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living in Italy

Gardening: In Italy, a Man’s Home is His Orto

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^ Fresh produce from our garden. The zucchine aren’t supposed to be that shape; they had long skinny ends which I cut off because they were rotting; the uneven growth might be due to uneven watering (we’re still learning). I also need to learn to look more closely at the tomatoes before I cut them. But it makes a visually interesting assortment.

Our new home has a bit of land around it, so, for the first time in 30 years, I can plant in something bigger than a windowbox. There’s a lot to do to turn this mess into a garden, however – the previous owners neglected it terribly. For starters, since we moved here I’ve grubbed up several hundred kilos of dandelions and other weeds from the lawn. (I don’t mind. I find weeding therapeutic during times of frustration, such as phone calls to Telecom Italia.)

I planted bulbs back in October, in the bare patches left after the dandelions were removed, so we have cheerful clumps of daffodils, with hyacinths, tulips, and irises coming along later. My weeding activities have given the lawn a mangy look, but I’m reseeding it with grass and wildflowers.

Measured horizontally, our backyard would be about 10 by 12 meters. But we’re on a slope – in its natural state, this land would be almost vertical, so when the house was built, the land got terraced. There’s a piece of flat yard extending about four meters from the door of our basement-level den out towards the lake, then there’s a six-meter drop. The mass of earth (building rubble and very clayey soil) is kept in place by a stack of open cinder blocks, mostly filled with rocks and weeds (yes, my fellow Woodstockers, we have our very own khud!). There’s another three-meter terrace of flat land below, then it drops three meters (more cinder blocks) to a tiny strip (1/2 meter) of dirt abutting the neighbors’ fence. All this is traversed by a narrow staircase of more cinder blocks.

What to do with this peculiar arrangement? The top level we’ll mostly keep clear, in hopes of eventually having a lawn worth enjoying. And lawn chairs – it gets lots of sun. We’ve planted ten rose bushes along the low fence that stops people falling down to the terrace below, and yesterday I put up a low enclosure for the turtles. (Predictably, they spent most of the time trying to get out of it.) After I decide exactly where I want that to be permanently placed, we’ll put in a little pond so that they can stay out there full-time when the weather’s warm enough.

The terrace below is in the process of becoming a vegetable garden (orto). For this, I have help. We had scarcely moved into the new house last September when Mimma (the wonderful Sicilian lady who cleans and irons for us) brought her husband Domenico to have a look. Retired from factory work, Domenico is a keen gardener, maintaining their own orto somewhere near Lecco, as well as gardening for several other people.

Domenico is a very practical man: his first suggestion was to plow up everything, including the top level, and make it all into orto. I resisted this – I want a place to lounge in the sun, when I have time for such things. (And can stop myself leaping up to dig, plant, or weed.) We do have a patch of herbs in the corner by the garage, and I’ve planted green beans on the other side of the fence where the roses are (there’s just enough space between fence and drop for me to walk along). This may be unorthodox, but legumes fix nitrogens in the soil (so I’ve read), so they should be good for the roses, and of course they can climb the fence.

green bug on purple iris

Down below, I’ve already planted various salad greens, with parsely, basil, and coriander in alternate rows. I am reading up on organic gardening, trying to find natural preventatives and remedies – it seems silly to go to all the trouble of planting our own veggies, and then have to spray them with nasty chemicals and wonder what we’re eating. So far I’ve read that garlic and other “smelly” plants help discourage bugs; I’ve planted garlic around the roses. I’m growing marigolds from seeds and will transplant them out to the orto when they’re bigger, as they, too, are said to have a bug-scaring smell. And nasturtiums, which not only smell bad to bugs, but can be eaten by humans (both flowers and leaves, in salads).

In a few weeks, when the weather is truly warm, we’ll buy vegetable plants – eggplant, tomatoes, zucchine, cucumbers, peppers – which Domenico will come plant for me. Yesterday he brought some sapling trees from his own orto (two figs, four hazelnuts) which he planted along the bottom of the first retaining wall; when they get bigger, they may help prevent a landslide. This whole hillside used to be a hazelnut orchard, and the neighbors still have some very nice trees, but our property was completely deforested by someone stupid, and is therefore prone to slippage.

The rows of cinder blocks are offset from each other and stick out just enough to make little planters, so I’m slowly filling them up with odds and ends: two miniature carnation plants, small succulents that will expand to fill their spaces, and wild strawberries. The property is full of strawberry plants, but they have a tendency to grow where they will get stepped on, so I’m transplanting them to the cinder blocks, which should make perfect strawberry planters.

…and I could go on all day, obviously. I’d forgotten how much I love gardening, it’s been so long since I had a real opportunity to do it. I like watching things grow. And having an orto is very much an Italian tradition – anyone who has a patch of land, no matter how small, plants things that they can eat. Part of eating good food is having it fresh, and it doesn’t get any fresher than right out of your own garden. I’m looking forward to putting own on produce on our dining table this summer!

May 11, 2005

I should have been grateful for the unusually long winter. Now spring has set in with a vengeance, and with it, allergies. We had a beautiful weekend, and I would have loved to be out gardening, but I was stuck in my room with my clean-air machine, taking allergy pills and eyedrops (probably more of both than I should), and nonetheless in sneezing, eye-burning misery. Oh, well. At least I have a nice view of all the burgeoning greenery from my window…

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living in Italy

Why Italians Have Stopped Eating Out

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Like most people in Italy, we don’t go out for dinner as much as we used to. We love to eat out, and there are many great restaurants in Italy, but who can afford them anymore?

It started with the euro. The official conversion rate was 1936.27 lire to the euro. In other words, a pizza that used to cost 8,000 lire, if converted correctly, should cost slightly over 4 euros. In practice, many restaurants just lopped off three zeros, so a pizza that used to cost 8,000 lire now costs 8 euros. It almost seems reasonable at first glance, til you realize that you are now paying almost 16,000 lire for a pizza, which no one would have dreamed of doing pre-euro.

In Milan a few weeks ago, we ate at a restaurant that we had frequented for years, and considered good quality at a medium price. This assessment proved to be sadly out of date. Between the three of us, we had three primi (first courses), two secondi (second courses), one dessert, four ¾ litre bottles of water, ½ litre of wine, and one coffee. The primi (first courses) were good, the secondi decidedly less so: Enrico’s bollito misto (boiled meats) was unimpressive – I can buy better mostarda myself! – and my agnello al scottadito (grilled lamb ribs) seemed almost fried rather than grilled, certainly not tender as they should be. And the bill was 98 euros! Definitely not worth the price.

We saw only two or three other tables of patrons while we were there, and the chef spent most of the evening standing around in the hall. Not a good sign, but no more than he deserved for charging us an arm and a leg for a sub-par meal. Until recently, some restaurants might have imagined they could rely on the less-discerning palates of tourists, but, with the dollar in free-fall, many Americans can no longer afford to come to Italy at all, or at least need to eat more cheaply while they’re here. Italian restaurateurs need to rethink their pricing and quality before they go out of business in droves.

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Italian culture

The “Real” Italy

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^ Of course, some people in Italy actually do sing opera for fun (and/or for a living).

To bring people to my site, I hang out in online forums about traveling and living in Italy, answering questions where I usefully can. It’s been an education for me as well, in American attitudes towards Italy.

One young woman bemoaned the fact that in her travels in Italy, and especially in Rome, she had not found the “real” Italy that she expected. Her vision of the real Italy apparently included (only) beautiful people beautifully dressed, spotless streets, and women who make pasta from scratch every day while singing along to Verdi and Puccini. She was sadly bewildered to find Rome full of immigrants (“Bulgarians and Chinamen,” as she phrased it), rude people, and young people kissing on park benches (she was of the opinion that this sort of behavior should be heavily fined – really, what planet was she from?).

Come to any country looking for a stereotype, and you’re bound to be disappointed, especially when your picture is based on the rose-colored memories of emigrant grandparents, or the more recent “live the good life in Italy” stereotype created by well-heeled foreigners who move to Tuscany, renovate a villa, and then write a book about it.

A recent post on Zoomata.com bewailed the removal of crucifixes from Italian classrooms (due to a court challenge by the Finnish mother of an Italian child); another on Fodors.com was upset over a bit of news reported in the US, that in Treviso a school’s nativity play was replaced with “Little Red Riding Hood.” Said the Fodor’s poster: “I love Italy. I thought I knew Italians, being American Italian myself.”

These two people, a Canadian and an American, both mourn Italy’s “becoming” secular rather than remaining Catholic. As second- or third-generation emigrants, they have skipped over several generations of Italian history, and apparently don’t realize that the separation of church and state in Italy was established in the Constitution (strongly modeled on the American one) in the early 1950s.

The Catholic Church still has influence in Italian life and politics, but that influence is waning (though not going down without a fight, I admit). The Church’s presence in daily life is nearly non-existent. Most Italians are still baptized etc. and would claim to be Catholic if you asked, but only about 10% (I’m guessing) are practicing Catholics.

There are still devout Catholics of course, but even they are puzzled by the attitudes of their non-practicing compatriots. One of my colleagues who is very active in his diocese told me: “These people show up wanting to marry in the church or baptize their kids. We’ve never seen them before and it means nothing to them, so we have to wonder why they bother.” If forced to think about it, these people might answer that it’s traditional, and/or that they want to please an older relative.

Italy still maintains many of the outward forms of Catholicism, but even those are being challenged, as in the above-mentioned cases of the classroom crucifixes and nativity play. Like most modern nations, Italy is wrestling with large-scale immigration and how to integrate new people, religions, and cultures into the existing culture and society. These are not easy issues, and the best answers differ even from community to community within a country. Some parts of Italy have found effective and interesting ways to bring their newly-multicultural communities together, others are still working on it. In most cases, the result will not look like the Italy that many Americans think they know.

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What’s in a Title? Signora vs. Signorina in Italy

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I’m 42 today and, waking up with blue circles and bags under my eyes, I look it. Well, that’s the result of two days on my feet in the kitchen, cooking for 35 people (yes, I did have lots of help – thank you, Shannon!) for our annual Thanksgiving/ birthday/ housewarming feast (the housewarming part is not meant to be annual). Most of the time, people say I look young for my age, and I don’t think it’s just idle flattery.

I’ve been trying to understand the logic by which Italians decide to call me signora (Mrs.) or signorina (Miss). When Ross was small and I was in daily contact with her teachers and other parents at her schools, I was accustomed to being signora, because everyone assumed that, as a mother, I must also be a Mrs.

This signora habit almost got me arrested once. I was getting off the bus in Milan, in a hurry to pick up Ross from daycare, and swept right past the squad of public transport inspectors doing one of their random checks. I completely ignored the calls behind me of “Signorina! Signorina!,” assuming they couldn’t be directed at me. So the inspectors thought I was running away to dodge a fine for travelling without a ticket (actually, I am always scrupulous about bus and train tickets, except when I forget to stamp them).

I’m often called signorina even now. This may be because I often dress informally, by Italian standards, in jeans and sweaters. In a business suit and heels, I’m almost always signora. On some occasions, the choice of address seems to be based on the speaker’s desire to flatter me, and which term they think will accomplish that.

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living in Italy

Moving House in Italy: The Bureaucracy

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I read somewhere that something like a third of the US population moves house (often changing town as well) every year. Even if that number is exaggerated, it’s certainly true that Americans move far more than Europeans do, so many of the necessary steps are very routine in the US.

In Italy, it’s not so simple. Take forwarding mail. In the US, you pick up a form at the post office (and often other places), fill it out (for the entire household) with the old and new addresses, sign it, and hand it in at any post office, or even mail it. The service is free and continues for a year.

In Lecco, I had to go to the post office to pick up a form that is used so rarely that all they could give me was a poor photocopy of it. Two copies, actually, because you need to fill out a form for each adult member of the family, and supply a photocopy of each adult’s identity card; any minors should be put on one of the parents’ forms.

You should do this at least 10 days before the date you want forwarding to start, which I didn’t know when I went to the post office on the Friday before Monday’s move. But the postmaster reassured me that, since we were moving within the same town, the service would actually start Monday for regular mail. Registered mail needs a few more days to work through the system, and if you’re moving to another town it can take up to 10 days for the paperwork to reach your new post office. You can choose to forward for 6, 9, or 12 months, and you pay – 12 euros per household for 12 months.

The postmaster recommended that we also leave a note about the change of address for our mail carrier (postino, or in our case, postina, since ours was female). Enrico and I were running errands, so I asked Ross to do it. She composed a very nice note thanking the lady for her kindness and good service (deservedly so – everyone who works for the post office in Lecco seems to be very nice, as well as efficient). I don’t think the postina had ever had a note like that from a customer; when she saw it on Monday, she buzzed me to come down for the day’s mail (since we were in the midst of moving), kissed me goodbye, and wished us well in our new home.

I mentioned before that you need to notify your local town hall of your change of address, so they can send you ballots at voting time. Interestingly, it is NOT necessary to change your carta d’identita’ (identity card) for a change of address, until the card itself expires (every five years). In fact, they will refuse to change it before it expires, unless you lose or destroy it. I’m told that running it through the washing machine is a very effective way to destroy it; just be prepared to demonstrate the remaining shreds at the ufficio d’anagrafe (population records office) when you go to get it replaced.

About that ID card: Many Americans get itchy at the idea of a national ID card, even though a driver’s license (or non-driver ID from your local driving authority) is in effect used as an ID card all over the US. In Italy, and most of Europe I believe, everyone has an ID card, and thinks nothing of it. Foreign residents are also entitled to an ID card in Italy. I got by without one for years, didn’t see a real need for it until, strangely enough, it would have been handy in applying for an Indian visa. (When you apply for a visa from a country which is not your country of passport, you usually have to supply proof of residence in the country from which you are applying.) So now I have my own carta d’identita’. I previously used my US passport, which caused slight extra paperwork in opening bank accounts and so on, but was not a huge problem.

For all financial purposes in Italy, you do need a codice fiscale (fiscal number) which is more or less equivalent to an American Social Security number. The codice fiscale is made up of the first three consonants in your last and first names (e.g., in my case, STR DDR), the last two digits of your year of birth, some bits in the middle calculated from your birth month, and a number signifying your town of birth – there’s a different number for every tiny little town in Italy, but the same code (Z404) is used for EVERYONE born outside Italy, from Australia to Zimbabwe.

Because the codice fiscale is calculated and not random, it is possible for two people born in the same town on the same day to have the same codice fiscale, if they happen also to have the same name, or names with the same sequence of consonants. Theoretically this should be checked before a codice fiscale is issued, but there have been cases of identical codes being issued to two different people, resulting in all sorts of confusion, such as the man who was still alive but couldn’t draw his pension because his code sharer had died.

Some more issues pertinent to home ownership:

All homeowners pay a tassa sui rifiuti (garbage tax), calculated on the size of your home and I suppose the number of family members. When you move, you need to go to the local tax office to move your tassa sui rifiuti as well. And, as I have just learned, you can’t put garden trimmings with the rest of the umido (compostable food scraps); you have to take them to the town dump, which means that you have to have a magnetic-stripe card to give you access to the dump. This you acquire from the Ufficio d’Ambiente (Office of the Environment) at the Comune (town hall). [more on recycling]

If you move to a different town (or far across a city), you also need to change your medico di famiglia (family doctor); this is done at the local ASL office (Azienda Sanita’ Locale – local health company).

And you need to stay on top of Telecom Italia. I called them on September 8th to inform them of our move on the 27th. I called again twice, and each time was told that the process was underway. Enrico called on October 4th, and found out that the process had come to a dead stop. The previous owner of our house had had the phone line registered as a business line, possibly because he was claiming a tax deduction on using part of the house as an office. Now we’re trying to switch it to a home line, causing endless confusion at Telecom. At one point they claimed they needed to do a technical test on the line, even though I was calling them from it (the old owner’s number is still active at the house, though it was supposed to be turned off 10 days ago).

Further, our house number has a letter in it, and Telecom’s computer system doesn’t know what to do with this, and/or the paperwork can get lost in the computer depending on whether a capital or small letter is entered. Gah!

So Monday Enrico told them to start all over again with a new contract and new phone number, which the Telecom lady advised us would be faster than trying to resolve the confusion over the old contract. However, we have no idea how long it will take to get a technician out for the new line…

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