Category Archives: culture

An Un-American Halloween: Dia de los Difuntos

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While all my stateside friends were partying for Halloween in scandalous, ironic and/or terrifying costumes, a couple of my classmates organized an event with a decidedly more serious tone. Dia de los Difuntos (Day of the Dead) is commonly celebrated on November 1 in former Spanish colonies, coinciding with All Saints Day in the Catholic church. For the occasion, Caro and Rae organized a gathering that combined traditions from their respective countries of Ecuador and the Philippines. Most interesting, you could see how Spanish missionaries were able to integrate elements of Catholicism with indigenous practices of ancestor worship.

Unlike the celebration of Halloween, death is quite present in Dia de los Difuntos, though not in a morbid or grotesque manner. This day is meant to remember and commemorate the passing of your ancestors, and welcome their spirits back home. In many ways, the holiday closely parallels Chinese culture’s Qingming Festival, or Tomb Sweeping Day, where your entire family visits the burial grounds of your ancestors to clean the graves and offer food.
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Chasing the Forbidden Dragon: Lyon’s Quartier Chinois

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We were in France, and by god, I was going to get some Asian food.

Before your jaw drops off in horror (sacre bleu!), let me back up for a minute and explain my mad logic. The UNISG masters students had arrived in Lyon, a land of fine haute gastronomie…and the third largest Chinatown in France (after two enclaves in Paris). At lunch, we had just gorged on a stunning French meal, accoutered with boisterous grand chefs, wine, and healthy doses of cream and butter. The University was allotting us a stipend of €15 for dinner, which does not go a long way in Lyon. Besides, I was itching for something chili and umami-laden. According to Wikipedia, Lyon’s Quartier Chinois could be found in the city’s 7e arrondisement. Our hotel clerk had marked “Le Guillotière” on the map, and armed with that knowledge, we set out to search for the best bowl of pho in Lyon. It might not have been French food, but it was at least French colonial food?

After wandering across the Rhône river, I saw a number of Moroccan restaurants, African barbers and veiled women. Hmm…it appeared as though we’d found an “ethnique” section of town, but not Chinatown per se. I craned my neck searching for ideographs, as we wandered further east and north from Le Guillotière. It was time to break out my expert Franglais. “Pardon monsieur, pouvez-vous me dire où est le Quartier Chinois?” Again and again, this question elicited quizzical looks and head scratching. “Er, le Quartier Chinois? Je ne sais pas…il y a un quartier chinois?” No one even knew of the neighborhood’s existence; it was as if we were trying to find Diagon Alley.
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Soaring Through Centuries: Falcons and Farms in Tuscany

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A falcon catches a lure mid-air.

After a 7 hour battle for seating on a hot, overbooked train, I stepped off the platform in San Miniato and took a good look around. This was Italy’s famed Tuscany, the stuff that Hollywood movies and expat marriage dreams are made of. All was quiet, and I paused uncertainly as I looked at the empty train station waiting room. If I were a WWOOF host, where would I be, I thought to myself. My worries were allayed however, when I spotted a woman waiting around the corner. She approached me with a smile and said, “Hi, are you Crystal? I’m Amy, nice to meet you, I’m glad that you made it!”

Amy quickly introduced herself and told me about the Barbialla Nuova farm, where I am volunteering through WWOOF for the next couple weeks. In no time, we were trading life stories and discussing how the shape of bread across cultures is influenced by the way it is used (flatbreads for curry in India vs round disks used as bowls for stew in England). Amy moved from Australia to Italy with her husband and two young children about 9 months ago, after deciding that they wanted to spend some time living abroad. Ken, her husband, is a very talented bread baker and they both have extensive experience as WWOOFers around the world. After sending out inquiries to the WWOOF network, they stumbled upon Barbialla Nuova and haven’t left since. “It’s really neat to be on the other side now as a host!” commented Amy.

Barbialla Nuova is a 500-hectare farm in central Tuscany, and the project aspires to govern the land as a holistic living organism, with knowledge from the biodynamic, sustainable and Fukuoka schools of natural agriculture. The farm holds a herd of 60+ Chianina cattle, pigs, a lake for fishing, and some of the most valuable natural white truffle beds of the Val d’Elsa. More than half of the property is wooded, and much of the remaining land is set aside for grazing animals. Wild boars, deer, hares and porcupines are some of the animals that are commonly seen on the grounds. At one point, there were about 50 farmhouses on the property, and the 1861 census records state that 382 people lived on the estate at that time, with each family given a house and some land in exchange for half of the profits. Even further back in history, Barbialla was underwater during the Pliocene era, and in some of the layers of rock, you can find marine fossils of gastropods and bivalves.
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The Italian Work Ethic

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Me: “I’m sure Italians are very hardworking people!”

Italian: “Don’t be silly, all the hardworking Italians are already in the U.S.”

After I announced my move to Italy and the initial excitement had subsided, the jokes started rolling in about the work ethic of Italians and southern Europeans in general. I reassured myself that I’d be living in northern, rather than southern Italy, and surely it would be nice to take a break from the frenetic pace of American work habits? I mean, who needs to run errands between the hours of 12:30 and 3:30 pm anyway? (Most Italian businesses are closed closed in the afternoons, on Sundays, and often on Saturdays and Mondays as well.)

Anyway, I try to keep an open mind and not simply exaggerate stereotypes, but had to lol (with chagrin) at the NYT’s latest article on Italian work culture, “Fiat Pushes Work Ethic at Italian Plant.” Read it and weep:

Even some workers here in Pomigliano, Fiat’s lowest-producing plant, complain of ingrained bad habits, citing peers who call in sick to earn money while working another job or skip work with a fake doctor’s note — especially when the local soccer team is playing.

Now, fresh from rescuing Chrysler in the United States, Sergio Marchionne of Fiat is pushing these workers to be more devoted to their jobs, mirroring a larger effort by the government to improve Italy’s competitiveness and reduce its debt through austerity measures.

But shifting a culture toward work and closing the divide with Italy’s northern neighbors won’t be easy. Embedded for generations here — and on other parts of Europe’s often-sweltering southern rim — is a lifestyle that values flexibility for workers.

To some, Fiat is drawing the curtain on a humane working life.

“He wants to impose American-style standards,” Nello Niglio, a factory worker, said of Mr. Marchionne’s requirements to work longer hours and cut back on absences. “But too much work is going to kill our workers.”

Oh No, American-style standards! Pomigliano is near Naples, in the southern half of Italy, where poverty levels, unemployment and mafia strength are much higher than northern Italy. When I jokingly asked (northern) Italians why they don’t simply secede and leave their poorer southern cousins behind, they replied seriously that the separatist party Lega Nord was effectively trying to do just that.

And in case you think Fiat is trying to make too many changes at once, they do acknowledge the importance of Italy’s national past-time:

Just last month, Fiat erected large television screens inside the factory when Italy played in the World Cup to encourage employees to come to work, said Mr. Nacco, the longtime worker there. Still, some people did not show up. “And Fiat was paying us to watch the game,” he said.

The productivity of GM workers is starting to look pretty good right about now.

First Pizza

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For an informal pre-start of class get-together, the UNISG May 2010 cohort gathered for beers/aperitivo at the bar on the premises of the Slow Food headquarters. In the courtyard, there is a small restaurant named Baladin, with a small bar outdoors that serves wine and a couple beers on tap. On this particular night, the Isaac and Nora beers were available, the former being similar to a Belgian white beer and the latter an “Egyptian” style lager.

Of the 25 people in the class, I met about 17 or 18 of them tonight, and presumably the rest will be present at class tomorrow morning. There are five men, 5-6 Americans, two Italians, a Thai, a Mexican, an Ecuadorean, and some Aussies. As you can imagine, everyone is fairly cosmopolitan and speaks many tongues, but the winner for linguistic diversity might be Luca, an Italian who speaks English with a perfect British accent who studied Chinese in Beijing for several years.

Post beers, we trekked around the corner to Aqua Pazza Pizzeria, which was described by Luca as being a reasonably priced, cheap pizza place. Much to my surprise, the pizzeria was decked out with nice wine racks, track lighting and white tablecloths–Papa John’s this was not. On the other hand, the menu was filled with about 20 types of pizza, all between €5-8. That is definitely cheaper than the American equivalent. Also, I was amused to see some creative naming in the Pizze Baby section.

After scanning the menu carefully, I decided to go with the Basilica, topped with grape tomatoes, mozzarella and basil. The crust was thin but not cracker-like, with enough chew and durability to support the toppings. It was also a pretty hefty serving for one person, unlike some other Neapolitan pizzas I have had, where you walk away hankering for another half a pizza.

Time to go to bed, so I can bike to class bright and early in the morning.

Italian-Style Cultural Immersion

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For good measure, I tried to find other sources of Italian media and incorporated them into my daily life. The following is a list of resources for anyone who wants to learn more about Italian culture:

  1. Blogs: The Transparent Language Italian blog is an invaluable resource in learning the intricacies of Italian grammar, and includes insider details on holidays and volcanic dust in Italy. I particularly love this post on commonly used gestures in Italy. Since I am gearing up to study food, I also follow some Italian food blogs written partially in English, including Dulcis in Furno and Briciole.
  2. Newspaper: La Repubblica, based in Rome and the second most circulated newspaper in Italy. Scan the news and see if you can figure out what’s happening in the US. If all else fails, resort to Google Translate.
  3. Movies: I sat through a number of pretty terrible Italian movies until I wised up and began asking for recommendations instead of choosing randomly. Oscar-winners Life is Beautiful and Nuovo Cinema Paradiso are obvious choices. For a change of pace from sad-violin dramas, La Sconosciuta (The Unknown Woman) is a fast-paced (by Italian standards) psychological thriller. And in the canon of classic Italian film, you cannot ignore the contributions of Vittorio De Sica and Frederico Fellini. I watched De Sica’s Ladri di Biciclette (Bicycle Thieves) and Il Giardino dei Finzi-Contini (The Garden of the Finzi-Continis), which are both set in periods around World War 2. Fellini’s work is interesting because it moves over time from neorealism to somewhat uh quirkier art films over time. While I enjoyed La Dolce Vita and 8 1/2, I found his later work to be a a bit more…eccentric. Amacord follows the life and ongoings of a small town in Fascist Italy (I found the lack of centralized plot off-putting), and E la Nave Va (And the Ship Sails On) portrays a luxury cruise ship carrying a love-sick rhinoceros and the friends of a deceased opera singer, as they travel to bury her at sea. Yeah. Watch at your own risk.
  4. Books: For a glimpse into contemporary Italian living, I recommend Tim Parks’ Italian Neighbors. It does for small town Italian living what Adam Gopnik’s Paris to the Moon did for the City of Light. The novel follows a British expat who moves to Italy and gradually acquaints himself to the intricacies of wine-making, combative neighbors, and the proper techniques for bribing bureaucrats. I laughed out loud on many occasions.
  5. Music: There is a lot of Europop out there, and they also listen to a lot of American tunes, but I was much more interested in quality music, preferably spoken at a comprehensible rate (not so much rap). Jovanotti is an Italian singer-songwriter who blends the Italian Cantautore tradition with funk, rap and other world influences. I was floored by the beauty of “Fango” (Mud). The chorus includes the line “Io lo so che non sono solo/ anche quando sono solo,” or “I know that I am not alone / even when I am alone.”