Category Archives: Italy

The Perils of the Italian Quest for Fresh Wild Mushrooms

August 29, 2006 Deirdre Straughan Leave a comment

While out on a walk (which became a hike), I saw a couple of women heading into the woods with wicker baskets dangling from their backpacks – off to hunt for mushrooms. Italians, like hobbits, are very fond of mushrooms, especially the varieties which defy cultivation and can only be found in the wild (or bought, expensively, from someone else who found them).

^”Edible or not? The answer: the mushroom checker.” A pharmacy sign in Switzerland.

To ensure that the mushrooms they pick are edible, many Italians have taken courses or otherwise learned how to distinguish various types. If you’re not sure, you can go to a pharmacy to have your catch examined – I guess pharmacists have to have some sort of mushroom qualification. Still, every now and then someone thinks they know more than the pharmacist does and ends up poisoning their entire family (usually not fatally). The wild mushrooms you buy in stores are certified safe, I presume.

But mushrooms have other ways of taking revenge on the humans who seek them so avidly. The mushroom courses apparently don’t include tips on how to pick them without killing yourself, so every year, during mushroom season, people fall off cliffs while out ‘shrooming. This past weekend saw one death, one serious injury, and two people needing to be rescued from whatever situation they’d got themselves into on a mountain somewhere; this morning’s local paper announces another death – all in quest of mushrooms. I think I’ll stick to buying them at the store.

NB: The mushroom shown at top is of the “DON’T eat me” variety.

an American student in Viterbo on ‘shroom love

bio, Italy travel

Airport “Security”: Reflections on Our Times

August 20, 2006 Deirdre Straughan 1 Comment

After all the fuss in the UK last week about terrorists toting Gatorade bottles, we faced our return flight to Italy with some trepidation. Not because we were afraid of being blown up, but because the “enhanced security measures” widely reported in the media promised hours in line waiting to be pawed over by TSA agents of questionable competence, for no increase in our actual safety.

I worried a great deal about how to pack. Not what to pack, because I didn’t have much choice about that – we had arrived in the US with two iPods, a laptop, and a digital still camera. Once there, we picked up my videocamera (which had been sent for repairs), and Ross got a new digital SLR for her birthday. Everything else might be expendable, but I was damned if I was going to pack a brand-new and expensive camera in checked luggage. And we had done a lot of other shopping, so our two large suitcases were already bulging (and tempting).

I checked the TSA and airline sites daily, and was relieved to see the former being frequently updated with new information. By a day or two before departure, it was clear that, as far as TSA was concerned, I needn’t worry about carrying on the electronics. But I still stressed about it, wondering if overzealous airline staff might give me a hard time – US Airways’ site had not been updated after the first day of fear, so I had no way of knowing if their policies had changed.

I was relieved to find that the new suitcase locks I had bought were TSA-friendly (meaning that security agents have keys to open them). Normally I prefer to use non-TSA locks and accompany the bags myself through the initial scan, but, under the circumstances, I didn’t want to give anybody any excuses to get paranoid about my luggage.

We flew from Baltimore BWI to Philadelphia to Milan last Thursday. On the advice of US Airways, we arrived at BWI three hours ahead of flight time – which turned out to be totally unnecessary. Check-in was smooth, once I had figured out that I was supposed to do it myself on a touch screen terminal – I guess this is increasingly common in the US, but it’s still fairly new to me. Then it took the agent a while to figure out how to ring up our $100 charge for overweight luggage. In light of everyone emptying their usually heavy carry-ons (on advice of TSA and the media), it would have been a nice gesture on the part of the airline to add a little to the checked baggage weight allowance (though my own suitcases were heavy for other reasons).

We dutifully drank our bottles of orange juice before heading into security. First stop was an air-puff bomb sniffing machine, then the usual “everything off/out” x-ray and metal dectector. The line was minimal, the TSA staff efficient and seemingly competent. We ended up with way too much time to hang around in the terminal (and then the flight was late).

My large new backpack contained my laptop, videocamera, still camera, books, non-liquid toiletries, and iPod. In addition, I was carrying a nearly-empty purse, for easy access to my wallet, tickets, passports, etc. Weirdly, it was the purse they decided to swab for bomb-making chemicals. The TSA agent apologized for the delay and said it was “something about the way things were laying in it.” Possibly the metal coil on a small spiral-bound notebook had looked strange on the x-ray.

At the gate there were recorded announcements that you couldn’t take liquids etc. on the plane, but no one was actually looking at bags, so I could easily have gotten away with buying something in the terminal and carrying it on.

We had a three-hour layover in Philadelphia – plenty of time for a security check which we didn’t actually go through. Depending on what terminal you switch to in any given airport, you may or may not have to go through security again when transiting between flights. We had gone through security in Philadelphia on the way in, but didn’t on the way out.

At the gates, again there was a recorded announcement about liquids, but no actual check. I noticed that duty-free bags were being handed over at the plane door. Though I did not look closely at what was in them, some of it may have been cream-type cosmetics. I guess this is okay if you receive it at the door and it’s in a sealed package, though I wouldn’t absolutely rely on this, and would not myself risk buying expensive cosmetics in the duty-free just now.

I usually like a strong finish on my articles, but perhaps it’s best that I refrain from any flippant remarks about how easily anyone with half a brain could circumvent all this “security.” In America these days, you never know who’s reading your mail…

bio, Italian education, living in Italy

Education – What Skills Should We Build for a Lifetime?

July 16, 2006 Deirdre Straughan Leave a comment

I have written about my vast and varied experiences with education. I haven’t reached any firm conclusions about what education should be, I just know that a lot of what I endured didn’t work for me, and much of our daughter’s schooling to date has hasn’t worked for her. And it’s very hard to say what will work for kids in the future, or to know what sort of citizens schools should be aiming to form, let alone advise them on how to do so.

I had the good fortune to go to a remarkable high school with high academic standards, small class sizes, and talented, dedicated teachers. Given all that, I could have achieved straight A’s and a scholarship to MIT, right? The fact is, I could never be bothered to put in the work that straight A’s would have required. I studied just hard enough to stay on the honor roll (so that I could study in my room instead of in the dining room during mandatory evening study halls). I worked hard on the subjects that interested me, and coasted through the rest – I was never motivated to get grades for their own sake.

I don’t remember most of the facts I learned in high school – who does? What I remember are skills: writing (and typing!), page layout (I worked on the yearbook), editing (school newspaper), leadership (student government) and community service (I did art for the school). Some important skills (research and writing) I developed in English and history classes, but most were acquired during extra-curricular activities.

Some of the skills I use today I couldn’t have learned in high school because they simply didn’t exist back then: desktop publishing, word processing, building websites, communicating by email, designing software. As the world changes ever more quickly, it is likely that our children will need skills that we cannot imagine today, let alone teach them in school.

My college studies were even less directly relevant to my working life today. I was one of only 15 undergraduates majoring in Asian Studies at the (enormous) University of Texas, but our department was swamped with business school undergrads taking courses in Japanese language and culture, as an “obvious” asset to their business careers.

“What are you majoring in?” these young preppies would ask me.

“Asian Studies and Hindi.”

“What are you going to do with that?” they would sneer.

Lo and behold, twenty years later, my life experience and academic knowledge of up-and-coming India may well be more valuable than their knowledge of Japan. (And how I wish I’d stuck with my Chinese language studies!)

So what use is education as we know it today? I wonder. It still fulfills its social function of keeping young people out of a crowed job market, but I’m not sure that that’s a service to the young people themselves. The best we can hope for is that they learn a few universal skills that are likely to serve them later (more on that below), and, most importantly, learn how to learn – as has been said by wiser folks than me, in today’s world we must all expect to go on learning throughout our lifetimes.

Life Skills

No one should leave high school without knowing how to:

Type at least 50 words per minute. Sure, someday voice input with computers will become truly viable. But most of us don’t speak the way we write, nor would we want to write the way we speak. Formal writing is and should be different from everday speech, so, unless you’ve had a lot of practice at formal speech, the fastest way to get formal writing into a computer is to type it.
Use the Internet for research, including critical evaluation of sources. Before the web, the fact that a text made it into print for mass circulation was more or less a guarantee of quality, and it was usually reasonable to believe what you read. The Internet has made it possible for anyone to be a publisher, so we now have billions of sources, but very little quality control. The ability to distinguish true from false is therefore critically important.
Create websites/blogs (that is to say, publish yourself online, with whatever technology is prevalent).
Use other forms of online communication, including video. Today, those of us who write well have an advantage on the Internet. Over the next decade, video may well supplant the written word as the primary means of communication. People who perform well in front of and behind the camera will then have the advantage. Start practicing now!
Get along with all kinds of people. In today’s small and globalized world, sooner or later we find ourselves living and working with people of different cultures, languages, religions, etc. Misunderstanding and incomprehension lead to strife. You don’t have to agree with everyone you meet, but, if you could at least see where they’re coming from and imagine why they think the way they do, perhaps it would be easier to live together.

I’m sure there are more essential life skills we could be teaching our teenagers – suggestions from the floor?

Suggestions from Jakob Nielsen

Italy travel

Finding a Toilet in Italy

July 14, 2006 Deirdre Straughan Leave a comment

Exploring an exotic new place is wonderful and fascinating – until you need a toilet. Then the strangeness can be intimidating, and cause delays at the worst possible moment.

Italy doesn’t have many public toilets. You will find them in the larger railway stations. Expect to pay, e.g. 70 euro cents in Milan’s Central Station. This is a good thing, because it means that an attendant is constantly on duty, keeping those bathrooms clean. In smaller railway stations, there is almost always a little building with bathrooms at one end of the platform; these are usually squatters, cleanliness is variable, and don’t expect to find toilet paper (when travelling anywhere in the world, I usually carry packs of tissues for bathroom use).

If you’re travelling by car, any highway gas station and rest stop restaurant/bar will of course have toilets. These, too, are usually attended and clean although they are often unheated! You should leave a tip for the attendant, 50 cents to one euro.

When you’re walking around a city or town, finding a toilet is a little trickier. Very occasionally you will find public toilets maintained by the city; cleanliness is highly variable.

My usual solution is to go into a (coffee) bar, use the toilet, and then buy something – cup of coffee, glass of mineral water or, if I’m really not thirsty, a pack of gum. Using the toilet without being a paying customer would be rude, though you can get away with it without incurring anyone’s wrath if you’ve got a small child or an obvious emergency.

Be aware, however, that many bars, especially smaller ones, only have a squat toilet. These are more hygienic because the only part of you that touches the toilet is your shoes. However, it takes good knees, balance, and some practice not to pee on your own feet.

Add your own Italian toilet tips.

bio, living in Italy, opinion

Watching Football

July 4, 2006 Deirdre Straughan 1 Comment

I have beenÂ living in Italy long enough for this to be my fourth World Cup. And, to my own surprise, I’ve grown to enjoy it and actually care about who wins, even though most of the finer details still escape me. Aside from a passing interest in Olympic equestrian events (when I can get them) and figure skating, World Cup football is the only sport I watch. So the experience of being actively interested in a sporting event is a new country for me to explore.

The World Cup has, appropriately enough, followed me around the world. For the earlier games of the 1994 World Cup, I was home in Milan, during a typically hot, humid summer. We lived in an 8-story apartment building with windows looking onto the same courtyard as four similar buildings, and of course everyone had their windows open. So, when Italy scored, it was a community event: we heard the whole neighborhood erupt in cheers.

For the final games, I was in California for work, staying (as usual) atÂ Fabrizio’s large house in San Jose. The whole gang of Italian staff and their families transplanted to California for Incat Systems, plus me, watched the Brazil-Italy final together on Fabrizio’s big TV.

In 1998 I was back in California for work (I spent a large part of each summer there from 1994-2000) for at least part of the Cup – I remember watching the Iran-US game with aÂ Woodstock friend at his house, but I’m pretty sure I was home in Italy when France won the final (or was that in 2002?). I was sardonically amused by the fact that France, so protective of its lily-white Frenchness, won largely thanks to its team members of north African descent. French president Chirac’s habitually sour expression barely changed as he watched the victory from a privileged seat in the stands, and I wondered if he was sucking on the sour lemon of realization that these “colored” people have much to contribute to France.

Even funnier was the after-show footage shot in the Paris pubs, of drunken revelers singing “We Are the Champions” – in English. So much for French Anglophobia.

I got interested in those games as I watched them, but the fact that I watched them was almost accidental. This year is different: I am actually keen to see the Italy games – and not just when it lets me take an hour and a half out of the workday. Fortunately, I’m not alone in this. We had the Italy-Czech game on at theÂ office, and anyone who wanted to was welcome to watch it, alongside the boss. I left early to be home in time to watch most of the Italy-Australia game (which started at 5 pm on a workday), and I wasn’t the only one – there was an unusually early traffic jam in Lecco as I was riding home on the bus.

The usual Italian soccer season leaves me cold because, just as in American professional sports, who wins seems to depend more on the club’s business savvy (keeping enough money rolling in that you can buy the best players) than any real local affiliation – why should the Milanese root for the Milan team, whose “greatness” is simply a reflection of Berlusconi’s bankroll? I doubt there’s a single actual Milanese on the team, and perhaps there never has been. (I groused about this years ago, seeÂ below.)

Much the same is true of most Olympic events: countries that pour money into certain sports (whether as individuals or as governments, viz China) tend to win those events. Sports that require specialized equipment or locations (skis, snow, ice rinks) are won by wealthy countries that can afford those things.

Some Olympic events are more democratic. Kenyans can win marathons thanks in part to genetic ability, and in part to living at an altitude which helps them train. They don’t even need expensive shoes: they’re used to running barefoot. On the other hand, a natural-born Kenyan ice skater won’t be recognized anytime soon, because he or she may never see an ice rink.

Football, too, is a leveller. It doesn’t take much equipment to practice, so good players can be found in all corners of the world and all walks of life (a couple of Italy’s players grew up in poor neighborhoods in Rome, such as Totti who, back home, is the butt of jokes for his fractured Italian grammar). The professional teams scout far and wide, so you get Ghanaians playing in England, English playing in Spain, Ukrainians playing in Italy… Then, when it’s World Cup time, the best go home and play for their national teams.

This contrasts with the Olympic ideal of “amateurism”, which I’ve never understood – perhaps someone can explain it to me. Professional athletes can’t participate in the Olympics, yet many who compete do nothing but their sport, even if they don’t draw a direct salary for it. So I don’t understand where that line is drawn between “professional” and “amateur”.

In World Cup football, you’re actually seeing the best of the best, re-sorted from the wealthy clubs into national teams. I don’t know if or how much the players get paid for playing on their national teams, but to be chosen is an honor – the players are felt to be representing their countries. National flags, normally scarce in Italy, are brought out for the World Cup (and sometimes hung upside down or backwards, to the dismay of Italy’s few keen patriots).

It’s interesting to observe societal differences on the field. The US team is multicolored, with a range of surnames reflecting the melting pot of American society. The French team is similarly integrated although, as mentioned, not all the sons of France seem happy about this. The Italian team, on the other hand, does not feature a single player who is not ethnically Italian with an Italian surname. The most we can say is that the players are drawn from all parts of Italy – and, to a Milanese, Naples might as well be a foreign country.

Part of the joy of watching football, to me at least, is the uncertainty – it ain’t over til it’s over, and a goal in the last 30 seconds can turn a game upside down. A formerly-overlooked country can score a surprising win against the team everyone assumed was going to win. I enjoy rooting for the underdogs, and football is practically the only major sport in which Americans are underdogs (cricket doesn’t count – Americans don’t even try to play cricket).

And, last but not least, football gives me an opportunity to watch a bunch of good-looking men, wearing far less than American football or baseball players do, running around getting sweaty. It’s a pity the shorts are so long and baggy this year.

Watching Football… Very Anxiously!

July 8, 2006

Thanks to everyone who shared thoughts on the above (which you, too, can do below).

Of course, when I published that newsletter on July 4th, I was thinking ahead to the Italy-Germany game that evening. Which was frustrating and even boring until the last two minutes of overtime. The preceding minutes had been nail-biters, because it looked as if the game would be decided on penalty kicks – if you’re tied at the end of overtime, the game is decided by five shots each, one kicker against the goalkeeper. This is a situation in which Italy historically doesn’t do well (lost to Brazil that way in the 1998 final), and in any case it’s considered a lottery. But Italy scored two goals in the last two minutes, and the whole country erupted in cheers. We could hear the noise from Lecco at our home 200 meters above the town, as half the inhabitants got into their cars and drove around honking for an hour.

The Germans, defeated on their home field, were stunned and even in tears. The Italian triumph was all the sweeter as a response to some Germans’ jingoistic pre-game behavior. Prime Minister Prodi had turned down an official invitation from German Chancellor Angela Merkel to come to an earlier Italy game – apparently he had confidence that Italy would get this far, which is more than many other Italians did.

It only remained to know who would be Italy’s opponent in the final. The next night, France played Portugal for that slot – a very cautious, boring game which France won by one penalty kick.

Now all of Italy is nervously bracing itself to face the French on Sunday. I really wish it were the Portugese. I wouldn’t mind losing to them, if it came down to it. I would very much mind losing to France. So we’d better not. (I don’t know why the French are the people that everyone loves to hate, but so it is, in Italy almost as much as in England or the US.)

Even if they don’t win, the Italian team are basking in the limelight as national heroes, which helps to erase the shame ofÂ what’s been happening in football back home – several top teams may be relegated to the B or even C category for corruption; club owners bribing and/or threatening referees have cast doubts on several years’ national championships.

For this and many other reasons, Italy could really use a win on Sunday. By some estimates, a World Cup win is worth a 3% increase in a country’s GNP. In Italy’s case – “Been down so long it looks like up to me” – the effect might be even greater.

Either way, I don’t think anyone’s going to get much sleep Sunday night. So watch the game and lift a glass of good red Italian wine along with us, and wish Italy well!

Post-Game Reflections

July 17, 2006

Enrico and I watched the World Cup final with our friends Ravil and Amanda; Ross was with her own friends. Our home crowd wasn’t typical for Italy (or anywhere else, for that matter): one Italo-Tatar-American (Ravil), one New Zealand kiwi (Amanda), me (TCK/American), and Enrico – one of the few men in Italy who cares very little aboutÂ calcio (football) at any time. Ravil, Amanda, and I were far more worked up about the game than he was.

Americans persist in finding football boring, and have published endless articles throughout this World Cup dissecting why this should be so, and wondering how the rest of the world can find the game so fascinating.

Ravil tried to explain it thus to an American friend of his: Americans fans get all excited when their local (city) team has a shot at a national championship. Those happen every year, and the fan base is mostly local.

Most football-playing countries have local teams who play in annual national championships, and there are also regional championships. But the World Cup involves everybody – each country’s entire population rooting for their national team – and it only takes place once in four years. So the intensity of team support is magnified by sheer mathematics.

Even if not much appears to be happening on the field, there is high drama in the simple fact that the teams are out there facing each other in “battle” – in the World Cup, you have to factor in history and culture in a far bigger way than can ever be true for American local sports teams. After all, Pittsburgh has never waged war on Chicago EXCEPT on the sports field, and the cultural rivalry between, say, Los Angeles and New York, rarely results in bloodshed.

We all know enough history to observe that European animosities, rivalries, and stereotypes go back a long way. As I mentioned earlier, the Italian victory over Germany was especially sweet because some Germans (including at least one major newspaper) had been rather rude about Italians, to the effect of: “Send the pizza-makers home.” To which the Italian response was “Two pizzas in two minutes! Tie’!” [Take that!]

Countries Beginning with I

Category Archives: Italy

The Perils of the Italian Quest for Fresh Wild Mushrooms

Airport “Security”: Reflections on Our Times

Education – What Skills Should We Build for a Lifetime?

Life Skills

Finding a Toilet in Italy

Watching Football

Watching Football… Very Anxiously!

Post-Game Reflections

Deirdré Straughan on Italy, India, the Internet, the world, and now Australia

You might also like:

You might also like:

Life Skills

You might also like:

You might also like:

Watching Football… Very Anxiously!

Post-Game Reflections

You might also like:

Deirdré Straughan on Italy, India, the Internet, the world, and now Australia