A Week of Firsts

I had a bunch of “firsts” this week . . .

On Sunday I ran my first half-marathon. I liked it. Tough, though: It was, effectively, 12 km UP the mountain, and then 9 km DOWN the mountain! It was beautiful: I could see snow-capped peaks in the distance and river valleys below. I did pretty well, won some cheese, and some guy gave me a salami.

On Monday I cooked my first risotto. It’s basically rice, but – at least if you make it well – there are three things that elevate it to all-star status in my book. First, it gets a lot of flavor from whatever vegetables you use. You sauté the vegetables – lots of ‘em – at the beginning, and they create a good broth. (At least, that’s what I do. The Italians do whatever they can to make it unhealthy. Butter. Pig fat. Probably some disgusting fatty meat product if it’s on hand. Which it always is.) Second, you use arborio rice, which is very starchy and kind of disintegrates a bit when you cook it. That gives the risotto a “creamy” texture. And the third thing is that instead of putting all the water (or broth, or wine, or whatever you’re using as liquid) at once, you “give the rice only what it needs,” adding the liquid little by little and stirring regularly. On Monday I made a zucchini risotto, and I liked it so much that I made another risotto yesterday – this time with mushrooms. Next on my list: risotto with butternut squash!

And on Tuesday I gutted my first fish. Yeah, it was pretty gross. I need to wander over to Google videos to figure out what all that stuff in there was. In any case, I figured that if I’m going to be a good cook, I better start gutting fish. The experiment turned out well. After gutting the fish, I filled its belly with the top parts of a fennel stalk, a little salt, and a little lemon juice, wrapped it in foil, and put it in the oven. I’ll definitely repeat.

And, not related at all to my week of firsts, here’s a photo I shot in Piazza Maggiore. I love this pic. Check out the way Cop #2’s cap is tilted – straight out of a ‘50s TV series!

Made in Italy

The Italians have good food. No question, right? But I’m getting a little tired of the “Made in the Italy” arrogance. Yesterday and today I’ve had a series of amusing moments all centered on the same theme: “In Italy, we eat well. And definitely better than you.”

Last night, I went to an Italian farmhouse for a contadino meal. It was lots of fun: they roasted meat on a grate in the fireplace, and the wine flowed freely. I knew they’d try to make me eat all kinds of fatty meats, and – all right, that’s what I expected, I wanted to sample them, and then basta! (Enough!) Really, I wanted to taste them, and a taste is all I needed. But it’s definitely not all the Italians need.

The entire meal consisted of fatty meats. First course, cured meats: Ciccioli, coppa di testa, salsiccia curata, salame. Second course, cooked meats: salsiccia mata, salsiccia fresca, pancetta, ribs, and I’m probably leaving something out. The pig is 95% useable, and, believe me – they use it. In any case, there were – I’m counting – at the very least eight different kinds of fatty meats. As I said, a bite works for me. But everyone else there, including women and children, devoured entire plates of the “appetizers,” ate a full piece of each of the cooked meats, and then asked for “seconds”! (Or would it be “ninths”?) Incredible! And disgusting, in my opinion. But, amazingly enough, and perhaps assisted by Bacchus in my noble quest for tolerance and open-mindedness, I wasn’t feeling judgmental last night. If they want to eat a diet consisting entirely of saturated fat, great, go for it. (Just as long as they don’t make me do it!)

That is, until the entire conversation turned into the usual pedagogy about how Italian food is so much superior to American food and hence Italians are so much superior to Americans. (Note the P-implies-Q causality: food is so important here that it really is a “hence.”) I figured – ho! – that, at least this time (this is a conversation that I have – or that people have on me, really, every day) they’d launch the battle on the gourmandize front. But no! In fact, we moved quickly to the health front, and the entire room agreed that the “Healthy Mediterranean Diet,” (“consisting largely of fruits, vegetables, and pasta”), shamed what Americans eat every day, which is, obviously, three meals consisting exclusively of McDonald’s hamburgers. They also said, in these exact words, “Now, you seem very thin, but all the rest of Americans are obese. Right?” I repeat: I was the only person in the room who wasn’t at least 40 pounds overweight!

No one – except for me, and I was content to amuse myself, again with Bacco’s help, by having a director’s-version conversation inside my head – seemed to note the riotous irony of the situation: A roomful of fat, slow-moving Italians devouring five pounds each of the fattiest meats you could ever find were expounding on the superior health characteristics of their diet.

That reminds me that, also yesterday, when I was at the market, the man in front of me bought two kilos of oranges. Great, good for him! Then he started to make conversation with the fruit man. “I have a ‘subscription,’” he said. “Six oranges a day. Three in the morning, and three after dinner.” I really am not being critical of this practice: six oranges a day, way to go! I just use it to illustrate the fact that nothing here is done in moderation: if you’re going to eat oranges, you’re not going to eat an orange, you’re going to eat six. And besides, from the looks of the guy, I think he also had a “subscription” to cookies.

Then today I read an article in a running magazine that included this exact phrase: “A healthy diet should include lean meats (such as Prosciutto di Parma, DOP) . . .” If prosciutto is lean, I’d really like to know what fits into the fatty category. Apparently, though, if you know where it comes from (that’s the DOP label), it’s all of sudden perfectly healthy? It’s kind of like that other theory some people have: if you bake a cake, and eat the entire thing, but in small bites right from the cake pan, and never actually take a piece on a separate plate, it’s actually the same as not eating it.

And then, also today, I heard a radio advertisement featuring a famous soccer player. “Your health is too serious to play with. That’s why I feed my team a healthy breakfast every morning: fresh milk, in-season fruit, bread, and Nutella.” If you’re not familiar with Nutella, it’s like chocolate peanut butter; its ingredients, in order of appearance, are “sugar, peanut oil, hazelnuts, cocoa, skim milk, and a bunch of chemicals.” I agree that fresh milk and fruit do constitute part of a healthy breakfast, but would anyone ever consider it ethical to advertise, say, cheesecake, as a healthy snack because you serve it with two raspberries on top?

And then I read another publication, a health booklet published by the Italian Association of Dietetics and Nutrition, and I found the standard “health pyramid.” But wait a minute! The health pyramid isn’t actually standard. This was the “Italian Food Pyramid,” labeled just like that. In this health pyramid, they actually include cookies in the same (recommended) category as pasta, rice, bread, and potatoes. They don’t make any distinction between whole grain and refined-grain products, probably because whole grain products don’t exist here. And, also notably, “Oils and Fats” are more highly recommendable than “Milk and Yogurt.” I can’t be the only person who thinks such a recommendation is absurd. I’m a pretty big fan of the scientific method; is laboratory science in Italy considerably different than that in the United States, or do they just not pay any attention to it? I’m going with the latter, especially since I’ve given up discussing the improbability that, for example, not drying my hair will give me a permanent neck ailment, or that not wearing a scarf will translate directly into a soar throat. In any case, I haven’t seen any studies lately that say, “You know, you should really think about eliminating skim milk from your diet. How about some lard instead? Oh, and . . . yep, here’s another problem. Doesn’t look like you’re getting enough cookies.”

I’m not saying that the Italians shouldn’t eat like crap. If that's what gets them going – and does it ever! – right on, they should go all out. But I am saying that they should look at themselves a bit more objectively, and that they should somersault right off that high horse they’re riding.

How I Became Italian

Saturday I took a major step in becoming Italian: I stopped playing fair, thought only about myself, broke the rules, and got what I wanted. I ran in the middle of the street and didn’t worry that I was pissing off the car behind me. I cut in line – in major fashion – at the film festival, elbowed my way to the front, and got one of the last tickets. And, best of all, I brought a plastic bag with me to the movies and rustled it as much as I could.

In fact, I think I’m going to repeat these activities intentionally next weekend, so as to reinforce the Italianization process. It’s still not quite natural for me: I’m starting to be rude and self-important (though still not fashionable), but I still feel guilty about it. I’m thinking that if I keep up the effort, though, I’ll be able act entirely without thinking about anyone else, with entire self-absorption, and with no Catholic guilt!

Sarcasm aside – ha! had you there! It’s almost back. – I have to go back in time a little to get back to today.

The Cineteca of Bologna is an awesome institution, and it’s always doing cool film series and hosting film festivals. (It’s the best. Every city should have a Cineteca!) Right now is the Human Rights Film Festival, and I’m trying to catch as many films as I can. I think there’s something wrong about the Human Rights Film Festival being the catalyst and place of my conversion to self-centered rudeness, but there you have it.

I went to a film the other night with my friend. Naturally, there was a line a half hour long, not because there were so many people, but because, despite the prestige and international character of the event, it was taking place in Italy and therefore had to impose a disorganization, and lines. There was a single person issuing tickets, and, this is great: You needed to buy not only a ticket for the film, but also a membership card – I told you, they’re huge! – to the Cineteca, which, interestingly, doesn’t ordinarily require a membership card. But not only that! You had to choose which type of membership card you wanted, and then determine whether you qualified for one of the discounts: Student? Member of the Food Coop? Patron of UniCredit Bank? And so on. So every single person in line got to the front, squinted at a full page of 8-point pica print describing the various membership options, and, after half an hour, stumbled away with his ticket (and brand new membership card). So then everyone got into the theater, the event started half an hour late, and the director introduced the film. They started the film, and, then – fifteen minutes later – realized that – whoops! – it’s the wrong film! (How do you get fifteen minutes into a film which the director has just introduced without realizing it’s the wrong film?) Ok, it can happen. Maybe. They stopped the film, and two of the festival directors went to the front to say, “Sorry. Wrong film.” And this was great, just classic: one director did that thing where you kind of shrug your shoulders, flop your arms out to the side, cock your head, and scrunch up half of your face, and she said, “So . . . do you guys want to continue with this film, or should we change to the scheduled film?” The 200 people in the audience were (surprisingly?) not of one mind or voice, and so the other guy repeated the question. People in the audience started shouting . . . This one! That one! Then they started negotiating: “If we play the one that’s supposed to run tomorrow today, can we play the one that’s supposed to run today tomorrow?” Just imagine if you went to the Regal to see Top Gun, and the cinema people told you, “Oh, sorry. Turns out we actually played Top Gun yesterday. Today . . . let’s see . . . yep. We’ve replaced it with Brer Rabbit and the Briar Patch. Another great film!” Actually, if the equivalent holds, it would be a beautiful, stylish, 25-year-old girl or guy telling you this, and you’d probably obediently buy a (supersized) popcorn with extra butter and settle down to an evening of Disney enjoyment. But that’s not the point. I went with an Italian friend, and his analysis of the situation was right on target: “Only in Italy! I guess this could happen anywhere. You put on the wrong film. Ok, it might happen. But only in Italy would we consult the audience and say, ‘Shoot. What do you think we should do now?’”

All this is to point out several key characteristics of Italian living: Organization is always horrendous, you always need a membership card, there will always be a line, and the people around you will always look tremendous.

Back to today, finally. It was a fantastic, full of great things. That’s the thing: It’s disorganized and there’s a line – but if you can parse your way through the disorganization and work your way to the front of the line, Italy is fantastic. The first thing I did today was attend a program at the Archeological Museum about the alimentary habits of the Etruscans, which was, naturally, followed by a tasting. (Which, also naturally, involved a long line. I’m becoming very literate: I’ve learned never to go anywhere without a book.)

The lecture was awesome, but almost as impressive was the concentration of the Rude Fashionable Old Italian Ladies. It was like an RFOIL convention. If you’re at all attentive, you can spot an RFOIL ahead of time based on visual clues, but I wasn’t so attentive upon my arrival and hence had chosen a seat located in a zone of particularly high RFOIL concentration. I knew this several minutes into the lecture when my (fairly low) aural skills started to pick up on a crinkling, which soon escalated to levels you might find in, say, a plastic bag factory. (I assume they make plastic bags in a plastic bag factory? I’ve never really thought about it before.)

The RFOIL is an Italian institution, and, as I said, she’s easy to spot. She’s an over-65, but she’s made-up to seem, say, “dating age.” This always includes pointed, high-heeled shoes, a fashion scarf, lots of makeup, and – the giveaway – an enormous fashion handbag. I use the word handbag, even though I’m not from New England, because the size of this “accessory” disqualifies it on a purely philological level from inclusion in the purse category. I want to make friends with an RFOIL so I can see what on earth goes into these handbags. As best I can tell, there are just layers and layers of plastic bags. Maybe these ladies are all on their way to the recycling center.

Of course, it’s not really just plastic bags: I know there are also a few other items. A cell phone, for example, which is never turned off, and which is programmed to sound in the middle of the concert. A few other wallets. For example, one might be for cash bills, another for coins, and another for ID cards. All together, they’re kind of like a matrioska doll. This means that, if you are at the supermarket, in line – after waiting a half hour, naturally – you will arrive at the front, and the old lady one person ahead of you will take the ol’ digging-in-the-purse-for-the-exact-change routine to a whole new level. She’ll get to the front. Wait for the cashier to tell her the bill. Surpise! Time to pay! (Oh!? Now?) She’ll dig in the handbag to find the change purse. Open it up, dig around . . . oh, no! Silly me, that’s the ID card purse. Dig around in the giant black-hole handbag some more. Pull out the wallet-purse. Dig around in the wallet-purse to pull out the (even smaller) change purse. And then dig around to find eighty-seven euro-cents, exactly.

Right, so I know there’s a cell phone and a series of purses-within-purses. There is also a supply of hard candy, all packaged in a complex telescoping (like the purses) plastic wrappers. This is how you find an RFOIL in public: You listen for the plastic wrappers. If you’re worried that your sense of hearing isn’t especially keen, or that you’ll “miss the moment” while distracted: Don’t. You can’t miss it. Once unleashed, the RFOIL will dig through her purse for the entire performance. First for the cell phone (because it’s going off right now, and playing Like a Virgin). Then for the change purse. And finally for the plastic wrapper. I mean the candy. No, on second thought, I think it actually is the plastic wrapper she’s going for. Wrap. Unwrap. Wrap. Unwrap. Deposit in purse once again. Man, does she ever get a lot of use out of that wrapper. Then she’ll decide she wants another piece of hard candy, and... . Repeat. For the entire performance, no kidding. And remember: the entire handbag is padded with plastic bags! Whoo!!! Plastic!!!

In case you’re wondering, Younger people usually skip the plastic wrappers and select from the multiple choice of other disrespectful lecture/concert/cinema behaviors, the two preferred choices being (1) talking through the entire performance, to oneself, if necessary; and (2) making out, noisily, through the entire performance.

So: Great program at the archeological museum. But lots of stupid RFOILs with plastic wrappers.

Which, finally, brings me back to the film festival. I wanted to see two consecutive films, and I figured – ah! There I go again – that I’d buy both tickets at one time. Nope. Turns out that you can buy tickets beginning only 30 minutes before the performance starts. (This is to encourage lines.) So I went to see the first film, which, naturally, started, and hence also finished, 20 minutes late. I went to get the next ticket, and, not surprisingly, there was a line that was about half an hour long.

And that’s when I became Italian! I decided that the line didn’t apply to me. An every-man-for-himself fury swept over me, I furrowed my eyebrows, and began the mission to GET WHAT I WANTED. My first effort, a bit too reasonable, was to approach a theater worker and explain that, since I was participating in the festival by attending the 6:15 screening, it was hence impossible for me to get in line early to buy a ticket for the 8:30 show, and that this didn’t make any sense and would in fact discourage people from attending the lesser-known films, and that hence she should give me a ticket without making me wait in line. (This was true, and entirely reasonable, but still, I felt downright sneaky.) She agreed that my dilemma was absurd, and that they should come up with a better system, but, “I can’t do anything, this time. Sorry.” But, no problem! I didn’t let that stop me. I’m Italian now! I scanned the crowd, found a young guy, joked around a little bit, and . . . basically inserted myself into the line right there. Which was the the front.

About 200 people got left in line. I got one of the last tickets. And that’s how I became Italian.

What happened to the sausage?

I'm trying my best to keep the Jack Handys coming, but I'm a little pressed for time. Wine tastings, film festivals . . . it's a busy life :) Plus I'm working on a bunch of research projects right now: one on chestnuts, one on sustainable agriculture, and one on - ! - cannibalism. They're all really interesting, and I love working on them. I can't believe I have to chance to study this stuff. (I was just about to comment about about how this probably means I'm meant for an academic career. But I don't think they allow the terms "Jack Handy," "stuff," or ":)" in the International Journal of Anthropology. So . . . I'll pocket that comment for now, I think.)

Anyway, the power of food: Here we are: Fabrizio and Paola, language exchange partners and Bolognese Bolognese; Marta and Giulia, two students who live downstairs, from Umbria, near St. Franny's haunts (whoops! academic journal foul!); Christian, lawyer, tour guide, socialite, also Bolognese; and me (create-your-own-identification). We had a fun dinner together, and talked about religion, politics, and sex.

We also ate that sausage.

I know you were wondering what happened to it.

The Parmesan cheese is still in the frig.

Eat Chestnuts!

I've been using my camera more lately, and it occurred to me today that I could use it to get around one of Italy's Big Inconveniences. Here's how:

The copisterie - the copy shops - are a huge scam. I really should go out and buy an HP printer-copier-scanner and make some bucks myself. A copy is usually five euro-cents, which seems reasonable. Unless you're copying any part of a book, in which case there's a five-to-ten euro-cent per-page surcharge. I realize that it's not ethical to copy a book, but it seems to me that there's a huge difference between copying Figure 15.14 on page 233 of the book and copying the book, and that the first doesn't come anywhere near warranting a twice-the-price surcharge. (Overpriced copiers are also, for convenience, located in the libraries. From which it's quite often prohibited to borrow books.) If you want to do anything in color, it's at least a euro. And this is the winner: To scan a document into the computer: 1 euro per page. To review: Paper use: zero. Ink use: zero. Energy use: minimal. Cost: 1 euro. It's absurd. Also, you're not allowed to make your own copies. The trained copy expert must exercise his or her extraordinary skill (Paper? Check. Index finger? Check.) and make the copy for you. Which, of course, means that you must wait in line, since there's a maximum of one employee in any copy shop, and the person in front of you will want to make six copies of his doctoral thesis.

I’m doing some research now on the chestnut. It’s awesome. I joked that I was going to do my master’s thesis on the chestnut, but maybe it wasn’t a joke. It’s really interesting! Did you know that 70% of the world’s chestnut production takes place in China? Actually, I have another idea I’m fixed on for my thesis now: Something having to do with the hallucigenic use of food in traditional religions. Wouldn’t that be cool? And maybe an excuse for some hands-on research. Of the traveling type. Of the physical traveling type. :)

Here’s a quick video I took the other day. It’s Piazza Maggiore in Bologna, about five minutes from house, where they had a soccer tournament there last weekend.

Unemployment: The Upside

The Italian unemployment rate is around 6%, which is much lower than I would’ve thought, for all the complaining about it that I hear. So I did a little further research, and it turns out that they’re right: the official number isn’t very telling. The 6% figure masks a rapidly growing migrant/immigrant workforce, a growth in part-time workers, a huge divide between the industrial North and the largely unemployed South, and a huge growth in fixed-term contracts (which, along with immigrant-bashing, is everyone’s favorite conversational sport). But from my outsider perspective, I’d say that Italy needs a high unemployment rate. And not for the traditional “ideal unemployment rate” reasoning. Here, there’s a different reason: Someone in every family must be available to wait in lines. “Waiting in Lines” and “Playing Bureaucracy”, is effectively, a job. Two, in fact; though developing skills in one or the other can prepare a beginner for successful careers in both.

Seriously, the amount of time you have to waste here to do anything can get really frustrating. For example, I recently learned that, for the upcoming elections, Italians must return to their home provinces to vote. Mail-in or internet balloting? Ha! Well, that’s not an entirely accurate criticism: If you are incarcerated in a province other than your own, you may vote in the province of your incarceration. If you are working in a province other than your own, or, God forbid, studying overseas, however, you must return home to vote. Seriously, I met a girl yesterday who flew back to Italy from her university in Spain so that she could cast a ballot.

If you need to make a payment to the university? Online payment? Check? Credit card? Ha! Go to the bank with a wad of cash. Wait in line.

And here’s a fun one: Want to take out a book from the library? Ho-ho. Grab a seat. If I had one wish for the Italian university system, it would be a well-functioning library system. As it lies, here’s how it works. There are maybe fifty or a hundred different university and municipal libraries, each with its own set of rules and practices. Need five books? You’ll most like likely need to visit five different libraries and Play the Game at each one. Maybe you need a special card to use a certain library; maybe not. Just to enter, you’ll need to leave your backpack in a locker outside so that you don’t steal any books. (Since the bar code scanners that seem to quite effectively work in supermarkets, department stores, and foreign libraries suddenly don’t function for Italian books???) Actually, more than that: Some libraries are more generously tolerant, but many actually prevent you from bringing books into the library. And, even better, many prevent you from taking books out of the library! How, then, does the library serve its function, you might wonder? Answer: You may sit in that library and read a book from that library.

Ah! But that assumes you were able to get the book in the first place. That’s a whole ‘nother story. To get a book, you can’t usually just go to the shelf and get the book. That job is reserved for a Library Employee. You must find the book in the catalog, fill out a paper form (electronic requests from the comfort of your home? Ha!), hand-deliver the paper form to the librarian, and wait for the next book retrieval period (often occuring on the hour). You may then pick up your book. If that library permits you to take out books, you’re still not homefree. You might not be able to take out that book, even if it says in the catalog that you can. For example, after visiting three different libraries, filling out a dozen different forms, waiting in three different lines, and spending – no kidding – about five hours on the entire endeavor, I discovered that practically none of the over 2000 Bibles in the Bologna library system can be checked out. I gave up.

Hence: If you want to vote, write a check, read a book – or god forbid do something more complicated such as legalize your immigration status – prepare thyself for hours and days of lines and bureaucracy. It’s no wonder to me that immigrants remain illegal. If my experience is any indication, it would be – no exaggeration – absolutely impossible to have a full-time job and to fulfill the bureaucratic steps for becoming legal.

So, here it is, the Economic Theory of the Day: Without at least one unemployed person in every family, a family would not be able to perform basic social, civic, and economic tasks. Hence, high(er) unemployment is, in Italy, an absolute economic necessity.

On that note, I leave you with this calming photo :)

Picture of the Day

I'm whipped! Lots to report, little time to report it! In the absence of a story, here's a picture of the day. I took it while "studying" (Italians?) in Piazza Maggiore of Bologna. A presto!

The Faster You Go, The More Fat You Win!

I think I told you that the “running” scenario in Italy differs quite a bit from that in the States. In case you missed those episodes, the quick summary is that running in Italy involves a team (mine is Lippo Calderara), a membership card (that’s huge!), a uniform (we’re red, yellow, and blue: I’m all set to root for the Romanians in Peking), Spandex (I invariably violate this rule), an extraordinarily complex organization (Do you want to run in the competitive race? The non-competitive race? The shorter race? The even shorter race? The walk? The children’s race? The younger children’s race?), a sexual harassment-prone landlord (perhaps that’s just my situation? But who knows, maybe it’s part of the “system.”). And . . . prizes!!!

I really like winning prizes, I dislike sexual harassment, I find the obsession with membership cards amusing, and I get a little stressed out by the complexity of the system.

As you know, I’m hyper-competitive, so I really do like winning the prizes. Now I just have to figure out what to do with them. I really get a kick out of this: The prizes invariably consist of giant packages of the fattiest, unhealthiest foods you can find. The faster you go, the more fat you win! Here’s me, wondering what to do with two of my prizes:

That’s what's left of a salame on the left, and a huge hunk of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese on the right. I figured it out, and my excitement reached a kind of violent level in this pic:

Actually, the prizes come in handy: My friends and gastronomo-classmates love them! And I like the winning-them part :)

They Study That in the United States?

I know you’ve been waiting for a language slip-up story, and finally I have one worth reporting. Not that, up till now, I’ve been communicating with such perfect clarity that I’ve been slip-up-free and people confuse me for a native Italian speaker, but I haven’t had any of those “whoops” moments that I always read about, where some poor guy accidentally tries to sell his wife for a few camels, or a foreign girl accidentally invites her professor to dinner. No, wait, actually I have done that last one . . .

Last night I had everyone laughing, though. I wanted to mention my friend who researches homeless people. In Italian, the word for a homeless person is a “senza tetto” – literally a person “without a roof.” What I actually mentioned, however, is my friend who researches people “senza tetta”: “without boobs.”

What a difference an “a” makes! Anyway, for all the flat-chested women out there (ahem), I’ve found you a researcher!

Voulez vous cou- . . . Oh. No. That’s Something Else.

I’m taking a course in French right now. Not a French course, but a course in French. The professor is great: He speaks slowly, is really patient, and does a great Powerpoint. Still, I’m impressed with myself! Not because of my French ability, which ticks in at caveman level. But because I actually understand the course! My questions go something like: “What – is – difference – feculeries – and – minoteries - ?” (Yes. There's even a hesitation before the question mark.) But I’m more or less following the course. At least, I hope so: the exam is tomorrow.

I really shouldn’t be impressed. A few of my classmates haven’t really studied French either. They’re doing the same thing I am, and probably better. And I get the idea that it’s normal in Italy to have a class or two taught in English, just because it’s something that you should know if you want to go into business. Or engineering. Or academia.

Still, I think it’s really cool that we can all do this. And it makes me want to really learn French, which – along with lots of other things – is “on the list”!

Il Precario

There’s a curious difference between the ways the (average) Italian and the (average) American view work. In fact, I don’t think most Americans are aware of the “work situation” in Italy. I know I didn’t have much of an idea before living here, and I obviously don’t yet fully understand it, because a newspaper headline today caught me off-guard:

“Salaries: Young People Earn 23% Less Than Those Over 40.”

Yeah? I thought. Why on earth is this being reported in the newspaper? Isn’t this “news” of the dogs-bites-man type? There seems to be a complaint, an outrage over the finding – and yet, from my vantage point, there’d be a problem if it weren’t the case.

On the same page were two other mini-articles that also illustrate a chasmically different (from American) Italian world of employment. One is something that I’ve already written about here: Striking is downright trendy. The article “Strikes on the Rise” reported that, in 2007, the hours of strikes by Italians increased by 62% from 2006 to a total of 6.3 million man-hours. With a workforce of around 25 million people, my calculation puts that at about 15 minutes per Italian worker! That seems hugely significant to me (although I don’t have any comparative statistics). The other headline, “Pay more to better employees,” presented exactly that as a promising – but, alas, probably impracticable – employment innovation.

That probably gives you a starter feel for the difference. We could really talk for days and days about the work situation in Italy – in fact, the Italian newspapers do, and rightfully so. It’s really difficult to get a “good” job in Italy, and that’s the biggest problem facing young Italians.

Which brings us to the Biggest Difference of the Day: The “precario.” What I find most interesting about this entire “issue” is that the very concept of the non-precario leaves most Americans scratching their heads. (Rightly or wrongly). Basically, the Italian job seeker is searching for a contract “a tempo indeterminato” – an “indefinite” contract. It means that, as best I can tell, barring major criminal activity (note the modifier), you have that job, and every month you get paid, and you get to keep going to said job forever and ever, until you retire. If yesterday there was demand for 100 widgets, which made the company hire 100 employees, and today the demand drops to only 10 widgets – bummer for the company, but they’ve got 100 paychecks to write. Getting such a job is THE goal of the typical Italian. Companies, instead, for obvious reasons, are keen to give contracts “a tempo determinato” – fixed-term contracts, usually lasting six months, which can then (somewhat illegally) be extended and re-created ad infinitum, essentially employing someone long-term but in a series of six-month contracts. This leaves the employee as a “precario” – literally in a “precarious” situation. The complaint is that, as a precario, you really can’t plan for the future: you can’t get a mortgage, buy a house, get married, and settle down forever and ever.

As I said, I think the most interesting thing about this entire issue is that the very concept of the problem is foreign to most Americans. I like to think that I’m pretty well-informed, but I had to keep asking my Italian friends “clarifying questions.” (And I’m going to have to ask them another one tomorrow: It a surprise that young people get paid less than those with more experience? Is it a “problem”? Is it “wrong”? Why?)

First of all, I think the desire for a fixed contract is itself an interesting comment on the Italian identity. As much as the image of the shoulder-shrugging, toss-it-to-the-wind Italian prevails, I think a more accurate analysis of the Italian personality reveals an strong push for security, stability, certainty. Adventure, planned or imposed, is “dangerous” and best avoided. (This plays out in lots of ways, not just work: for example, even a vacation is usually “safe,” organized by a tour operator, passed with a group, or spent in a vacation village.) The promise of stability is a good thing: You don’t want 500% turnover every year, and you definitely lose something cultural and familial with lots of moving around. But you also gain something, personally and nationally, through risk, chance, innovation. I’m not surprised that a push for stability exists; I’m surprised at the extent to which it’s dominant. There are really very few Italians who are eager to innovate, to go out on their own, to try something new, to take a risk. Again, you don’t want an entire workforce taking risk, but you do need some of it for a healthy economy. It’s kind of an economic application of “bio-diversity” and genetic evolution, I think: You need some risky genes to mutate the economy for the better, in a “survival of the fittest” kind of way.

Second, I’m really surprised that few people pick up on the economic disincentive of the indefinite contract. If I’m an employer, and I know that I can’t fire a lousy employee, I’m sure as heck going to be hesitant to hire anyone. So I really don’t get the double demand: “Hire more people! Create more jobs!” and “Give everyone an indeterminate contract!” The two just don’t seem to go together for me.

This “issue” is in the papers literally every day. It’s a real issue, and really problematic; but it’s also hindered by a somewhat parochial optic. (Just as my optic, for example, didn’t include this employment worldview up until a few months ago!) I obviously don’t understand “from the inside,” and my “analysis” is pretty limited. Still – it’s one of these things that I find really interesting, and I thought you might, too.