An Englishman in Verona

The key o my keyboard appears to be broke . I have to slam it to make it work. How aoyig.

The strangest things happen when you live abroad. In Bolivia I once found myself at a high-school graduation in a tiny village, the only gringo for miles around looking even more out of place in combat trousers and jeans; a contrast to the locals who were all in best outfits. And yesterday I found myself judging a public-speaking competition.

Given that my only experience of public speaking was a comical attempt at compering a monthly variety night (although I did get better over the two years we ran it) I’m not quite sure what qualified me to be asked to judge. But asked I was, and I happily accepted.

It was part of a global competition for teenagers, the idea to bring them closer together through the world’s lingua franca, English. I have huge respect for these young people, speaking in public in a foreign language. The topic was “The Borderless World” and, if the contestants are anything to go by, the orgaiser's utopia of physical borders broken down by cultural exchange is well on its way to been achieved; a Philipine native singing the praises of dual-nationality and a Romanian girl pleading for increased tolerance to immigrants are testimony to that. I’m just glad the other judges agreed with me that there was no way the half-Canadian, half-Italian guy could win after arguing that the way to spread love and understanding throughout the world was via the doctrine of Catholicism.

The eventual winner was a Hungarian girl who took the very brave decision to argue that US cultural output was a force for good in the world, citing – even braver! – McDonald’s as a model of sensitivity to local custom and suggesting that many cultures are guilty of mis-understanding American motives. As crazy a thesis as that sounds, her case was genuinely compelling, which surely reflects well on both the content of her argument – which drew upon a wide range of sources and used several real-world examples – and her delivery.

Her prize would be a trip to London to represent Italy at the International finals. However as she doesn’t hold an Italian passport she can’t take that up; the runner-up, an Italian, will take her place. Fortuanately Hungary aren’t entering so she can probably attend under her native flag, as long as the money can be found to take her there. If she were my daughter, I’d happily pay.

I’ve been thinking hard about what to enter for the photography competition. Thinking about my Reflections of Italy idea I asked some friends if they knew of any large, modern, shiny pieces of architecture that sit opposite classical Renaissance buildings. There certainly aren’t any in Verona; maybe in Milan, I thought.

However one respondant pointed out to me that the Italians don’t seem to go for these grand, modern public buildings. Spain has the Guggenheim, Germany the Nazi Museum, France the Pompidou Centre and Britain the Tate Modern (to pick just a few examples), but Italy has no such equivalent. And any new business buildings tend to go up on the outskirts of towns, and in anonomous surroundings.

This got me to thinking: why not? Where is Italy’s Tate Modern? A few weeks ago I, along with 80,000 others that day, paid 10 euros to see the Colloseum. That adds up to half a million pounds. A day. What are they doing with the money?

A similar situation occurs at Pompeii – 8 euros, and tens of thousands of visitors daily – and at many other similar locations. Italy has more UNESCO heritage sites than the rest of the world put together. Where is all this money going? Italy must have a vast income from its history, and yet it is so conspiciously lacking in modern public monuments. This is worse than a travesty. Whatever the causes – be they corruption, inefficiency, laziness or something else – I can’t help, as an outsider, but see it as a national embarrassment.

It’s reflections like this that have caused me to observe lately, when asked about the matter, that despite the beauty of the country, despite all the fun I’m having, and despite all the nice locals I’ve met, I don’t respect Italy. How can I respect a country whose Prime Minister controls huge swathes of the national media, where nepotism is standard and expected, where corruption is frequent and only thinly veiled, and where vast chunks of money go into the public system but don’t appear to come out anywhere? In many ways this is all the worse in a mature Western democracy; aren’t we past this?

One friend, agreeing with me, pointed out that it seems that I’m not alone: many Italians don’t respect Italy. Certainly the primary idenfication seems to be with the family unit, as I’ve said here before. After that comes the region and only then the nation. This is perhaps inevitable given that the country is so recently united. And maybe it is in fact healthy: once you dig under the impeccably turned-out surface, Italians frequently despare at the grotty details of the state of their nation.

Before I came here, a half-Italian, half-English friend in London told me that Italy was a very insecure country, unsure of its place in the modern world. Certainly it often seems that I get asked “What do you think of our country? Do you like it?” more often here than I did in Bolivia. But a rich, beautiful and significant European nation shouldn’t be angsting over its place in the global village; that’s for small, poor, dictatorship-ravaged South American states. Italy should instead be boldly and confidently asserting itself as a major part of the most evolved continent on the planet. And, with such a fantastic base from which to work, that could so easily mean exciting architectural fusions of the old and the new. So why is there so little of that?

I replied to my friend’s comment by asking if she thought the country’s insecurity was related to the high value placed on la bella figura. She said maybe. I don’t know if there’s a causal relationship between the two, but there’s certainly a metaphoric parrallel. Of course, many people will tell you: if you’re that beautiful, why try harder? After all, everything will come your way eventually. Sadly, I can only conclude there is something of that complacency in the national character. And hence a confusing paradox presents itself: as individuals, they are charming, but as a nation they seem content to sit on their culinary, climatic and cultural riches. That seems so sad.

Hellas Verona are the local side. However a few years ago a local businessman bought Chievo, a team from a nearby suburb, and invested lots of money in the club. In five years they climbed from non-league status to, briefly, lead Serie A. They’re currently mid-table in the top division.

In contrast, since winning the scudetto (The Italian Championship) in 1985 Hellas have been in slow but steady decline. After Friday’s defeat it looks increasingly like they will suffer another relegation and go down to Serie C1.

Inevitably, Hellas fans don’t like Chievo. They see their supporters as fly-by-night glory hunters, whose “We’re nice people from the country just upsetting the apple cart” attitude grates. And, after now having seen both teams play – or, more precisely, having seen both team’s supporters perform – I can see why.

The 10,000 or so people who, last Friday evening, saw their failing team lose a game they should have won made more noise than I’ve heard at almost any of the hundreds of live games I’ve seen in England. In contrast, when I saw Chievo play Inter Milan during the winter the atmosphere was more like English grounds shortly after the introduction of all-seater stadiums: polite hand-clapping, early departures and more talk of nicities than football.

After the game we drove to the nearby town of Villafranca, where a beer festival was taking place inside the grounds of the medivial castle. Unfortuanately Italians know nothing of beer, and in reality it was just a bunch of pretty late-teens drinking standard lager. Having previously tried – and failed – to explain to foreigners what bitter is and why it’s so good I decided not to bother this time. People seem unable to get past the idea that it’s best served at room temperature. Anyway, the night was fun, and I was quite impressed with myself getting through six hours of socialising in Italian, with few problems.

Then on Sunday the beautiful game again showed why it is the global sport, as we headed to the park and our kick-around developed into a international festival of football, with Italy, England, Canada, Ireland, Tunisia, Bulgaria and The Congo all represented. And I can report with glee that the solitary Italian was the worst player on the pitch.

Seven reasons why football is the greatest game on the planet:

• It’s simple; a 3-year-old can understand it. Two goals, one ball, no hands.
• You don’t need any special kit to play. One ball, and two jumpers.
• It looks easy. Everybody thinks they can play.
• A goal matters. They are moments of undistilled joy. Compare with basketball, in which a basket goes in every 20 seconds. Who cares about one more?
• Football games are, mostly, decided when one person ups the level of performance; too many sports wait for moments in which one player or team makes a mistake.
• It’s the perfect non-violent outlet for our natural tribal and competitve instincts.
• Pele.

My landlord is, as we Anglo-Saxons say, a super chap. Not only am I paying under the odds for my lovely, well-located flat on a nice piazza, but he’s always full of advice and suggestions for the places I go to visit and will go out of his way to help.

However yesterday, for the first time, I wasn’t so impressed.

One of our teachers (well, the only other teacher apart from our two bosses; we’re a small school) failed to return from her Easter break in England. Consequently I’ve taken on several of her hours, including a session at the technology school where my landlord works. It’s worth pointing out that this session is with a bunch of 17- and 18-year-olds that have previously fallen out of the education system. My former colleague used to dread the lesson.

Yesterday, before I went off to my 9am lesson (why is my one early start a week on a Friday?), I agreed to go with my landlord to the school to meet a couple of people and for him to show me my way around. It was only as we walked into the classroom, where a bunch of spotty, vacant faces were noisily waiting, did he tell me that he wanted me to teach for 45 minutes. In fact he didn’t even tell me; I had to deduce this for myself:

“Sorry, umm... are you expecting me to teach right now?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Laughs. “Sorry. Look, you only have to show them to this website where they can read stuff in English, or maybe play some music or...”. I wasn’t listening now, but thinking as quickly as I have since the last few minutes of my French GCSE exam. Basically he’d failed to find somebody to fill the first half of this slot and decided the best thing was for me to babysit them for a while; he had somebody for the second half.

“You’ll get paid for it”, he said. I should bloody well hope so, I thought. Why didn’t he just ask me beforehand? I would have said yes, and at least then I’d have had some time to prepare.

So what did I do? Fortuanately for everybody involved I can be rather professional at this job, and I had an activity to hand: I stuck a bunch of words about me up on the board: “San Zeno”, “football and skiing”, “English, Spanish and Italian”, “cooking and photography”, “28”, “London”, “Brighton”, “Mathematics”, “one brother” and “they’re retired” and told them that these were the answers and that I wanted them to write the questions.

Fortuanately that was a success, and I left feeling rather pleased with myself. However on reflection it makes me a bit angry: I have to teach these kids, and starting off with a babysitting session with nothing more than a pretence of English-language learning is only going to lead to trouble down the line. He should have told me, and let me prepare myself.



Taken on the fishing island of Procida.

A few random thoughts.

After a few weeks of erratic weather, summer seems to have arrived. This times the locals, as well as myself, seem to believe it. Many more people were out on the streets as I cycled home yesterday evening; all those outdoor table and chairs that looked so sorry through the winter are now the places to be, and the air is pleasantly warm.

Teaching English damages your writing skills. Creative ways of expressing yourself are sacrificed for simple sentence structures and the commonest, simplest synomyn is normally the one chosen. Grammar errors even creep into one’s own speech, the result of spending your days conversing with people speaking bad English.

The biggest dilemma in my life is how to fund the Master’s degree I want to do. If you can spare some loose change (or a few thousand quid), then please drop me a line.

I’ve stopped missing the shared knowledge of the popular media. I don’t know nor want to know what the big yet trivial stories are back home. In many ways I live in a bubble; away from my home media and, at least previously, unable to understand the media here. But although my Italian is improving fast but I have no desire to tap into the zeitgest here. It’s good this way. The only thing I do wish for is cricket on the radio.

I’m thinking of entering this photography competition. I need to enter a set of eight pictures. I was thinking of calling my entry Reflections of Italy, and using several of my pictures that use reflections. If you have any favourites, let me know. And if you need reminding, just say so and I'll repost them up shortly.

Why...

..are all the girls I fancy in relationships?

..did one student come to school today wearing the shortest skirt with the loveliest pair of legs and sexy little heels?

..did one girl spend 30 minutes flirting with me today (and I know enough to know I didn’t misread it) only for me to find out later, via my boss, that she has a boyfriend?

..does the only female Italian I can ask for inside information on the workings of female Italian mind happen to be the person I’m sleeping with, and therefore a rather inappropriate source of advice?

..do even the English girls I fancy have boyfriends?

..haven’t I met a intelligent, curious, self-aware, gregarious, confident, savvy, sexy and single young girl yet?

After 30 minutes of thinking about what to write about Rome I gave up; I would only recount tourist stories told a thousand times over. Sadly, but predictably, Rome was heaving with us; sufficiently so that I’ve since decided to further minimise my time spent in such hotspots. Despite that I’ve more good pictures of Rome than I have of Naples; testimony to the former’s beauty and the impossiblity – for this amateur anyway – of recording the vibrancy of the latter on celluloid.

However, you may not know that a Nike was an angel that supposedly accompanied Roman emperors on victory parades through the town. One is depicted on the victory arch at the front of the Forum. And the Nike symbol is of said angel’s wings. Fantastic.

My reflections on the colloseum were of awe – at its size – but also pity – at its present state. Having seen how well-preserved the Arena in Verona is – concerts are still played there – it became a pity that – at least while we’re in the building itself – the sound of the colloseum’s audience and the atmosphere of its crucible will only ever exist in our imagination. Fortuanately special effects now do most of the work the mind ever had to and Gladiator brings it all to life, even if it is apparantly littered with historical inaccuracies.

The only thing unique to my trip – or perhaps, sadly, it isn’t so unique – was the awful performance of the Italian railways. However I wouldn’t, sometime in the future, want to reread my thoughts on a lovely Easter holiday and have them marred but a reminder of the farcical details. So I’ll leave those rants and thoughts to another day. And besides, it’s a whole conversation in itself. In the meantime, here’s the early morning spendor of the Roman Forum. How many cities do you know have 2,000 year-old ruins just lying around between their main streets?

I would apologise for the lack of posts lately, but that would require me to ego-centrically believe that people are hanging on for more news of my adventures.

Tomorrow there should be an entry about Rome. In the meantime, here's another photo that you could only take in Italy:

And then, after three days in Napoli, it was off to Rome, but the write-up for that will have to wait.

Veronese reactions to mention of Naples come in two forms, each the inverse of the other. Depending on the bent of the individual, one either hears “Ah, it’s a beautiful city, and you will eat so well (but watch the pickpockets)” or “It’s a crime-infested dirty hell-hole” grudging followed, when pressed, with the acknowledgement that, yeah, the food is great and it’s much more alive than here.

If I were so disposed, my first impressions could have reinforced the second outlook, with the emphasis on the negative. Not only was Piazza Garibaldi noisy, dirty, ugly and hawk-infested (hawk meaning those infernal “good price for you” salesmen, not the birds, obviously), it was also pissing down. I had been transported to another world: where Verona is spacious, Naples was claustraphobic; where Verona is calm Naples was chaotic; where Verona is smart, Naples was urban and where Verona is sunny Naples was, apparantly, wet. I couldn’t wait.

Urban is, for me, the word that best summises the city. Tall overcrowded buildings held up – and sometimes together – by endless scaffolding sit next door to grandoise colonial sea-view apartments. On each corner appears a run-down church or, if not, then a shrine. Or maybe the church is just out-of-view, stuck up on top of – or even underneath – something else. Kids play football under the roofs of wonderful and ornate shopping centres. A day’s wandering had me convinced that I was amongst the condemed, but, wow, what condemnation! One has no choice but to come alive to the sights, the smells and, most obviously, the noises of the city; if you don’t, then you’ll quite literally do the opposite when a scooter – probably carrying three generations of the same family – zooms around a corner and straight over you. Fuck, we were nearly run over by a police car doing a hand-break turn around the corner of a one-way street – in the wrong bloody direction.

Correspondingly, service in the restaurants was curt and simple. On one occasion we were placed sharing a table with a family of three, whom we quickly established must be northerners because we could understand at least some of what they were saying. Unlike us, they weren’t impressed by the large, busy and food-stained waiter asking them what they wanted to drink and then, whilst they dithered, deciding for them: “Half a litre of house red and a bottle of mineral water, yes?”. He had vanished before they could compose themselves sufficiently to reply.

Bean soup, grilled swordfish, fresh artichokes, margherita pizza, linguine with seafood... never have I eaten so well, so consistently and so cheaply. An inventive Neapolitan chef created the pizza in honour of the visit of Queen Margherita and consequently Naples takes the production of the famous dough topped with tomatoes and cheese – the simplest ideas are always the best – very seriously; any place not displaying the vera pizza logo outside is making unwelcome compromises in its cooking, and I suspect that this is one Italian institution that shows an uncharacteristic efficiency in pouncing on members that break its code. My pizza was different to the ones here in Verona – even to those I’ve had in Rome – and, it should be said, even better. Why is Pizza Hut still in business?

Moving on from the pizzeria we found a jazz club. There is – at least during the winter – little live music in Verona and so we revelled in watching a Swing-Jazz group perform an excellent set. The music and even the venue may not have been classically Neapolitan but something must be, and so it was when we realised that the 5-metre wide stage was going to host an 11-piece band, complete with drums and grand piano. They may not have literally been so, but with a low ceiling and brass instruments tooting away from all corners the band, like the buildings of the city, seemed to be playing on top of one another.

The morning after we spurned Capri to go instead to the less visited Procida, a small fishing island a short boat trip from the city. Public transport is by way of the microtaxi, a three-wheeled car/van hybrid, and the peace was a welcome break from the road-runner sounds of whizzing scooters that so quickly became familiar back in the city.



And as for the big tourist attraction... well, you can read about Pompeii anywhere, so all all I’ll add is that it’s much bigger than I expected and the Roman Arena there isn’t as impressive as the one in Verona; indeed, it fits the two city’s personalities that the one in the peaceful town of Verona is less damaged. But I bet the one down south saw more drama.

Back from the south.

Write up to follow tomorrow (probably).

Tomorrow evening I head south to Napoli for the Easter break so this is (probably) the last entry until the middle of next week. We'll be breaking the return trip in Rome. Photos and adventures to follow.

Have fun all.

Back in October I put a picture up of the Roman Arena reflected in the window of the Louis Vuitton shop, which at the time had a picture of J-Lo in it. Well, the model's now changed, so here's a new, but similar, photo.



The Arena is still there, in the bottom-left.

And here is the first photo, to save you having to look in the archives.

This really is a lovely town. Finding myself with an hour to spare on Friday evening I cycled around, took some photos and remembered how charming the place is.

Contrary to what one of my friends (who thinks one of her students is a few words short of a dictionary) says, it is me that teaches The Stupidest Man In The World. (Sometime in, I think, January, I said that “Some students will never speak English well; I feel bad taking their money”. It was this very student, M., that I was thinking of.)

M. wants to do an English exam (the PET, for those that know about these things) this summer. He can’t. He would fail miserably. To contextualise for the British amongst you, it’s wanting to do an AS level in French when you can’t even remember Ou est le poste, s’il vous plait?. He’s only just started to (slowly) learn the past tense, and the exam will probably require him to write 100 words recounting some wacky adventure, in the way language exams are wont to do (students should lose marks for excessive use of the exclamation mark though). I hope they don’t ask him to express something in the future, as he’s never yet studied that. He simply doesn’t know enough grammar or vocab, let alone the necessary speaking and listening skills.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with not speaking a foreign language well (or, indeed, not being that bright), as long as one knows one’s limits. But, by asking to do the PET, M. is showing as much respect for his linguistic limits as the average Italian motorist shows the speed limit. So I did the only thing I could, and told him he wasn’t ready; maybe he could do it in December (I didn’t add “..only if you do a lot more than one hour a week and go to study in England for four weeks in the summer...” although that’s the truth).

Now comes the bit that really pisses me off. When M. came to us in December he did mention that he wanted to do an exam but was remarkably vague about which one, and why. (I would suggest that vagueness was deliberate, but that would be crediting him with a certain nous; some cunning. M. has less cunning than Baldrick.)

Anyway, my boss, after establishing (by deduction) that it was the PET he was refering to, told him he wouldn’t be ready. Still, M. began two one-to-one lessons a week with me. He soon changed to one, but he does work hard, if slowly.

Now, late on Tuesday, after I’d told him he shouldn’t do the exam, his mother phoned the school to, it seems, shout abuse at my boss: “You’ve taken our money under false pretenses” and “M. phoned all the schools and you were the only ones who guaranteed results” (does “You won’t be ready for the exam” sound like guaranteeing results?) were just two choice pieces. I wasn’t there, but my boss reports her as “a vile women” and actually thinks that the “false pretenses” remark is a veiled reference that we should be using the money they’ve given us to pay off the examiners. It turns out that the little fucker told his mum we did make promises, and she’s believed it. But, of course, her boy wouldn’t dare lie, would he? So it must be our fault the lad isn’t fluent after 18 one-hour lessons.

Anyway, despite my boss saying quite clearly that he won’t pass, the mother insisted he get entered for the exam. So entered he has been and I have eight further one hour sessions to teach a goldfish how to fly.

Now, dear reader, what picture do you have of our friend M.? Spotty, pale and timid 14-year-old? Long-haired rebelious gothic-loving late teen? Wrong on both counts, and nowhere near. He’s a 28-year-old fucking man. He’s been an undergraduate for 10 years (and so must have failed several years running) and needs this exam to graduate in November. Of course, like all Italian men who haven’t yet found their wife, he lives under his parent’s roof and wouldn’t know a simmer from a saucepan. So it’s here, it’s now, it’s at this point – when Italian Mummy’s Boys disguised as men would rather lie to their parents than take a hold of their own lives – that I fail to understand Italy, and I’m finally lost for words.

"You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time" and its retort "You can fool all of the people all of the time if the advertising is right and the budget big enough" were just two of the quotes that appeared on a worksheet on April Fool's Day that I used in some of my lessons today.

I think the second one is funny, as were some of the others: "If you wish to avoid seeing a fool, you must first break your mirror", and, from Groucho Marx, "You have the brain of a four-year-old boy, and I bet he was glad to get rid of it". However, having matched the beginnings and endings of these quotes, most of my students just shrugged their shoulders, not, apparently, seeing the humour. Fools.

In contrast, the Italian version of April Fool's Day - pesce d'aprile - involves, for reasons nobody can explain to me, fish. Apparantly the big joke in Italian schools is to stick a fish shape on people's backs. And indeed, I did see a couple of cars with cardboard fish stuck to them whilst cycling through town today. Hilarious. And we're the ones with the strange sense of humour?