So much Italian news, so little time.
CIA agents will be tried for kidnap in Italy
Egypt frees cleric reported seized in Italy by CIA in 2003
More about the love park in Bari, but don’t get your hopes up - it’s apparently been closed.
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The Portland International Film Festival is in town, and this year there was a selection of three Italian films. We chose two to see - E l’aura fai son vir (2005) and Il caimano (2006).
E l’aura fai son vir (And the Wind Blows Round) was a quiet film about a French family that moves to a tiny northwestern Italian village. The newcomers arrive in the winter, when most of the town’s inhabitants are away (the vast majority of the residents only show up for the nice summer weather), and the warm reception they get quickly turns sour. It’s hard to say really who’s more at “fault,” the French family who - inevitably - introduces some new elements to the town, or the Italian townspeople, some of whom seem to have it out for the newcomers from the beginning. The friends we saw the movie with said afterwards, “Well, that was a handbook for what not to do when you move into a small Italian village.” Indeed. I don’t think it’s spoiling anything to say things don’t exactly go well for the new family.
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The dream of nearly everyone who read “Under the Tuscan Sun” is to find that quintessential Tuscan village - you know, the one no one has discovered yet - and have their Tuscan moment. Nevermind that the town Frances Mayes “discovered,” Cortona, had been a popular vacation spot for ages and that there aren’t really many “undiscovered” spots in Tuscany anymore. These are trivialities, and they don’t have any impact on the hordes who might have better luck finding the Holy Grail.
Enter Calcata, Italy - a hippie artist community in an Italian hill town’s clothing. Don’t let the medieval facade fool you - Calcata has new kinds of charms beyond the city walls.
Maybe it’s the fresco of Jimi Hendrix painted on the wall of an 18th-century building. Or the ponytailed locals, some of whom might be milling about in Indian-style saris. Or the absurd number of art galleries tucked away in the tangle of cobblestone alleyways. Whatever it is, it doesn’t take long to figure out that Calcata is not your everyday Italian hill town.
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When I was a kid, my dad used to tell stories of our Parisian cousin who would get noticably angry if anyone referred to non-French sparkling wine as “champagne.” I didn’t see what the big deal was at the time, but now I get it. It’s more than just truth in advertising, or the lack thereof, it’s about national identity. To many people, “champagne” is just another word for bubbly - but it’s more than that, it’s a region in France where the locals aren’t about to let anyone else claim ownership of their product. Most wine producers in the US stopped calling their sparkling wines “champagne” years ago, but - to my knowledge - Californian producers still justify their use of the word “champagne” because they’re using the French method. Yeah, I think that’s cheating, too.
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For this Valentine’s Day post on the Italy Logue, I’ve got some love-related news items for you…
First, to satisfy your poetic side, I offer you the tale of two prehistoric lovers, their 5,000-6,000 year old skeletons found embracing one another. They were most likely young lovers, as “their teeth were mostly intact” (isn’t that romantic?), and is seen as an “extraordinary case” partly because two people were buried in the same tomb and partly because the two were hugging when they were buried. “I must say that when we discovered it,” said
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When I hear about family businesses in their 3rd or 6th generation, I’m impressed. It’s a testament not only to the business itself, but also to the family’s ability to keep younger generations interested in sticking around. The other night at my Italian conversation group, one of our friends said on his last trip to the Chianti region he met with winemakers who were in their 70s - and there were no younger family members around to take over. While I doubt that something as venerated as the Chianti wine-making tradition will die out anytime soon, it is sad to see that so many young people want nothing to do with things that have made their country and culture great for hundreds or thousands of years.
So imagine my joy and surprise when I heard about the Seguso family of glassmakers in Murano.
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A country’s national anthem can tell you a lot about the country, its history and its people. The German anthem has always struck me as quite reserved and ordered, like the Germans I know. (And I’m half-German.)
(The German anthem also happens to be the same music that was my high school’s and the husband’s college’s alma maters, so when Michael Schumacher used to win a Formula 1 race we’d sing our competing songs over the broadcast. But I digress.)
The Italian national anthem, by comparison, begins in a stately way and ends with such enthusiasm and energy that it seems to typify the energy of the Italians themselves. It’s alternately called Il Canto degli Italiani (The Song of the Italians), Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) or L’Inno di Mameli (Mameli’s Hymn, after the man who wrote the words), and though it was only made the official anthem in 2005 (it was chosen as a provisional anthem when Italy was unified in 1946), it has stuck. There are occasional talks about changing the anthem, though I haven’t heard any that go beyond talk.
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Looking for a summer job and a way to travel to Italy all rolled into one? Lingue senza Frontiere (Language Without Borders) might be something to consider:
We are now looking for summer camp tutors. You should be a native English speaker with a bubbly character, preferably 21 years old by 1st June 2007 and have a genuine interest in working with children. Italian is not required but useful.
The summer camps run from mid-June through September. Check out this website for more information.
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Italian women might be the most sexually active in all of Europe, but apparently they’ve also got the smallest breasts.
According to a survey by bra maker Triumph, British women have the largest breasts of the countries polled - 57% of the British women in the survey wear a D-cup bra or larger - whereas only 10% of Italian women are so well-endowed. In Italy, the largest percentage was in the B-cup category, with 68%. Whether breast size has anything to do with one’s sexual activity is a topic I’ll leave to
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There’s more Italian news out there than you can shake a prosciutto at.
Veronica Lario, Mrs. Silvio Berlusconi, feels “more at peace” after having publicly asking for an apology from her flirting husband.
Berlusconi himself might not feel quite so peaceful after making a comment about gays in Italy.
Italian women are the most sexually active in Europe. Did you need another reason to visit?
The Italian cabinet says yes to a draft law granting rights to unmarried couples, despite the Pope’s grumblings.
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