What Confetti Really Means, and Other Facts About Italian Weddings

 

Before I start, I need to be upfront about something: I am not an expert on Italian weddings In fact, I have been to a grand total of one wedding in Italy, and the couple were both British. But one of the delights of multicultural life (or friends have been resident in Italy for several years) is that sometimes you get to pick the best from each of the cultures and put them together to make something even better, which is what our friends did, and the result was a truly beautiful occasion which I can't resist writing about.*

Our friends got married at a civil ceremony in the Valle d'Aosta. They actually live in another part of Italy, but were able to give "personale" as their reason for choosing a different commune for their wedding. The legal part of the ceremony was quite short: the mayor confirmed the identities of the couple and their witnesses, read out the relevant legislation (3 articles), then read out the wedding vows as "Do you ... ?" questions, to which they only had to answer "Yes". They then signed the register and the mayor summarised what had been said and signed. I've found the legalese read out at other weddings a bit dull, but I liked the fact that the articles from Italian law focused very much on making choices in the best interests of the couple and any children they might have, including giving the children an upbringing appropriate to their capacities, natural inclinations and aspirations. After that there were two readings chosen by the couple, one in English and one in Italian and the bride's sister sang a song. (These were not allowed to have any religious content) Our friends also chose read out the English wedding vows to each other, but obviously that didn't have any legal significance. After that there was time for a few photos, then we all had to leave before the next wedding party came in.

As the couple exited the town hall, we all threw confetti ... but only in the English sense. The actual Italian meaning of confetti is the sugared almonds that guests are given as wedding favours in a little bag or box called a bomboniera much later on. If you threw Italian confetti at the happy couple, they might not stay happy for much longer!

This was just the beginning!

The reception took place in a hotel with a terrace and garden looking out over the mountains. It started with prosecco and aperitivo snacks on the lawn, and as it was about 2pm by this point, we were all hungry and tucked into the buffet. An hour later, when we sat down at our tables for the actual meal, most of us wished we had been a little more restrained - the menu covered both sides of the piece of paper ... and not because there were lots of choices! We started with four different antipasti, or starters, which included little cheese pastries, insalata caprese, local hams and sausages and vitello tonnato (veal with a tuna sauce). Luckily there was a break before we moved on to the next course, with a speech from the father of the bride. (This is a British tradition - I believe that at Italian weddings it's normally one of the witnesses who gives the speech.) The next two courses were risotto then gnocchi, followed by meat with a mushroom sauce ... luckily with more breaks and British-style speeches from the groom and finally the two best men, then we went out to the garden for desserts, wedding cake and spumante. (Prosecco and spumante are both sparkling white wines, but prosecco is drier and is usually served before the meal, while spumante comes afterwards.)

By this time we had been enjoying magnificent food for about six hours straight and as we finished up our desserts, we were also treated to a magnificent sunset over the mountains. Italian friends told us that this would normally be the end of the wedding, with people giving their presents and saying their goodbyes. The tradition is to give money in an envelope rather than actual gifts, and you can buy special cards with a pocket for the money inside for exactly this purpose. While our friends made it clear that the money was to go towards their honeymoon, the tradition in Italy that you give at least enough to cover the cost of your meal. This is also the case in France, whereas in the UK I think the amount spent on a present is based more on how well you know the couple, with friends who aren't particularly close often giving quite small presents.

Our friends' wedding ended with music, dancing and more drinking for those who could take it, but that part was definitely more British. The band did a great job of performing covers of English-language songs, even although they had admitted beforehand that they weren't very sure of some of the words. And so ended a very special day that combined all the best of Italian and British tradition!

*If you would like to hear more about Italian weddings from someone who knows what they're talking about, Leanne at From Australia to Italy has a whole series of posts on the subject that gave me a good idea of what to expect!

Bologna la Rossa*

If I was mildly frustrated by the experience of being a tiny dot in the hoardes of tourists in Florence, Bologna was the perfect antidote. Not only were we visiting friends, and therefore slightly less "touristy" ourselves, but even when we did go touring around the city's many sights, we didn't have to queue for anything. Not once.

The most obvious buildings to visit are the Two Towers, which were built in the 1100s and are the symbol of Bologna. There used to be many, many more, but they either they were demolished or they (gulp!) collapsed. Both of the towers lean, although the one that you climb, the Torre d'Asinelli less than the smaller Torre de Garisenda.




Small Tower from Big Tower



Climbing the (very old) wooden staircase.



Another interesting building is the Basilico di San Petronio. It is the fifteenth-largest church in the world, but would have been bigger than St Peter's in Rome if the money for its construction hadn't been spent on the building the university instead. It does hold one record though: laid into the floor is a 66.8m meridian line that is part of the largest sundial in the world.

 

One quirky attraction in the city centre is this arcaded walkway, where you can speak into one side of arch and the sound echoes so that you can be heard perfectly on the other.

 And finally, for perfect views of the main square, you can't beat climbing the stairs in the Palazzo d'Accursio (the town hall) and looking down at what's going on below:

 


* Bologna is often called "la rossa" or "the red" for two reasons: the colour of its bricks and the colour of its traditional politics. The political red has faded somewhat in recent years, but the bricks, as this post proves, remain red (dish brown) as ever.




Queueing with the Carabinieri in Florence

When Understanding Frenchman and I went to Italy back in October, the 27 hours we spent in Florence were something of an afterthought. Our main plan was to see friends in Milan and Bologna, and Florence just happened not to be too far from our planned itinerary.

Turns out, though, that it's not really a place you should try to visit as an afterthought. Or in 27 hours. Because in Florence, to visit just about any place when you haven't reserved days in advance tends to involve spending several hours standing in a queue. Also, you have to pay (a lot) to visit absolutely anything, including churches, so wandering in and out of places just to see if they're interesting isn't really an option.

The most impressive waiting we saw was when we lined up for half an hour in front of the Uffizi to book a slot to visit the following day. The massed queue was managed by the carabinieri, (one of Italy's many police forces), but that didn't stop some brazen souls from jumping it. Once inside, we were informed that all the times up to three o'clock were already full and, with a train to catch at 5pm, we were forced to give up. I was also sad not to climb up to the cupola of the cathedral or the bell tower, but again the queues were so long that both times we tried, we would never actually have got to the front of it before either the place closed or we had to be somewhere else.

Nevertheless, we managed to have a good time, mostly by strolling around and admiring all the gorgeous architecture from the outside:

View of the Duomo from La Rinascente department store. A sneaky look at the view from their tiny terrace is FREE!

Ponte Vecchio. Also free, but better enjoyed from a distance, especially if crowds scare you.

 

Santa Croce church, with a massive piece of public art in the piazza.

The Campanile. I would have loved to climb it, but even just getting this shot made me happy because it's so tall, it was hard to fit it all in!

 

We also visited the interior of the Duomo, which is free, and where the highlight is definitely the cupola, which everyone stands underneath straining their necks to see this amazing work of art:

 

 You just look up, and up and up!

 

 Eternal fires of hell

 

I particularly liked this cheeky skeleton.

 



 In such a touristy city, I was surprised by the friendly service in nearly all the places we ate, particularly from our lunchtime pizza seller who made the effort to check that the temperature of our slices was just right, and the charming waiter in the little trattoria on Borgo Pinti. And on our last walk back to the hotel after dinner, we came across a mime artist doing an old fashioned performance that kept us and the rest of the audience amused for at least half an hour... and there was no queueing involved!

 

 

Unravelling the Confusion

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!

Italian Trip Summer 2010

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.

Why Don't We Have That at Home?

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.

At the Barber's Shop

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.

May Day

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

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.

Why is it that in Italy...

... 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?

It's Good to Talk?

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.

Misadventures in the Italian Language

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.