Milan - September 4 - 5, 2012

I arrive in Milan. As I pull my luggage behind me, walking away from the platform and toward the station proper, the immensity and beauty of the station beguiles.

Milan feels different than many other parts of Italy. Modern, business-like and brimming with sophistication, my hotel, Mennini, is a different matter, rough around the edges and in need of a renovation.

Center of Milan

Streetcars deliver passengers around the city. The main square full of fashionable shops with names such as Dior and Versace let visitors know they have arrived in one of the world's fashion capitals.

The Museo del Novecento displays works of the twentieth century. The exhibits, set in chronological order, begin with Italian art produced circa 1900 and ends with works from 1968. Spiralling stairs lead the way into assorted rooms, each one themed with a different era and different style.  Impressionistic, abstract and realistic works are explained in historic context and consideration given to influences of the time, and the artistic talents and personalities that went into creating the pieces.

Venice - September 1 - 3, 2012

San Marco - Venice main piazza

Its 26 million or so visitors each year give testament to the uniqueness and beauty of Venice. And yet, I cannot help but question its very existence. Resting on sand bars that reach into the Mediterranean Sea, its biblical paradigm comes to mind.

Somewhere in the New Testament, Jesus tells the parable of building a house on sand, as opposed to rock. In Venice, I see many a large and imposing edifice, somehow still standing, after several hundred years, even though its foundation is weak.

Forced into the sea by invaders, Venetians made the sand bars their home. Through the salt the sea produces, they became exceedingly wealthy and collected the trappings that money provides. Culture, art and beauty are everywhere.

Bologna - August 31, 2012

Bologna library

Alessandra's friend Elena sees me off; I'm on my way to Bologna. She tells me it is a university town. After checking into the hotel I Portici I make my way to the center of the city. 

My short stay means I see little of Bologna. Since it is a city for students, what better place to visit than one of the many libraries? I visit Biblioteca Comunale dell'Archiginnasio. Constructed between 1562 and 1563, the library's long history speaks of the many scholars, past and present, who have made good use of its learned halls. Today the Società Medica Chirurgica and by the Accademia di Agricoltura occupy much of the first floor, portraits of distinguished doctors fill the walls. 

Viareggio, Italy - August 27, 2012

Viareggio, Italy

To arrive at the resort town of Viareggio from Lucca, it takes a picturesque bus ride that costs 3 Euro one-way. Although not surprised, I'm not use to what I see on the beach. Sign after sign, each with the name of a particular bagno, advertises that for an amount of money, I do not inquire as to how much, people can access the beach, along with a change room, lounge chair and umbrella. Where I come from, free beaches complete with a bathroom and change room, belong to everyone.

In the design of its buildings, Viareggio looks something like Miami, Florida. Perhaps I should say Miami looks like Viareggio. Located in Versilia, which is the Italian Riviera, with green hills and jagged rocky mountains in the background, blue sky and waves from the Mediterranean Sea lapping the shore it is a place that you savor.

People lying in the sun turn themselves almost crisp black, while men, whose color borders on ivory black, sell hats that can provide protection from the sun.  Men, no women, fish in the waters, and very young girls go topless while their mothers keep themselves modestly covered.

There are boats in the harbor. Sailboats, yachts and cruisers all designed to provide pleasure whenever their fortunate owners lift anchor.

Florence, Italy - August 21, 2012

Replica of Michelangelo's David
located where the original once stood.

David

During a school assembly when I was in elementary school, we watched a film about Michelangelo's David. I'd like to believe, in spite of evidence to the contrary, each of us makes decisions, puts together hopes dreams and ambitions, and either consciously or unconsciously fulfills the destinies we carve. By the end of the film, I knew one day I would see that statue up close and personal.

Its position in the Galleria Degli Accedemia is grand. He stands tall at the end of a hall that displays many of Michelangelo's unfinished marble pieces.

However, I may be the only person on earth who begs to differ with those who believe David is perfectly proportioned. I have trouble with his hands and feet because they appear too big for the rest of him.

Most David's are victors, depicted after they have slain Goliath. However, this David readies for battle.  His first home was in front of the Firenze City Hall, where a copy stands today. The city, like David, stands ready to do battle with the larger and more powerful cities of the area. Although, for the life of me, I cannot imagine a Tuscan city more powerful than Florence was during the Renaissance.

A portion of Bascillica de Santa Maria -

Bascillica di Santa Maria del Fiore ( Saint Mary of the Flowers)

Construction of the main cathedral in Florence, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site,  began in 1296. It took 140 years to complete. Architects planned that it should include the world's largest dome. The problem was, no one knew how the build such a dome. The incomplete cathedral remained an embarrassment to Florentinians until Cosimo de' Medici commissioned the work to be complete. The contract was awarded to Brunelleschi, who in designing and undertaking the supervision of building the dome, accomplished what was thought to be impossible. It remains, to this day, the largest brick dome in the world. 

Ponte Vecchio

Ponte Vecchio - oldest Florence, Italy
bridge

Although flooding almost destroyed the bridge in 1333, it has stretched across the Arno River since Roman times. During the 15th Century fishmongers, butchers and grocers sold their smelly items in shops lining the bridge, but were replaced by goldsmiths. The oldest bridge in Florence, today the shops on the bridge sell jewelry and souvenirs.

Late Luggage and Recovery: The Italian Way

Tuesday, September 31 and Wednesday, August 1

I fly AirBerlin from the JFK airport, headed to Lucca, Italy by way of Berlin, Rome and Pisa. The flight is delayed on the JFK runway. Although I make the Berlin transfer, it does not surprise me that when I reach Rome, my luggage is not on the plane.

The next flight from Berlin to Rome is scheduled to arrive at 6:30 p.m. My first thought is to remain in Rome until my luggage arrives, which means I miss my flight to Pisa. I know if I continue my journey to Lucca without it, a struggle is sure to ensue. Italy has its own rhythm. However, what if my luggage is not on the 6:30 flight? I've wasted time and money.

I fly to Pisa and take the bus to Lucca. By 6 p.m. I settle into my apartment.  I use Skype to call Rome's lost baggage department.  I must give them my address. I discover that the baggage office closed at 5:30 p.m.

Thursday, August 2

 Luggage - Retrieved at last

I begin calling at 8:30; the office should be open.  At first, no one  answers, then I receive repeated busy signals, sometimes the phone is answered, and then disconnects. I persist. Eventually, speaking to someone. Bad news, without a telephone number my luggage won't be delivered.

 The apartment I rented does not include a telephone. Although I brought my cell phone, and planned to purchase a SIM card, I forgot the charger. I decide to treat myself to a new cell phone. After all, do I have a choice? Buying one will prove a challenge.

I begin at the tourist information office and learn a company called TIM sells and maintains Italian cell phones. At the sales office, no on speaks English, and I struggle to explain and understand. By early afternoon, I own a new cell phone.

Attempting to contact the Rome baggage office to give them the required number, again I experience repeated busy signals, and I worry the office will close before I reach anyone. I luck out, and manage to give someone my number. My luggage will be delivered on Monday, or so I'm told. So much for the four day maximum quoted delivery. I shop; I spend money and wait.

Monday, August 6

I decide to confirm delivery, and again, beginning calling at 8:30 in the morning.  Finally reaching some one, I discover my suitcase remains in the Rome storage area, no explanation given. I tell the woman I'm speaking to that  I will pick-up my bag in Pisa. She promises my luggage will arrive in Pisa on the 2:45 p.m. flight.

I take the bus to Pisa, which takes a little over a half hour. My luggage is not on the flight. Staff in the Pisa baggage refuse to call Rome. They email and wait. Apparently they only have the telephone number I have and aren't prepared to experience hang-ups, busy signals and no answers. I doubt the Rome office will read the email anytime soon.

I remember I have a cell phone, and begin using it. Eventually reaching a person. My luggage left the storage area. She doesn't know why it wasn't on the flight. Apparently it isn't possible to telephone the area of the airport where my suitcase may be sitting. She must email and will call me when she receives an answer. I don't bother asking when she will receive an answer because she won't know and it could be days, or not at all.

If I stay in Pisa until the next flight from Rome, I miss the last bus back to Lucca. I leave Pisa. Sometime after 10 pm, I receive a call; my luggage now resides in Pisa.

Tuesday, August 7

Feeling confident, I ride the bus to Pisa. Upon arrival, I speak to the same woman I spoke to yesterday. She makes it absolutely clear that the telephone call I received was not made by anyone working in lost baggage, and leaves to investigate. Perhaps my luggage is not in Pisa after all.

Several stressful minutes pass, and then my suitcase is placed in a sort of revolving trap door.  The lost baggage area is well protected. I think some passengers just might threaten bodily harm. A group from Belgium is returning home today, and is told their missing luggage might arrive tomorrow.

AirBerlin

Receiving compensation is impossible. No one answers phones; emails are answered requesting more and more information. I give up.

Canada: The Country that Works

For those of you who regularly read my blog, you know that I’ve been travelling a lot, and generally I’ve been travelling on my own.

Because I’m alone, I get into conversations I would otherwise have not been involved in. I learn a lot talking to strangers. And as the saying goes: “They tell you, don’t talk to strangers, but once you’ve talked to someone they are no longer a stranger.”

In September, when I was in Rome, Italy I very much liked Piazza Navarone. In fact, it was one of the few relaxing places I found in the beyond words chaos of the central part of the city.

If it was at all possible, I ate my midday meal in the piazza. One day I got into a discussion with my waiter. He was a very interesting man, who, like me, considers himself a citizen of the world first and an Italian second. Well, not exactly like me. I’m a citizen of the world first, and secondly a Canadian.

“I’ve been to eighteen countries,” he told me. “And of all the countries I’ve been to the only one that works is Canada”

For eight years he owned a business in Cancun, Mexico, I don’t know what type of business, but I’m guessing a restaurant.

One day some thugs came into his business and told him he needed to pay protection money. “You’re strong arming me? I’m Italian, we originated this caper,” he said. Then promptly sold his business and headed for Canada.

When he arrived in my homeland he showed the Canadian Border Services Agency his Italian passport and his Mexican residency papers.

The whole thing looked pretty suspicious to the Canadians, and they held him for twelve hours before they were satisfied it was okay to allow him into the country, for six months, to visit. Then he had to leave.

He was impressed with the diligence of the people who guard Canada’s borders, he was impressed with how law abiding Canadians were, how clean the country was, how everything . . .well. . . .how everything worked.

At the end of six months he did what he had to do, he left.

Lucca - The City of the Wooden Circle

In Rome I saw no evidence of Medieval Times. There was the Roman Empire, which left behind the Colosseum, Palentine Hill, Apian Way and thousands of other remnants of what once was. Roman greatness did not return until The Renaissance, memorials, fountains and grand palazzo give evidence to this era of rebirth.

It was in Tuscany that I found the beauty of the Italian city-states that managed to thrive in spite of all their bickering, lusting after parts of one another’s comune, which is the city and its surrounding area, threats from the feudal lords to the north, and the bubonic plague. The darkness of medieval times had its bright spots, and much of that light shone in the city-states of Tuscany. Lucca, fiercely independent little Lucca, was one such city-state.

I hadn’t heard from the Lucca Italian Language School, and I was scheduled to begin classes the following week. Since they had told me they would contact me two weeks before my arrival, giving me the particulars of my home stay, I sent an email.

Their reply read something like: “It’s difficult finding a private bath (I had requested my own bathroom) within the walls. There is a young woman who has a bedroom in her apartment, but you’d share her bath. We’ll continue looking outside the wall.”

Outside the wall!? No, that wouldn’t do, I wanted to stay within the wall. Inside the wall and outside the wall is one of the ways of locating things in Lucca. I made a decision I wouldn’t regret. I’d stay inside the wall and share Alessandra’s one bathroom two bedroom apartment on Fullingo, Lucca’s main street.

“Tomorrow we run around the wall,” my new friend Alessadra said.

“No, we won’t,” I replied “You might, but we won’t.”

I’m not a runner. However, I did walk the wall. It was a surprisingly short distance. Alessandra says it’s 4.5 kilometers.

Founded by the Etruscans and Ligurians, who worked side by side building canals, Lucca became a Roman colony in 180 BC. The Romans built the first wall. After the fall of the Roman Empire Lucca was conquered by the Goths, Byzantines and others. In the 6th Century AD, the Lombards, a Germanic tribe, settled in the Tuscia region and made Lucca its capital and brought relative stability until the 9th Century.

In 1119 Lucca was constituted as a free comune with a republic constitution and a magistrate, known as a Pedestra, was assigned the task of administrating the comune. Power was in the hands of the mercantile class. It was around this time that construction of a second wall began. It was completed in the mid-13th century.

An important city in the silk trade, banking and a resting spot for pilgrims on their way to Rome. The city flourished and its wall expanded. By the 1300’s and the beginning of the Renaissance most city states had become petty monarchies, no longer democratic.

By the 15th and 16th Century these powerful principalities began expanding their territories. Nearby Florence threatened Lucca and she responded by beginning construction on a fourth wall. By the time it was completed, 100 years later, history had changed and there was no need for a wall thick enough to house cannons, munitions, horses and soldiers. Truth be told, Lucchese were never much for fighting and preferred to negotiate with their neighbours.

Lucca was the second largest Italian city-state, after Venice, with a republican constitution to remain independent over the centuries. That changed in 1805 when Napoleon, with consent of the Lucchese, took control of Lucca and installed his sister, Elisa Bonaparte Baciocchi as "Queen of Etruria".

In 1815 Lucca became the Bourbon-Parma duchy then part of Tuscany in 1847 and finally part of the Italian State.

In 1899 Princess Marie Louise Bourbon, declared the wall to be a “passeggiata” (a place to walk) The rampant was barren and unpleasant looking, and so she planted trees. Today, the trees still grow strong and tall on top the wall. Leading poet Gabriele D’Annunzio gave Lucca the title “City of the Wooden Circle.”

The center of Rome is riddled with broken statues, columns and piles of stone that once meant something. I’d be a fool not to understand the preservation of monuments to the once great Roman Empire such as, the Colosseum, the Parthenon and the Palentine Hill. But, I saw so many other ruins and relics of the past whose significance appears to be lost somewhere in the annals of time. I wondered about the cost to tax payers and how these crumpled up landmarks detract from the beauty to the city. Although I wondered I was glad the decision of what to disband and what to keep was left to other. Archeologist, I assumed.

At a dinner party in Lucca I met an archeologist. “Rome is a mess,” she told me. “The Romans are crazy and insist on keeping everything. Here in Lucca it’s easy. If it’s inside the wall we preserve it. Outside the wall we forget about it.”

Inside the “wooden circle” you can find a once independent, wealthy and proud city-state. Viva Lucca!

Why Italy - An Observation

The Italian Diaspora

There I was, the first day of my two weeks of study at a language school in Lucca, Italy.

In Italian she asked, “Why do you want to study Italian?”

“Because Italian culture, food and the language are favorites throughout the world,” I said, likely unconsciously speaking Spanish rather than Italian.

I envisioned, but didn’t have the words in any language to explain, throughout the world there were people who had romantic notions of Italy, and I was one of them. How did this happen? How had Italian culture spread so far?

Somewhere in Rome, around the Victor Emanuel Monument, I wandered into a display of photos and films. In Canada, my homeland, the years between the mid-eighteen and mid-nineteen centuries had meant massive immigration But, here in the center of Rome, I had drifted into a display commemorating emigration during the same period.

Italian emigration is known as “The Great Italian Diaspora.” It began in 1871, which was the date when Italy became a country and ended in 1950, which was the start of Italy’s economic boom. During The Diaspora approximately 33% of Italy’s population left for other countries. Poverty, fascism and organized crime were the impetus.

This mass emigration means that today many citizens of other countries can claim Italian heritage. For example: 25 million Brazilians, 20 million Argentinians, 17.8 million Americans, 5 million French, 1.5 million Uruguayans, 1.4 million Canadians.

As Italians found new homelands they brought their culture with them. Today 55 million people living in Italy speak Italian. In contrast, it’s estimated that between 120 and 150 million people around the world speak Italian as another language.

The Great Diaspora ended a long time ago. Italy is now one of the world’s greatest economies, a G8 member and ranked among the top ten countries regarding standard of living for its citizenry. It has the world’s second best health care system and is home to the greatest number of UNESCO world heritage sites. Like most developed nations, Italy’s economic growth depends on immigration. In 2010 4.8 million people living in Italy were foreign born.

Italians are no longer mass emigrants and as a result the enclaves they lived in, the “Little Italys”, are diminishing in size and influence. Still, even today, most major cities have a Little Italy where people of Italian descent maintain businesses. Sidewalk cafes abound. Gelati replaces ice cream. Specialty wine shops mix with grocery stores that sell fresh pasta and parmagiano. Pastry shops sell cannoli. With such a strong taste of Italy permeating many places outside of Italy it’s not surprising that Italy is the fifth most visited country in the world. Not all roads lead to Rome, but many do.