a heart attack, that's a scary thought.

Unravelling the Confusion

2010-09-05T22:51:00.003+02:00

One night in Italy as we sat down for dinner, we had a little bit of trouble remembering whose napkin was whose. At the inside dinner table, we all had a different colour of napkin rings, but the night before we had eaten outside using different napkins in different rings and had not necessarily all taken the same colour. As we tried to sort out the situation, my friend and hostess remarked, “Gli italiani amano fare confusione” (“Italians love to create confusion”). As anyone who has lived in Italy will testify, this is absolutely true. Confusion is an excuse for lots of talking and hand gestures, and Italians love those.

Around the same time, I discovered that the Italian word for “to develop”, sviluppare, also means "to untie" or "to extricate." In other words, the complete opposite of fare confusione!

Put these two facts together and you can see how progress in Italy rarely comes quickly. To compensate, however, there are at least plenty of opportunities for social interaction along the way!

The Dark Heart of Italy

2010-09-05T22:38:00.000+02:00

For a long time, I’ve been meaning to write about a book that I read a while ago called The Dark Heart of Italy. The author, Tobias Jones, is a reporter who went to Italy hoping to investigate and explain the country’s politics and the various scandals that were going on at the time. However, he eventually realized that the truth in Italy is difficult to find, never mind unravel, and instead wrote a book explaining why everything in Italy is so difficult to explain. The book tackles corruption in various areas of Italian life, from football to the building industry, but for me the most interesting part was finding out more about how Italian politics came to be in the state that it is today, which in turn explains, at least to some extent, why Italians keep voting for Berlusconi in the face of total incomprehension from most of the rest of Western Europe.

I gave the book to an Italian friend who also wanted an explanation of Italian politics, so unfortunately I can’t check up on the details, but what I learned, in a very, very simplified way, was this:

After World War Two, politics in Italy was divided between Communists and Fascists, and well into the 1970s, these were very much two warring factions, split, of course, into many smaller parties. There were terrorist attacks, there were cover-ups, and somebody was even pushed from a window in an attempt to stop an investigation. In the face of all of this, Berlusconi seems like quite a reasonable man. He might spend much of his life getting parliament to pass laws that protect him for the rest of his life from being tried for doing pretty much anything, but at least he doesn’t blow people up or push them out of windows. As a politician, he may be corrupt but his politics do at least belong to today’s world and not to the warring ideologies of last century. He has convinced Italians that their country can be modern and successful and they (or many of them) like him for it.

The other reason, of course, as the book explains, is that in Italy you can sit in your Berlusconi built house reading Berlusconi magazines and watching Berlusconi TV and, in fact, pretty much live your entire life as a customer of the Berlusconi empire. That might be the other reason so many Italians end up being convinced that voting for Berlusconi is the right thing to do.

I mentioned a while ago that I have never wanted to mock or criticize Italy for the sake of it, but rather to understand where the country and its inhabitants are coming from. For anyone who wants to do the same, reading The Dark Heart of Italy is a great way to start.

Back to the Veneto

2010-09-04T20:46:00.002+02:00

After a week of total relaxation, I was ready for the next stage of my Italian adventure – teaching English at summer camp. This year, the children were not only delightful, adorable and totally charming in the way that Italian children do best, they were also (relatively) calm, attentive and motivated to learn. It was a wonderful two weeks. It's also amazing, when you get away from the lake and the magnet for cultured German tourists that is Verona, how quickly you feel that you are deep in the heart of the “real” Italy. You can cycle for hours along the country lanes between the fields of sunflowers and corn, watching the light change as the hot sun sets on the hazy horizon. You watch chickens hatching from their eggs. You can go for a drink at the bar and, even though you haven't been there for a year, they still remember you. You buy an ice-cream at the gelateria and the owner gives you a personal invitation to sit with the locals on the plastic chairs by the roadside while under a starry sky. And, if that all sounds a bit too idyllic, you can get eaten alive by the hungriest, greediest, most tenacious mosquitoes in Italy.

For better or for worse, the sense of community in these small villages and the speed at which news travels became very evident to us this year. One of my friends received a surprise visit from a friend of hers who didn't know where we were staying. He had found the not very regular bus using the internet but when he arrived, he didn't know where to go, so he told the bus driver he was looking for the house where the English teachers were staying. The driver didn't know, but he quickly got on the phone to all his friends and was able to point my friend's friend in the right direction. The signora across the road showed him the right house and he found us ... as did the many, many men of a certain age who stopped us in the street wherever we went after that to ask us if we were the English girls staying at a certain well-known B and B!

Sirmione: the Good

2010-08-25T14:37:00.003+02:00

I know that normally the good is suppose to come before the bad and the ugly, but actually, our horrible experience at the hotel in Sirmione was just a bad beginning to what turned out to be a very good day, so much so as to almost wipe the memory of the morning from our minds. We found a friendly pizza place for lunch where they didn't seem to care that we were dripping wet, although the waitress did raise her eyebrows when my friend ordered a tuna and onion pizza with no mozzarella but with anchovies instead. Even the hoards of Germans who dominate the tourist business in the Veneto and have caused wuerstel to appear on every pizza menu haven't changed the idea that you don't mess with Italian culinary tradition.

After lunch, and feeling relatively dry again, we went to visit the remains of the Roman villa which lie at the very point of the peninsula. According to its name, the villa belonged to the Roman writer Catullus but in fact historians don't believe that he ever lived there. The villa was enormous, with its own baths and olive groves and even if you're not very interested in Roman history, the ruins combine with the views over the lake to make a very scenic place to wander around for an hour or so.

After the villa, we visited the castle. Despite a childhood spent running around endless old Scottish fortresses, I think this is one of the best castles I've ever visited. It has a drawbridge, a moat and interesting parts that stick out into the sea, as well as towers that you can climb to get a fantastic view of the peninsula and the lake. Highly recommended.

Sirmione: The Bad and the Ugly

2010-08-25T12:37:00.004+02:00

For most of the week that we spent at Lake Garda, the weather was lovely and so were the people. The day we went to Sirmione, however, there was a terrible thunderstorm and we had an experience that ranks right up there with having my bags stolen at Milano Centrale in terms of nastiness.

Sirmione is tiny town located at the end of an improbably long and skinny peninsula that sticks out into the lake from the southern shore. The old town is guarded by a castle fort and only people who live there are allowed to drive over the bridge that leads inside the ity walls. The town extends the length of the peninsula, however, with houses, hotels, car parks and the odd restaurant lining the road that leads to the historic part. It's always busy, even on a stormy Thursday morning, and we had to park the car quite far from the fortress. As we got out of the car, a strong breeze was stirring in the trees, the sky was darkening and the greyish green waves on the lake were lapping hungrily at the shore. We weren't five minutes from the car when the giant raindrops began to fall.

We immediately started to get absolutely soaked and decided to look for shelter. We ducked under the awning of hotel, where several other people were also sheltering. Realising that the rain might be on for a while, we decided to do the polite thing and order coffees, rather than just standing there taking advantage of the hotel's driveway.

Our politeness, however, turned out to be entirely wasted on the hotel staff, who were pretty much the rudest waiters I've ever met (and I've been living in Paris for a year). They communicated in grunts from behind twisted lips and seemed to be entirely incapable of eye contact. We asked if we could sit inside, where we could see an almost empty restaurant with space for at least fifty people, with more spaces in a conservatory that looked out over the lake on the other side of the building. They said no, so we adjusted the position of the tables in an attempt to shelter ourselves from the torrential rain outside and the almost equally torrential drips that were coming through the gaps in the shelter.

By the time they grudgingly brought us our drinks, the puddles in the driveway had amalgamated into a flood that was rapidly encroaching on the ground around our feet. Again we asked if we could go inside. Again the waiter grunted, disappeared and refused to make eye contact. When he reappeared, I pointed out to him that the water was actually lapping at our toes as well as dripping into our coffee and again he disappeared.

A little while later, the kitchen porter appeared brandishing a brush and, to our horror, began to attempt to sweep the water off the driveway and into the road. This was clearly an impossibly task because every time a car went past, even more water would be sprayed from the gutter into the quicky expanding flood. The porter realised this and must have noticed our sympathy, because he turned round and made funny faces to express the hopelessness of the situation.

Unfortunately, this did not impress his evil overlords, who came out and shouted at him several times, grabbing his arms aggressively. I'm sure the fact that they were white and he was black had nothing to do with the fact that they thought this was an acceptable way to behave...Meanwhile me and my friends stood there feeling sick at having to watch this scene but, with the rain pouring down and nowhere to go, we couldn't really leave, so we had no choice but to stand there reformulating every opinion we had ever had about Italian hospitality.

Actually, though, this situation was unlike anything I have ever experienced in Italy and I refuse to revise my ideas based on that one horrible experience. I've had people trick me and lie to me and short change me, but I have never, ever seen anyone be so downright rude and nasty, either to a customer or to a member of staff. Eventually the rain died down and we left. My friend gave the poor kitchen porter a ten euro note as we went away and the few hotel residents who were sitting in the dining room all clapped, but if I were them, I would have been horrified to find myself staying in a place like that. I wish I had the name of the hotel but it was too wet to check as we left, but if you're ever tempted to stay in a peach-coloured hotel on the way to Sirmione with a conservatory at the back, driveway that looks liable to flood at the front and waiting staff who are unable to smile or look you in the eye, make sure that you think again.

Proof That I Am Definitely Grown Up (and quite possibly becoming middle aged)

2010-08-20T23:50:00.005+02:00

During our holiday at Lake Garda, we went to Gardaland for the day. I did not go on a single scary ride. I didn't feel remotely tempted to go on a scary ride. I didn't berate myself for being too chicken to go on a scary ride. and afterwards, when my friends got off the scary rides, I didn't feel the slightest bit of regret about not having joined them. No, when it came to the rides that went upside down, looped the loop or even just spun around a little too fast, I just said “no”.

To be honest, I've never been a big fan of rollercoasters. It's just that there was a point in my life when I felt that I should try them out, if not for the fun then just to conquer my fears and prove that I could do it. But a little while before I went to Gardaland, I went rock climbing. On my way up the vertical cliff, with a river roaring down beneath me, my legs began to shake like crazy, despite the fact that my mind kept telling them everything was fine. I got them under control, climbed a bit higher and then forced myself to look down. I might easily have fallen off and if I had, it would have been painful, terrifying, difficult to get back up again and entirely my own fault. When I didn't, I knew that I had achieved something. On the Gardaland rides, I would almost certainly have got off at the end with no disasters having happened, but instead of feeling satisfaction, I would probably just have felt sick.

That's not to say that I didn't have a great time in Gardaland. My favourite ride was Mammut, the runaway mine train, which speeds at an angle around spiralling bends and lets you scream to your heart's content, but never ever turns you upside down or spins you around. That was great. I also liked the water rides, particularly the log flume, the flying island, which gives you a view over the lake and the surrounding countryside and the kiddie caterpillar train, which turned out to be quite a bit faster than any of us expected and was therefore pretty exciting despite the fact that it was really a baby ride. The only ride I didn't like was the one where you go down inside a magic tree where they spin the walls around to make you think you're going upside down. That just messed with my head and made me want to vomit, and it was in the kids section!

If I went back another day though, I'd probably spend the whole time on that runaway mine train. It was awesome.

Camping at Lake Garda

2010-08-20T00:24:00.002+02:00

I started my trip to Italy with a week of camping with a group of friends at the wonderful Camping Lido at Pacengo, on the shores of Lake Garda. I went there last year and this year's experience was exactly the relaxing break that I hoped it would be after a week of killer hiking in the Alps. As well as a camping space, we had booked a little bungalow which was basically a little kitchen, four bunk beds and a cupboard, all in one room, with a little terrace outside. The facilities at the campsite are fantastic, so that's pretty much everything you need. As well as the cleanest toilets and showers ever seen in a public place in Italy, there's a swimming pool and bar, a restaurant, a supermarket and a long stretch of lake shore with a pier that you can jump off for a slightly wilder swimming experience. Just along the shore is the port of Pacengo, where there's a market once a week. The port is also home to a lovely restaurant which I think is called the Casa di Giulia. There's an outdoor terrace with views over the lake, they gave us free limoncello at the end and my friend's insalata caprese was so fresh and delicious that I could smell the tomatoes as they passed my nose.

There was also a farmer's market in the town centre the Friday that we were there. At first we were a bit disappointed because it was tiny, but we went round every stall, tried everything and bought most things. At the final fruit stall, my friend L. must have charmed the stallholder because he kept pressing free fruit on us. Even after we had bought everything we wanted and more, he kept cutting slices of melon and handing them to us until we could eat no more. It was fabulous.That weekend was also the Festa dello Sport in Pacengo. In the evening there were different stalls selling local food and wines and a band playing covers of cheesy songs. Many Italians, particularly if they're of a certain age, learned to do proper ballroom dancing when they were kids, so lots of people dance the “official” steps in couples at these kinds of events. My friend J., who is also a really good dancer, was desperate for us all to join in but the rest of us Brits were too uneducated and inhibited so she found an old man to dance with instead and he was delighted with the opportunity. She, on the other hand, was quite relieved when later in the evening she convinced me to dance the uncoordinated British shuffle with her!

Italian Trip Summer 2010

2010-08-20T00:15:00.003+02:00

I was looking at my blogging statistics the other day. In one year in Paris, I've written around 70 posts. When I lived in Italy, I wrote 150. As I've said before, Italy is just more bloggable.

Italy is a land of extremes. Extreme beauty and extreme ugliness. Extreme kindness and extreme rudeness. Danger and safety. People who welcome you into their homes with open arms and treat you like royalty and people who would screw you over for your last centime. That's what makes it so interesting to write about, but it also sometimes makes it hard. Every time I criticise something about Italy, I think of all the lovely people that have made me feel so welcome there and I feel guilty. It feels like being given private access to somebody's home and then telling the world about their domestic difficulties. And yet it's impossible to spend time in Italy and not feel strong reactions of all kinds. So before I start my next series of posts about my Italian experiences, I would just like to say to any Italian who may be reading this, and also to the world, that everything I say about Italy comes from a profound interest in and love for the country that has grown so much over the past few years as a result of all the wonderful people who have welcomed me into their Italian lives and given me glimpses of what lies underneath the sunny, sparkly exterior. Thank you for that and please be assured that nothing I write here is intended to cause offence or to judge, but only to document my personal journey into a culture that fascinates, confuses and entrances but is never, ever boring.

The Italian Paradox

2010-04-08T21:53:00.002+02:00

I spent my last day in Italy in Monza. To get to Monza from Milan, you take the train from the dreaded Porta Garibaldi train station. The train will probably be filthy and you may well not be able to see out of the graffiti covered windows, but this doesn't actually matter very much because you are about to travel through some of the ugliest parts of Milan's ugly outskirts.

Then you will get off the train and find yourself in the Italian version of Perfectville. The charming cobbled streets are punctuated with flower displays and the occasional water feature and lined with small independent shops selling artisanal products. Monza has its own La Rinascente. It has a cathedral. It has historic columns in the centre. It has an extensive park that is probably the biggest green space in the whole of Greater Milan. Monza is nice.

There isn't acutally a lot to do in Monza, unless you are into Formula 1 and it happens to be a race day. I spent most of my time sitting on a bench in the park soaking up the sunshine, watching the swans glide across the water and wondering what it is about Italy.

What is it about Italy that captures your heart even when you live in one of the ugliest, most polluted industrial cities in Europe? What is it that makes you feel excited to be alive there even as the smog is probably slowly killing you? How can it have the most frustrating bureaucracy and the craziest drivers you will ever encounter and still make you feel more relaxed than you have ever felt before? How can bite you again and again with its corruption and exploitation and still make you feel like you betrayed a little piece of your heart when you left?

I don't know how it does any of these things, but it does.

Monte Boletto

2010-03-27T20:30:00.004+01:00

It's almost one month since I was in Italy, and high time I finished posting about my trip, but I think subconsciously, I've been putting off writing this particular post.

On the Monday morning, as my friends set off for work, I took the train up to Como to do a walk that I had been wanting to do for a long time. You take the funiular to Brunate and follow the signs to the “faro”, the lighthouse that stands a little higher up on the hillside. From the lighthouse, you follow the red and white signs, which lead you further up the hill, through villages and forest and up on to the mountain ridge. You can follow the "Dorsale" path right the way to Bellaggio, but I stopped at the top of Monte Boletto.

I think I've been scared of posting about this hike because words can't do it justice. Even the photos don't do it justice. When I arrived at th top of the mountain, less than two hours' walk from Como, and saw the dark lake at my feet and the snowy mountains stretching out into the distance above it, their summits reaching ever higher, I felt that I might be in the most beautiful place in the world, and the joy that I felt was bittersweet, because when I left Italy last summer, I left all that world and all its adventures so far behind.

Brunch

2010-03-20T22:08:00.001+01:00

After our crazy night out in the hotspots of Milan, my friends and I decided to have a quiet day on Sunday, the highlight of which was trying out the totally not Italian tradition of brunch. Brunch in Milan, from what I could tell, is a very expensive way of buying a high quality version of what in the UK we call pub food. And yes, they call it “brunch.” After failing to get a table at the Californian bakery, we ended up at Exploit, which is near the columns and not at all far from the places we had visited the night before. I made the mistake, when ordering the “hamburger exploit” of assuming that the name of the place had been borrowed from English and not French. Luckily, the snooty waiter quickly corrected me and my pronunciation. Had I been feeling a bit more on the ball, I would have insisted on placing my entire order in French, but unfortunately my brightest ideas only come to me long after the opportunity to use them has passed, so at the time I just smiled sweetly and pretended to be interested.

Luckily the food, when it came, was actually very nice.

Nightlife in Milan

2010-03-15T19:22:00.001+01:00

After our exhausting day strolling around Pavia, taking photos and relaxing in cafés in its quiet piazzas, we headed out in Milan for well-earned aperitivo. J had reserved a table at Cheese on Via Lupetta, opposite the church of Sant'Alessandro...or so she thought, until we turned out and they had no idea who she was. Luckily it turned out that the table was actually booked at Yguana, the bar next door which has the same phone number. It also provides the same food, which was the best of Italian aperitivo – lots of salad and lots of pasta to make you feel full without having eaten a huge amount – and serves very nice cocktails. It was absolutely packed and they kept trying to convince us to give away seats at our table for ten, but eventually everyone arrived and we were so squashed in that there was no way anybody was moving anywhere. After that we moved on to La Toscana, a relaxed bar on the Corsa di Porta Ticinese, which has nice squishy seats and had a bit more room to breathe. At 2 am, we still weren't quite ready to go home, so we spent an hour or so in Cuore, a bar around the corner(ish) which had very bright lights, bad music and a tiny and overstuffed dancefloor but had the advantage of being open late and having some extremely good-humoured bar staff. The night ended with a long search for a taxi. We walked up to the Duomo, where there were none, and ended up calling one of the companies after about half an hour. Our friends who walked down to the Navigli, where it's usually easier to find a taxi, ended up breaking up a fight on the way though, so we probably did choose the right direction!

Pavia

2010-03-13T11:45:00.005+01:00

After going out for an enormous pizza and my first limoncello of the year on Friday night, I stayed with my friends J and L in Milan and we got up early enough on Saturday morning to go to Pavia. Pavia turned out to be another one of the places that I couldn't believe I hadn't discovered in a whole year of living in Italy. For anyone in Milan who feels as if they are missing out on the experience of living in a proper little Italian town, Pavia, only half an hour away on the train, is the perfect escape. It had a busy market, but the rest of the town was quiet, even on a Saturday afternoon. It does have a university though, and there were hints of some lively student life going on. It also has lots of beautiful churches, some of which were very different from any I had seen in Italy before, and is famous for its towers, which stretch up tall and straight to look out over the plains that surround the town.

The church of San Michele Maggiore. It was built of sandstone and a lot of the detail of the carving has been eroded, but it still looks amazing.

Sunken church. Unfortunately it was closed, so we couldn't go inside.

Santa Maria del Carmine. Lots of the old buildings in Pavia are built from these red bricks, often arranged so that they stick out in funny ways from the facades of the buildings.

The Torre Civico. It collapsed in 1989 and, tragically, several people were killed.

Towers

Towers and the university gate. I would have happily studied here!

Canzo in the Snow

2010-03-11T21:44:00.000+01:00

Much as I enjoyed my first day in Milan, one day was enough. I had found all the maps I needed to head to the mountains and I was feeling inspired, so I caught the train to Canzo, the friendliest place in Italy, and set off for a hike.

Despite the smog and the rain in Milan, I was still optimistically hoping for stunning views of snow-capped mountains. Unfortunately, it was raining in Canzo too and as I walked up through the village, I stopped to add waterproof layers as often as I tried to take pictures of the rapidly disappearing mountains.

I started off on the path that Mum and I took last summer, following the signs for the 3 Alpi. After the first alp, however, I left that path and headed steeply up hill on the walker's path to the Corni di Canzo. (There are two paths, but one of them involves a via ferrata, and it wasn't the day for experimenting with that.) As well as being over optimistic about the weather, I was hoping to do the 5 hour walk in 4 hours in order to catch the train back to Milan in time for aperitivo with my former colleagues, so I pushed myself hard to get up the mountain in the snow in record time. As a result, I was slightly breathless and this, combined with being surrounded by bare black trees, fog and a thick blanket of snow, contributed to a very other-worldly impression. I did want to arrive “somewhere” before going back down the mountain, however, so I struggled onwards and upwards, stopping every so often to try to figure out how far I had gone and whether I was going to make it or not, which was tricky given the snow underfoot and the total lack of visibility.

I didn't make it right to the Corni themselves, but I reached the rifugio, which made a satisfactory end point to the climb, and let myself rest for an inadequate two and a half minutes before turning round and heading back down the path.

The whole effort became worth it, though, because just at that moment, the mist and clouds began to lift and suddenly gorgeous views of the Lago di Lecco and the Triangolo Lariano began to appear through the trees. In the distance, I could even see the snow-capped mountains.

I caught the train back with minutes to spare after jogging gently down a large section of the track. and arrived at the bar in plenty of time. I peered through the window, but couldn't see anybody I knew inside. Three of my friends were already there, however, and my loud friend Rachel must have said something loudly because just as I was turning to cross the road and check at the other bar, the Chinese bar girl came running out, calling my nickname after me in her very Chinese Italian. And once again, I felt back at home in Milan!

Italia mon amour

2010-03-08T21:09:00.000+01:00

Just over a week ago, I got on a train in the Gare de Lyon. We sped across France, the Alps and the plains of northern Italy, and seven hours and fifteen minutes later, I stepped off the train at Milano Centrale and back into my old life.

And for one week, I lived that life again (in fact, it was better than my old life, because I was on holiday and didn't have to go to work) and I remembered how much I loved it. Then, seven days later, I got back on the train, and seven hours later, was back in my French life again.

The trip was amazing. Sad, in some ways, because it reminded me of things that I had left behind, but satisfying too, because it showed me that many of these things are there, no further than a train journey away.

I spent the first day walking around Milan, reminding myself of all the familiar places and discovering the coffee shop in the Mondadori bookshop on the Piazza del Duomo, which has delicious hot chocolate, comfortable chairs and a great view of the square and the cathedral. Then I walked down to the Navigli, caught the metro back to the castle and the Parco Sempione, wandered around some of my favourite shops, and went back for more coffee in Mondadori. Here are some of the more picturesque things that I saw:

FAQ Italia

2010-02-02T23:01:00.001+01:00

For a long time, I was fascinated by Italian bookshops. I used to go into them and wander around, dreaming of the time when my Italian would be good enough to read and fully understand the works that lined their shelves.

Many of the books I saw were translations. Italians, like most non-Anglophone Europeans, seem far happier to read foreign books than Brits are. (The same applies to music, films and pretty much everything else, but all of that is another rant for another day.) These were not the books, however, that I wanted to read.

The ones I wanted to read were written by Italians, in Italian, and they were all about Italy. Not tourism and travel books, but books about politics, books about the mafia and books about recent Italian history. The section of the shop devoted to these books always seemed to be disproportionately large. I wanted to understand Italy and I wanted to understand it from an Italian point of view, so eventually, with a long summer holiday and lots of travelling ahead of me, I bought one of these books.

I bought FAQ Italia, by Francesco Merlo. It comes from a series called “FAQ Books: domande che danno risposte” (questions which provide answers). Examples of the “questions” range from “Are we the land of the Mafia?” to “Are Italians mummy's boys?” These were questions to which I wanted not just any answer, but the Italian answer.

At first I quite enjoyed the book. Gradually, however, it wore me down. The “answers” to the questions were too short, too unbalanced and too irrelevant. After a while, I put FAQ Italia down and started on something else. I was staying with Italian friends at the time, and when I showed my friend the book and explained my disappointment, she sighed and said, “Yes, everything in Italy is polemical.”

For a long time I thought that the fact that Italian bookshops were so full of critical works on the country was to do with the fact that all the newspapers and television channels were under the control of Berlusconi and his ilk. Such writing was much less evident in the Mondadori bookshops, owned by the Berlusconi family, than in others. Books, I thought, were perhaps the last remaining outlet for free (or free-er) speech. There were certainly more politically oriented works in the Feltrinelli shop, which was my Mondadori's closest rival.

Recently, however, I discovered from Tobias' Jones' The Dark Heart of Italy (which is an incredibly gripping book in itself) that the Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, owner of the aforementioned publishing house, was a communist and the founder of GAP, one of Italy's main terrorist organisations of the anni di piombo.

And so I learned that in Italy, not only does everyone in the media have an axe to grind, but they are heavy and destructive axes indeed.

Say Formaggio

2009-11-25T21:42:00.000+01:00

Once upon a time, many moons ago, I promised to write a post about Italian cheese. The other day, after being baffled by the range of delights in my local French cheese shop, where I spent 30 euros on 5 smelly concoctions that I didn't even know the names of (to justify myself, mostly to my mother, I should say that I was going to a dinner party and had offered to bring the cheese course!), I decided that Italian cheese was a slightly more approachable subject than French. So here is the post – Formaggio for Beginners.

The two most famous Italian cheeses must be mozzarella and Parmesan. The best mozzarella is made from buffalo milk. Good mozzarella has a delicate, creamy flavour, but in the bad versions the taste quickly becomes bland. I've often been surprised by how good basic supermarket mozzarella can be, but it varies a lot, so experiment!

Parmesan is the matured version of Grana Padano. The name “Padano” comes from the Pianura padana, or valley of the Po river, where it's made. Interestingly but unrelatedly, the name La Padania was appropriated by the Lega Nord as a possible name for a separate northern Italy and the area sends sports teams to competitions for nations that are not officially recognised. Grana Padano cheese is common in Italy but in the UK, most people have heard more about Parmesan, the real version of which tastes nothing like the dry flakes we used to sprinkle from a tube on to spaghetti bolognese when I was a child in the 80s. Italians do sprinkle it on pasta, soup, risotto and pretty much any primi piatti that aren't made with fish, but you can also eat it in small chunks by itself or, even better, with slices of Parma ham.

Asiago is another one of my favourites. Like mozzarella, it's mild, so when it's good it's very good but when it's bad it can be tasteless, and you find it everywhere. It exists in an aged form, but I never tasted it.

Provolone is also common. It comes in two kinds, dolce and piccante. The texture is quite like Emmental and the dolce version tastes similar. “Piccante” means “spicy”, but it's not hot, it just has more of an aged flavour. I never particularly liked it either, but maybe that's just personal taste.

Mr A and I used to call Scamorza “penis cheese”. On reflection, this is pretty gross, but it was only because the first ones we ever saw did bear a striking resemblance to penises. Actually, it's a smoky cheese that tastes delicious and melts nicely on to pizza.

Toma and Taleggio are two creamy mountain cheeses. Most of the Taleggio I had was stronger than the Toma but the texture is similar. Like all the others, these are cows' milk cheeses. I'm not a huge fan of goats' cheese (caprino) and didn't come across much sheep's cheese (pecorino) but the different regional varieties of both could make up a blog post in themselves. Interestingly enough, when I looked up the origins of all the cheeses I ate regularly, they were all relatively local to Milan – mostly from Lombardy, the Veneto or Piemonte – so the shops and markets in the South might well sell a completely different selection. I plan to go there again eventually, and I promise to do some research!

Why I Pay for Italian TV

2009-11-23T19:39:00.001+01:00

With my internet package here in France, I get high definition TV bundled in with the phone line and internet connection that are the reasons the package is actually worth paying for for me. There are 150 TV channels included, but nevertheless, I was more than delighted when I realised that for a bargainous 3 euros per month, I could add the Italian “bouquet”, which gives me access to Rai 1, 3 and 3 and 24 hour news just as if I were in Italy. Given the reputation of Italian TV, it may come as a surprise to you to learn that anybody, least of all somebody born and bred outside of the borders of the Bel Paese, would actually pay to watch it, but there are two reasons why I do.

The first reason is that French TV is pretty bad. It doesn't have the same number of high-quality programmes that you get in the UK, but, unlike Italian TV, it doesn't give you much opportunity to laugh at it rather than with it either. Imagine Italian TV made boring. That's French TV.

The second reason is just one programme: L'Eredità. L'Eredità alone is worth 3 euros a month. It's a quiz show, on at 7 o'clock every weekday evening, where contestants answer questions in a range of formats, being eliminated as the show progresses until only two participants are left. These two then answer questions to “inherit” each other's money until eventually the winner takes it all.

The quality of the questions varies. Some are pretty stupid but some are amusing and quite a few are really interesting. One of the rounds is a guessing game that is actually really difficult, and overall, the questions are interesting enough to keep you watching and not make you despise the contestants too much for their stupidity when they get it wrong.

L'Eredità is also good for language learning because, as well as involving a wide range of vocabulary, the questions appear on the screen as you watch, helping you to understand the basics of what's going on. After the contestants response, there is a longer explanation of the answer that is a bit more complicated to follow.

As Italian TV programmes go, L'Eredità is surprisingly inoffensive. There are fewer flashing lights than in your average quiz show (and possibly even your average nature programme in Italy) and the host's skin is not too ridiculously orange. The contestants look like normal people and do not seem to have decided to appear purely in the hope of nabbing an evening gig at Berlusconi's villa. Just to add that hint of Italy, however, there is this incongruous moment where the glamorous female assistants have to dance before going on to report on relatively well-researched answers to the questions. It's bizarre.

The way that things worked out, I haven't found myself back in Italy as often as I expected to over the past few months and I feel like a bit of a fraud for carrying on this blog when I don't live there any more. I'm not ready to give it up just yet though, so let's just hope that La Rai and a few trips in the next wee while will give me enough to keep writing about.

Ritorno a Milano

2009-10-07T22:07:00.004+02:00

I went back to Milan last weekend for the first time since I moved away in August, what seems like seven very long weeks ago. As I was expecting, it was an emotional weekend. Mr A and I broke up when he was here in the summer and visiting Milan really brought home to me the reality of what had happened. Needless to say, that hurt.

At the same time, though, the visit was a very positive experience. I was worried that I would have grown apart from my friends since last year and that without working together we would have nothing to talk about any more, but in fact that wasn't the case at all. On Friday night I slept at my friend S's house and we stayed up until 3 in the morning catching up, then on Saturday night a big group of us from my old work went out for pizza and drinks (which turned into pizza, profiteroles, ice cream... and drinks) and had a great time.

On Saturday, I stayed with two other friends and we spent most of Sunday making ravioli from scratch:

The whole process took about 4 hours, so I ended up scarfing my bowl in about 20 minutes and running off to the airport, but it was worth it just for the fun of the cooking!

The weekend was tiring and all too short, but I was glad that I went. Lots of the good things about Italy are good in France too, but Italy has this kind of exuberance that makes you smile and makes you cry in a way that no other country I know of does. Like when I was in the supermarket and the woman in front of me paid with a handful of small coins. “Della moneta – che bello!” rejoiced the checkout assistant. Or when after all those hours in the kitchen, we finally sat down to eat and realised that the pasta was delicious and we had made it all ourselves. Or when my my plane took off from Malpensa as night was falling and I caught a glimpse of the mountains rising out of the clouds into the darkness and realised that despite everything that had happened recently, Italy, that other love of my life, was still going to be there for me.

Muse on Italian TV

2009-09-28T22:57:00.002+02:00

I have been cracking up tonight over this clip of one of my favourite bands taking the mickey on Italian TV. Aside from the obvious joke of the guys switching places, the fact that the presenter manages to get so excited about a band that clearly knows nothing about (unless she's doing an excellent cover-up job) is hysterical. I was also laughing at her for going on about how having an English language band was "so international" ("international" is cooler than a mint granita in Italy right now, but you don't have to do much to achieve the cachet), but it turns out that Matt Bellamy has an Italian girlfriend (boo!) and the album was recorded between Milan and Como. Why did I ever leave?

Stresa in the Sunshine

2009-08-31T19:11:00.001+02:00

I realised that after my long story about sly old ladies skipping the queue at the train station, I never posted anything about my actual day in Stresa.

I've probably said this before, but I love Stresa. It's as if they combined the best of Italy and Switzerland and put them into one little town surrounded by stunning mountains and lakeside scenery.

That day two weeks ago, my first goal was to do something energetic, so I got the cable car up to Mottorone (Ok, so not that energetic!) and set off for a bit of a hike. This is where I finished up:

If I hadn't been starving and short of water, I would probably have done the 2.5 hour walk back down to Stresa, but under the circumstances I decided that it would be better to go back to the cable car. In the interest of diversity, I decided to go back a different way, and it turned out to be steep, exposed and definitely longer than the way I came. The sun beat down and the sweat dripped off me and the half hour back to the cable car seemed endless. I arrived looking as though I had been swimming and was too embarrassed to sit in the restaurant to eat, so after mopping myself down in the toilets, I bought a sandwich and found a place to hide among the trees to eat it.

Then I got the cable car back down to Stresa and jumped straight in the lake, which is probably what I should have done at the very beginning. Hiking at midday in 35 degree heat is not good for your health!

The Post Office Again

2009-08-29T17:13:00.003+02:00

Just in case anybody was thinking of sending parcels from an Italian post office and was utterly terrified after reading about my experiences, I thought I would post the end of the story here. Four of the boxes arrived within 3 days with most of the stuff intact (although one broken mug did lead to a whole other adventure).

The other one arrived almost 3 weeks later, when I had given up hope and was assuming that customs officials had taken umbrage at or a fancy to the bottles of wine that were carefully wrapped and included in the package. When I went to collect it at the post office, I was surprised to be given a completely different box, smaller than the one I posted and covered in Chronopost International labels. Some of the stuff was missing and a lot of it was broken. A lot of the things were newly wrapped in cardboard. A lot of the things were covered in red wine.

I'm assuming that since so many of the things were broken and since they had taken the trouble to repackage the whole lot that this was somehow the post office's fault and not mine, but there was no explanation, so who knows?

Incidentally, one of my friends posted boxes and boxes full of old clothes from Italy and wasn't even asked at the post office what was in the parcels.

Buying a Train Ticket

2009-08-18T08:47:00.002+02:00

I came back to Milan on Saturday, and with a day to spare before getting the train back to Paris, I decided to go to Lake Maggiore on Sunday. Before I even got on the train, however, I found enough material for an entire blog post.

The trains to Lake Maggiore leave from the Porta Garibaldi train station, which has over 20 platforms and lots of departures, even early on a Sunday morning. Despite the frequency of the trains, however, the ticket office was closed. This would not have been a huge problem if two of the automatic vending machines hadn't been broken, meaning that anyone who hadn't bought their ticket the day before had to either use the regional ticket machines, which only accept coins, or the one main line ticket machine, which took bank notes but could only give change up to 4.95.

This initial hurdle eliminated many participants before the ticket buying test had even really started. Many wandered off towards the bar, which was desperately asking customers to pay for their 85 cent coffee using something other than a 50 euro note. The rest of us passed on to the competitive part of the exam: queueing like an Italian.

The queue was long. I arrived and took my place behind a guy with a suitcase. An elderly-ish woman came and stood next to me. Possibly even slightly in front of me. Despite the fact that she was invading my personal space, I sidled a little further into the space between me and suitcase man.

At this point I should say that I am normally nice to my fellow citizens. I give up my seat on the bus, let people with one item in front of me in the supermarket and would have no problem letting someone who was about to miss their train go in front of me in the ticket queue. Where I am perhaps not so nice, however, is in the fact that I like to have a choice about it. If old ladies try to cheat me, there is no way they are getting my place in the queue. Being British, however, I am incapable of turning to people and saying, “Excuse me, I was here first.” Instead I sidle, refuse to make eye contact, and spread my feet and elbows out in an attempt to fill the space that they are trying to steal from me. So, for several minutes, that is what I did.

Old Lady Number 1, however, was an amateur compared to the next one that came along. Peering over her glasses, she pretended to be examining the machine in an attempt to understand how it worked. She sighed a lot and addressed a few questions to the crowd. (“What do I do? Does it take banknotes? Can I buy a return ticket?”) A man near the front of the queue who was clearly a better person than me answered all her questions.

“Oh, signore, do you think you could help me buy my ticket?”

And with one neat move, there she was by his side at the front of the queue.

The fun didn't end there though. The machine refused to accept people's banknotes. It spat out their cards and cancelled their transactions. People at the back of the queue were offering change to people at the front in a desperate attempt to get their tickets on time. Old Lady Number One began to feel concerned. She asked Gentile Signore to help her. Gentile Signore looked worried. He had a train to catch.

“Don't worry, I can help you,” I said. We arrived at the front of the queue and, after a couple of attempts, bought first her ticket, then mine. She thanked me, and I smiled back.

“My pleasure,” I said. And it was.

Apparently, living in Italy can bring out the wartime spirit in all of us.

In the Veneto

2009-08-18T08:41:00.004+02:00

When I first came to the Veneto, it was not my favourite part of Italy. After the Amalfi Coast, the lakes, and the rocky cliffs of Liguria, its plains seemed dull and the mountains on the horizon far more enticing than the flat fields that surrounded me.

That was before I discovered thunderstorms and the big, dramatic skies that come with them.

Shooting Stars

2009-08-18T08:39:00.001+02:00

Last Wednesday I discovered a new Italian tradition. For an hour and a half, from nine thirty until 11, I lay on a sun lounger in the dark, staring up at the sky and looking for shooting stars. It's traditional to do this around Ferragosto (the 15th August), when there are many of them in the sky. I saw about 7 or 8, but the children I was with (aged 7 and 10) managed to see “20 real ones and lots of fake ones.” I was distracted some of the time by trying to convince Child 2 (aged 7) that there weren't any wolves lurking in the garden ready to come and get them, and some of the time by convincing him to pretend to be the wolf to scare his brother, and some of the time by laughing so hard whenever we tried to do wolf calls in the dark.

It's something everyone should do. Lie down in the dark, stare at the night sky and watch as the stars multiply as it gets darker and your eyes adjust to the lack of light. Watch the aeroplanes, some low and some far, far away and be amazed as every so often a shooting star zaps across the sky. It feels like watching the universe go by.

And if all that sounds a bit too exaggerated, make sure you have a wriggly and slightly scared seven year old next to you to bring you back down to earth.

Turandot

2009-08-18T08:38:00.001+02:00

On Friday night, we went to the opera in the Arena di Verona. Tickets for a plush red velvet armchair in the stalls cost a fortune, but if you are prepared to sit for five hours on a hot stone step, you can get a seat at the top of the arena for under 20 euros.

I went to the opera in Verona last year, to see Rigoletto, and, although it was worth going just for the experience, it wasn't necessarily something that I was desperate to repeat. Turandot was different though. It had all the over the top extravagance that you expect from opera, with a gorgeous set, an exciting story, an enormous cast and fantastic performances. Sometimes the stage was so busy that I didn't know where to look – at the opera star singing the arias or the acrobats and dancers who were creating a virtuoso backdrop to the story. Like everybody else in the arena, I was looking forward to hearing 'Nessun Dorma', but I didn't expect it to be so entrancing that it sent shivers down my spine. The poor orchestra didn't even get to the end before the whole of the audience burst into applause for the singers.

I like the idea of going to the opera in an enclosed theatre, where I would probably see and hear what was going on better, but the atmosphere in the Arena was something special. Sitting there with my wonderful Italian friends, in a building constructed by one of the world's great civilisations, listening to music by a native composer, I was reminded that there are many things about Italy that are hard to beat.

Bardolino

2009-08-18T08:31:00.001+02:00

On Sunday, we did actually make it to Lake Garda. We went to Bardolino, a town pretty much like all the others on the eastern shore of the lake, with pretty streets, clean water to swim in and lots of extremely civilized tourists. We were particularly taken with this mother duck and her one little ducking, who very kindly stopped to preen their feathers just a couple of metres away from us on the beach.

There was also this little leaning tower just behind the harbour. Almost as good as Pisa!

Vicenza

2009-08-18T08:24:00.001+02:00

On Saturday, one of the other camp tutors and I went to Vicenza, which is a small town about 40 minutes on the train from Verona. We were planning to go to Lake Garda, but it was cloudy, so we went to the trian station and picked a destination at random, realising after we had bought the tickets that we should probably have checked if there was a train to come back. Luckily, there were plenty, and in fact our mistake turned out to be buying tickets for a EuroStar train (in Italy, that's just a fast train, not necessarily the one that goes under the channel!), which cost 3 times as much as the return journey on a Regionale train, but Vicenza was worth it. It's famous for its architecture, with the Basilica and many of the palazzi having been designed by Palladio, but we were also pretty impressed by the peace and quiet and the cold cucumber soup and wine at 80 cents a glass in the restaurant where we had lunch.

Summer Camp

2009-08-18T08:20:00.001+02:00

After precisely 5 days in France, I was back in Italy. It was cold, grey and rainy as the train rushed its way across France but as soon as we crossed the border, the train slowed down and the sun came out. I spent only half an hour in sticky Milan before I was on my way out in to the bella part of Italia again, on my way to Verona.

For the past four years, I've worked every August at an English summer camp for kids in a small village in the Veneto. I started when I was a student, but despite the fact that I now have a real job, I keep going back because these two weeks in August are an experience of everything that is good about Italy. In the morning, we teach crazy Italian children useful phrases like “Bananas of the world, unite!” and in the afternoon, we have long naps, soak up the sunshine and stroll around Verona feeling smug about not being tourists.

The best part of the whole experience is that we stay with the family in their amazing 100 year old farmhouse where the water comes from a spring and the stairs going up to my bedroom are made of cool, bare stone. The house is so big that up until this year I didn't even know that the room that I'm sleeping in existed. We are ridiculously spoiled by the Nonna, a proper Italian grandmother, who cooks amazing food using fresh vegetables from the garden.

In fact, the children at the camp this year are calmer than they have ever been before and the past ten days have been ridiculously easy. Every so often they entertain us with questions such as “Why are your eyes that funny blue colour?”, “Are you Scottish or Moroccan?” (In this part of the world all foreigners are either Scottish camp tutors or travelling salesmen from Africa, apprently) and (my personal favourite) “What world are you from?” Obviously, we are partly there to widen the children's horizons, but at the same time, their innocence is nice. Where else would you find 13 year olds who don't know what Facebook is and are still happy to spend a week of their holidays singing the aforementioned banana song?

Moving to Paris 3

2009-07-30T12:51:00.003+02:00

Well, I made it! And so did 4 out of my 5 boxes, in only 2 days. I would be able to track where the other one was on the internet except that the link to the tracking page is broken.

I'm going to keep posting here about my exploits in Italy (i'm not finished there yet!) but stories about my new life in France can be found at http://parisatmyfeet.blogspot.com. Enjoy!

Moving to Paris 2: Last Night in Milan

2009-07-29T11:55:00.001+02:00

After the ordeal of sending my parcels yesterday, my cleaning schedule was about six hours out. This was a problem, as Italian landlords generally expect you to do a very thorough job before you leave, sometimes going as far as repainting the walls. I didn't manage that, but I did stay up until 2 am cleaning the oven, washing the floor and trying to get a reading from the gas meter, which is cunningly positioned so that you can only read it if you have a head no bigger than a Barbie doll's. I did, however, take a couple of hours off for aperitivo in the lovely Brera district, one of the few parts of Milan that is actually beautiful, with J. and L.. We found a great bar with friendly staff and a huge and varied buffet. It's on the corner near Lanza metro station and is called, ironically, 'The Old Post Office'.

Moving to Paris 1: The Post Office

2009-07-29T11:45:00.002+02:00

This post comes to you from Artesia train 9242 'Alexandre Dumas' from Milano Centrale to Paris Gare de Lyon. I am sitting in a comfortable seat with a view of the French Alps outside the window. I have a small bag under my seat and a suitcase and a rucksack sitting neatly in the luggage rack at the end of the carriage. That accounts for around a quarter of my personal possessions. The rest are … somewhere else, and, courtesy of the Poste Italiane, I have no idea when I'm likely to see them again.

The Post Office in Italy is almost legendary. In the UK, people pop into the post office for a few minutes in their lunch break, or maybe allow half an hour or so to complete a complicated transaction. In Italy, you take the morning off work to go.

Knowing that sending my things from Italy to France was never going to be simple, I started doing my research months ago. Most of my friends were away from Milan for the summer, so I was expecting to be on my own. Companies like DHL and FedEx were expensive and posed the unusual but awkward problem of being able to get my stuff to Paris faster than I could get there myself, so I decided to use a service provided by the Post Office called Paccocelere that would ship the things in around 2 days. After reading about it on the internet, I went to the main post office in my area to check that it was indeed the service I wanted.

Alarm bells should perhaps have started ringing when the man behind the counter had never heard of Paccocelere and had to check the post office website himself to find out what it was. However, he confirmed that I could use it to send “personal effects” such as clothes and books and gave me a large bundle of forms to fill out so that I could prepare my shipment in advance, and I went home to book my trip to Scotland and my train to France based on a timescale of 2 days and allowing a few extra days in case things got held up. I wasn't able to leave any more time because I need to go back to Italy at the beginning of August to work at summer camp, but I figured that was pretty reasonable.

I was expecting to have to take the boxes to the post office in a taxi because nobody I knew who was still in Milan had a car but luckily (perhaps the only lucky part of the whole story) my friend S. came back for the weekend and offered to take me in her car. We planned to go to the post office about eleven and meet another friend, J., for lunch around one, allowing what seemed like a very sensible two hours to complete the process, but we got held up by S. sleeping in and me running out of parcel tape and taking over an hour to fill out the three forms that had to accompany each of the five boxes in triplicate. As instructed by Mr Post Office Man, I wrote “effetti personali” on the customs declaration and S. said I could use her address as the return address on the ominous part that said “In case of failed delivery a) return the shipment to me at my expense or b) abandon the shipment.”

We decided to go for lunch first and then tackle the post office, and poor J. innocently offered to help. So, around 2.30, we headed to the post office and between the three of us, managed to pile up the boxes in a small space by the door. I took a number from the machine and, after a surprisingly short wait, was called to the counter and explained what I wanted to do.

The woman, who we will call Ms Slightly Too Efficient, looked at the customs declaration.

“You can't just put 'effetti personali'. You have to be specific. What's in the boxes?”

Confident that I was not attempting to ship grappa, explosives or child ponography, I replied, “Just clothes, books and some kitchen equipment. I'm moving house.”

“Let me just check that for you.” She typed a few things into the computer. “You can't use Paccocelere to send these things.”

She turned the computer screen towards me and sure enough, there it was in bold red letters. You are not allowed to send your own used clothes into France using Paccocelere.
Another post office worker, who we will call Ms Know It All, confirmed that this was indeed the case.

I started to panic. Was I not allowed to take any clothes to France at all? Would I have to arrive with nothing but the clothes on my back and kit myself out with an immediate trip to the Rue de Rivoli? It turned out, however, that you can send used clothes by road freight but not by air.

The mind boggles as to what spectacular fusion of French and Italian bureaucracy might have produced that rule. (A friend later told me that Germany has an equally bizarre rule that says that you can't send anything wrapped in polystyrene into Germany for environmental reasons, despite the fact that the Germans are perfectly at liberty to manufacture and export polystyrene themselves.) Road freight, however, was not enough to solve my problem by itself, however, because by the time the stuff arrived, I would be gone. Nevertheless, I collected another pile of forms to fill in and went to talk to my friends about what to do. J. lives outside of Milan and S. was going away on holiday again that night, so there wasn't a lot they could do to help, but S. suggested going into school to phone my landlord in France and see if I could send the shipment to his address instead of mine.

So we left poor J. at the post office guarding the boxes and S. and I went to school. I spoke to the landlord, but he was going on holiday. I phoned FedEx to see if they could store the things for me for a day but they couldn't. Another friend, M., offered to send a FedEx shipment from the school for me once I was gone, so I phoned them again but they couldn't do a pick up at the right time. Time was running out. School was closing and J. had been at the post office for almost an hour. The only solution was for my landlord to ask one of my neighbours to help me after I arrived. So I decided to send my worldly goods off into the blue.

By 4 o'clock, we were back at the post office. My three extremely tolerant and understanding friends helped me to fill out the new forms in record time, all three of them scribbling away around a tiny table, and eventually I was once again called to the counter. To Mr Post Office Man Number One. He almost told me to send the shipment using Paccocelere, which I would have willingly taken the risk and done (rules are flexible in Italy) but then I was directed to another counter where Mr Post Office Man 2 was waiting. He too almost let me use Paccocelere, and without the customs declaration too, but Ms Know It All was looking over his shoulder and said accusingly, “These are the people who wanted to use Paccocelere before but they can't because there are old clothes in the boxes.” So the ironically named “Quick Pack” road-freight service it was. (Perhaps tellingly, Mr POM2 had no idea what “Quick Pack” actually meant.)

The computer system was down so he had to write my receipts himself with a pen that J. lent him because why would a post office supply their staff with pens? Halfway through the transaction, he told me that, despite the fact that this was a large Post Office operating a banking service, I couldn't pay with my debit card. Having heard this before, I had had the presence of mind to bring my cheque book. Nope, no cheques either. Only cash or a Post Office bank card. Which would have been OK if the cash machine had been working when I went to the bank in the morning, but it wasn't. And only my own bank would let me take out enough money at once to pay for the shipment.

But once again, S. was there to save me. “I'll pay. I've got cash,” she said.

“Have you really? “ I said in disbelief."It's going to be about 500 euros." But she did. Italy being a third world country that has somehow managed to slip its way into the EU and the G8*, she had received her child benefit in cash that morning.

There was one last hurdle to overcome. When all the boxes were finally weighed, labelled, customs declared and paid for, Mr POM2 gave me a handful of “receipts”. Being the bottom carbon copy of three from a top copy that had been written by hand, they were almost illegible and certainly didn't look like anything I could hand to my new employer to claim as expenses. I politely asked him if it was possible to have a receipt for the total amount that somebody with less than second sight would be able to read. Instead of either giving me one or politely saying “no,” he decided to take this as an insinuation that he hadn't done his job properly, was planning to steal my money and was consigning the packets to the fires of hell. Sally and Maggie being fluent in Italian, the whole very Italian experience ended with a loud argument before we said our polite goodbyes and headed to the bar.

So I am cursing my foolish decision to put any trust in the Italian post office, but feeling eternally grateful to my wonderful friends who gave up their whole afternoon to help me out. And please, hold your thumbs, cross your fingers or pray that my boxes get there, preferably by the end of the week, but if not, the middle of August will do. Thank you.

*Harsh, but under the circumstances, also quite fair.

Como Again

2009-07-28T19:15:00.002+02:00

I couldn't leave Milan without one last trip to the lakes, so on Friday J and I packed a picnic and got on a train to Como. From Como, we got the boat up the lake to Argegno, where there is a lakeside lido where you can sit on the grass and jump into the lake. When we got there, though, we discovered that the lido was closed and there was nowhere else that was really suitable for swimming. We sat in the sun, which was so hot we were dripping with sweat just sitting still, and ate our picnic, but after that we could take no more and went into the bar to ask if they could recommend a place to swim. They told us that there was nowhere else in Argegno, but suggested that we took the bus up the road to Grianta, and it turned out to be a very good piece of advice. Grianta is a gorgeous town just down the lakeside from Menaggio, where scenery starts to get even more dramatic and there are great views across the lake to Bellaggio and the mountains. On the edge of the town there are all these incredibly luxurious looking villas with private swimming pools, but normal people like us could go to the small stony beach to swim in the lake.

We didn't get there until about three o'clock, so after our swim there was just time to dry off and get chatted up by the local old men, who were shocked that we were spending the summer in Milan and offered to pick us up and bring us to the lake the next day too (if they had been about thirty years younger it might have been an attractive proposition), before it was time to go and get the bus. We decided to get the bus all the way back to Como so that we had more time at the beach, and it turned out to be a good choice, because the road back was spectacular and you actually see more from the bus than you do from the boat. The man in the bar that sold the bus tickets very kindly exchanged them for us and pointed us in the right direction. I find people in Milan pretty friendly most of the time, but once you get outside the city, the locals put their urban neighbours to shame! My guide book doesn't even mention Grianta as a place to visit and it's hard to find information about the buses up and down the lake without actually being there, so it was entirely thanks to them that we found the place and didn't melt into little pools of sweat for want of a place to swim.

Lido di Milano

2009-07-28T19:12:00.000+02:00

One sweltering hot day last week, my friend J and I finally made it to the Lido di Milano, which is at Piazza Lotto on the red metro line. After you pay at the gate, you walk through changing rooms which reminded me ominously of school swimming lessons in the 1980s, but you come outside to trees, flowers and an enormous outdoor pool. (It looks at least Olympic-sized, although it's a bit of a funny shape. There's a bar and picnic area and water chutes and games for kids, and you can hire a sun lounger for 4 euros or pay 11 euros to sit in the VIP area and be gently sprayed with cold water, but we just sat at the edge of the pool on our towels, along with most other people, and went in for a swim every time it got too hot. Highly recommended, and much more spacious than the My Island “beach”!

Choose Life

2009-07-23T19:09:00.001+02:00

...but which one?

I had a fantastic time at home last week seeing Mum and Dad, catching up with all my friends and appreciating the oasis of cool tranquillity that is the UK after the experience of summer in Milan. I indulged in endless hours in chain coffee shops drinking ersatz Italian coffee and delighted in the concept of putting these coffee shops in bookshops so that you can be tempted by cake and literature at the same time. I breathed in the fresh air and the smell of grass and hedgerows after a summer shower and I drove on well signposted roads where people respect the speed limit.

I also began to look forward to going to Paris. I found out more information about my job and got excited about furnishing my flat on Ikea online. I discovered that one of my French friends is moving back there in September and I started to plan all the things that I want to do when I get to Paris.

Then I came back to Italy and sat in the park in the sunshine and watched the well dressed people go by and went to the Lido with my friend and remembered all the wonderful things about Italy.

As it happens, my choice is made. In a way, it was made for me. But if I had completely free choice, which would I choose?

Vodafone Passport

2009-07-23T18:37:00.003+02:00

Ever since I destroyed my internet connection and my boyfriend went back to England for the summer, I've been suffering from communication technology withdrawal. After a week at home where I socialised with my friends all day every day and abused my parents' broadband, I was a little sad to be coming back to Italy and my 50 cent per minute international mobile calls.

So when I arrived at the airport and saw an advert for Vodafone's summer promotion, my heart leapt. I have an O2 phone in the UK, but Vodafone have abolished roaming charges in Europe for July and August and are giving away a free sim card when you buy £15 worth of credit. Because I bought my phone from the Carphone Warehouse, where most of the phones are not network-locked, all I needed to do was put in my new sim and activate Vodafone passport and I was ready to go. From Italy, or anywhere else in Europe, I can now phone home for no more than it would cost me to make the call in the UK.

I have the same promotion on my Italian phone but that only lets me call Italy when I'm away. Vodafone Italia also has a promotion called One Nation that lets you make cheap international calls on your Italian mobile in Italy, but after I activated it and accidentally spent a fortune calling Britain and France, I found out that it doesn't apply to European countries. (Why???)

At the moment, the Vodafone promotion is only for July and August, but I'm hoping that, seeing as it seems a great way for them to get ahead of the competition, they'll continue the promotion for at least as long as it takes for me to get broadband and Skype in my new flat. And, knowing France, that could be a long time!

Racism

2009-07-17T20:14:00.002+02:00

I often find myself wondering in this country whether the statement “Italians are racist” is, in itself, something of a racist, or at least prejudiced statement. It is definitely fair to say, however, that racist attitudes are much more socially and politically acceptable here than in the UK or France. Not only is the Lega Nord, which has policies that are so racist they don't even like Italians from the wrong part of the country, one of the major political parties, but politicians from the so-called “centrist” parties make openly racist statements too.

Yesterday, with a whole day entirely by myself to fill, I spent some time reading the back issues of the newspapers which I tend to buy, read the magazine section and fail to finish the news and I came across an article where Berlusconi and other politicians were claiming that Milan is in danger of becoming “an African city” and criticising the fact that there are so many black faces on its street. It's hard to imagine mainstream politicians in the UK getting away with making that kind of statement, but even the Corriere della Sera, which is one of the more enlightened Italian papers, could only manage a tone of mild criticism of their attitudes. To put the statement into perspective, around 13% of the population of Milan is made up of “foreigners”. That includes the fashion designers who create the clothes of the rich and famous, and the international footballers that Berlusconi himself pays a fortune to import for his team. It includes people like me, who come to give Italian children the education in English that their parents covet and the Filippinos that they trust to look after these children while they go out to more attractive employment.

Where the anti-immigrant voices of Italy often go wrong, deliberately or otherwise, is in failing to make a distinction between immigrants and illegal immigrants, which makes it easier for them to make the presence of foreigners seem like a threat and therefore makes all racism seem more acceptable. “Of course that black man is not to be trusted,” the thinking goes, “because he is almost certainly cheating the system and stealing my country's resources.” (Never mind that the best people at cheating the system in Italy are the Italians themselves.) And perhaps what makes these foreign faces so supposedly prevalent on the streets of Milan is the fact that these racist attitudes make it very difficult for the “wrong” kind of foreigner to get a job that will take them off the streets and into a job that is more profitable than selling crummy plastic toys in the metro station.

Why Don't We Have That at Home?

2009-07-17T20:06:00.002+02:00

Three of my favourite inventions that make life in Italy that little bit easier:

Dividers at the checkouts in the supermarkets. When the checkout person has scanned your stuff and you've paid, they can push your stuff into one section and start scanning the next customer's things so that you don't have to worry about taking your time over packing your bags and holding everyone else up.

My dish-drying cupboard. The perfect invention for people who are too proud to have dishes on show and too lazy to dry them with a dish towel.

Bidets. When it's hot and dusty they're good for all kinds of washing, but especially your feet. And when it's cold, you can revert to British traveller mode and dump the washing in them.

Parli Italiolo?

2009-07-17T20:03:00.001+02:00

After my mum left last week, my friend R. and her boyfriend P. came to stay. R. is Scottish, but she lives in Seville, and P. is Spanish. As I know about twenty words in Spanish, most of which make up bizarre curses which R. taught me when we were flatmates at uni, and P. only spoke a little bit of English, we spent the next three days testing the theory that Spanish and Italian are mutually comprehensible languages (that is, that Italian speakers can understand Spanish and vice versa). I came to the conclusion that this theory is exaggerated. While the two languages, like Italian and French, are very similar grammatically and many of their words have the same origins, differences in pronunciation and in many very common words mean that, while it may be very easy for an Italian speaker to learn Spanish, just as it was easy for me to learn Italian after learning French, everyday communication is not that easy. Interestingly, I found it easier to understand P's views on bull fighting and opening the market for illegal drugs than to figure out what he wanted for breakfast, but that may have had something to do with the amount of wine we both drank before the first two conversations started. At one point, though, P. and R. got into a very animated conversation about cock-fighting (la pelea de gallos) and I found myself wondering what people from Wales (el pais de Gales) had done to upset them.

On Wednesday night, I introduced them to aperitivo and Milanese cocktails and we had an evening of complicated but great fun conversation with two of my friends from work. On Thursday, they went sightseeing in town and on Friday we went to the beach. In Milan.

Technically, the “beach” in Milan, which can be found in Piazza Carlo Magno next to the Fiera Milano City, is My Island, an outdoor swimming pool surrounded by sand, artificial grass and sun loungers, which has been created in the middle of what would otherwise look like a building site. The pool is not enormous and it was full of children when we were there, and the bar staff were a bit grumpy, but in a city that has so little outdoor space where you can laze around in the sunshine, it was a nice place to spend an afternoon. As well as the pool, there are tennis and volleyball courts and the whole venue turns into a bar/club at night. Even the DVD of waves crashing on a beach that was projected onto a screen above the pool was quite nice...

until the credits started to roll!

Stresa

2009-07-14T01:46:00.000+02:00

Mum came to Italy with one wish: to see the Italian lakes. Our walk on Thursday was lovely but we weren't high enough in up in the mountains to actually catch a glimpse of the sparkling waters of Lake Como, so on Saturday we went to Stresa for the weekend.

Stresa, like Como, is only about an hour from Milan on the train, but the trains aren't all that frequent, so we had to get up early on Saturday morning. When we arrived, the first thing we needed to do was find a hotel. After walking along the lakefront and admiring the Astoria, the Regina Palace, and the impossibly beautiful Grand Hotel des Iles Borrmomées, we eventually settled for the Hotel Elena on Piazza Cadorna in the centre of town. It didn't have a swimming pool or live music and dancing on the terrace in the evening, but we had a balcony, the staff were friendly, and who needs a swimming pool with Lake Maggiore on their doorstep?

In the afternoon, we went to see an example of luxury that surpassed even the Regina Palace Hotel: the villa on the Isola Bella. The Isola Bella is one of three islands that are only a short boat trip from Stresa (and if you go with one of the unofficial ferry companies, it can be a short and exciting trip as you bounce along the waves created by the much larger official boats). On the island is a huge villa built by a member of the Borromeo family in the 17th century. The scale of the baroque architecture would put many churches to shame and as well as the (at least relatively) tastefully decorated rooms upstairs, there is a spectacularly hideous series of artificial underground grottoes on the lower floor of the villa which house everything from a collection of marionettes to a canoe dug out of a nearby peat bog.

My favourite bit of the villa, however, was the gardens. A series of terraces stacked up from the lake level and populated with specially imported white peacocks leads to an enormous centrepiece decorated with statues and fountains. While some of it verges on being over the top, the flowers, the sunshine and the way that the land is shaped to take best advantage of its position in the middle of the lake are beautiful and if I were a 17th century countess, I certainly wouldn't be offended if my husband built me a garden like that.

On Sunday, we got the cable car from the Lido in Stesa to Mottorone, a mountain behind the town. At the top, you get amazing views over the lake, across the mountains, and down to the Lago d'Orta on the other side. There are several waymarked hiking trails, of which we did one lasting about 2 hours, or you can go to the small dry ski centre or just have a picnic. About half way up the mountain, at one of the cable car stops, there is an alpine garden. There weren't many flowers out when we were there but it might have been more interesting at a different time of year.

Both nights in Stresa, we ate at the Osteria degli Amici, which is not far from Piazza Cadorna. The first night I had grilled trout from the lake and an amaretto mousse for pudding and the second night we both had pasta with saffron, bacon, courgettes and prawns. I left my umbrella under the table on the first night and not only did they remember me and give it back on the second night, they reminded me to take it away again when we left the second time. So different from the Milanese and their umbrella-stealing ways!

On Monday, we walked along the lake front to the gardens and zoo just outside of town. The zoo wasn't very big, but it had some very cute little goats and deer, some llamas, a zebra and an aviary. Most of the zoo was nice enough, but seeing this toucan with his bright colours in a dull empty cage made me feel a little bit sad.

We sat in the gardens for a couple of hours, mostly because I was in the middle of reading The Savage Garden, which is a mystery novel set in a villa with a large garden in Italy, and I couldn't have found a more appropriate setting to finish it in. After that, we walked back into Stresa and had a swim in the lake before catching the train back to Milan.

Hiking in the Triangolo Lariano

2009-07-14T01:30:00.001+02:00

Mum arrived for her visit on Tuesday night. On Wednesday, I sent her off to Bergamo while I did boring but useful things like going to the bank and shifting boxes with Mr. A. On Thursday, however, I decided it was time to join her on holiday and we went for a hike in the Triangolo Lariano, which is the bit of land between Lake Como and Lake Lecco.

You get the train there from Cadorna station in Milan and get off at Canzo station. Just outside the village, there are lots of marked walking trails up into the mountains beyond. A friend had recommended the area to me, but unfortunately I only vaguely remembered the directions she had given me and it took us about an hour to find the tourist office and get out of the village. It's just on the left as you walk up the hill from the train station into the centre of town, but we managed to miss it and did a couple of circuits of the village, asking three passers-by where it might be. The last person we asked was an old man sitting on a bench outside the bar who had probably seen us go past twice and very kindly took pity on us and actually led us to the door of the comune, where the office was housed. That door turned out not to be the actual door for the tourist office, but the woman was incredibly kind and went and got all kinds of maps for me, including one that she gave me for free but I'm sure I should have paid for. She must have realised that somebody who was looking for tourist information in the anagrafe office, which deals with things like residency and taxes, was clearly in need of a map.

Once we had the maps, it took us another couple of circuits of the town to find the right way out. There are 5 or 6 routes, all signposted with the traditional red and white striped markers, and we weren't quite smart enough to remember the number of the path that we wanted to take, which led to us taking another detour, this time up a very steep hill, but eventually we got ourselves on the right one and were heading for the Tre Alpi.

The walk up to the Primo Alpe was steep but not too difficult. The path was shaded by trees and we saw lots of pretty orange butterflies. At the top, there's an education centre and a picnic area. The Secondo and Terzo Alpi turned out to be very close to the first one and the path flattened out, so that part of the walk was easy. On the way, there is a chapel of St Miro, who apparently brought rain to the area during a long drought, and at the top there's an agritourismo. It was a bit late for lunch by the time we got there, but we had a drink, admired the farm tools and the corns hanging from the walls and the ceiling and watched the owners chasing the goats out of the house.

We wanted to go down by a different route, but it wasn't signposted and after our experiences in the morning, we decided it was safer to follow the main path, especially as the thunder was starting to rumble. We made it back to the village just as the raindrops were becoming really big, and were just in time for a train back to Milan.

Bureaucracy with a Smile

2009-07-14T01:27:00.001+02:00

Over the past few months I have been developing a theory about bureaucracy. In the UK, at least compared to other countries I've lived in, paperwork is kept to a minimum and is generally relatively easy to complete. As a result, people who administer it are generally pleasant and efficient, but rarely anything more than that. In Italy, on the other hand, bureaucracy is a crazy, incomprehensible mess that can only be confronted three days a week between the hours of 10.30 and 11.15 in an office on the other side of town from where you thought you had to be. As a result, the people who administer it feel the need, every so often, to be incredibly helpful, just to remind themselves that they are still human beings and that all this paper has nothing to do with the real world.

Because I work with children, I needed to get a certificate from the police before I left the country stating that I had no criminal record in Italy. The first part of this process is astonishingly simple. You fill out an online form and send it off, and a few days later you get an email telling you that you can collect the certificate, in my case from the Casellario Giudiziale di Milano.

This was where the fun started. At 11.30, after doing another little job in town, Mr A. and I set out to look for this building. Our search was somewhat hindered by the fact that my map of Milan, published by the ATM (which runs all the public transport) has an index that doesn't correspond to where the streets actually are on the map. As Mr A. kindly pointed out, if I had acquired a little less Italian inefficiency, or was less Scottish and less mean, I would have bought a new map by now, but seeing as I am clearly one or both of the above, we ended up wandering around for half an hour before sneaking a look at a street plan in the Mondadori bookshop. We found correct entrance to the Casellario Giudiziale, walked through the metal detector, surrendered our cameras to security and asked for directions for where to go.

And let me tell you, that place is massive. As well as what looked like court rooms and hundreds of offices, it also had its own bank and post office. The man who gave us the directions waved vaguely to the right, muttered something about “on the left” and sent us off on our way. It took us a good ten minutes to find the office number 500, which was not particularly near 500 bis, or where it appeared to be on the maps of the building. By this time, it was about 12.40 and the office workers were getting hungry and disinclined to work. I handed my piece of paper to the man behind the desk, along with my passport, and hoped for the best.

Only one problem. I needed a “bollo”. After ten months in Italy, I still don't really know what a “bollo” is for, but it's a little sticker that you can buy that appears on most official paperwork. I knew that I would need one before I went, but I didn't know where to buy it. I asked the man behind the desk and he gave me some more unclear directions. I asked him to clarify. If it was far away or there was a queue, I would never make it back before the office closed at one and would have to come back the next day. The guy said something else, which I didn't understand. I was obviously still looking confused, and he obviously wanted his lunch, because he asked if I had the 3.52 euros and, when I said that I did, reached into his bag, pulled out a stamp, stuck it on the piece of paper and handed me the certificate.

Italian bureaucracy at its best!

At the Garage

2009-07-03T11:07:00.002+02:00

After our encounter with the friendly mechanic at the Fiat garage in Via Corsico, Mr A. and I went back on Monday morning to drop "La Punto" off. (Because the word for car in Italian (macchina) is feminine, you use la even when the name of the car is masculine.) We met another mechanic, who was the one who actually ended up servicing the car and sat down to discuss prices with us. I had brushed up on some vocabulary this time and the guy was both very friendly and very professional. He gave us quotes for prices and an estimated time to do the work, remembering that it might take longer to order the parts for a British car, and when he heard that Mr A. was taking the car back to England for her MOT, we had a chat about the differences between the UK and Italian versions of the test. (In Italy, they only check the basics (brakes, lights, tyres etc) whereas in Britain, everything that worked in the car when it was new now has to be in working order to pass the test.) We arranged for the work to be done and when we went back on Tuesday to collect the car we found that he had also very kindly checked the oil and put air in the tyres to prepare the car for her long journey home.

On the way back into Milan we stopped off at a tyre place to get a quote for replacing the two front tyres and had a very different experience. The mechanic who greeted us had a big smile and a loud chuckle and looked unnervingly like a clown in his red overalls. There were no other cars in the garage, only about three other mechanics with nothing to do. The conversation went something like this:

Me: How much will it cost to change the tyres on the car?
Clown: Hmm, let me have a look and see how many need changed. (Something in Italian that I didn't understand.)
Me: I'm sorry, I didn't understand that.
Clown makes a gesture that clearly means, "turn the steering wheel so that I can see the tyres." Mr A. opens the driver's door and turns the wheel. Clown stops peering in the passenger side of the windscreen and starts to laugh.
Clown: Ahahahahahaha! It's an English car! The steering wheel is on the other side! Hahaha!
Clown finally manages to stop laughing. Mr A is beginning to look worried.
Me: So how much will it cost for the tyres?
Clown looks up price list behind the counter.
Clown: Well, you've got Michelin tyres but we're out of these. I could do another make for 220 euros.
Me: Mr A., he says 220 euros.
Mr A. starts to get back into the car.
Mr A.: The guy at the Fiat garage was only 200 euros. Let's go.
Me (to clown) : Thanks, but another garage gave me a better quote. Goodbye.
Clown: Ah, just hold on a minute. I can give you a cheaper offer with another make of tyres. How much did the other garage say?
Me: 150, including labour. (Afterwards, I decided I should have said 100).
Clown: OK. I can do it for 140 euros.
Me: He says 140.
Mr A. (still looking worried): OK, let's go for it.
Clown 1 calls Clown 2 over to get started on the work. Clown 2 gets in the passenger side of the car. He passes me my handbag, which is on the floor, then realises something is wrong and starts to laugh hysterically.
Clown 2: It's an English car! I was wondering where the steering wheel was! Ahahahahah!
Clown 2 eventually stops laughing, gets in the driver's side of the car and starts the engine.
Clown 2: This feels really strange. I don't know if I can drive this thing. Puts his foot on the accelerator. Get out of the way guys, I'M COMING!!!!

3 days later... The car has arrived in England. The tyres are still OK. The new brake pads that they ripped us off by telling us they were selling us 4 instead of 2 seem to still be attached to the car. Mr A's hair is not yet grey. And once again, I got a lot of education and an amusing story out of the experience.

Bits and Pieces

2009-06-29T15:31:00.004+02:00

A couple of weeks ago, my internet key broke. After all the tears and frustration of getting one that worked in my apparently aging computer and figuring out how not to get ripped off by Alice Mobile, it just broke. I took it out of my bag one day, plugged it into the computer and the little green light just didn't come on. The bit that plugs in feel too loose, so I figure it was probably all my own fault because I didn't look after it properly. There's no way of replacing it that would be worthwhile for the six weeks or so before I move to France, so at the moment I am internetless and scrounging friends, school and the internet cafe in a bid to stay in touch with the world, because it couldn't have happened at a worse time. I need to book flights, arrange to ship my stuff to Paris and plan a holiday for me and my mum, and this has really brought home to me how dependent I am on the internet for information and communication. I'm sure all of these things can be done in other ways, but it's just so much more difficult. (The best places I've found for internet here are the major bookshops. Although Mondadori is closer for me, I tend to use FNAC because although the internet cafe is open all day at Mondadori, they only sell credit at certain times, and never at weekends. Trust Italy to make even the internet inconvenient!)

Anyway, apart from finding myself temporarily on the wrong side of the digital divide, here are a few of the things that have been happening in the past two weeks.

Summer has definitely come. The school year has ended, it's 30 degrees outside, and the comune (town hall) is shutting for it's 3 month long holiday. It's only open for 5 hours a day at the best of times, so I guess 3 months of being completely closed won't make much difference.

With the end of the school year have come lots of goodbyes and farewell parties. Two of my favourites have been at the bar of the Mondadori bookshop, which has a terrace which is open to the public all the time and another one for private parties, and at La Toscana, a bar and restaurant on the Corso Porta Ticinese. I also attended a Partyamo event for the first time. Partyamo is a social group organised by a Scottish guy called Steve who has been living in Italy for 15 years and that lets foreigners and Italians meet and speak in different languages.

On Friday, my friend and I went shopping in Nadine, which is one of my favourite shops in Milan. She was exchanging a skirt and I actually didn't let myself even try anything on because I was scared I would want to buy everything! Italian fashion, I will miss you...

The highlight of Saturday was quite definitely a visit to the car wash. Mr A needed his car repaired before driving it back to the UK this week, and we were actually looking for a garage but ended up in the car wash by mistake. 4 euros bought us a good half our of fun with the high pressure hoses, the foam brush and a special machine for washing the floor mats, and weirdly enough the place, which had room for about 30 cars, was full of other people doing the exact same thing. It was great. Then we actually did find the Fiat garage (on Via Corsico) and met a very friendly mechanic who, despite the fact that he was closing up, came out into the street to look at the car and listened very patiently to my attempt to explain the problem without any technical vocabulary and then offered to let us skip the queue for repairs first thing on Monday morning.

And now there are just a few days of packing, cleaning and paperwork before Mr A goes back to the UK for a few weeks and I get ready to entertain my mum, who's arriving for a week's holiday on Tuesday, and enjoy Italy like a tourist again!

Paris, je t'aimerai

2009-06-29T15:30:00.000+02:00

A while back, I wrote a post about staying in Milan for another year with a list of reasons why, despite my suffering respiratory system, this was a good idea. Well, that's changed. For reasons that I'm not going to go into here, I'm leaving my fabulous life in Milan for what I hope will be an equally fabulous one in (or at least near to) la ville des lumières.

It wasn't an easy decision to make. I was never planning to stay in Italy for ever, but another year to appreciate it would have been nice. My Italian is not as good as I would like it to be yet and I haven't seen half the things I wanted to see yet. I have lots of friends here, a nice flat and a great life. Most of all, I have Mr A, who will still be staying here for at least another year. (Does EasyJet do airmiles?)

So, although it may sound crazy, I'm excited about living in France but I'm not over the moon. It's a great opportunity and I intend to make the most of it, but I've lived in France before and this was not quite the future I had planned for myself. Sometimes, though, life just deals you a crappy hand and if the best way to cope with that involves moving to one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, I guess that's not all bad. I'll try to come back with some more enthusiasm next time!

Camping at Lake Garda

2009-06-22T16:59:00.002+02:00

Last Saturday afternoon at around four o'clock, I was lying on a sun lounger beside an azure blue swimming pool, drinking a mint granita, watching the thermometer fluctuate between 29 and 30 degrees and vaguely contemplating when to go for my next swim. Beside the pool, a wide avenue of perfectly pruned trees led down to the lake shore, where earlier in the day we had been relaxing on the beach, jumping off the jetty into refreshingly cold water and buying ice cream from a boat instead of a van. In real life, this is what other people do once a year on holiday. In Italy, it's what you do on any June weekend when you feel like it and you can do it less than two hours' drive from your house.

Admittedly, we were lucky. Not every campsite in Italy has lakeside pitches fenced in by box hedges where you can park a car and pitch two tents before you go off to shop at the market, eat in the restaurant, drink in the bar, or go and swim in the 25 metre pool. But the Camping Lido at Lazise does, and that was why we went there.

After our laid back day at the campsite on Saturday, we went to Sirmione on Sunday. Unfortunately, so did most of the rest of the population. Sirmione is a historical town with Roman ruins, city walls and a castle that sticks out into Lake Garda on a peninsula on the southern shore. It's a gorgeous place with a lakeside promenade, lots of little shops and the most extravagant gelaterie I've ever seen. You can't drive in the town, so after getting as far as the city walls without finding a parking space, we ended up doing a few 3 point turns in tiny car parks and parking a good half hour's walk from the old town centre. Once we were there, however, it was actually very calm. There were lots of people, but most of them, like us, were just strolling, sunbathing and swimming. Despite being slathered in sun cream for most of the weekend, I had caught a bit too much sun on Saturday, so one of the highlights for me was being able to buy a big floppy straw sunhat with a ribbon. Mr A was not particularly convinced that this was a good look, but I decided it was better than sunburn. And I can wear it wherever we end up going next weekend too...

Parco di Monza

2009-06-22T16:59:00.001+02:00

From my flat in Milan, I can get to the metro by turning right at the corner of my block. I avoid the eyes of the shady men who hang around my street and step carefully among the rubbish on a dusty, smelly street to arrive at the metro, where battered looking grey carriages rattle through the tunnels in the belly of the city. If I get off at the Porta Garibaldi station, I can walk along underground corridors in a station where few of the ticket machines work and the office isn't open on a Sunday and get on a graffiti covered train to Monza, ten minutes ride from Milan.

Things are different in Monza. Outside the station, the streets look a little bit scruffy, but if you follow the main road you soon arrive at a pedestrianised high street with expensive shops, flowers, and a fountain that sparkles in the summer sun. On a Sunday, people stand around outside the beautiful churches in expensive looking designer clothes (I find this weird) and drink post-communion coffee on the terrace of a bar.

If you keep walking, the atmosphere changes. There are people, many people, and especially families on bikes. After a while, you realise that most of them are going in the same direction. If you go with the Sunday afternoon flow, you will find yourself in the Parco di Monza.

The park is a proper Sunday afternoon place. It has a large villa with landscaped gardens, statues and a lake, where you can take a leisurely stroll. Further out, it becomes wilder, with forest trails where people go running. There are some wide roads and tarmac paths which are perfect for gentle cycling or rollerblading. Further out still, there are pony rides, bike hire and fields where people have barbecues.

I went there one Sunday and spent three wonderful hours wandering, rollerblading and reading under the trees.

Then I went back to the station and got a nasty surprise. Even in Monza, the ticket office was closed and none of the ticket machines were working. I guess it's not so far from Milan after all.

It You Don't Laugh...

2009-05-28T18:59:00.000+02:00

I had a good chuckle to myself today while reading the online version of the Corriere della Sera in my lunch break today. Headline news was, of course, the latest in the Berlusconi saga. The Corriere della Sera is one of the more reputable newspapers and has taken an anti-Berlusconi stance on several big issues, so I was interested to read what it had to say.

Just in case you have been hiding under a stone for the past couple of months, here is a quick summary of the story so far.

Back in April, Berlusconi invited several potential candidates for the European elections to his party headquarters. Among those on his list were an actress, a daytime TV presenter, a former contender for Miss Italia, and an ex Big Brother contestant, none of whom had any political experience.

This, however, was only the beginning of the scandal. In May, Berlusconi's wife, Veronica Lario, filed for divorce, accusing him of “consorting with minors” after he attended the 18^th birthday party of Noemi Letizia, who was, he claimed, the daughter of one of his friends, and presented her with an expensive necklace. Since then, Noemi has given interviews claiming that Berlusconi is something of a grandfather figure to her and that she hopes that he will set her on the road to a successful political career. La Repubblica, however, then published an article in which Noemi's ex-boyfriend claimed that Berlusconi had got to know her after seeing photos of her in a casting book that was accidentally left on a dinner table by her agent.

All of this has been reported on in the national press, but the harshest criticisms have come from outside of Italy, where the Italian electorate's reluctance to reject Berlusconi seems less comprehensible. As a result, as the Corriere reported today, Berlusconi's foreign affairs minister has just made a speech in which he condemns the foreign press for its interest in gossip and for lacking the moral values of the Italian papers. Which might just about be believable if a) Berlusconi were not the owner of three television channels specialising in directing camera angles up women's skirts and b) if he were referring to the Daily Mirror and the Sun . It all becomes somewhat less convincing, however, when you have watched the said TV channels for about 20m minutes and when you learn that the main target of the attack is the Financial Times.

Berlusconi's own response to the situation was to say, “Mussolini had troops of Black Shirts, while I, according to the newspapers … have troops of starlets... at least it's a little better.” Well, perhaps, but is that the best that Italy can do?

Montalto and the Oltrepo Pavese

2009-05-24T11:03:00.001+02:00

Who would have guessed that all of this was just 1 hour's drive from Milan? The Oltrepo Pavese is a wine producing region and you can stop off at numerous little production places by the side of the road and taste and buy wine. Personally, though, I'd go again just for the flowers!

At the Barber's Shop

2009-05-20T18:36:00.001+02:00

I've always thought that if I ever decide to change careers, I would like to be a freelance interpreter. I have a friend who does this job and she has interpreted everywhere from at meetings about politics with the German chancellor to meetings about tractors in fields with two farmers. Every so often here in Milan, I find myself acting as somebody's informal interpreter and never is it more stressful than when Mr A decides that he needs a haircut.

The first time we went, he ended up more or less with a shorter version of his previous haircut, but he wasn't too impressed with his experience in a mixed salon, so this time we went to a proper barber's shop. You could tell it was a proper barber's shop because it was furnished with an ancient leather sofa, lots of wooden furniture and two of those chairs that hold you up off the ground and make you feel like a six year old again. All over the shop there were “no smoking” signs and yet the place reeked of cigarettes, and the barber himself was impressively portly and disconcertingly bald. An old man who was waiting for a shave kindly let Mr A go first, probably because he sensed the potential entertainment in the situation.

Mr A sat down in the chair and I explained what he wanted. (“Like this but shorter and take a bit more off the back.”) The barber got to work and began to chat to us about where we were from, whether we liked Italy etc. After hearing that we were British, he pointed out a wobble in Mr A's fringe and said, “The last time you had a haircut, was it in England or Italy?” When we replied that it had been in Italy, he said, “And was the hairdresser Italian or Chinese?” Despite the fact that we said that he had been Italian, the barber then insisted that he was going to give Mr A “a proper Italian haircut.”

And to give him his due, he did. He got out a comb that looked none too clean, combed Mr A's hair and then proceeded to give him a haircut that was very short, but perfectly done, with the hair perfectly trimmed and shaped around the ears. For a man's haircut, it took a long time. Or maybe it just felt like that because I was watching the hair get shorter and shorter, and Mr A's voice was getting quieter and quieter and I was terrified that he didn't like it and that this was somehow all my fault for not explaining properly. At the same time, however, I was carrying on a conversation with the barber about how good the food was in Puglia and all the places in Italy that we had visited. He finished the whole thing off with a cut-throat razor, repeatedly saying “ferma, ferma!” (“stay still, stay still!”), which Mr A appeared to understand without my help.

Then it was time for the moment of truth. Mr A stood up and, as the barber disappeared into the back shop, I asked Mr A, “Do you like it?” To my huge relief, he smiled, shrugged his shoulders and said, “Yes.” Then the barber reappeared and before we could pay him and leave, the old man who was watching insisted that I gave him a kiss. Not that I objected to that, because with his short, “proper Italian” haircut, Mr A looked very like a star from a very old but classic movie. And luckily, when we got home, a bit of gel brought his look back into the 21^st century and the interpreter didn't get the sack.

The City of Ham and Cheese

2009-05-16T17:37:00.003+02:00

I have been in Italy at least once a year for the past five years of my life. I've been on a gondola in Venice and a scooter in Rome. I've eaten pizza in Naples and been cheated in Salerno. I've been to Verona and Mantua and Trento and Turin. But, until last weekend, I had never been to Parma, supposedly the town with the highest standard of living in Italy, and certainly with the best ham and cheese. And anybody who has known me for any length of time knows that ham and cheese are very important to me.

In the interest of having a restful weekend, we took the train to Parma. Driving can be stressful for Mr A because he has to avoid the maniacs on the motorway and for me because I take my responsibilities of paying the road tolls, calling the other drivers morons and waving like the queen at people who stare at Mr A's British car very seriously. Taking the train was a great idea, apart from the fact that we had a very long walk in the heat to our hotel, which according to the booking website was “centrally located” but turned out to be on the wrong side of the motorway from the centre of town.

That aside, we really did have a restful weekend. On Saturday morning we had a little bit of excitement when Mr A tried to buy a pair of sunglasses from a market stall and the vendor was very persistent, following us and trying to convince Mr A while at the same time running away from the police. We had lunch on the terrace of a cafe, where I had what must be the pinnacle of ham and cheese sandwiches and Mr A had a roasted vegetable panino with parmesan cheese.

We wandered around the town for a little while before what turned out to be the long walk to the hotel. Apart from the fact that our non smoking room was equipped with two ashtrays and smelled of cigarettes, it was worth the walk. We had a lovely big room with a nice bathroom and, to Mr A's delight, a TV with one English channel. The best thing about it, though, was having breakfast on a huge terrace in 25 degree sunshine.

Everybody told us that the point of visiting Parma is really to eat, so we did. We walked back into town from the hotel and, after exploring the centre a little bit, sat down in the square under the impressive clock tower for a delicious aperitivo served in tiny dishes and watched the well-dressed world go by.

For dinner, I had filled pasta in a butter and parmesan sauce and Mr A had asparagus risotto that was also loaded with parmesan. We're going to try recreating it at home this weekend with the cheese that we bought.

On Sunday, we managed to be a little bit cultured and visited the cathedral. All the paintings have been restored and it has a gorgeous octagonal dome with a painting of Mary's ascension on it. The work was controversial at the time because Mary, as seen from below in her billowing dress, does not look pious or dignified, but more as if she has been swept away by the wind, and today, even to someone with very little knowledge of art like me, it still stands out as different from your normal religious painting.

We had a lovely walk in the Parco Ducale, where we watched terrapins swimming around the pond and had a glass of Malvasia wine in the cafe. I'm not usually a big fan of sparkling white wine but this one had a lovely delicate flavour that matched the setting among the spring greenery perfectly.

We finished our visit to Parma with a classic regional dish: a board of ham, salami and cheese served with fresh crusty bread and a glass of local wine, then sat in the park in the sunshine. Parma is a great place because it's quite a small town where you can wander around and sit and relax without being hassled, but at the same time it has a university and seemed to have a fairly large immigrant population, so it was still quite lively and interesting to visit.

This blog probably gives the impression that I spend a lot of my time in Italy sitting around eating and drinking. Often, this is true. Eating, drinking and visiting churches is what you do in Italy. In my own defence, though, I would like to point out that I weighed myself last week and I was actually 3 kilos lighter than I was when I arrived in Milan in August, so my lifestyle may sound indulgent but it appears to be doing me good. Admittedly, I haven't quite dared to step on the scales since last weekend...

Paris, je t'aime

2009-05-07T18:19:00.003+02:00

I was in Paris the other day experiencing inverted culture shock. (Obviously, I didn't go just for that, but I thought it would be interesting to blog about.) Inverted culture shock is a term that I've invented to describe what happens when you go to a foreign country not from your own country but from an even more foreign country and you are surprised by all the wrong things. Inverted culture shock is when you are British, you go to Paris and you are surprised by the freezing cold weather, the cleanliness and lack of dog dirt at your feet, and the politeness and caution of the drivers. You probably have to live in Milan for a while to understand it.*

I also got into an argument with a French person and, for the first time in my life, actually won it. It happened like this.

My colleagues and I were having dinner in a somewhat posh hotel and decided to share a bottle of wine to go with our meal. The guy who ordered it said the name, pointed to it on the menu and, as we were having a bit of banter with the waiter, jokingly added "le moins cher". The waiter brought the bottle from the cellar, showed it to us, the guy tasted it and we drank it with our meal. It was only when the bill arrived that we realised that this wine was clearly not "le moins cher". It was significantly more "cher" than the one that we had ordered. The waiter, when we pointed out the mistake said, "Yes, but that's the one that you drank."

He disappeared into the background and we had a whispered conversation in agonies of British embarrassment. Should we say any more or just pay the money and be annoyed about it?

It seemed that most people were inclined to shut up and pay up when the waiter came back, but something got into me and I found myself saying, "We did tell you which one we wanted quite clearly twice," to which the waiter responded, "Yes, but I showed you what you were drinking and you drank it."

I said, "Yes, we made a mistake, but you made more of a mistake than we did," and eventually he agreed that he had made a mistake and charged us for the bottle that we had asked for.

This kind of exchange always leaves me with my heart beating a little bit faster and feeling very embarrassed. The waiter, on the other hand, was clearly unscathed. He brought us the (reduced) bill cheerfully and, when we went to collect our room keys from him later, said jokingly and with a huge smile on his face, "Your rooms are tents in the garden. They're the cheapest ones!"

Oh to be French and to be able to argue and not care!

* Emma at Life, Lavoro and Luca claims that the French are also scruffy dressers. I wouldn't go that far. Yet.

May Day

2009-05-03T20:19:00.003+02:00

In Italy, unlike in the UK, an important date is an important date. Be it the liberation of their country from fascism or the immaculate conception, Italians like to celebrate anniversaries on the proper day and as a result, a public holiday can fall on any day of the week. If that happens to be a Saturday, too bad, but if it's a Tuesday or a Thursday, you're in luck, because you can take the Monday or Friday off and make a "ponte" (bridge) to the weekend.

This year, the 1st May fell on a Friday and so tonight is the end of a lovely long weekend. On Friday, I had some work to do at home, so I spent the day alternating between the sofa and the bedroom, laptop in tow, until 6pm, when I finally got out of my pyjamas (yes Mum, I am a little bit ashamed!) and went out for aperitivo with Mr A. My friend was arriving from Scotland at 8.30, so we figured we could have a drink and then get the metro to the train station to meet her off the airport bus.

Unfortunately, when we eventually wandered to the metro station, the doors were locked. No metro. So we went to the tram stop. No tram in sight. A passer-by told us that they had stopped at 8 o'clock. Italy being Italy, and May 1st being a workers' holiday, the workers were not working and public transport was not running. I later saw a poster explaining that on May 1st, all public transport would be running not the normal service and not the Saturday, Sunday or holiday service, but a special reduced version of the holiday service. They were taking the occasion seriously. (Apparently there was also a big parade in town where they were throwing glass bottles but I was still safe at home in my pyjamas at that point.)

Luckily Mr A offered to pick my friend up from the station in the car, and to be honest the lack of transport seemed perfectly reasonable to me. I did laugh, though, when I found out that almost all the shops which are normally shut on a Sunday were open today, presumably to make up for all the trading that that they missed when their workers were on holiday.

Winning and Losing in the Great Umbrella Game

2009-04-27T18:54:00.003+02:00

People from Northern Europe tend to assume that Italy is sunny. Recently, at least in Milan, this has not been the case. The rain has been pouring down for about a week now, with only odd breaks in between torrents to fool us into thinking that summer might actually be coming.

One of the consequences of this is that there are numerous opportunities to participate in The Great Umbrella Game.

Like most things in Italy, The Great Umbrella Game is not organised. Rather, it occurs naturally on rainy days as a result of a combination of Italian habits, social behaviours and survival instincts.

This is what happens. If you go to a bar or a restaurant on a rainy night, you leave your umbrella in a pile, or, in more upmarket places, an umbrella stand at the door of the establishment. At the end of the evening, you go and retrieve an umbrella from the same place. What makes all of this interesting is that the chances of you retrieving the same umbrella as you left are slim. It is more than likely that somebody else has already taken your umbrella.

The first time this happened to me, I exchanged a new umbrella that I had bought from a street vendor for three euros with a handle that didn't work perfectly but that nevertheless kept the rain out for one with broken spokes that I threw in the bin somewhere on the way home. Last night, however, I discovered that somebody had taken my dilapidated green brolly and left me one that at first glance seemed similar but that on handling turned out to be in perfect condition and significantly more solid than the one I had lost.

Last night, at least, I was a winner in the game.

In Which I Fall for the Oldest Trick in the Book

2009-04-26T12:22:00.002+02:00

I had a long day yesterday. I got up at four o'clock in the morning, was travelling for most of the day and arrived back at the Stazione Centrale at half past eleven at night. Mr. A was coming to pick me up in the car, but my bus got in early, so I had to wait for him outside the station in the area where the airport buses arrive.

That part of town has a bad reputation, so when a man approached me saying, "Taxi, taxi, taxi?" I made a point of saying,"No, grazie" very firmly and walking off. Unfortunately, I did have to wait for Mr A, so I stopped a little further down where one of the airport buses was getting ready to leave and there were plenty of people around and put my two bags down at my feet to wait.

I was tired, hungry and somewhat pissed off by this stage. Then a second guy approached me and asked me where to go to catch a train. I could tell from the way he asked the question that he wasn't really looking for a train and assumed I was in for the usual, "You're not from here, where are you from, do you have a boyfriend" conversation, so I decided the best thing to do was just to give a quick answer and then ignore him and, if necessary walk away, but he pretended not to understand my answer and I had to repeat it. It was then that I heard someone on the bus banging on the window and shouting, "Put it down! Put it down!" I turned around to see one of my bags lying on the pavement a few metres away and another guy running away around the back of the bus.

In years and years of travelling in big cities in Europe, this was actually the first time that anything like this had ever happened to me. I get the "friendly" harrassment conversations all the time, but I'm usually really good at looking after my stuff. In fact, all my important things were in my handbag, which I was holding on to (although I wouldn't necessarily have noticed if the guy had tried to pick my pockets), and I think the thieves would have been pretty disappointed to open up the other bag and discover nothing but an English newspaper and the remains of my packed lunch, but what scared me was that I didn't even suspect what the two guys were doing. I was so busy expecting one kind of problem that I forgot to be open to other possibilities.

So I guess what I learned from this was: hold on to your luggage, because just watching it isn't enough, and don't ever let yourself be distracted. And I hope that if I ever see anything like this happening to anyone else, I'll be quick thinking enough to stop it as the people on the bus did for me.

Playing Tour Guide

2009-04-19T12:38:00.002+02:00

My friend C arrived on the train from Dresden at 07.50 on Wednesday. She left at ten this morning, and in the meantime, I think we did as much as it was possible to do in three days.

On Wednesday, we visited the Duomo, the castle and the Parco Sempione and drank expensive coffee while lounging in the sun on the La Rinascente roof terrace. Walking across the piazza, we had a good laugh at the guys who approached us and said, “You want a bracelet? No? You want a husband?” We went to a local restaurant for dinner and ate pizzas that barely fitted on the table. We spoke German for most of the day, which rendered me completely incapable of saying anything in Italian, and I'm sure my concierge is now convinced that I am guilty of throwing cigarette ends out of my window into the courtyard just because I stammered so much when she asked me about it.

On Thursday, we went with Mr A and his English friend to Lake Maggiore in the pouring rain. We took some hasty photographs and then ran for cover in a restaurant and ate another pizza.

Then we went back to Milan. C and I then visited the Pinacoteca di Brera, where we wondered at the number and ugliness of the paintings of the Madonna and child and despaired over our ignorance of Christian tradition. Then I introduced her to the steepness of drinks prices in Milan and the stupendousness of aperitivo hour in the Bufala Cafe, which, as the name suggests, is all about the mozzarella.

On Friday, we went to Bergamo, resisted the temptation to use the funicular railways and instead walked all the way to the Castello, where we watched planes taking off and thunderstorms rolling in over the Alps. We also visited the botanical gardens, ate pizza somewhere along the way and bought a Polenta e Osei cake to take home. Eating polenta with whole songbirds is traditional in Bergamo but the orignal dish has been replaced with cakes that look similar but are a lot more palatable.

On Friday night we went for a drink in the Navigli, then on to Le Trottoir, a bar in the middle of a roundabout that has incredibly loud live bands and where you can dance to cheesy music until 3 am.

C and I met when we were both language assistants in Compiègne and we hadn't seen each other since I visited her in Berlin in 2004, where I “improved” my German by drinking Glühwein in August because it was all her friend had in the house apart from beer, but it felt as though nothing had changed. Having her here was fun because she made me notice all the things I've been getting used to about Italy, like the grannies sitting in cafes and yelling into mobile phones and the cars being parked in the middle of the pavement. Above all though, not everything has been easy here in Milan recently and it was nice to chat about it all with an old friend and to be reminded about all the good things about living in here.

Easter Monday Barbecue

2009-04-17T00:28:00.002+02:00

On Monday afternoon, I discovered what everybody in Milan does if they can't get out of the city does on a sunny bank holiday Monday: they have a barbecue at the Bosco in Città.

The Bosco in Città is a kind of a park on the edge of the city. There's an old farmhouse-type building, some woodland and a lake. It's quite pretty but you never quite forget the dodgy things that might or might not be going on in the bushes as you take your Sunday afternoon stroll there.

In preparation for a long, hot summer, my friends J and L had invested in a barbecue and they invited me and another friend, R, to its inauguration ceremony. While I moved to Italy on a plane, J and L hired a van, and they have an impressive selection of picnic equipment, including a hamper, a rug and a cool box that is also a radio. The three of us lugged it all on the bus out to the park.

We thought that we had prepared pretty well, but relatively, we were were totally underequipped. The park was heaving with people and they all had far bigger barbecues than we did. Some had chairs and tables. Some were eating lasagne. Some of them even had gazebos. The whole atmosphere was a bit like a music festival, except that the only music was some annoying bloke with bongo drums.

We were a bit taken aback at first but we quickly got into the spirit of it. We lit our charcoal and allowed it to smoulder. We drank wine from plastic tumblers as we waited for our burgers to blacken. We tried not to let our little barbecue suffer from an inferiority complex.

Then, in one final monent of glory (or one desperate attempt to drown out the bongo drums), we turned up the volume on the cool box radio and sang along to Bohemian Rhapsody. J insisted that the people next to us were laughing with us and not at us. She might have been right.

The whole experience seemed, as R said as soon as she arrived, completely and utterly chav-tastic. But then five o'clock came, and almost with one accord, people began to pack away their things. They put their rubbish in black bags, piled it up next to the bins and left the park clean and tidy, ready for the next bank holiday Monday.

Camping in Liguria

2009-04-14T10:41:00.002+02:00

Mr A and I started planning our Easter holiday camping trip weeks ago, not long after we came back from skiing. We knew where we wanted to go, had decided what we needed and just needed to do one big shopping trip to buy some equipment before we left. Somehow, though, we still managed to leave in an incredible rush, with our departure punctuated by conversations like:

Me: “Do you have a towel?”
Him: “Yes. Did you remember a sleeping bag?”
Me: “Oooops! No!”

Despite the rush, though, we actually did manage to remember pretty much everything we needed and the only major problem was our bed. We had bought an inflatable mattress and a friend had lent us a battery operated pump to blow it up which had a mains adaptor and one to plug into the cigarette lighter in the car. After we had been driving for about an hour and a half, Mr A said, “Do you want to start charging the pump up now?” I reached for the box and read the instructions. “Charge the pump for eight hours before use.” Oh dear.

In our defence, I had never seen one of these pumps before and Mr A had only ever had one which could be used at the same time as it was charging, but ours was clearly marked with dire warnings about what would happen if we tried to do that. Luckily, the people at the campsite were really nice and let us use a pump of theirs. It was enormous and made a huge amount of noise but appeared to do the trick.

Unfortunately, it turned out that all our efforts were in vain because the mattress deflated in the middle of the night and we woke up at 4am lying on hard, stony ground with strange pockets of air remaining around our ears. On the second night, the same thing happened and on the third night we bought a new mattress and finally had a good night's sleep.

We stayed at the Acqua Dolce campsite in Lévanto. It was quiet, clean, had great showers and was almost entirely inhabited by Germans with camper vans and deluxe tents who obviously knew exactly how to live this kind of lifestyle and could be seen in the mornings doing housework in the camper vans and in the evenings sitting outside on folding chairs and tables with table cloths drinking wine and eating dinner. We felt a little bit out of place with our little tent and our failure to organise adequate bedding for ourselves.

Our main reason for staying in Lévanto was to visit the Cinque Terre, 5 little villages propped on the edges of towering cliffs and linked by a coastal path.

I'm a big fan of coastal paths and this was one of the best that I'd ever been on, even if they did charge us 5 euros each to walk along it. If you start at the first village, Monterosso, the walk takes about 5 hours and you can stop for ice cream, focaccia and a laze in the sun at the villages, which are no more than an hour and a half's walk away from each other. Being hardcore, however, we decided to start our walk at Lévanto, which added on an extra 2 ½ hours of walking over a very steep hill but was worth it just for the sense of achievement.

On the second day, we drove to Portovenere, which is near La Spezia, a big port, and at the tip of the Golfo dei Poeti, which gets its name from all the poets that it has inspired. Byron even has his own cave there.

We were totally lazy that day and just wandered around the village and stopped for lunch and ice cream. We ate testaroli, which is like a big pancake that you cut up and eat with sauce. Ours was with pesto, which is another Ligurian speciality.

On our last day, we went back to the Cinque Terre and took the boat between the five villages. The boat was nice, but we both agreed that we appreciated the villages more when we had to walk to get to them!

Mamma Mia!

2009-03-31T17:39:00.001+02:00

Because I saw mia mamma at the weekend and it was lovely. She arrived on Friday afternoon and, after a cup of tea and a chat, we did some mother and daughter bonding in Esselunga by discussing the ridiculous price of fruit and vegetables and the merits over mushroom versus meat filled ravioli.

On Saturday, we went to the market, where the stallholders tended to assume that she was the one doing the shopping (because what Italian ragazza would pretend to know more that her mother?) and bought vine tomatoes, cheese and strawberries that all truly lived up to expectation when we ate them for lunch later.

Then we went into town and visited the Duomo. I hadn't been there for about 4 years and climbing up to the roof retained all of its magic. You can walk all over the main roof, getting a vertiginous close up view of the statues surveying the cityscape on their pedestals, and peer down on the piazza below from behind the filigree stonework of the facade. The inside of the cathedral is something of a disappointment afterwards. On a dull day, it's dark and the light is almost greenish, making it hard to believe that the exterior is so light and airy.

By the time we'd visited the cathedral, the rain was truly raining, so after a walk past the designer shops, we headed home. We went out for a meal that night and it was a true Italian experience, with delicious food and small children running around and hitting Mr A. in the back whenever they got bored of waiting for their next course. I'm all for children being taken to restaurants, but surely when they start physically assaulting complete strangers it's time to either tell them off or take them home?

We had planned to go to Lake Como on Sunday but it was raining, so we ended up going to the Triennale design museum instead. This place is incredibly expensive, with entry being 8 euros for each exhibition, so if you wanted to see all of it it would cost you about 32 euros. I also found the labelling of some of the exhibits frustrating because they often just said what the things were made of and who made them without explaining why they were special enough to be in a museum. I enjoyed it much more once I stopped reading the labels and just looked at the exhibits themselves, as there are lots that most people would immediately recognise and some that I even have at home. I've found this often with museums: I tend to read too much and look too little, so maybe it's me that needs to change.

Mum left early on Monday morning and I felt kind of sad as I watched her go. I haven't missed home much since I've been here but seeing her reminded me how new everything here is and how far away some of the things that really matter are. So sorry to all the people that I'm bad at keeping in touch with (having no phone line and rubbish internet doesn't help) and I promise to come and visit soon!

The Power of Words?

2009-03-29T20:54:00.001+02:00

There is an advert all over the Milan metro at the moment which shows a woman's coat and legs and bears the slogan “Stilisti, go home.”

The non-English speaking world is plastered with examples of writers who fail to realise that their words may have a double meaning which they never intended to use. (One of my favourites is a sports shop in France called Athlete's Foot.) Given that the advert, which is for the home improvements store Leroy Merlin, is by Saatchi and Saatchi, however, I suspect that the use of this emotive phrase is not accidental and is intented to be provocative in the same way as the recent adverts for a clothing company showing two woman being sexually dominated at a roadside by two armed policemen.

The latter campaign, which was very visual, caused a great deal of controversy, including complaints from the Brazilian government because it had apparently been shot in Brazil. The Leroy Merlin advert, on the other hand, is more subtle, and, given that very few people in Italy will appreciate that it is provocative in the first place, I don't realy see the point of it.

Studying Italian

2009-03-26T20:01:00.003+01:00

A few nights ago, I decided it was time to tackle my issues with Italian pronouns head-on. Apart from the fact that I've been working my way through Clelia Boscolo's 30 day revision course Upgrade Your Italian (which is actually a very good study resource) at a rate of 19 days in about 3 years, here is why I have issues with Italian pronouns.

In Italian, as you would expect, there are direct and indirect object pronouns for each person, with different ones for singular and plural and, in some cases, gender. So if, for example, if you want someone to give you a book, you need the pronouns lo (“it”) and mi (“to me”), along with the verb dare (“to give”).

Then you need to remember that in Italian, the mi comes before the lo. Essentially, you say “Give to me it.”

To make your sentence, you need the imperative form of dare. There are two forms, and in this case you need the less common one, da'.

In Italian, when a direct object pronoun and an indirect object pronoun are used together with an imperative, the pronouns combine, as if in English you were saying “Give tomeit.”

When you combine the pronoun mi with another pronoun, it becomes me. (English equivalent: “Give tomiit”)

The pronouns also combine with the verb to make one word, which in English would be “Givetomeit.”

Finally, you need to remember that when the verb da' is combined with a pronoun, you double the initial consonant of the pronoun that follows it, giving the sentence that you actually utter: in Italian, dammelo; in English, "Givettomiit".

By this stage you will probably be too intellectually exhausted to read the book that is, finally, in your sticky hands.

Being the kind of sad person who actually enjoys knowing this kind of thing, I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of Schaum's Outlines Italian Grammar which is winging its way to me this weekend. In the meantime, however, I discovered this great website with online exercises that you can check your answers to at the click of a button, meaning that you can save all your mental energy for those delightful pronouns.

Milano for Improvers

2009-03-23T21:49:00.001+01:00

I came to work in Italy on a temporary contract and recently had to decide whether to let it terminate in a couple of months' time or renew it for another year. After much soul-searching and some half-hearted job hunting, I decided to renew it. Aside from the job itself, which has its ups and downs like any other, there are a few things that mean that I'm not ready to leave Milan just yet.

Firstly, Mr. A is on a longer contract than me, and while we would both have considered a long distance relationship, living in the same city is definitely easier and better!

I came to Italy to learn Italian and I haven't learned enough yet. I was hoping that it would get better the way my French did when I lived in France but I guess I underestimated the value of eleven years of study versus one and a half-hearted bit. I don't speak a lot of Italian during the day because I work in a mostly anglophone environment, so although I know the most essential grammar points, I can't quite conjugate verbs and combine pronouns fast enough to be able to speak fluently and correctly at the same time. As always, I need to study some more!

I love living a bilingual life. At home, unless I get a job that requires languages, I'm always going to feel like all my knowledge is wasted. Here, I need them just for living and I like that.

While I sometimes find living in Milan depressing because so much of it is ugly and dirty, there are some incredible places not very far away. Venice, the Ligurian coast and Gran Paradiso national park are all day trips from here, while France, Austria, Germany and Switzerland are only a few hours away. When you grow up on an island, international trains seem very cool and cosmopolitan (at least in a very sad way).

Italians are fun. People claim that the Milanese are cold and stand-offish, but that's either not true or a very relative judgement. Or else I've just been lucky enough to meet the friendly ones!

So, despite the smog, the cost of living and the evil lady from Alice Mobile, I will be here for another year to document the highs, the lows and above all the endless “but why?”s of living in this crazy city.

Why is it that in Italy...

2009-03-23T19:25:00.002+01:00

... you're supposed to wear disposable gloves to choose your fruit at the supermarket?

Do they really believe, after it's been grown on a tree, picked by a picker, packed by a packer and transported hundreds of miles on a lorry, that the dirt on my little hands will make any difference?

And don't people wash their fruit when they get home anyway?

Down Off My High Horse

2009-03-19T21:49:00.003+01:00

I went to the comune today to apply for residency and they allowed me to be britannica and from the Regno Unito. The whole process took about 15 minutes and the lady was very nice.

Despite having eaten a delicious dinner of fresh bread and a selection of cheeses followed by some pre-Easter chocolate, I may have to eat my words.

How to Drive Like an Italian

2009-03-17T18:16:00.001+01:00

The Italians are such notoriously bad drivers that it seems almost unsporting to write a post criticising their motoring habits. The death rate from road accidents in Italy was 11.7 per 100 000 of the population, compared to 5.81 in the UK, 9.49 in France and 8.03 in Germany. Nevertheless, Italians appear to enjoy driving, and one of the things which I do like about their attitude is the fact that, although they will honk their horns incessantly if they have to wait too long at traffic lights, they will often sit patiently as another driver attempts an obviously crazy manoeuvre on a narrow country road. And crazy driving is not the preserve of a small minority. It is ingrained in the national mentality and supported by everything from the police to the road markings. Rather than criticising, therefore, I have instead compiled a list of advice for those who would like to drive like the locals and enjoy a quintessentially Italian experience:

Don't expect lane markings to be present, especially on big roundabouts and motorways. You can change lanes by cutting someone up any time you want, so why would you need them?

Don't ever stop at a zebra crossing, unless it's because you intend to park on it.

Do use the hard shoulder on the motorway to get past traffic jams. There is no reason why the people at the front of the queue shouldn't let you in ahead of them when you get to the front.

Do not be surprised if the sliproad joins the motorway in the fast lane. This is entirely sensible – why would anyone want live life anywhere other than in the fast lane?

Don't use your indicators. The flashing may distract others from the glint of your bling-bling designer sunglasses, which you must wear at all times when driving. (This rule applies especially when changing lanes on the motorway at 130 km/h.)

Do double park your car. Or, for the ultimate experience, park on the pavement where someone can block you in and enjoy reversing 100 metres down the block to get out, forcing pedestrians to flatten themselves against walls as you do so.

Do honk your horn repeatedly when the queue at the motorway toll booths doesn't move fast enough. If Italians didn't enjoy waiting impatiently for other people to pay, they would all have bought Telepasses by now.

You will sometimes have the opportunity to turn right at a junction when the pedestrian crossing on your exit street is green. In theory, you should give way to any pedestrians on the crossing, but in practice this only applies if the person crossing is a nun.

Disclaimer: I have never actually driven a car in Italy. Take this advice at your peril!

CioccolaTo

2009-03-10T19:15:00.002+01:00

It was Saturday evening. It had been a lazy day. After a long lie-in, I had been to the market with Mr A, we had lounged around the house, cooked dinner and watched some TV. The weather forecast for Sunday was nice and Mr A's car needed a day out somewhere, so we were discussing possible places we could go without much enthusiasm. Nearly everything here shuts on a Sunday, and unless you know what you're looking for, it's very easy to end up visiting a ghost town and having to promise yourself that you'll go back another day when you might see something more than closed shutters and deserted streets.

Then Mr A, who was browsing on the internet, said, “There's a chocolate festival in Turin.”

“Eureka!” I shouted. “Take me, take me, take me! Drive me down that autostrada like an Italian on speed, for I do not want to miss a minute of it!”

Actually, being British and reserved, I probably said, “That sounds nice,” but Mr A understood the hidden subtext and so, first thing on Sunday morning, we found ourselves on the way to Turin.

The fact that the main market part of the fair was not on any of the three squares listed on the official website caused me to recall with some anxiety my last visit to Turin, but we eventually found it on the Piazza Vittorio Veneto.

The theme of this year's festival was “Chocolate and Seduction” and, if we had been there on another day, we could have listened to experts on one or other subject discussing the links between the two in a series of talks, but Mr A and I were really just there for the chocolate. And boy, did we find it. The whole piazza was filled with stalls selling chocolate in every shape and form, from traditional but exquisite Easter eggs to chocolate salami tied up with string.

Unfortunately, at this point I lost my appetite and began to feel a bit dizzy. This was not my body trying to protect me from my brain's natural gourmandise, but the effects of some evil germs that had clearly decided to invade my body with particularly cruel timing. It probably did my wallet and my waistline a lot of good, however, as I ended up only having a restrained but very delicious cinnamon hot chocolate and a bite of Mr A's chocolate kebab (slices of different pralines wrapped up in sweet bread and covered in whipped cream and caramel sauce. Mmm...).We also bought some gorgeous chocolates to take home, which came in very handy on Monday night when my appetite returned to normal and my body suddenly realised what it had missed out on.

As well as being famous for its chocolate, Turin is also the home of Lavazza coffee, and when I didn't feel like standing up any longer, we went into a coffee shop to try some. Like many Italian products, it did seem to be better in its home town.

Sunday was also International Women's Day and there was another market in Turin which was supposed to be for products made and sold by women but where we also found a stall manned by two burly men who gave us grappa to try from bottles decorated with pictures of other burly men, this time with moustaches. In Italy, it's traditional to give mimosa flowers on this day. There were plenty of people selling wrapped blossoms on the street, but after walking past them all afternoon, I allowed myself to be taken in by some guy in a car park who offered me a tiny piece “as a present” and then said “but could you give me some money for a drink?” After a day filled with delicious chocolate and coffee, I wasn't really in the mood to mind.

How Much Is One Euro?

2009-03-05T18:29:00.001+01:00

This is a question that I've been asking myself ever since I moved here. I have to decide this week whether to stay in Milan for another year, and inevitably that brings lots of questions about the more distant future as well. And one of the things I need to consider is, how much am I actually paid?

In a world of sliding exchange rates (the euro is worth about 20 pence more than it was when I took this job) and rising prices, it's really hard to tell. Obviously, I know what my salary is in euros and what that equates to in pounds, but what really matters is, how much does that money buy in Italy compared to what my hypothetical UK salary would buy me there?

In an attempt to answer this question, I did something very geeky. I went to the supermarket last weekend, bought nine things that I needed, came home, looked up the prices of the equivalents in the UK on the Asda website and did some maths.

In Italy, my basket of shopping cost 11.97 euros. In the UK, it would have cost £9.64. The exchange rate at the time was £1=£1.07 euros, so the Italian shopping cost the equivalent of £10.69. I was shopping in a nicer supermarket than Asda, though, so my conclusion was that prices in the supermarkets are roughly the same in Italy and in the UK.

It was interesting, though, to see what was cheaper and what was more expensive. Wine is much cheaper in Italy. Deodorant is far more expensive. Strangely, so is cheese. Even fresh tomatoes are more expensive in Italy, although admittedly the fruit and vegetables at the market are much cheaper than in the supermarkets. It would seem that to get the best value from living here, you have to drink lots of wine. Oh well...

Italian Paperwork and Scottish Nationalism

2009-03-04T23:29:00.000+01:00

Next week, I have to go to some official place in Milan with some official pieces of paper to get another official piece of paper from an official person which will prove that I live here. Before I can hold the piece of paper in my sticky hand, some policemen will knock on my door to prove that I actually live where I said I did.

As an EU citizen, I have the right to live and work in Italy for as long as I like. Nevertheless, the Italian government apparently feels that it is worth spending its taxpayers money on paying the aforementioned bureaucrats and policement so that it knows exactly where I live.

Apart from the fact that it's a bit of a waste of time and other people's money, I don't mind too much. What I do mind is this:

When I first got here, I filled out the application form. The questions on the form are written in Italian, French. German and English, so I wrote my answers in English. Apparently, though, they have to be in Italian, so my work very kindly wrote some corrections on the original form, which I then have to copy on to a new form. And under the “nationality” section, where I had written “British”, they wrote “inglese”, which means “English”. One of my Scottish friends in Italy confirmed that this is what the Italian officials make you write. So I am going to have to write it, and then sign the piece of paper to say that what I've written is true.

This doesn't annoy me because I'm a raging Scottish Nationalist. It bothers me because it's wrong. Saying that a Scottish person is English is like saying that Austrians are German because both countries are in the EU and they speak the same language. I am from the UK and my nationality is British. That's what it says on my passport and that's what I write on forms. (I do feel Scottish too, but that has nothing to do with politics. And if English nationality could be officially recognised, I could have that too, but it doesn't.) If the man in the street called me English, I'd either explain politely why I'm not or smile and shrug my shoulders. But if the Italian paper-pushers want me to sign endless unnecessary documents, they should at least give me the opportunity to put the right facts on them.

The Reader

2009-03-01T17:39:00.000+01:00

WARNING: If you don't want to know what happens in this film, don't read this post!
As I mentioned in my last post, I went to see the Italian-language version of The Reader yesterday. Kate Winslet won an Oscar for Best Actress for this film, and my initial reaction was that it was very good, but the more I thought about it afterwards, the more I decided it was actually not nearly as good as it could have been. I read the book (Der Vorleser) in German when I was at university and, although I think the ending of the book is weak, there is a lot of depth in the book which isn't really exploited in the film.

The Reader is the story of Michael Berg, who when he is fifteen begins a relationship with an older woman, Hanna Schmitz. He reads aloud to her and then they make love in the afternoons when he finishes school. We later learn that Hanna is a former member of the SS and was involved in the deaths of hundreds of people when she worked at the concentration camps.
One of the film's biggest failings is the way in which Michael is portrayed, and therefore how we respond to his relationship with Hanna. In the book, the relationship begins when Michael is just recovering from a long illness. He is a vulnerable, physically weak character who has lost touch with many of his classmates and spent too much time alone. While his relationship with Hanna is fully consensual, you are left with the impression that he is being exploited. There are several scenes in the book when she gets angry with him for no apparent reason and he is left feeling hurt, confused, and almost begging for her to be merciful and take him back. In the film, on the other hand, Michael has an impressive six-pack and biceps and a cheeky twinkle in his eye. He is as much the instigator of the relationship as she is and comes across as a successful seducer rather than a vulnerable teenager.

Portraying Michael in this way removes a lot of depth from the character of Hanna and from the story. The second part of the film shows Michael as a young law student watching Hanna's trial. We know by this point that she is illiterate and that she took the job in the SS when she was offered a promotion by her previous employer that would have required her to read and write. The implication is that her own vulnerability leads her to prey on the weaknesses of others and, as a result, she becomes a hideously twisted and yet somehow sympathetic character, but the film loses out on a lot of this through its shallow portrayal of her relationship with Michael.
The story, both in the book and in the film, touches on a lot of questions about guilt, responsibilty and the consequences of inaction as well as of action. One of the most powerful moments in the film is when Hanna attributes her actions in the SS to the need for order and asks the examining magistrate, “What would you have done?” These questions, combined with the beautiful cinematography, are what makes the film worth watching in spite of its weaknesses.

It would be difficult to make a film about the Holocaust without it being thought-provoking, and this was the reason that I liked the film at the beginning. It was on continuing my train of thought, however, that I realised that the film's unnecessary extension of the book's mawkish ending, combined with it's failure to exploit the full potential of the story, made it, in the end, less powerful than it initially appeared.

Carnival Saturday

2009-03-01T12:18:00.001+01:00

In most places, Carnival happens in the week running up to Ash Wednesday. In Milan, though, it's different. Because Sant Ambrogio is the patron saint of Milan, the city follows the Calendario Ambrosiano, which means that Lent begins on the Sunday after Ash Wednesday. My first thought was that this was a cunning trick of the Milanesi to make Lent shorter and therefore easier for themselves, but according to Wikipedia, it's actually because in the Calendario Ambrosiano, Sundays are counted as days of penitence, whereas in the Calendario Romano, they're not.

Carnevale in Milan seemed to be mostly about children dressing up and throwing confetti and silly string at each other, although there was a parade and a concert later on in the day. Yesterday, after a trip to the market to buy my first strawberries of the year and stock up on cheese, I went into town to meet a friend, and the Piazza del Duomo was full of them. After dodging the silly string for a while, we went to the cinema to see The Reader. I'm going to write a separate post about the film, so for now I'll just say that it was the first time I'd seen a film in Italian at the cinema here and I was quite proud that I understood everything, although it was quite weird watching an English language film of a book that I read in German dubbed into Italian.

After the cinema, I went back to the Duomo and met Mr A and we wandered around for a while enjoying the fact that most of the people in costume were either under ten or grown men before going to the Irish pub to watch the rugby. Only one fo my Scottish friends dared to be very vocal about the fact that Scotland won, but it made a nice change, even if it was just against Italy. After the second game, we went out for pizza to celebrate another friend's birthday, then for a drink in one of the bars on the Navigli.

It had been a long day, so I was pleased when my apparently eternal good luck with Milanese public transport continued and the tram home pulled up to the stop just as we got there. Being in Italy, I should apparently touch metal instead of wood to make sure that this continues.

It's Good to Talk?

2009-02-25T18:11:00.000+01:00

It occurred to me recently that it had been a while since I posted any witty (or otherwise) observations on the Italians and their crazy ways. I was reminded of that thought this afternoon when, standing in the queue in the supermarket, I noticed that the woman next to me was holding a dog in her arms and realised that I wasn't particularly surprised by the sight. (It was, admittedly, not as dramatic as the time my mum and I were in a restaurant in France and saw that some other customers not only had a dog with them but were giving it the restaurant plates to lick.) Perhaps I've just lived too long in Mediterranean countries to be surprised by the dog dirt on the pavements, people attempting to run me over on pedestrian crossings and the fact that it is 100% socially acceptable to drive when drunk.

One thing that still astounds me about Italy, though, is the noise. People seem to just have louder voices here. The sweet little 5 year old girls that I teach talk about playing with their dollies at about 100 decibels. If you want to know anybody else's business, you can walk 50 metres behind them in the street and still hear their phone conversations. You know what your neighbours are having for dinner because you can hear it through the walls, as long as you can make out what one of them is saying over the interrupting voice of the other.

On the plus side, I suppose that this love of loud conversations is a sign of one of the nation's great virtues: it's sociability and willingness to share. That may be worth far more than French discretion or British reserve. The problem, though, is that when everyone is talking, nobody's listening. Kids at school don't learn because they don't listen. People sell you the wrong things because they weren't listening. And, as a foreigner, it was very reassuring for me to realise that often, when people don't understand what you're saying, it's not because you're saying it wrong. It's because they weren't listening.

La Settimana Bianca: Après-Ski

2009-02-22T09:19:00.003+01:00

On our first day in Pila, we only bought half-day ski passes. Our lessons finished at 12.30 and we figured that we could easily fit in an extra bit of practice before the passes ran out at 2 o'clock if we wanted to. By Tuesday, however, we had realised that we were unlikely to want to do anything other than collapse in the sun with lunch after a 3 hour skiing lesson and that the view from the chalet terraces alone was worth paying an extra ten euros to stay an extra couple of hours and look at. As I said before, the centre of Aosta was pretty, but not quite pretty enough to compete with a stunning panorama of Mont Blanc, Monte Rosa and the Cervino mountains.

As well as me and Mr A, several of our friends from Milan were up, so most days we met for lunch and caught up with each other's adventures (being hit by a kamkaze skier in freefall (me), falling on the ice in the street before I even got to the cable car (me) and being dragged along a conveyor belt while appearing to embrace a chairlift (oops, me again!)). After lunch, I usually skied down a couple of the easier slopes by myself before meeting up with Mr A for some more sitting around in the sunshine then getting the cable car back down to Aosta.

One of the consequences of all this snow and sunshine was that I ended up with very obvious panda eyes from my sunglasses. Nobody else got them, which I found most unfair.

After a shower and a nap at the hotel, we went into Aosta for dinner. On Monday, we had pizza in La Grotta Azzura, which was nice and not at all expensive, although my 4 seasons pizza did appear to be missing a season, as it only had 3 toppings. On Tuesday we went to a place that I think was called something like Ristorante Moderno. It was in a state of chaos when we arrived and appeared to have been feeding school parties all evening, but they were gone by the time we got there and the restaurant did an incredible 3-course set menu for 13.50. I was unfortunately too full to eat it, but my friend had a delicious-looking bubbling lasagne, two enormous pork medallions with vegetables, a plate of chips and a sorbet. Inspired by him, I ordered something similar the next night in Le Carillon, but it was more expensive, the lasagne was less bubbly and there was no sorbet. There were, however, sculptures of naked women all over the walls, so that might be to somebody's taste.

Mr A and I were alone on Thursday night and we had the meal that we had been waiting for all week: cheese fondue. We went to Ulisse, a restaurant recommended by our hotel. In a town filled with tourists, this restaurant appeared to be frequented only by older Italians. The waiter explained exactly what was in the fondue, told us how to eat it and gently suggested white wine when we tried to order red. The fondue arrived in a plain old saucepan over a simple burner, served only with a basket of bread, and for the next half hour or so, we were in melty, gloopy, cheesy heaven. We left the restaurant reminding ourselves that Aosta was only a 2 hour drive from Milan and we could come back whenever we wanted, but we might just buy a fondue set instead.

La Settimana Bianca: Skiing in Pila

2009-02-21T19:10:00.002+01:00

The possibilities for going skiing in Italy are almost endless. At first, we had big plans for hiring a chalet for our February holidays with a group of friends, but as usual, the big plans didn't quite work out and we ended up heading to Aosta for five days, staying in a hotel and having skiing lessons at the ski school in Pila.

Pila is a ski resort in the Valle d'Aosta, the tiny bilingual region in the top left-hand corner of Italy that borders France and Switzerland. On our first day in Aosta, we went into a bar and the man behind the counter, realising that I wasn't Italian, spoke to me in French. I don't know whether it was because he heard me speaking to Mr A or because I accidentally asked for “water with marbles” instead of “water with bubbles”, but he finally switched to English and I was left feeling a little bit disappointed.

Aosta was a Roman town and there are still some Roman remains to be seen, but the centre, which has a lovely big square and pretty pedestrianised streets, is mostly medieval. We stayed in the Albergo Mancuso, which was cheap and conveniently located five minutes walk from the cable car up the mountain to Pila. Our room was basic and decorated with bright green curtains and an orange and yellow candlewick bedspread that would have made any 1970's housewife proud, but it was big and had a full-size bathroom with a nice hot shower and the hotel staff were friendly and helpful.

Before I go on to describe the skiing lessons, I should probably say something about my prior experience of skiing. The first time was at Hillend, the dry ski slope in Edinburgh when I was about ten. All I remember of that was being very hot from walking up the hill with skis on and the pain of sliding on spiky plastic brushes ever time I fell over. The second time was seven years ago when I was in my first year at university and a friend offered to take me and two of my friends to Glencoe with his family for the day. The Scottish ski season is generally pretty unreliable, but this was a good year and the mountains were covered in snow and glistening in the sunshine as we drove up. We survived the ski fitting and the chairlift up the mountain quite well, but things started to go wrong when we tried to get on the drag lift. Friend No 1 managed it but Friend No 2 and I failed to get on or fell off a couple of times and were eventually sent by a member of staff to walk to the nursery slope with our tails between our legs so that all the people in the queue behind us could actually get up the mountain.

Embarrassment aside, we actually quite enjoyed sliding around the beginner slope for most of the morning, but the ground was very icy and when our friend, reappeared at lunch time, he told us that the snow was much better up at the top. He and his family helped us with the lifts this time and his parents were incredibly kind about helping us to ski down the run, despite the fact that we were falling at every turn, and, in my case at least, every time I got too much speed up and didn't know how to stop.

And that was how I ended up doing red runs on my first real day of skiing. I remember the terror, I remember the ache in my legs all throughout the day, I remember not being able to brush my hair afterwards because my arms were so sore, I remember the bruise the size of a tea plate on my thigh, and I remember, despite everything, the sense of achievement at the end of the day.

It was unsurprising, therefore, that my first skiing lesson in Pila was something of a let down. I decided that it would be a good idea to start from scratch and signed up for the beginners' lesson. Unfortunately, in Italy, most people only take beginners' lessons when they are under five, so I was put in a group with about ten three year olds and two teenage boys and led off to the nursery slope. We had about ten instructors and helpers with us, but given that the children were too young to even realise that they were supposed to try to slide down the slope and basically needed an instructor each, I and the two boys were more or less left to our own devices and after about half an hour it got boring. The nursery slopes in Pila have magic carpets, which are essentially conveyor belts, instead of lifts, so there wasn't even the excitement of trying to catch a button lift. At one point, I felt nauseous and sat down with my head between my legs, and the instructors didn't even notice because they were too busy pulling toddlers down the slope and making sure they didn't fall off the magic carpet. Given that the ski school had about 170 instructors available, I thought that it was pretty bad for them to put adults in groups with such young children, especially as the kids were basically getting one-to-one tuition and the adults, who had paid more, got next to nothing.

The next day, therefore, I asked to change to a higher level group. Unfortunately, the next group up was composed mainly of five and six year olds who could at least stand up on their skis but weren't particulaly keen to actually go down a slope. I thought I was going to have a repeat of the day before but luckily the instructor realised as we set off and three out of the five children started to cry, that this group wasn't going to be much fun for me either, and handed me over to Renato, who was teaching a slightly more advanced group with older children who actually wanted to be there. There was another adult as well, the mother of one of the kids. She and I became known as “le mamme” (“the mums”) for the rest of the week, but we had great fun together avoiding the kamikaze kids and being scared of doing any jumps.

Renato was a great instructor and the rest of the week was fabulous. On Tuesday, we went down easy blue runs and learned the beginnings of parallel turns. On Wednesday, there was a covering of fresh powder on the slopes, the turns became easier and suddenly Renato's instruction to “lean further down the mountain” started to make sense. We went down our first red runs that day, which was probably why my muscles hurt so much on Thursday, and I didn't feel like I skied so well. Pila is a great resort for beginners though, with lots of blue and red runs and nice trails through the forest, so it was fun just trying out all the different places to go with someone who knew what they were doing to stop me from accidentally finding myself on a black run. Friday was the last day of the course and everybody was supposed to participate in a competition. My fellow “mum” and I were reluctant at first, more because of the idea of being watched by the proud mummies and daddies on the side than by fear of the course or the competition, but Renato convinced us and it wasn't too painful in the end.

While I was doing all of this, Mr A was having snowboarding lessons. He found it tricky at first, mostly because standing up on a snowboard when you're 6'4” tall is very difficult, but by the end of the week he was making it down the runs as well. He was lucky, too, that toddlers don't learn to snowboard, so at least everybody in his group was over the age of ten!

By the end of the week, both of us felt confident enough to go skiing by ourselves, so all we have to do now is save up some more money...

Cheddar Cheese

2009-02-14T19:02:00.000+01:00

We found it in Auchan. It was only 1.99 euros. It tasted great.

And tomorrow we're going to the mountains for a whole week of skiing lessons!

Lugano Again

2009-02-10T21:58:00.002+01:00

On Sunday, we went to Switzerland again. Mr A still needed some clothes for skiing, so we stopped off at the Foxtown outlet centre. Mr A got a North Face jacket for 100 euros. He was happy to have the jacket, and I, as his tight Scottish girlfriend (as he likes to remind me), was glad on his behalf that he got such a bargain.

After that, we went up to Lugano for a walk around the lake so that I could get my fix of nice views and fresh air. Lugano is beautiful, with a turquoise lake, gorgeous grand hotels on the promenade and snowy mountains behind it, and the air was definitely less polluted than in Milan. The town is so clean and organised looking that it seems really strange when you hear Italian spoken around you. Just like in Milan, the people are incredibly well dressed, but combined with tidiness of the setting, it creates a sense of perfection that's almost unnerving. Nevertheless, Mr A and I both decided that Switzerland would be a very nice place to live, and you're never too far from the more flawed countries over the border!

Il Parrucchiere

2009-02-10T21:55:00.001+01:00

On Saturday, I went with Mr A to get him a haircut. Getting a haircut yourself in a foreign country is scary enough, but being the translator for your other half's barbering experience when you have a somewhat shaky command of the language (I know the Italian words for “hayfever” and “magnifying glass” but regularly confuse simple adjectives and prepositions) has the potential to be a real test of a relationship. The experience was made a lot worse by the fact that we had to wait for over an hour watching middle-aged ladies having their hair set in rollers and an older man having his style finished with hairspray.

The final result looked really good, which was a huge relief for both of us, and we relaxed by going to the Irish pub to watch the rugby. The pub is called Murphy's Law and it's in the Navigli district. It's a pretty authentic looking Irish pub but it sells very nice Italian wine as well as beer in actual pint glasses and they did a delicious and very filling aperitivo of things like sausages and mashed potato, accompanied by tomatoes and mozzarella. I found all of that much more exciting than the rugby!

Body Fitness Dance

2009-02-07T05:46:00.001+01:00

Up until a week ago, I had never in my life been to an exercise class. Well, never in my adult life. When I was 16 and trying to get my Duke of Edinburgh award, I went to the school aerobics club for two whole weeks. Then I realised that it was torture and that I could get the award by ice skating instead and I never went back. Last year, when I lived in Edinburgh. I didn't need exercise classes. I was walking for an hour ever day, climbing mountains every so often at the weekends and going running every time I could guilt myself into it.

Since I came to Milan, however, the only rapid movement that has taken place in my life is the downhill slide in the amount that I exercise. In the summer, I could rollerblade in the park and I did some amazing long walks in the mountains. In winter, though, the ground is too wet for rollerblading and the mountains are too dangerous for a dilettante like me. Even if I was motivated to go running, the nearest park is a bus ride away and on the days when it's not too wet, the cold air opens up your lungs and lets you breathe the traffic fumes in far too effectively to make running a healthy thing to do. So when two of my friends announced that they were going to a dance fitness class, I decided it might be a good idea too.

The class is great. Bouncing around to music ranging from the Beatles to Mambo Italiano, culminating in a grand ten minute finale to the Mamma Mia Mega Mix is definitely my idea of fun. In fact, it's exactly what I do at home in front of the mirror when nobody's looking. The other women who go (even Italian blokes are not quite comfortable enough with their masculinity for this kind of thing) are great fun as well. They are the most Italian Italians I've met in Milan so far and they laugh and talk the whole time, including when we're dancing and over the teacher talking. I've been to three classes so far and every time I've left with a big smile on my face.

In addition, I might finally learn to remember which way is “su” (up) and which way is “giù” (down) so well that I will never ever forget it.

Camaieu in Milan

2009-02-04T18:40:00.001+01:00

I didn't think shopping got any better than finding the things that you actually need to buy reduced to a price that you can actually afford, but I was wrong.

On Sunday afternoon, Mr A and I decided to put off marking and writing reports by going to the big out of town Carrefour that we had seen on the way out of Milan the day before. He was hoping that the biggest supermarket around would have an alternative to Robinson's Special R squash and possibly some Cheddar cheese. I was hoping for a Gallic shopping experience that would allow me to wallow in nostalgia on a cold and rainy afternoon.

Mr A, unfortunately, was disappointed. If anybody knows where to buy sugar-free diluting juice in Italy, please let me know. My wishes, on the other hand, were fulfilled beyond anything I could ever have hoped for.

We thought we were only going to the supermarket, but it turned out to be in a shopping centre called Milano Fiori, which is next to the Datch forum as you leave Milan on the motorway. We were strolling along among the usual range of high-street chain stores when I saw it. The familiar pink and purple frontage. The white lettering. It was Camaieu.

I interrupted whatever Adam was saying about Robinson's squash and cheddar cheese. I grabbed his hand and dragged him towards the shop. I may have kissed him in delight a couple of times on the way. At some point, he realised that all this excitement was utterly genuine and looked slightly stunned.

Camaieu is my favourite clothes shop in the world but I'm not totally sure why I like it so much. The clothes are not that good quality and I once even cut my finger on a zip on one of their skirts. Nevertheless, I love that shop. Last time I was in France, I went at least four times to two different stores. I know where Camaieu is in St Quentin, La Défense, Compiègne, Nancy and Nice. Somehow or other, they make clothes that I like with the added impression of buying into a little bit of French chic on the way. It may be psychological, but I always find clothes that I like in Camaieu.

And they have shops in Italy. I am happy.

McArthur Glen

2009-02-02T07:49:00.002+01:00

I've written before about how good Milan is for shopping. The well- heeled can splash their cash at La Rinascente, Italy's answer to Harrods or Jenners where after riding on endless escalators and trawling though rail after rail of expensive clothing, shoppers can relax with refreshments on a terrace that looks out on the roof of the cathedral. The even better-heeled, meanwhile, drive their Ferraris around the Quadrilatero d'Oro and barely inflict damage on their platinum credit cards in the designer flagship stores.

For the likes of me, however, these places are more like art exhibitions than places where you actually buy things. The likes of me have two choices: shop in the high street shops of Via Torino or get out of town. To the outlet centres.

Not having a single Ferrari between us, Mr. A, two of our friends and I made our escape in Mr. A's Fiat Punto. There are several outlet centres within driving distance of Milan, but we chose the one at Serravalle, which is run by McArthur Glen. The shops range from Reebok to Prada, and we were open to finding anything.

Our most successful finds were in the sports shops. We all got trainers in the Reebok shop, and, thanks to my personal shopping advisor (Mr. A)'s eagle eyes, I got a pair that were reduced from 90 euros to 30. My other great bargain was a ski jacket and trousers, (which I will be needing for our skiing holiday in 2 weeks!) reduced from about 250 euros to 60. Mr. A got a nice scarf and gloves in Timberland and my friend ran out of Versace in shock when they told her that a fluffy handbag, reduced by 50%, was a bargain at 1500 euros. The outlet stores normally have about 30% the normal price, but because it's still sale time in Italy, we were getting up to 50% off the outlet price, so some of the reductions were incredible.

Bargains aside, my other two favourite finds were this hot beverage solution for the travelling Italian who misses the coffee from the Bel Paese:

and the Lindt shop, where high quality chocolate is sold as pic'n'mix on a scale that Woolworths could only dream of even before it went bust. At 3.55 euros for 100g, it wasn't exactly cheap, but who cares when you've just saved 240 euros on the rest of your shopping?

Lo Smog

2009-01-29T18:35:00.000+01:00

The other day as I was walking home from work along the main road, I noticed that I wasn't breathing properly. Not in an, "Oh no, I'm about to have a heart attack!" kind of a way, more the way I used to breath walking through the smoking section of a restaurant when people were still allowed to smoke in restaurants.

But I wasn't in a restaurant. I was out in the open air.

I wrote the other day about how terrible the air quality is in Milan. In fact, this is such an obsession that approximately 5% of my blog posts have been about the pollution here. The latest news is that Italy, having exceeded the safe EU limits for air pollution in Milan for the past 4 years, is about to be taken to the European court of justice and will in theory be made to pay millions of euros in fines if they don't solve the problem.

Unfortunately, they have until 2011 to do it and I'll either have left or died of lung cancer, so in the meantime, I've taken to walking the back streets to school. The air there is a little bit easier to breathe, but it takes extra oxygen to jump around the dog shit. If you've ever moaned about the crottes de chien in Paris, you should see Milan.

The X Factor

2009-01-26T21:25:00.003+01:00

As a way of avoiding the mounds of paperwork that I should be doing tonight, I'm watching the Italian X Factor.

The show was opened by the UK singer Seal. He came on stage and spoke in English. The presenter spoke back to him in English. One of the Italian judges asked him the question "Do you think I'm sexy?" Throughout all of this, a little bit of what was said was translated into almost inaudible Italian. The rest wasn't.

This leads me to two possible conclusions. One is that the producers of RAI television believe that all the people in Italy who watch The X Factor are fluent in English. The other is that on the X Factor it doesn't matter what you say as long as you look good and sound cool.

The programme has been on for about 20 minutes now and there's been about 30 seconds of the contestants singing. The rest is the judges arguing with each other and interrupting a lot.

Burns' Night

2009-01-26T20:09:00.002+01:00

Last weekend, as my fellow Scots across the world were reading poetry to lumps of sheeps' innards and birling each other dizzy on the dancefloor, I did something different. I had a crêpe party.

The original inspirations for the party were Normandy cider bought from the artisan fair at Christmas and the availability of sarrasin flour in the shops, but these aspects of the party both failed due to my English friends having been put off cider by drinking too much White Lightning in bus stops at age 14 and by me doing my shopping in the GS supermarket rather than the French-owned Auchan. The authenticity of the occasion was further depleted by the guests being 50% vegetarian, meaning that many of the traditional French fillings were off the menu for them. We did, however, have a fabulous baked Camembert (I don't know if the French actually do this to Camembert but Mr A made one with herbs and olive oil and it was amazing) and a real Béchamel sauce. (Mr A, backed up by Wikipedia, taught me the difference between Béchamel and white sauce. I proceeded to ruin his creation by making it lumpy.) We bought cheese at both the market and the supermarket and at one point it was filling two shelves in the fridge. For the sweet crêpes, we had Nutella (Italian in origin but beloved by the French), lemons and sugar, and strawberries and banana flambéed in Amaretto.

I might not have eaten haggis at the weekend, but the fusion cuisine more than made up for the loss.

From the Italian News

2009-01-25T21:23:00.001+01:00

Three stories from the UK made the evening TV news tonight. In order of priority:

Prince Harry and Chelsy Davy have broken up. She is now listed as “single” on Facebook.

People are now flocking to Britain to buy cheap Aston Martin cars in London.

Something about underwater ironing. My vocabulary wasn't specialised enough to understand the finer details.

It's Getting Harder and Harder to Breathe

2009-01-21T17:52:00.000+01:00

In the newspaper last week it said that air quality levels in Milan had been safe on only two days since the beginning of this year's records. The rest of the time, pollution was up to three times higher than the safe level.

No wonder I've started coughing again.

Taking Life as it Comes

2009-01-20T07:48:00.000+01:00

It occurred to me this weekend that it's been a while since I posted anything about what I've actually been doing when I'm not falling out with Italian customer services staff or musing about their communicative habits. Then I realised that there wasn't actually that much to say. Life is very normal and that's a good thing.

I came to Italy with a mission to learn to speak Italian and to experience as much as possible of the country and the culture in the nine months that followed. I felt claustrophobic spending too much time with my colleagues outside of work. I started going to conversation classes and joined a hillwalking club. I bought lots of newspapers and made a point of watching the news every evening I was at home. I was really happy, but life was also hard work.

Now I feel like I've relaxed a lot. I've made some good friends among the people I work with and met my English speaking boyfriend. I'm still learning Italian but I've accepted that it's not going to happen as quickly as it would if I were working in an Italian company or had hundreds of Italian friends. I need to motivate myself to actually study it, but I speak it pretty much every day and I hear it all around me, so something must be going in.

Part of the reason for this, I think, is that I've realised that I can stay here as long as I want. I like my job and I can probably stay on next year, so I have plenty of time to explore Italy. Not being totally immersed in the langauge and culture might make my learning curve a bit slower but it also makes life a lot easier.

So what have I actually been doing? Working hard. Spending time with Mr A. Planning a skiing holiday for February. Meeting up with friends. Going to conversation classes. Teaching English conversation classes. Reading the free newspaper in the metro. Watching the weather forecast in the hope that it's going to snow again.

My life might not be 100% Italian, but it's good.

Misadventures in the Italian Language

2009-01-15T07:15:00.000+01:00

Once I had recovered from the shock of my experience with Alice Mobile's “Customer Services” the other day, I realised that my conversation with the woman on the other end raised some interesting sociolinguistic questions.

One of the things that shocked me almost as much as the price of their internet services was the fact that the woman interrupted me when I was speaking. In the UK, that almost never happens, unless the customer is truly ranting, raving and being abusive. In Italy, however, it is generally much more socially acceptable to interrupt and speak when someone else is speaking. (Try dealing with that with a class of 25 children with very loud voices!). What I wonder, therefore, is, would the woman have done that if we had been speaking in English?

Lots of my English speaking friends, even the ones that speak Italian, ask to speak in English in situations like this. I've always tried to speak in Italian, partly because I want to, but also because I've always thought that I'll get better service that way. Maybe this comes from living in France, where people tend to look down their noses at you if you don't have a perfect accent, never mind if you have the audacity to try to speak in English, or maybe it's because I think that if you make the transaction more difficult for them by carrying it out in a foreign language, they're more likely to give up on you when it gets complicated. Other friends in Italy have told me, however, that they've always had good customer service when they've spoken in English, perhaps because Italians are usually proud that they speak English and keen to be able to help by using it.

What I was really wondering, though, was whether, in the same situation, my woman's attitude would have changed if she had been speaking English. When you speak another language, do you take on some of the characteristics of its native speakers? I've noticed that some of my anglophone friends who have been in France a long time don't just sound French when they speak French, they act it as well. In Italian, I felt it was acceptable to interrupt this woman after she had interrupted me, which I wouldn't have done in English. I suspect that if she had actually lived in an anglophone country and picked up its sociolinguistic rules as well as the language, she wouldn't have.

Alice and Tim - Don't Go With Those Two!

2009-01-12T18:01:00.000+01:00

One of the great things about having a blog is that you can mouth off in public about things that annoy you. I try not to do this too often, mostly because it's boring to read, but this might actually be useful to somebody, so here goes.

When I first came to Italy, I decided to get mobile internet through a company called Wind. Other people I know have had no problems with their technology, but for some reason, it didn't work on my computer and, after spending a fortune in internet credit without getting an internet connection in return, I decided to try another company.

I bought a modem and sim card from Alice, which is the internet branch of the company Tim, which in turn is owned by Telecom Italia. I got them from a shop owned by a friend of a friend and she was very helpful, gave me good advice and let me try the equipment in advance. I signed up for a promotion that gave me 9GB fror 25 euros a month.

For the first month, it worked really well. Then, as the month drew to an end, I bought new credit for the sim card ready for the next month.

The day after the second month was supposed to start, I tried to connect to the internet. It worked for about 20 minutes, then stopped. I phoned up to check the credit and discovered that I had none.

When I came back from my Christmas trip home, I bought some more credit, topped up the sim and connected to the internet. 2 minutes later, my 5 euros of credit was gone.

I waited two days for the customer helpline to be open and phoned them up. I explained very politely that 35 euros of credit seemed to have disappeared without a trace. The woman explained that when you top up the credit, you also have to request the "promotion" (eg the 9GB of downloads per month) every time. This was not written in any documents that I received from the shop but I politely admitted that it was my fault and asked her to explain where the credit had gone, if it hadn't been spent on renewing my "promotion". Her response was that I had been on the internet since the promotion ran out.

"Yes," I agreed, "but I had 5 euros of credit and I was only connected for 2 minutes. I don't understand how 2 minutes of internet time can cost 5 euros."

At this point the woman got seriously ratty. She told me it wasn't her job to convince me of anything, nor to listen to what I had to say. Somewhere in a few seconds of us speaking over each other in very loud, very fast and in my case probably very poor Italian, she told me that being connected to the internet without a "promotion" costs 7 euros for every megabyte. Then she put the phone down on me.

Luckily, the understanding and technologically savvy Mr A was on hand to give me a hug after this traumatising experience and to confirm that at that rate on a high speed connection, 2 minutes of being connected to the internet could indeed cost 5 euros. And that, my friends, corresponds to a rate of a hundred and fifty euros per hour.

If I wasn't in Italy, I would write to the company and complain about the rude woman.

If I wasn't in Italy, I would contact trading standards.

Being in Italy, I sucked it up, renewed the promotion for January and moaned about it on my blog instead.

Venezia

2009-01-08T19:54:00.000+01:00

One of the best things about living in Milan is how easy it is to get out of Milan. With a few days to spare before work started after new year, Mr A and I did some quick research on the internet, booked a hotel and got on a train. Within a couple of hours, we had gone from Milan, the ugly economic and industrial powerhouse of Italy and perhaps the only place in the whole country where things actually work, to glorious, historical, impractical Venice.

We had both been to Venice before, but only in the summer, when the temperatures are high and the crowds are stifling. On a January evening, the remains of a snowfall were still lying on the streets, which were deserted to the point of being eerie, and gondolas slipped through the mist, seen and then unseen in the patchy light.

In the morning, the weather was bright and clear and we set out into the city. One of the best things to do in Venice is just walk, and that is what we did. Even in the crowded areas, it was relaxing to wander without the noise and the chaos of the Milanese traffic. I do wonder, though, how on earth people do things like moving house in Venice, where there are so many buildings you can't even get to by boat, never mind by car or with a lorry.
We arrived at Piazza San Marco at the end of the morning, visited the basilica and climbed the Campanile. The Campanile is a 100m high bell tower that has spectacular views all over Venice and across the lagoon to the mainland. Unfortunately, the winds at 100m were bitingly cold and we physically couldn't stand to stay up there for long but it was worth it all the same.

In the afternoon we had time to do some more walking and buy the incredibly expensive nougat for which Venice is famous before warming ourselves up with hot chocolate and getting the train back to Milan.

Il Capodanno a Milano

2009-01-04T18:34:00.000+01:00

I flew back to Milan on the afternoon of the 31^st December. At the airport, I was struck by the number of Scottish men striding around the place in kilts (always a nice send-off) and assumed that they were probably off to wreak havoc in the bars and piazzas of any European city unfortunate enough to be an EasyJet destination. Little did I realise that New Year's Eve in Milan would make your average Scottish Hogmanay street party look like afternoon tea at the Women's Institute...

I took the (inappropriately named) Malpensa Express back into town and celebrated being back in Italy by eating focaccia for lunch. A few of my friends were already back and we had been planning to go out for a meal, but when we realised that the price of a set menu was around 80 euros and all the restaurants were either closed or fully booked two of my friends decided to organise a pizza making party at their house.

After the pizza, we packed a bottle of “champagne” and some cartons of cheap wine in our bags and headed out. The streets were surprisingly quiet, apart from a few guys setting off fireworks down a side street near the bus stop.

That all changed when we got to the Duomo. Even as we emerged from the metro, we could hear loud bangs exploding overhead. We looked up to the sky, expecting to see colourful displays of fireworks, but there were none. Just the cathedral, the Christmas tree, groups of people hanging around and a whole lot of smoke. And what we heard were earth-shattering bangs that shook our nerves and seemed to shake the historic cathedral to its foundation stones.

What in fact was happening was that the groups of people were setting off firecrackers. Big ones. And they were throwing them into the piazza, at each other, and in the direction of anyone who happened to be standing nearby. The few policemen who were actually present were cowering under their riot gear and doing very little.

How dangerous the firecrackers actually were I do not know, but the explosions were certainly big enough to be terrifying. Normally any street party in Italy is filled with families and people of all ages, but this was mainly groups of young men for whom a buggy with a baby in it, a dog or the inside of a moving tram was as good a target as anything else.

We escaped from the Piazza del Duomo as quickly as possible, hiding from the blasts under the arches of the Galleria Vittorio Emmanuele. We tried to find a safer route across the piazza using the metro station, but people were throwing the firecrackers down the exits too. Eventually we made it out and headed towards the castle. Outside the castle the situation was the same, but this time with the added interest of the traffic.

Luckily some of my friends were braver than I was and decided that we should investigate what was going on in the park behind the castle, where there was supposed to be an actual fireworks display. The park was beautiful. There was thick snow on the ground and the trees made wintry silhouettes against the frosty sky. Bars in log cabins were selling mulled wine and apple strudel. We didn't have to wait long before the fireworks display started and, in its snowy setting, it was spectacular. It went on for almost half an hour, with the fireworks getting bigger and more impressive every time, until they seemed to burst towards us, filling all the visible sky. We drank the sparkling wine and toasted the new year in English and Italian. We even did a very loud but somewhat mumbled version of Auld Lang Syne, which was cheerful even if nobody else knew any of the words beyond the first line. And that was my new year!

Felice anno nuovo a tutti!

Adventures in the Italian Language 4

2008-12-30T11:10:00.000+01:00

"Non ho capito"

The literal translation of this phrase is "I didn't understand." Italians use it a lot and, when you're a foreigner making shaky attempts to speak the language, it can be quite disconcerting. It took me a while to figure out that it's also used to mean "I didn't hear you," and when someone says it to you it doesn't mean your Italian was crap, it just means you need to repeat what you said.

This kind of thing is useful to keep in mind more generally when you're speaking a foreign language. Mistakes and misunderstandings happen for all kinds of reasons and often it's as much to do with the other person as it is to do with you!

Nostalgia

2008-12-30T01:14:00.000+01:00

I got nostalgic today. I had an appointment with my old doctor and I met up with my old flatmate for coffee, which involved me getting the bus into Edinburgh from my parents' house, walking from Princes Street to the area where I used to live, visiting my old flat to pick up some post and finally driving past the school where I used to teach on the way home.

I noticed several things about Edinburgh.

I noticed the gentleness of the rolling hills outside it, so different from the harsh outlines of the Alps.

I noticed the sense of calm. Even in Princes Street in the middle of the sales, people said sorry when they bumped into you and nobody tried to run you over if you dared to attempt to cross the road.

I noticed the sense of history. Italy has a fascinating history too, but even strolling in Rome or sitting in the arena in Verona, it's never seemed so palpable to me. Edinburgh's history is my history and I learned it on the spot, being led down the Royal Mile by teachers in a time so distant it might as well be history itself.

And I noticed how beautiful the city is, as the sun sets and darkness falls over the trees, the spires and the hills. It brought back so many memories of a time when I felt very settled in a city that was truly home.

And, in fact, I never really meant to leave. I moved to Milan partly because of my seemingly inplacable language learning, foreign culture experiencing itch and partly because so many elements of my settled Edinburgh life either came to a natural end or came crashing down around my ears, depending on whether you want to be melodramatic about it or not.

Now I find myself in the opposite situation, with the itch being at least partially appeased for the time being, looking to the future and wondering what will happen if and when I take that same decision in reverse. The curse of loving foreign things is that you will always leave a little bit of yourself somewhere far away.

What reassured me today was the thought that as well as the people, there is a place that's worth coming home to.