Italo Train

21 May

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Otherwise known as: Trenitalia, eat your heart out, you sluggish beast, you! Here comes your sexier younger sister.

Anyways, what’s the fuss about? Today I started seeing these billboards plastered everywhere.

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“You’ll say Italo to mean train.”

Looks like the marketing blitz for Italo has begun.

Italo is being touted as the “Ferrari of Italian trains” because it’s sleek and truly high-speed, not fake high speed like some of us have experienced with Trenitalia. Meaning, high-speed until you get to the outskirts of Naples where for some inexplicable-but-certainly-having-nothing-to-do-with-organized-crime reason, the high-speed tracks stop and the train, the high-speed train, has to slow down to regular, i.e., slow train speed. Let’s just say it gave me plenty of time to admire the architectural gems that make up the periphery of Naples, and the clothes hanging from them.

But the Ferrari title probably comes mainly from the fact that the company that markets this privately-owned train company is managed by Luca Cordero di Montezemolo. Try saying that three times fast, right? Rich people have long and important names in Italy, usually with “di” something figuring in there somewhere as a precursor to a second last time. Because, you know, two last names is certainly more important and rich-sounding than just one. I, alas, do not have anything akin to a double last name or a “di” anywhere, but if you want you can call me Shelley Ruelle di Roma. That might be fun.

And yet, as usual, I digress.

I really want to ride one of these trains. They look so shiny and candy-apple red and so … well, so NOT Trenitalia. Woe to the travelers with Trenitalia, we all have our stories, just like our war wounds from experiences at the ol’ post office.

The NYT article says that meals will be served by, and I quote, “primly dressed attendants.” Why primly? (Which, according to Merriam-Webster online, is correctly defined as “stiffly formal and proper; decorous”). Forget the fact that they’re actually serving meals. Meals! Meals, I tell you! But—primly. What is that supposed to imply? That the Trenitalia attendants are dressed skimpily? That the Trenitalia attendants are nothing less than, well, stiffly formal and proper?

Oh, wait, that’s right! Silly me! (slaps head in a mock-comic gesture of baffled amazement and wonder) Trenitalia doesn’t HAVE attendants. As far as my second-class traveling ass knows, that is. At least as long as you define “attendant” as someone who does something—anything—to assist you during your journey.

But wait! Now come to think of it, I have had the pleasure of being a first class passenger on a Trenitalia Eurostar. I still can’t tell you whether or not they employ “attendants,” as frankly, the only benefit I enjoyed was the fact that there were actually working toilets. And if you think I’m trying to be *funny* then I encourage you, too, to embark on the lovely journey from Paola in Calabria up to Rome, in the summer, in a train without air-conditioning but with rickety old windows that half-open, and with one—yes count IT, one—working bathroom. Add in a little kid puking in the aisle and, well, let’s just say a stiffly formal and properly dressed attendant would have been a nice thing to have. Oh, the joys are never-ending, let me tell you! That is, if you find joy in the idea of impersonating a farm animal riding the train on the way to being ruthlessly slaughtered. No, slaughtering didn’t take place. But feeling like a farm animal on the way to it, that did take place. Yes, indeedy.

My first thought however is, price? I mean, let’s be honest. For all the AMAZING service you receive, Trenitalia isn’t cheap. Holy crap. You know I’d love to go crash on Mrs. Red’s couch like EVERY weekend, if it wasn’t for the fact that the Trenitalia bastards attendants would make me pay €180 round-trip to do so. Yes, you read right, it costs nearly $120 each way, so you’re looking at about $230 or thereabouts for a round-trip train ride Rome to Milan. Is that affordable? Not for the likes of me. And think, that’s without the primly dressed attendants. Can I get a WTF in the house?

Ok, let’s go comparison shopping. Wait one moment please while I consult Italotreno’s fares. I am fully willing to lose face if they cost way more than Trenitalia.

Holy crap people! I just discovered I can get a ticket to Milan for €30. Where’s the catch?

It’s a promo fare, but I’ll take it. No, not only will I take it, I will very primly board that train with a prim smile on my face. It will be very decorous and no farm-animals or broken bathrooms or children vomiting better ruin my trip.

Hello my dear, get ready, I’m coming!!

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Taste the rainbow

10 May

Inspired by “panthropologist” Moscerina, I continue my documentation of subjects in the wild.

It’s pretty easy to be stealthy in the urban jungle when you take a picture with your crappy cell phone camera like I do. I just pretend to be checking my messages while holding the phone steady like a camera. Do you think they’re catching on? I don’t. Not yet, anyways.

So check out dude in the yellow corduroys on my bus yesterday. Aw. I almost wanted to give him a big, bright, sunshine-y hug for his audacity in putting these pants on. Gotta love it. In fact I actually ended up sitting next to him on the bus, so I got to admire his heavy blue-ish tweed jacket too, in 70+ temps. God bless the man!

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Then we have Mr. Blue Shoes. Kind of makes me want to start tap dancing and doing jazz hands or something.

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Actually I think these would more accurately qualify for a red velvet “smoking jacket” ala Hugh Hefner. Even though they kind of look like fancy-shmancy Tods driving mocassins with all those lil’ cleats on the bottom. Posh.

Hey–tangent–do you know the real meaning of posh? I do. One of my British supervisors at an English-language school taught me. It means, supposedly:

‘Posh’ derives from the ‘port out, starboard home’ legend supposedly printed on tickets of passengers on P&O (Peninsula and Orient) passenger vessels that travelled between UK and India in the days of the Raj. Another version has it that PO and SH were scrawled on the steamer trunks used on the voyages, by seamen when allocating cabins. Britain and India are both in the northern hemisphere so the port (left-hand side) berths were mostly in the shade when travelling out (easterly) and the starboard ones when coming back. So the best and most expensive berths were POSH, hence the term.

But then this site goes on to say how that’s not true. So, whatever. Just another useless piece of trivia for you. Yeah, don’t mention it. I’m good for tons of crap like that. We writers are full of useless, trivial information, aren’t we?

But back to our pretty rainbow. Let’s round it out with the grand finale, the stealthily-captured red pants moment. Girl in red pants! Usually it’s men but this time we find a female specimen!

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My poor, unsuspecting victims.

Go out and work your red pants magic! ‘Tis the season!

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No stamps, this is the post office

9 May

I’m really starting to think that a pre-requisite for becoming an employed member of the ranks of front-line postal clerks in Italy, or at least here in Rome, is significant past professional experience either in the fine field of incarceration facilities (a.k.a. prison guard) or perhaps unsuccessful completion of a court-ordered anger management class.

What the hell is WITH Roman postal clerks?!?

Right. I came here 11 years ago, so yes, this should be old news by now and it’s certainly not new ground. I’ve faithfully hated Poste Italiane for quite some time. Exhibit 1: unbelievably laughable delays. Exhibit 2: local, yet logistically impractical, holy alternative.

In any case, I just want to keep you informed on good ol’ PT’s progress and evolution since those previous posts. Or rather lack thereof.

Today at the Largo Argentina post office, I had to pay two bills and buy some stamps. Since this post office is large and semi-evolved, they have a number system. All that usually means though is that you get a piece of paper during your 50+ minute wait. Today, amazingly, there were only two people ahead of me in the “P” number line.

Because, you see, when you go to the number machine, you get choices:

1) Poste Italiane bank account holder? Push here. Apparently you get special treatment. I think that’s an “E” but not sure.
2) Just need to do financial services (i.e., pay bills?) Push here. You get an “A”
3) Just need to send something? Push here. You get a “P”

However, allow me to note, that you can also push for the “P” and pay bills. It is written right there, in fine italicized print.

I approach when P196 is called. I go up to the window and present my two bills, half daydreaming. Next thing I know, I see the postal clerk lady’s head start spinning around like in The Exorcist, and she roars out at me:

“DEVIPRENDEREILNUMERETTOA!!!”

Here’s me: “Wha?? Cosa?”

Then, super snide and seething—yes, seething—she says in broken English, “You need A number not P!!!!”

Oh my God. Now not only am I being barked at, I’m being reprimanded like a five-year-old who snuck candy and doesn’t even speak the local language.

Me, in my best academic and polished Italian possible: “You see, I have to also buy stamps. And on the machine it states that if I have postal business to do, like buying stamps, then I can also add in financial business, such as these here bills.”

She: “Oh. Well. You didn’t tell me, so how was I supposed to know?!” Clearly. Kindly file this under “I’m an Italian public office employee, therefore I have not, do not, and will not ever be responsible for basically anything that occurs in, around, or anywhere within an at least 20 km radius of my workplace.”

Dude. Whatever.

She, in one big, grand, last flourish of prison guard-style customer service: “And anyways, we don’t have any stamps here.”

Oh no—no! You did not. You had to go and pull out the big guns. Why’d you have to go and do that? Why?

As much as I love Rome, this is something that after eleven years I CANNOT—as in CAN NOT—tolerate. You are the post office. Hence, you should provide me with the one essential product with which I may POST something. Am I wrong?

I mutter under my breath, but not really quietly, “The post office, and they don’t have any stamps.” Humph! I mean…really!

She, completely unfazed but strangely less hostile: “Strange but true.”

In the end, I think she took pity on me, because after I paid my bills in utter mortified silence, she started to ask me what kind of stamps I needed. This is so typical. It happens often in Italy that you get shot down by angst-ridden public employees who use you as their innocent punching bags, and then when you don’t freak out and retaliate like a total asshole, they just might come inching forward with their tail *slightly* between their legs. It kills me, because it’s like, you could have skipped the whole a-hole part and just asked me what kind of stamps I needed. Even though that question should be totally and completely irrelevant at this point, given that you just told me you DON’T. HAVE. STAMPS.

“I need to send a postcard to the Netherlands. And a letter to the States.”

“Do you have them with you?”

So she places one of those machine stickers on my postcard. I had been so flustered I hadn’t even thought to ask. Geez.

No luck on the US stamp, as I haven’t even written the letter yet that I intend to send. (That’s why I need a STAMP, people. It’s called ADVANCE PLANNING.) Go figure. Wouldn’t want to trouble the post office for a stamp, for God’s sake. What was I thinking?

But hey, don’t take it from me. There’s a small but militant group of expats and writers who can regale you with their tales as well:

What Can You Mail to Italy? and Post Offices in Italy by Natalie. She’s lovely. And she has the English title of my blog.

How to Post Things to Italy – Alex Roe at Italy Chronicles

Postal Service in Italy – Living Italy

Everyone has their story. Consider it a rite of passage. Like getting your driver’s license. Or having your first scooter accident. Or getting shat on by a Roman pigeon (good luck, they say).

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The Story of Leggerezza

8 May

The story of leggerezza begins … well, I don’t really know where it begins, exactly. All I know is that it ends in a tattoo on my upper arm, about t-shirt sleeve length and width, inked on my the weekend of my 35th birthday in Amsterdam by easily the world’s best tattoo artist EVER (Marco Serio I heart you, yes I do!) and designed by the world’s best friend and best artist EVER (Ele my dear you are the one for me!).

Folks, what can I say? In June I will mark eleven years since I first came to Rome. That’s a lot of time in my world.

Ten years with the man I met on the first day in the city, a fairly smooth divorce—if that’s not too much of an oxymoron—and a now on-really-good-terms parenting relationship, as we are in fact parents to three, yep count ‘em!, three, kids. A four year old and TWIN two year olds. Many of you who know me already know all that.

But wait!!

As in all compelling informercials, as well as in life: there’s more!

An almost-completed MSW back in the States, a string of really interesting jobs including youngest director ever of one my former organization’s study abroad centers (the one here in Rome), stints in kundalini yoga, Buddhist zen meditation, and courses in astrology, Spanish, and “natural” childbirth.

Results?

A love for Yogi Tea, not enough time to continue zazen (but to be continued…), a fairly good grasp of what it means to have Sun in Taurus conjunct Mercury in the 11th house forming a T-square with Saturn and Uranus (in short, it’s not easy), the ability to politely say “oiga!” in Spain to get someone’s attention, and two C-sections resulting in three children. So, as with all great expectations, some turn out, some don’t. I figure I’m par for the course.

Successfully starting, managing, and then closing my own business due to a move back to the States, and having to start all over again, for the nth time, at just 30 years old.

Enjoying a rooftop garden house for years in the heart of old Trastevere, living in a shoebox shared student apartment without enough water pressure to even rinse my hair, a hellish hospital stay post-birth here in Rome, getting a second driver’s license at 26 and learning how to drive in a way that purposely ignores most of the rules of the road.

Learning to loosen up, accept life as it comes, and above all, realizing that very little of that which makes up this life is actually under my direct control. And that being, all things considered, not such a bad thing. And that life, all things considered, shouldn’t be taken quite as seriously as I often take it.

Someone who played a very pivotal role in my life here in Rome was once telling me about all of his woes. Since I tend to be silly and sarcastic with the people I enjoy, I started making light of it. He looked kind of upset. I said, “Hey, lighten up. I’m just trying to bring a bit of leggerezza into your life.”

He said that leggerezza is one of the most beautiful words in Italian, both for its meaning (“lightness” — it always makes me think about taking things lightly and less seriously, the epitome of our “lighten up” phrase in English) as for the fact that physically, when you pronounce it, since it has a double “Z” you are practically forced to smile when you say it.

I found all of that quite poetic, and even if it was contrived, I didn’t care. I knew that was going to be my new key word for the forseeable future. Leggerezza. Yes, I like that.

And so, there you have it. My word, my artists, and lest we forget, my beloved swallow:

In addition to indicating that a sailor had sailed 5000 miles, swallows are also associated with the idea of return. This “return” symbolism is rooted in two ideas. The first was the swallow’s famous migration pattern, always returning home to San Juan Capistrano. Second, it was believed that if a sailor dies at sea, birds carry his soul home to heaven.

(Thank you Sailor Jerry!)

So, to mark my return trip, my logging of 5000 miles and then some, and my overall journey in general, I got inked. In Italian, in Amsterdam, by a New Yorker, who also is Portuguese, and did a stint in a tattoo shop just around the bend from the illustrious correctional facilty at Rikers Island. It’s like six degrees of tattoo geography. And all without one shred of regret.

And no, it did not hurt. (You try raising three kids ages 4, 2, and 2, and then come back and tell me if you think a tattoo hurts. No? I didn’t think so.)

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Me before it all began. Don’t I look nervously happy? Yes, indeedy!

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That’s what a stencil looks like, folks. Just so you know. You can still run away screaming at this point, without any permanent markings.

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Yes, needles were involved. Three for the outline and eight simultaneously for the coloring-in. Delirious fun and laughter was had by all.

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Just cool smeared ink is all.

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No, that’s not blood, you silly! It’s red ink!

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Don’t let tattoo-haters try to talk you out of your first tattoo by being all “OHMYGAWD it’s going to be so painful and so red and irritated and blah blah frickin blah blah.” Um, hi. I have like the world’s most sensitive skin and this was about as gory as it got. This is literally like moments after it was finished. Yeah, there’s like a couple drops of blood. Deal.

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Just another satisfied customer. All in a day’s work! xoxo Marco!

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Pac-Man Smart Car

26 Apr

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I suppose then that the stick shift is considered the joy stick?

All that was missing was that “wacka-wacka-wacka” noise coming from hidden speakers somewhere. And that “woo-woo-wah-wah” noise when your little Pacman guy died.

Wait, wait! I can do that for you. Don’t mention it.

Just, don’t go all “King of Kong” on me now, ok?

What’s “King of Kong,” you ask? Oh, only one of the most exhilaratingly entertaining documentaries I’ve ever had the pleasure of viewing in my entire blessed life.

Trust me on this one.

You will not be disappointed.

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Fluorescent Gym Shoes in Rome

24 Apr

That’s all. I’ve just been seeing them a lot lately. Highlighter-colored Nikes, et al. Case in point:

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Nice touch on the matching pink fluorescent stripes on shirt and … what are those? Spandex leggings? I feel the eighties coming back…

Not to worry, though. This trend surely won’t take the place of the beloved red pants.

Speaking of which, did you catch my “Christmas in March” tweet? Yes, folks. Here you have it, photographic evidence of unsuspecting victims:

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And I even saw a pair of purple pants yesterday.

It’s like a panthropologist’s rainbow of fruit flavors.

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Controversy

21 Apr


Any excuse to get some early-80s Prince in there.

For some reason I just feel like picking a fight. Not really a fight, necessarily, but just… why not stir up some trouble?

I am itching to discuss some things that normally don’t get enough airtime as far as I’m concerned.

Shall we talk?

1) Cheating on spouses. Does this happen more in Italy, or is it just that I hear about it more and people are more open about it? I know of a number of couples who more or less everyone knows that they have a lil’ sumpin-sumpin on the side, and yet, no one ever speaks about it openly and at the same time it’s accepted. It seems like it’s a practice here in Italy for couples to “stay together for the kiddos” and then pursue their own extra curricular activities on the side. There’s this phenomenon here called “separati dentro casa,” basically “separated but still under the same roof,” in which couples are either informally or even legally separated, and yet they continue to live in the same house but pursue their own separate lives on the side. I’m not judging. But I don’t get it and I guess I’m kind of fascinated by it, because it all seems to be more accepted here in Italy than it would be back where I come from. And I know personally several couples (one or both of the people in the various couples Italian), who are divorced because their ex-spouses cheated on them—blatantly, savagely—leaving photos or other memorabilia lying around to be discovered. Not to say Italians cheat more. But maybe they accept it more? They admit it more? They own up to it more? I don’t know. One of my American friends said to me, “It’s a cultural thing. Italians are more open about cheating.” But are they really?

2) Whatever happened to last summer’s diet fad, that scary FEEDING TUBE DIET? Oh my goooodness people don’t even get me started. Wanna stir up some controversy? Throw weight around as a topic (no pun intended), add in this strange way of losing it, and you’ve got the perfect start. So here in Rome there was this “diet” called the “sondino nasale” which was really big a while back and then suddenly seemed to disappear. Basically you’d see people walking around with feeding tubes coming out of their noses, attached to a little bag that they carry with them, that provides them their liquid diet. One dude I saw even had a Louis Vuitton bag for his “liquid” and no I’m not kidding. I don’t know exactly how it works but I think you do the liquid thing/tube thing for a month. People who swear by it say it’s above-board because you have to go to a DOCTOR to have the procedure done. Well no s(%$# Sherlock! Normally feeding tubes are used for hospital patients who can’t swallow food! For the love! Help me out here.

You think I’m making this up? I am not! At 2:13 the video says “Now the patient can happily start his NEP treatment which will allow him to lose about 10 kilos (22 pounds) in 10 days” Not for the weak-stomached. Literally.

3) We could talk about the old standbys of half-nekkid women on TV or women’s body image in Italian media or how you have to pay people off to get jobs or how every woman on TV and politics has supposedly slept her way to the top… but is that controversial, really? I’m thinking no. Not in the post-Berlusconi era.

4) Why is George Clooney in so many ads around here but none back in the States? Guess that year-round staff up at the villa in Lago di Como doesn’t come cheap.

Imagine, you can.

And while we’re on the topic, poor Elisabetta Canalis. I follow her on Twitter and I really do love her. She was the first I ever knew of veline, back when I moved here in 2001. The other day she posted a picture of herself, by herself, in a skimpy bikini on a pier in Santa Monica after lunch. (Do you think she ate at the Bubba Gump restaurant she’s posing in front of?) Another time she tweeted about how a chocolate bunny she had managed to eat just a bit of was taunting her from the refrigerator but she couldn’t eat it for fear of gaining weight. I remember watching her on Contro Campo and feeling uncomfortable as she burst into tears because she’d regularly get pummelled verbally and treated like an idiot, and the camera would pan up from her legs or down from her cleavage, and how she would try to defend herself while looking like a poor deer caught in the headlights. I just wanted to give that girl a big bear hug, cover her with a huge blanket, and tell her everything was going to be all right in the end–and that even if she was dating soccer player Christian Vieri, a guy known affectionately as “Bobo,” (who in fact ended up fat and on Dancing with the Stars 8), that she’d eventually move on to bigger and better. And now she’ll be forever known as Clooney’s ex. God bless her. Maybe she’ll start designing purses like Monica Lewinsky did.

Hey! Wanna see something really excruciating? Watch this video of Gianni Morandi interviewing Robert De Niro while Canalis translates into English.

Oh hell, let’s just admit it: nothing in Italy is really controversial, after all. There are almost no taboo topics here. You can argue about politics, sex, religion, bribery, and infidelity, all before the appetizer, and once the pizza arrives everyone is toasting and it’s all good times again.

Italy: have I told you, lately, that I love you? Have I told you, there’s no one else, above you? Sing it, Rod!

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