A quiet late night

I just read an email from our international move coordinator, Rainier Overseas Moving, telling me that our container arrived today, sailed through Customs, and will be delivered Wednesday, July 2. I was just getting used to living a Spartan life, with one furnished bedroom and one furnished eat-in kitchen. But, as the late great George Carlin might say, my 'stuff' is coming home.

It is a little after midnight. It's a moonless night, there is no sound but the kitty water fountain burbling away and the refrigerator humming. I am sitting by an open window, it is cool out...though we are expecting a build-up of heat coming tomorrow.

Angel asked me today...or was it yesterday?...if I had thought I would be so happy about being home. My instant reply was YES. I think I knew in October of last year that my time in Italy was limited. There were just too many problems with where we lived, and the Euro was just too strong to continue to support. My biggest clue came that October at the beginning of only our second trip home in the time we were away, when we were leaving Newark Airport, had cruised onto Route 80 West, and I innocently said, I could kiss the ground, I am so glad to be home.

WELL! Angel did not react well to that honest remark. After all, I was the Queen Mary who had set sail for Italy in 2005 with the intention of never looking back.

We got through that moment of clarity. I think it started us both talking much more honestly to each other about how we really felt about daily life in Italy.

Mornings here in Long Valley we awake with the birds, to the quiet, the blessed quiet. We're up early, have our cereal and coffee, and then out in the garden to work on claiming the flower beds back from the weeds, moving mulch, putting in new plants, puttering. Angel said to me, as I was attacking some particularly tangled root systems of persistent weeds, 'The little girl loves playing in the sand'. And that's me...playing in the sand. I have dedicated garden clothes that could stand on their own after two days. I love it.

May 31, the flight home

May 31 was our reentry into life in these United States. I am very happy to be home. Somewhere on http://www.expatsinitaly.com/ someone wrote that 3 years is the decisive barrier...if you can make it past 3 years, you will stay for a long long time. If you don't make it to 3 years, then you were meant to just be on a very very long vacation.

We liked living in Italy for a lot of reasons, but we didn't love living in Italy for a variety of other reasons. We left behind wonderful friends, and it will be very sad not to have them in our lives on a daily basis.

Our daughter picked us up at Newark International after 7 PM EDT. It was a very long day, beginning at 7 AM CET, when we awoke, got dressed and ready for the day, zipped up suitcases and then went out for cafe and brioche at our favorite coffee bar, Tubino. We did our giro (walk around the Centro) one more time, and came back to the apartment in time to be picked up by our great friends the Willemsens, Agnes and Alexander, with eldest son Guillaume as our driver, and second son Julien coming to say goodbye. Youngest son Florian was sound asleep after a late late night at his job, so I sent him a hug and a kiss.

It took from 11:00 AM to 12:10 PM to check in, due to computer problems at Lufthansa. Then we had to immediately start the trek through security, ending up among the last to board the plane. On to Munich where we had a 45 minute window to get to our flight, again being among the last to board (the last to board was a couple from Princeton NJ who had arrived at Pisa Airport to take their flight to Munich to find the airport completely closed down for an Italian military airshow...don't go there!).

We sat in the last row, with Annie and Emily in their carriers under the seats. They never said a word; Annie looked scared so after the meal service was over, she slept under a blanket on my lap until my legs couldn't stand it anymore, about 3 hours. Annie never ate but Emily, an old pro at travelling by now, chowed down on her Science Diet moist nuggets.

The plane was full. Fortunately I always order a Low Sodium meal (to avoid water blowup) so I got my bland food, and Angel got a tray with a roll, a wilted salad and a little dessert and a promise that after Business Class was served, they would see if there was anything left for him. He eventually got a hot entree of dry fish, creamed veggies and something else. Uck.

At Newark, our first three pieces of luggage (4 suitcases, one bike box and one wheel box total) showed up almost right away, and then the system imploded for 45 minutes. The carousel started up again, we got our last three pieces and wheeled our two trolleys, carrying our cats, and went out to meet Sandra.

Home never looked so good.

Kitty Pet Passports

No kidding. Our faithful and loyal American world-traveler-kitty Emily and our crazy little Italian kitty Annie are flying in the cabin on Lufthansa with us. Here is what we had to do:

(oh, before I tell you, when Emily went to Italy we went to Dr. Shatto, our veterinarian for all her shots, papers, certifications, etc. in two visits...one more than 30 days before the flight for a rabies booster and the other visit within ten days of the flight for her health certification)

In February, make our plane reservations and with those, separate reservations for the space under our seats to be occupied by our cats. Cost: Euro 90 EACH...you do the math. The nice Lufthansa lady tells Angel he can go to the airport now and pay, to get it out of the way.

Angel takes the bus to the airport, finds out there is NO WAY you can pay until the cats pass weight inspection the day of the flight...8 kilos ((17.63 lbs) for each cat which is to include the weight of her individual carrier. Sounds like a lot, until you weigh Emily and find out our big American cat weighs 8 kilos all by herself (Annie weighs 3 kilos). We put Emily on a restricted diet (she had gained 3 pounds after moving here, depression and less activity in an apartment).

Visit in February to Dottore Dal Zovo in to find out what the process is and what the timeframes are for the pieces of the process.

Visit in April to Dottore Dal Zovo with both kitties to begin the process: rabies shots, health exam. Annie, the Italian, gets a new microchip implanted in her neck. Dottore Dal Zovo assures us that Emily's microchip is sufficient because, in his words, if you travelled to ten countries, it would make no sense to have ten microchips. We agree.

Not less than 21 days later, May 5, visit to the Canile (the dog and cat pound) with both kitties so that their microchips can be read and matched to their new passports. The receptionist agrees with our information from Dottore Dal Zovo that Emily will not need another microchip. We believe her.

We see Dottore Pavan. Emily needs another microchip, as the American A.V.I.D. system is not readable by the European system. OK. Dottore Pavan very carefully completes all our paperwork. He also gives us a ten-minute explanation of the ins and outs of using the passport in all the countries of the world, and how important which pages are for which updated certifications. He is very nice. The receptionist gives us a bill to be paid at another building in another part of town on another day. We take a cab back to the apartment.

Addendum typed on 14 May: I forgot that Angel also had to return to Dottore Dal Zovo, without the kitties, for Dottore Dal Zovo to stamp and sign the passport to certify that he indeed had given the kitties their rabies shots. No charge. Isn't that nice.

May 12 we go to the Department of Health, Pet Section, to pay our bill. The little miss at the window rejects the bill, saying it needs a codice (code). What code? The one that should be supplied by Dottore Pavan. We leave a callback for Dottore Pavan, and start for home (25 minute walk). The good doctor says he will call the Sanita (Health Dept.) and straighten things out, and call us again.

We stop for another coffee to await his call. Angel returns to the Sanita while I go home. Angel calls me to ask for my codice fiscale (like a SS#) because...this is good...my codice fiscale is NOT IN THE SYSTEM. Why? Because we were, as immigrant pensioners, required to have our own private health insurance, so we did NOT sign up for the National Health Service, which covers both humans and pets. This passport thing is administered by the National Health. So, when the little miss types in my codice fiscale, I am a non-person. She says to Angel, You must have just arrived. He agrees, not wanting to open this can of worms.

The bill is paid...all Euro 33.26.

The kitties now each have her own formal blue passport (same size as a people passport):

UNIONE EUROPEA

REPUBBLICA ITALIANA

REGIONE DEL VENETO

PASSAPORTO PER ANIMALI DA COMPAGNIA

Emily has lost 3 lbs., or 1.36 kilos, back to her pre-move-to-Italy weight, so she is good to go. We are over the last big kitty hurdle...we think.

Aliens

This is not about illegal or legal immigrants in Italy. This post is about stress, and the things it does to a body.

Since we gave notice on January 6 to our landlord that we were leaving Italy, since the worst confrontation with our horrible neighbor on December 14, I have been trying to make lemonade out of lemons, smiling and being polite. I grumble to Angel, but he gets tired of hearing that, too, as I get tired of grumbling (though I have to say that crossing Lungadige...the frontage road along the river...at any time of day is to take your life in your hands, which makes me grumble...see previous post about where in the pecking order pedestrians fall).

My body has given me progressively dire warnings that I have to change my life (which I am going to do) and get out of Dodge (which I am going to do) so that I can feel at home again in my own skin. First, I clench my jaws at night, which started in 2003 after a terrible accident I was in that brought on screaming nightmares. I now clench my teeth so hard on my plastic night guard that my jaws are sore in the morning anyway.

Second, my right eyelid developed a random tic which almost is comical because I think it must look so insane. I wear sunglasses a lot.

Third, I feel a sudden sharp pain in the center of my stomach whenever I have to deal with some absolutely crazy unexplainable piece of Italian bureaucracy, or Italian tell-you-one-thing-mean-another so as not to offend by not saying what you want to hear.

Fourth, and most unexpected, I have ... there is no other way to say this... an external hemorroid. I call it the Alien. Angel asks me how the Alien is today. I tell Angel that I have to get up from our lovely outside table at the cafe and walk around because the Alien is ready to leave. I have had to learn to go into pharmacies (farmacie) and talk in my combination of English and Italian to perfect strangers about my Alien.

Angel Googled for causes of the Alien, and he found...STRESS. He also found OLD AGE, but we are not going to go there. Of course, no more coffee, chocolate, citrus, tomoto, spicy food. Hell, I already don't drink, so this is further limiting my diet. I think I will go on an all-white diet: potatoes, garbanzo beans, cauliflower, pudding, fish, chicken, like that.

I also carry a little inflatable ring to sit on in restaurants. Of course, it fits perfectly into my beautiful Bottega Veneta bag...just the thing.

Stress ('lo stress', in Italian) is my companion.

Balcony on the Strada

Another of the very attractive features of this apartment is the balcony off the kitchen, overlooking the strada below. Very tall double wooden doors with tall glass panes open onto a balcony big enough for a small cafe table and two chairs, with iron railings holding planter boxes

I envisioned an herb garden in the planters, snipping and clipping my herbs into fresh scrumptious offerings from my little kitchen. We planted jasmine to wind amoung the wrought iron supports, to shield us from the street, and a little lemon tree which sadly had to be cut down in anticipation of our move. It gave the sweetest lemons you ever tasted.

Just one thing. From the time we contracted the apartment in April 2005 to the time we moved in during August 2005, the small family ristorante across the street changed hands and became a bar attracting, on Friday and especially Saturday nights, lowlifes and drunks. We think they got chased away from wherever they were hangin' before, and decided to call our neighborhood watering hole their home. Most Sundays, the place was closed, so Sunday was always nice.

In September 2005 the Romani ... the gypsies from the encampment at the old airport outside of town ... occupied Chiesa San Tomaso, where Mozart played when he was twelve years old. The city was threatening to close down their camp (which did happen in 2007) so this was a protest. The gypsies took over the church, the piazza in front of the church, and it was generally an uncomfortable situation. And really loud.

I keep thinking of Cher's song with the refrain 'Gypsies, tramps and thieves'...now that means something concrete to me. Everyone in the neighborhood was upset and watchful to make sure the big palazzo doors to the various courtyards up and down the street were securely closed, because the Romani do come across the roofs at night to break into the apartments. Fun.

The gypsy crisis was resolved in time...early October...for a young Italian movie actress to be married in her old parish church, San Tomaso, replete with television cameras, movie cameras, limousines, hundreds of onlookers, her ex-husband 'and a cast of thousands cheered as the happy couple was driven away'.

The next drama was the Sri Lankans on their balcony across and one level lower and down the street. Dressed as they are accustomed to dressing at home in their country, which is in not much, they sat outside on their balcony, with cell phones, oogling the passing young Italian girls. One of them took to 'pleasuring himself' as the girls passed by, as one of our neighbors put it. Police were called, protest petitions were signed, and finally after months and months, there was a 'surprise raid' throughout town looking for illegal flats, and the flat was emptied of about ten illegal residents. The flat has never been rented again. There is probably a denuncia (lawsuit) against the landlord wending its way slowly, slowly through the Italian legal system.

So, my little balcony was not quite the balcony I envisioned. There were the buses that came through between 5 and 7 PM, and all the vehicles trying to beat the light at the next intersection, including that most horrific of engines of destruction, the moped. Screeeeeeeeee!

Even the plants are leaving...

...and today was the first day of their exodus.

One of the great features of this apartment is the terrazza on the second floor. In sun for much of the Spring and Summer and early Fall, with flowering jasmine abounding and burning bush and cascading ivy, and my many potted plants (in beautiful pots brought from New Jersey...I thought I was staying for at least five years), with its own automated watering system, the terrace should have been a little piece of paradise.

Our awful neighbors took that away. Their tiny terrace adjoins our 12 x 12 terrace, and that did not turn out to be a good thing.

So, today, after asking my friends Alexandre and Agnes if they would just give a new home to my beautiful plants, the first ones left. Repotted by Angel in clay pots provided by Alexandre, out they went, down the stairs, into the van and off to their new home.

This is the first indication of how I will NOT be handling well this whole leavetaking. I know, I know, don't cry over things that can't cry over you. Well, those things are symbolic, capisce? The terrace now looks discombobulated, and just not its old self. Kind of like me.

All my conscious effort goes into saying how glad I am to be going home, that I can't wait to get on that plane May 31, good riddance to a silly little country that just doesn't work on any level. But I don't really mean that. This is the denouement of a dream that I had since childhood, to live in Europe. The first tangible evidence of the end of the dream just went out the door.

Pasquetta (Little Easter)

It's Monday 24 March and we are going to the house of friends to share Pasquetta with them, the day after Easter being a national holiday when friends get together.

We had a wonderful afternoon at the house of Federico and Ling. There were 9 of us: one couple, the hosts, Taiwanese and Italian (Ling and Federico); their friends, both Italian (AnnaLisa and Nicola); mutual friends, Japanese and Italian (Kyoko and Rosanno); the Japanese friend (Akiko) of our Japanese friend Kyoko . And us. So four languages were being spoken, we laughed and had a great time, discussed a little politics. I will really miss that in America. Where do I go to find it?

The hosts are quite a pair. Federico went to Taipei to make pizza. There, he was visited by AnnaLisa and Nicola. They went with him to a disco, where he met Ling. Edi and Angel came to Verona to study Italian; in school, they met Kyoko. Kyoko had previously gone to London from Japan to study English, where she met Rosanno whose Italian company had sent him there to study English. Akiko was Kyoko's business colleague in Tokyo. That is how we all intertwine. Amazing.

Federico is an accomplished pizza maker and brioche baker. He bought a commercial oven for their apartment, and made four huge pizze for all of us. It was better than a spettacolo.

I am standing in the kitchen of Federico (Fede) and Ling, which is almost the same size as their soggiorno (living room), accomodating a large central table, two sides of cabinets and appliances as well as the HUGE commercial gas oven in the corner. This oven is Fede's pride and joy; he says that if Ling ever wants to return to Taiwan, the oven will go with them.










And this is Fede, the most enthusiastic innovative Italian I have met. He is willing to try anything, is open to anything and lives his life with gusto. It is not surprising, once you know him, that he went to Taiwan to make pizza for the Taiwanese and fell in love at a disco with Ling, a woman who is also an adventurer in life.

The first step of pizza making, the dough.

Now we are in the prep stage, setting all the toppings and grated cheese, and capers and anchovies and onions and...and...and...

These are the four pizze in the enormous oven, in the first stage of the baking.

These are the four pizze ready to eat. To the left in the photo is the GIGANTIC pasta maker that Fede just had to buy.











It was a great day.

Being a pedestrian in Verona

I have to vent a little.

The pedestrian in Verona is below dogshit. No kidding. This is the pecking order...
Buses, trucks, cars, motorcycles, scooters, bicycles, strollers, dogs, dogshit, pedestrians.

Step off the curb into a crosswalk at peril of your life.
Be in a crosswalk without making eye contact with a driver of anything at your peril.
Try to make eye contact with a vehicle driver who is purposefully looking the other way, with his head swiveled away from you as far as it can go.
Take your eyes off the pavement of a sidewalk for an instant (i.e., to answer your cellphone) and slip on dogshit only to hear, after the fact, Attenzione, signora!
Walk on a sidewalk towards any two Veronese and expect to get shouldered out of the way.
Flatten yourself against a building to let a truck go by on a narrow street, and watch the sideview mirror pass a centimeter from your nose, at full speed.
Start to cross a street and, hearing a moto or a scooter approaching, run for your life.

This I will not miss.

and even further West

No, we're not moving to California; we are returning to New Jersey, where I have lived since 1974. I wrote the following in 1981, when I was 36. You can take the girl out of California but you can't take... And as a disclaimer to all my wonderful New Jersey friends: I wrote this 26 years ago, when I was just a callow yout.

LAMENT OF A CALIFORNIAN

I don't much like the East Coast sometimes. Sometimes it's OK. This is not one of those times.

Most of the time, the East Coast is tolerable for a transplant. The weather can be handled. The commute on congested highways can be transcended. The surly shop people can be put in perspective. The dingy, trashy roadways can be overlooked. The tendency of the natives to be suspicious of human nature can be understood.

But right now I would give anything in the world for a whiff of bright California air. I would love to drive down roadways riotous in Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter with color and life. I would gladly commute in rain instead of snow and ice. I would love to spend money in stores that assume your innocence instead of your guilt.

I would like to be around people not always looking for a way to gouge the other guy out of another dollar. I would like to not hear the word 'lawsuit' again. I would like to be able to discuss something without having to first prepare a legal defense for my position.

I have been here almost seven years, with a fifteen-month break when I moved home to Los Altos [1976-1978]. Coping with the Eastern psyche has gotten easier. But right now at this moment, I am overwhelmed with all the negatives. There are positives about the East Coast and I shall enumerate them: my fiance, Angel.

In my mind I am walking along a beach on the Monterey Peninsula. The sky is that pure blue that only a California sky can attain. The clouds are so high up that the Earth by contrast seems endless and spacious. The Pacific is its unpredictable self, the water having come in from Asia on some monster wave.

Instead, I am in New Jersey, listening to Easterners who have never been anywhere but Florida and the Poconos tell me how California is the land of fruits and nuts. How can any New Yorker make fun of any place else? A Californian can have the curiosity and openness to want to experience the Big Apple, to be able to appreciate the differences. A New Yorker can be smug, taking pride no doubt in rude cabbies and a frightened populace. A Californian still wants to go visit New York, but a Northern Californian will always want to return to only one City, The City By The Bay.

I would like to live in a place where diversity is accepted, not used as a way to label people. I would like to live in a place where groups are formed based on common interests, not on ethnic background. I would like to live in a place where people are as interested in the country in which they live as they are in the country from which their grandmothers came.

I would like to be around people who are not always trying to one-up you in clever remarks, thus forcing you into the gamesmanship trap. I would like to be around people who just say how they feel with respect for others' opinions.

I would like to be around people who share my state of mind, California.

Now, having lived in Italy for two-and-a-half years, I will be happy to be returning home to New Jersey .

Facing West

OK, now the decision has been made...we are going home to the States. We told our daughter; written notice has been given to our landlord; we have each told our best friends here in Italy. The call has been made to the international move coordinator that we used to come here in 2005; an appointment is scheduled for Monday morning for the survey to arrive at a preliminary estimate. Our daughter is going house-hunting this weekend, Saturday, so that she can move out and we can return to our home in New Jersey. It's a done deal.

How do I feel? Happy and relieved, but a little sad. I will be leaving behind my best friend on two continents, Agnes, a wonderful Frenchwoman who seems to be my twin, separated from me at birth.

I won't be sad to leave Italy behind. Nothing works here. I must have been German or Swiss in another life, because I like order and rational processes. My favorite part of Italy outside of Venice is the Alto Adige, which most Italians decry as not being Italian at all, but rather being Austrian, which in fact it was before the end of World War I. I love Corvara, and La Villa, and the Dolomiti, going northeast into the mountains. I love the food, the unselfconscious non-fashionista way of life, the friendliness. I love that people in the Austrian part of Italy understand that it is not a national disloyalty to be able to speak another language. In fact, in the Alto Adige, children are taught three languages ... German, Ladino (a recognized language of the region, not a dialect) and Italian. While they are at it, they learn English...so many English-speakers come there to ski and hike, that if you want to have a job in the tourist business, you need to learn English.

Anyway, right now I am just anxious to be gone from here, totally ready to start again in Long Valley. The best decision we ever made was not to sell the house and not to buy an apartment in Italy.

It's fun to be planning inside improvements to our home, the kitchen first and foremost. While we have been in Italy, Sandra has overseen every outside improvement that a 25-year-old house could possibly need. She jokes that this was our plan...go away, let her move in, let her deal with the roof, the driveway, etc. and we come back to a nice 'new' house. Not true, but in any case, she did a terrific job. Can't imagine what it would have been like to have strangers renting the house when all these things happened. Shudder.

So, we are going home. Some people ... me ... are meant to live in Minnesota, not Shangri-La. Shangri-La is a nice place to visit, but...

On the way to Piazza Erbe

A late Fall day in Verona, walking our usual walk from our house to Piazza Erbe.




This gingko tree is the most beautiful tree in the city. It goes out in a blaze of yellow and gold. Many painters try to capture it, but I think this photo gets it.

Another one of our temporary friends, confused about which end is up.

The Painted City...as Verona was once known.

The furs are out! Women walking out arm in arm....so European.

The cupcake tower.

New friends in town

One day in November we went for a walk and found that frozen motion fantastical figures and creatures had come to town. All over the city, in piazze (piazzas, in English) large and small we found them. They stayed for about three weeks, and then ... tired of being stared at and misunderstood ... they moved on.

I'm stuck.

Which way?

Anatomically almost correct Iron Man.

Little girl smiling.

Free!!! Wheee!!!

All the statues are two-sided...some happy on one side, the other side in a state of panic. Wonderful stuff.

No room of their own

The lion of Saint Mark, symbol of the Venetian Republic, is keeping watch in Piazza Signori.

In the quiet of Piazza Signori (sometimes called Piazza Dante because of the statue to honor the poet), a couple without a room are oblivious to passersby and long lenses. Young people in Italy live at home with Mama for so long, that sometimes they just have to take their moments where they can.

Dante in exile.
Sometimes a woman just has to take action.

Does she cry that her passion is unfulfilled?

Or is the stonecold marble just too much?

This is Italy.

New Year's Eve 2007

We had the best New Year's Eve in many years at the Relais Villabella in the countryside outside of Verona at the edge of the village of San Bonifacio (Verona Province). http://www.relaisvillabella.it/
A 'relais' is French for a country home or chateau with a small number of rooms and a dining room. This particular relais is on sprawling acreage which you enter by passing through a medieval stone arch, up a long curving drive, through towering trees, and at night, tiny white lights.

Our friends Agnes and Alexander
had last been here twelve years earlier.
The VillaBella has sustained a lasting
reputation for fine dining in a beautiful
old building. They were delighted to make the arrangements for New Year's Eve at this beautiful place, to show us another side of Verona.

I don't know if you'll be able to read the menu.
We were served 8 courses, with wines to accompany each course (not for me, folks ;) , not to worry) by the most gracious staff I have yet encountered in Italy, save for the Locanda Cipriani on the Island of Torcello in the Venetian Lagoon. The only course I could have eliminated was the ravioli, only because it was 9 stars instead of the perfect 10 stars of every other course. The cuisine was 'high Italian', rather than regional specialities...more what you would find in a top restaurant in Rome.

La Creme di zucca con riduzione di aceto balsamico e cuore ghiacciato al gorgonzola (cream of pumpkin with a balsamic reduction and a chilled heart of gorgonzola)

Not since my accident in February 2003 have I danced so much, and had so much fun. Of course, a regular 4-hour-interval course of Advil all day helped prepare me to boogie. The DJ was on fire, playing great mixes of Italian, Spanish, French and American songs, all flowing seamlessly into each other.

The wait staff timed everything to the minute, so that hundreds of champagne flutes filled with Mumm's Cuvee Privilege 'Cordon Rouge' were raised at precisely midnight, with the last dessert course following ten minutes later.

Then, at 2 AM, a buffet of more casual typical Veronese fare was put out for those who hadn't eaten enough earlier. Groan.We skipped it, leaving at 2:45 AM. Agnes and Alexander dropped us off two blocks from home so that we walked through the sub-freezing night air to the apartment. Then I had a piece of traditional panettone...couldn't resist.

The entire evening was elegant and delicious. We're hoping to go back again, maybe this time we'll rent a room.