Get over it! That’s how I feel when I’m in the Dolomites. In 1919, more than a century ago, the Austrians lost the Tyrol and Trentino regions to the Italians, at the end of World War I. As a casual visitor, you would never know that. The safety instructions in German come first. Even the … Continue reading 236. The Hills Are Alive
I fell in love with Genoa. And I even forgot to try the salami. Homeland of Christopher Columbus. No shame there. The statue is the first thing you see when you get off the train. On this trip, we’ve been ping-ponging from city to mountains to seashore to city and then to mountains again, with … Continue reading 235. Genoa
Hot, hotter, hottest. It seems every summer, we read about record-breaking heat across Europe, with Italy always on the list of the worst of the worst. I subscribe to a number of Italy travel groups on Facebook, and many of the posts are devoted to complaints about the extreme summertime temperatures, or advice on how … Continue reading 234. Hot Stuff
La via diritta era smarrita “The direct way is lost,” is in the first stanza of Dante’s Divina Commedia, which I was required to memorize in Italian 101 fifty-six years ago. That line came to mind the other day, as we attempted to follow the Via Francigena, an ancient pilgrimage route from Canterbury, England, to … Continue reading 233. Walks
Siamo arrivati! And everything was clicking like clockwork. We breezed through the Milan airport ( the new fingerprinting process that is causing hours-long delays in Rome seems not to arrived here yet) and hopped right onto a train to Milano Centrale station. Our favorite Milanese bakery, Princi, has opened an outpost at the train station, … Continue reading 232. The Agony and the Ecstasy
One of the beauties of working at a place for thirty years is that you feel perfectly at home, and perfectly entitled to raise your hand and say, "Why not me?" Sometimes you win; sometimes you lose, but so what? It's always worth a try. So when a colleague told me she had started a … Continue reading 231. Italian Culture Club
Readers of a certain age will remember the biography shelf in the libraries of their youth. In the Pottersville branch of the Somerset Public Library in my hometown, I remember that the books were hardcover and orange. I'm sure I read them all, especially those that were about ladies -- the term we would have … Continue reading 230. Jane Addams
I am no big intellectual. I have always been a "good enough" student with not much effort, as long as I wasn't in a class--like science, math or foreign language - that had right or wrong answers. Unlike most of my classmates at the institutions I attended, I wasn't driven to get As. Even though … Continue reading 229. Adult Ed.
The other day at book group, a friend read out a passage from Ian McEwan's Lessons, a book she had enjoyed: "He said that if he ever had to look at one more Madonna and child, he would 'throw up.'...Within the totality of human experience of the world there was an infinity of subject matter … Continue reading 228. Raffaello
For my birthday this year, Ben had a brainstorm. He had read in the Philadelphia Inquirer about a retired private investigator and law enforcement agent originally from South Philly, James Trovarello, who has developed a small enterprise researching Italian American clients' family trees. Why not engage his services for my birthday present, rather than buy … Continue reading 227. Family Tree
Gigi's Italia 