On The Road - Vigevano

This post is the beginning of a series of monthly travel articles inspired by a recent New York Times article on 31 places to see in 2010. Most of the towns are small, all are rich in history and art and for the most part they are off the beaten track which, for me, makes them all the more interesting.

VIGEVANO, Italy - Call me a romantic fool but you gotta love a guy who builds (or rebuilds) himself a castle for his 40th birthday. It just goes to show what money and power can do. In this case the money and the power was in the hands of the 15th century Duke of Milan, Ludovico Maria Sforza, known as il Moro, the Moor.

The birthday castle is in Vigevano, a half hour train ride from Milan. The town is usually quiet but today the main piazza is buzzing with activity having been taken over by an Italian film crew.

“They’re filming a television commercial for a new Italian travel magazine,” says the woman standing next to me. “It’s about Vigevano,” she says pointing to an old man dressed in a Renaissance costume.

Ten minutes later nothing much is happening so I walk across the black and white stone piazza and go up the stairs that are under a tall clock tower designed by Donato Bramante. At the top there is a wide expanse of grass and across the way is the brick castle, solid and massive and more fort like than fanciful. The Duke hired Bramante, who had just finished St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, to bring the 12th century Vigevano castle up to 15th century standards. What you see today is the result of Bramante's genius.

Part of the renovation included a separate residence wing behind the main section of the castle for the Duke’s bride-to-be, Beatrice d’Este of Ferrara. Separate quarters were normal as there was no concept of romantic love between husband and wife during the Renaissance. Beatrice, like most wealthy young women of her time, was no more than a marriageable pawn used to create alliances between powerful families.

She was only five years old when the Duke made the deal to marry her, and her dowry of four hundred thousand gold ducats, (valued at close to $1 million in pre-World War I dollars when the ducat was still a viable currency) no doubt sweetened the pot. Beatrice and the Duke were married in January of 1491. The bride was sixteen, the groom, thirty-nine.

Walking around the main part of the castle I go through a tall arched door and find myself on a wide covered road. Above my head, mammoth wooden beams criss-cross the vaulted dome, and the only light comes from the narrow windows placed close to the ceiling.

During World War II when the Germans commandeered the castle to use as their headquarters, they used this road to drive their trucks and tanks right into the castle compound. Pretty amazing when you consider the road was built by hand in 1345. It is still used daily by locals as a shortcut through town.

Across the grassy courtyard from the castle sits a long, low building that once housed the horses for the Duke’s army of 1000 mercenaries. It was designed by Leonardo da Vinci. Inside, there are two long rows of evenly spaced marble columns that mark the edge of the stalls and flank a center foot path.

To this day no one has been able to figure out how Leonardo managed to raise those massive columns all in one piece. It had never been done before. The only clue is the three round indentations, each about the size of a quarter, near the base of the columns. Some experts think they were made by a machine Leonardo invented specifically for the task. But it’s only speculation.

With the Duke in residence Vigevano became a thriving commercial center. Twice a week a general market was held in the main piazza. Local farmers sold fruits and vegetables, poultry and pigs and merchants sold the wool and silk produced in and around Vigevano. Public executions were held there as well.

If you were condemned for sodomy, the most serious crime of the day, you were burned at the stake. The wood for the fire was carried in from the nearby woods by harlots who were then publicly charged with the lesser crime of prostitution, and hanged. And while they waited for the executions to begin the locals shopped, visited with neighbors and caught up on the latest gossip. Locals still shop at the weekly market, the hangings however, have been discontinued.

The Duke considered Vigevano an example of Leonard’s “ideal” city and there are many similarities between the sketches found in Leonardo’s Atlantic Codex and the Vigevano castle and piazza. Apart from the visual perfection of the piazza, two things that stand out are the oddly shaped chimneys, which are merely decorative, and the black and white stones under your feet, which are a local industry.

The stones come from the nearby Ticino River where stone collectors, wearing thigh high rubber boots, wade into the water and scan the bottom for stones of a certain size and color. They put the best ones into a small boat they pull along behind them as they work.

The stones were once carried in hand woven straw baskets tied to the backs of mules through the mountains and valleys of northern Italy to decorate piazzas in towns as close Genoa and as far away as Venice. In the 14th century, a Venetian craftsman discovered that by adding ground up white pebbles from the Ticino River to a soda ash solution he was able to filter out the impurities in Venetian glass. The glassmakers of Murano rejoiced for that breakthrough launched the Venetian glassmaking industry.

An afternoon visit to the castle, a leisurely aperitif under the porticos that ring the piazza, will put you in the company of generations of Vigevanesi. It’s a different kind of Italian experience not found in any guide book. It’s the quiet discovery of the Italy Italians enjoy.

Photos: (1) A corner of Vigevano's Main Piazza; (2) Bramante’s Tower; (3)Leonardo da Vinci's Stable; (4) Collecting Stones One by One

p.s. At the Vigevano Castle: Leonardo da Vinci's output during his time in Lombardy; 'virtual codex' on flying, botany, mathematics, weaponry, astronomy, engineering and architecture; until April 5.

Auntie Pasta - The Joy of Cooking Italian

It’s taken me a while to get the hang of Italian recipes even though I’ve been cooking for – I don’t even want to tell you how many years. I’ve finally come to the conclusion that Italians must have an extra gene, a special cucina gene that I am missing. The recipes call for a lot of food knowledge and in typical Italian fashion they can be extremely detailed and deliberately vague at the same time.

I’m finally comfortable buying by the etto, gram and kilo, but there are other measurements based on things like wine glasses and desert spoons that I still don’t get. When a recipe calls for a wine glass of heavy cream do they mean a wine glass like my cousin Jimmy uses which is about the size of a Slurpy cup, or a wine glass like my Aunt Louise uses, which is more like a thimble?

Just as I sat mesmerized by Julia Childs back in the 70’s, watching her fumble through dishes I still can’t pronounce, I now sit mesmerized by a group of young Italian chefs on cable TV. Like Julia Childs, they tend to stick to traditional recipes, and make them pretty much the same way their mothers and grandmothers do.

My current favorite is Mario Bacherini. The thing I like about him is that he always gives you a little background on the origin of the recipe. And he explains things. For example I’ve learned that a pizzico of salt is the amount you can pick up with two fingers. But if a recipe calls for una presa of salt, that is the amount you can pick up with four fingers.

The abbreviations are another story. My personal favorite is q.b. quanto basta, or to taste. Lots of ingredients are q.b. but don’t fall into the trap of thinking Italians are lackadaisical about these things because that kind of thinking will get you into trouble.

I have given sets of American measuring cups to some of my Italian friends who love American cookies, especially Brownies, and want to make them at home. They think the cups are cute but totally useless. They translate my recipes into grams and liters and all the rest and make whatever changes they think are necessary. Then they bake them in an oven heated to 175 degrees Celsius and yum, real American cookies. They want my recipe for pie crust too but there is nothing here that even comes close to Crisco and I’m not parting with even one pizzico of my coveted supply.

I once made the mistake of buying an Italian cookbook that had been translated into British English. Some of the ingredients called for in the recipes were: caster sugar, bunches of aromas, lacetto and matured cottage cheese. I finally figured out that caster sugar is just British English for regular white sugar and bunches of aromas are bouquet garni, but I confess I still don’t have a clue what lacetto or matured cottage cheese is.

One recipe in the book called for 400 grams of cuttlefish and a few ink sacks. I guess they sell ink sacks at some fish stores but not at my fish store. Maybe it’s a special order. And then there was the recipe that started with: pluck and clean the pheasant. Remove the head, feet and giblets and singe the bird. Then cut it into four parts. This is scary stuff to me. We may speak the same language but we were starting from two completely different points of view.

But in the end, thanks to Mario, I’ve learned that even the most complicated dishes are really not difficult, they just sound that way. And as for the measurements, well you know what they say: when in Rome do as the Romans do, or in my case, I do whatever Mario does.

Photos:(1) Mario Bacherini:(2,3,)Learning to cook step by step: (4)Chef Mariangela Susigan, Michelin star chef of Gardenia Restaurant, Caluso (TO).

The Wonderful World of Language

 Saronno, Italy

SARONNO, Italy - Just the other day I was cleaning out my desk when I came across an interview Madonna gave to the Hungarian newspaper Blikk when she was in Budapest filming Evita. The questions were asked in Hungarian and then translated into English. Madonna answered in English and her answers were translated first into Hungarian and then retranslated from Hungarian back into English. Here’s a sample.

Blikk: Madonna, Budapest says hello with arms that are spread-eagled. Did you have a visit here that was agreeable? Are you in good odor? You are the biggest fan of our young people who hear your musical productions and like to move their bodies in response.

Madonna: Thank you for saying these compliments. Please stop with taking sensationalist photographs until I have removed my garments for all to see. This is a joke I have made.

Blikk: Madonna, let’s cut toward the hunt. Are you a bold hussy-woman that feasts on men who are tops?

Madonna: Yes, yes this is certainly something that brings to the surface my longings. In America it is not considered to be mentally ill when a woman advances on her prey in a discothèque setting with hardy cocktails present. And there is a more normal attitude toward leather play toys that also makes my day.

Blikk: Is this how you met Carlos, your love servant who is reputed? Did you know he was heaven-sent right off the stick? Or were you dating many other people in your bed at the same time?

Those of us who struggle with a foreign language on a daily basis can well appreciate the obvious difficulties the translator had with English, especially the idioms. But it works both ways. One of the persistent problems I have with Italian is trying to decipher the sex of things. For example, la tazza, the cup, is feminine, but il piatto, a plate is masculine, and why?

Italians are not very sympathetic to my problem as they have their own issues with English. While it is natural for them to assign a sex to a shoe (feminine) or a book (masculine), and to have a special word for everything (fuoco = fire, but incendio = on fire) they want to know why English uses the same words over and over again to mean different things? Maybe the answer is for the opposite reason Italians say perchè, poichè, che, giachhè or sicome when all they really want to say is because.

And the contradictions, they lament. Why do you Americans say ‘wish you were here’ when you are talking about the present? And if Sam asks you if you are hungry while you are talking to your mother and you tell her what Sam said, why do you have to say ‘Sam asked me if I was hungry,’ when Sam is asking you now and you are answering now and yes, you are hungry now?

And why do you insist on talking about the present in the past, they want to know. No wonder we Italians get confused. And if that were not bad enough, you also have the nasty habit of talking about the future in the present. The train leaves tomorrow morning at 7 AM. Don’t you really want to say the train is going to leave?

Wait just a second I say. Italian is not so clear either. The ino, etto, otto business is enough to drive anyone to drink. A gatto is a cat, but a gattino is a kitten. A giovane is a young man, but a giovanotto is a younger young man than a giovane. Sometimes you can put two endings together, like otto and ino as in giovanottino. Then you have a really young man who is younger than a young man, or do you?

Then there is one, which conveys a sense of largeness, as in the word bacione, a big kiss, as opposed to bacio, which is just a regular size kiss. However, when you add one to some words they go through a sex change. Take the feminine noun, la donna, the woman. To say a big woman it becomes il donnone. Does that mean that the big woman is no longer female? Beats me.

It’s the same with la palla, the ball. If you add one to la palla (feminine) it becomes il pallone (masculine) but if there is more than one ball, then it’s le palle, (feminine) which, as you probably know becomes the basis of that Italianisma saying, ma, che palle, that only has a little bit to do with playing ball and absolutely nothing to do with being feminine.

My Italian friends tell me I am obsessed with terrorists, but surely this is a terrorist plot to keep me from understanding what is going on. I don’t even want to get into what I like and what is pleasing to me and what you like and what is pleasing to you, although if you want to talk about it a little later it just might be pleasing to both of us.

The Befana

I was in the grocery store the other day when a little kid, about 5 years old, said to me, “what are those?” He was pointing to a display of rather ugly Befana witches hanging in a prominent point of sale position near the checkout counter.

“Witches,” I said. His eyed widened and I could see that he was afraid of them, so I quickly added, “but they are good witches.”

I thought it an odd question but when he backed up against his mother I realized they were not Italian but South American. And from the look on his face I’m sure his mother is going to have to do a lot of explaining over the next few days.

The litttle boy probably knows the Epiphany as el Dia de los Tres Reyes, or la Fiesta de Reyes. It isn't surprising that he never heard of the Befana as the Befana is a uniquely Italian creation. She was originally a pagan Goddess, I'm guessing Strenia since the word for gifts in Italian is strega, and like many other Roman Gods and Goddesses this pagan Goddess was gradually incorporated into Christianity.

The Christian story is that the Befana gave shelter to the three Wise Men who were on their way to see the Baby Jesus. They wanted her to go with them but she refused. Then she changed her mind, but by then it was too late. So to make up for it she began bringing sweets and gifts to children which she puts in the stockings they hang up the night of January 5. The next day, January 6 is the Epiphany, the end of the Christmas season, the last of the 12 days of Christmas we all sing about.

I remember my father telling me how thrilled he used to be to find an orange among the goodies in his stocking on the morning of the Epiphany. That was in the pre iPod, Gameboy Italy of the early 1900’s. An orange may not be as special now as it was a hundred years ago but other things never change. For the past few weeks I’ve passed many a mother and grandmother sing songing this rhyme to their little ones:

“la Befana vien di notte con le scarpe tutte rotte, con un sacco pien di doni da portare ai bimbi buoni.”

Loosely translated it says, the Befana comes at night with broken shoes and a bag full of presents to give to good children. What it doesn’t say is that if they are not good all they will find in their stocking is a lump of coal. And the kids know this is true because lumps of the stuff are on sale everywhere. And who knows how the Befana spends her time between Epiphanies, maybe she makes all that sugar coal herself, or ….

There are a lot of things we don’t know. For example, sometimes she flies in on a broom and comes down the chimney, but then again she may come on a donkey and get in through the keyhole. You never know so you might want to leave a few carrots on the windowsill just in case. After all, she is a witch.

Photos: The Befana and her stash of coal, Filling a Epiphany stocking; A more gentle Befana

It's a New Day, It's a New Year

It’s New Year’s Day 2010. The morning talk show hosts are all reminiscing about the year that was, the stars that died and celebrating the fact that Spumante, Italy’s favorite sparkling wine, outsold French champagne in the U.S.A. in 2009.

The other thing they are talking about are horoscopes. According to the star gazers I’m going to have a very good, very profitable and interesting year. I think they always say that, but it makes me hopeful and I think that is the whole idea.

What they never talk about are New Year’s Resolutions. The Italians don’t know what they are, although they do talk about New Year’s Wishes. It’s almost the same thing, but not exactly. They wish for things and we work toward things, but it is close enough.

My New Year’s Resolutions for 2010 are few and fairly simple.

Resolution No. 1.

I want to travel more this year, do a bit more exploring. There are quite a few places in Italy that I have never visited like the town of Aosta in the mountainous northwestern corner of Italy, near the French border. Aosta fascinates me but I’m not sure why. It’s an old Roman town, founded 25 years before Christ was born, but there are many towns in Italy that have Roman roots including Saronno. For some reason I’ve had this Aosta itch for a number of few years now and 2010 definitely seems like the year to scratch it.

Resolution No. 2.

I want to write a book with my daughter. Maybe we will travel together this year and write an “On the Road” book. She is infinitely curious about people and place and things and wonderfully attuned to the world around her. And apart from the fact that she is such good company and always up for an adventure ….. she likes to drive.

Resolution No. 3.

I would like this baby blog to grow into a full blown web site and take on a life of its own. I want to see it all grown up with podcasts and video clips and all the bells and whistles this technology offers.

If I can accomplish those three things it really will be a very good year, maybe not profitable but definitely interesting.

Photos: (1)The bell tower of Sant’ Orso in Aosta (2) The Roman theatre in Aosta

Buon Anno a Tutti

SARONNO, Italy - New Year’s Eve always conjures up memories of my first New Year’s Eve in Milan. I hadn’t lived in the city very long, having recently moved from the swaying palm trees and blue Mediterranean Sea of the Riviera to the industrial north. My new apartment was in a densely populated part of town, a well kept working class neighborhood.

At the stroke of midnight rockets started flying off the balconies of the apartment buildings on my street. With fireworks whistling through the air before exploding, first from one side and then the other, it sounded like we were under attack. Everyone seemed to be competing with everyone else as to who could launch the biggest bang, and of course they were all out on their balconies drinking Spumante and yelling and cheering as the fireworks sailed through the air and exploded.

A friend of mine had come over for dinner, a single American in Milan like me, and while we were fascinated with the spectacle before us, I kept pulling her back into the apartment because I was afraid that one of the rockets was going to hit us.

Instead what was hit was another balcony in my building, on the floor below me. The apartment was closed up tight as the young couple who lived there were away spending the holidays with their families. Whatever they had left out on their balcony, probably newspapers, had caught on fire.

I remember screaming ‘fuoco’, ‘fuoco’, which is the word for fire but not the right word for that kind of fire, and waving my arms in the air at the people who lived in the apartment above the one that was on fire. They very neighborly waved back and raised their glasses of Spumante* and probably called out Happy New Year, but all I could hear was the whistling and exploding fireworks.

I kept shouting and shaking my head no and waving my arms and pointing to the balcony below them and finally they looked over and saw the flames. They froze. It was like the film had stopped. They ran back into their apartment and got some bottles of mineral water and leaning over their balcony they began trying to pour the water on the flames. At that point the flames were pretty high so they had to run in and out of their apartment dozens of times to refill those plastic 2 liter bottles. They did eventually manage to put the fire out without the help of the fire department. Linda and I let out a collective sigh of relief and went back in, poured ourselves a big glass of Scotch and just sat there, stunned.

So far this week the Carabineri have confiscated 50 tons of illegal fireworks, mostly made in China. The daily talk shows talk on ad nauseum about the dangers of playing around with the illegal poppers and rockets, and show photos of those who have lost hands and eyes, and even died but the warnings fall on deaf ears.

So once again the headlines on January 1, 2010 will be the number of accidents and deaths involving illegal fireworks, and the only thing that will have changed is the date.

Photos: Sparkling Spumante wine; View from my Milan balcony

When The Weather Outside is Frightful

SARONNO, Italy - It snowed in Saronno last week and the town was paralyzed. It's not that we don't have snow plows, we do, even if they remind me of toy Tonka trucks. And they do clean some of the streets some of the time, but in general the snow policy is to ignore it. It will all melt in a day or two anyway, so why stress about it.

The storm dropped about 4 or 5 inches of snow, which may be an all time record. A few of my neighbors were doing their best to clean off their cars, but this isn’t an area that has a lot of experience with snow storms so they don’t have a lot to work with. From my balcony I watched the woman across the street trying to clean her car off with a plastic dust pan. Some of the men were using brooms, which as a snow removal tool is probably better than the dust pan, but their technique left a lot to be desired. Call me judgmental if you want, but I grew up in upstate New York, close to where the U.S. Army does its Arctic training, so if there is anything I know about, it’s snow.

A few years back, after another not particularly heavy snow storm, the city of Milan hired a few North Africans to clean off the sidewalks. They were working in groups of four and five and it was obvious they had never tackled this kind of problem before. Dressed in traditional hooded djellabas and armed with Italian twig brooms, the kind witches ride, they were fluffing the snow this way and that, everywhere but off the sidewalk. This year 800 soldiers were brought in to do the job.

And speaking of Milan, after last week's storm all hell broke loose. Commuters at Milan’s Central train station waiting to board the train for Lecco got fed up with all of the delays and stormed the train. And passengers waiting for a train to Puglia became so frustrated a scuffle broke out and the police had to be called in.

In another incident eight hundred passengers on a train coming into Milan from the hinterland were held up for six hours due to a break in an electrical line. With no electricity the train’s heating system couldn’t function and emergency medical crews had to intervene.

Even the newly launched much publicized high speed train the Freccia Rossa, the Red Arrow, was brought to its knees by the weather and had to be towed into the Parma train station by an old diesel engine. The three hundred passengers on-board sat on the track in the middle of nowhere with little or no heat for four hours until they were rescued.

The situation was so bad the train engineers wrote an open letter of apology to the public in which they said they were embarrassed by the offensive and insensitive behavior of the train company management toward passengers. In uncharacteristic bluntness the engineers said that the FFS – Ferrovie dello Stato, the State run train company is full of executives and managers who have chosen to simply obey the government’s directives even when the objectives are wrong and sometimes dangerous. They even pointed a finger directly at the CEO of the FFS, Mauro Moretti, saying that instead of apologizing to the public and removing the people responsible for the problem he chose to attack everyone including the passengers, the newspapers and the train engineers.

Traveling by train has always been one of the best ways to get around Italy but it has become less of a pleasure and more of a chore these past few years. When I wrote for the New York fashion newspaper Women’s Wear Daily, many of the shows I covered were not in Milan. I often traveled to Florence and Bologna and beyond and I witnessed the gradual decline in quality and service. My hope for 2010 is that the train engineers get their wish. In the meantime, the beat goes on.

Photo: 19th century painting of Milan’s Porta Ticinese under the snow by Anonimo.