thisweekinitaly.com

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

On Web sites that offer help on various problems, there is often a section
Frequently Asked Questions, that contains these questions and the answers so
the reader doesn’t have to send a special request to get this common
information. For the Special 100th Issue of This Week at Gettysburg, I
offer the questions that I am most often asked.

1. Why did you move to Italy?

This really has two parts. Why did you move at all? Then why Italy?

I viewed retirement as a time to do something new in my life. I had no
obligations that constrained my choices other than the fact that the
retirement income is modest. I never studied abroad in College. I never
learned to speak a foreign language. Sort of a chance to “start over” but
without making a choice that was permanent.

At one time I thought of learning Spanish and moving to rural Puerto Rico
which I understand is wonderful. When, however, Gettysburg College for the
first time began to offer courses in Italian, I decided to take the courses
and move to Italy, the original home of my maternal grandparents. I could
also finally understand those few Italian phrases that my mother had yelled
at me when I was a child.

2. Why did you choose Pistoia?

When I first saw Pistoia on a day trip in 2001, I liked it immediately. It
is on the main railroad line to Florence so it is a convenient location to
visit other places. It is not a tourist city so it is uncrowded and less
expensive. It has a school where I can study Italian. With 90,000
residents it is large enough to have a cultural life of its own. It is not
on a hill so it is possible to ride my bike outside of town without a
herculean effort.

It is an unusual choice in that there are probably only 15 Americans in
Pistoia, mostly persons married to Italians. An American living in Florence
once said to me “You live in Pistoia? How quaint.”

3. Which do you like better, Italy or USA?

Italians often ask this. I don’t think of this as an either/or question. I
like them both for different reasons. I did not move from Gettysburg because
I was unhappy there. I don’t think you generally find happiness by moving
somewhere else. In the long run I might like to spend part of the year in
each place although this is difficult financially and logistically.

4. What has been the most difficult part of the move to Italy?

Learning a new language is difficult for an old man. It is a long,
frustrating, process. I’m getting it done, but not knowing the language
fully always limits your participation in the culture of another country.

You have to make new friends in a country where you are not sure exactly how
this is done. I’ve been very “pro-active” in this regard, and I do have a
nice circle of friends here.

I knew about the Italian level of (in)efficiency and the different view
towards the importance of time in Italy before I moved here. As a result, I
have not been as frustrated by these as many Americans would be.

Even though I have new friends, naturally I miss my American friends very
much. Many have been over to visit which is great, but I miss them on a
day-to-day basis.

5. What have you enjoyed the most?

The beauty of Italy. The food of Italy. The strong Italian interest in art
and culture. The challenge of trying to understand a new country. The
ability to travel around Italy and around Europe at lower cost. The ability
to send some nice gifts of Italian items to my friends in the USA.

Because the United Staes is such a large country and a powerful one, the
news in the United States and the attitudes of people tend to be more
parochial. I find the Italians in many ways to have a more sophisticated
view of the world that most Americans and I find this enjoyable.

6. How is the cost of living in Italy vs. USA?

About the same except the decline in the value of the dollar of over 20%
since I arrived has had an effect. Prices are about the same. Not having a
car makes it possible for me to live in Italy at about the same cost as
living USA with a car. As in the USA, if you are willing to look around,
you can find ways to live more cheaply.

7. When, if ever, do you plan to move back to the USA?

I take this question one year at a time. I’d like to be more confident in
the Italian language before I make a decision on this question. Then I will
have a better grasp on what it is like to live in Italy as a full
participant in the life of the country.

Higher Mathematics

The last two newsletters were both numbered number 97. Last week’s was in
fact number 98 and this week’s is thus 99.

A New Experience at Age 64

I took some film to be developed in Sweden. The man asked me my
name, and I said “Nordvall.” He did not ask me how to spell it. I
did not volunteer how to spell it. I assumed he would write it down
correctly and he did so . I don’t think has ever happened to me in
the United States. Maybe in I lived in Minnesota this would have
happened before.

A Pleasant Stay in Sweden

I am in the middle of my vacation in Sweden. If I had to think of
three adjectives to describe Sweden, they would be “fresh, clean (except for
the large cities),
and orderly.” I love Italy, but these three adjectives would never
come to mind in speaking of Italy.A little example of the many
differences between the two countries. In both countries in
museums, churches, etc. there are often hanging chandeliers of the
type that in the past had candles but today have small electric
bulbs. In Italy usually 10 to 20% of the bulbs in such a chandelier
are not working. In Sweden I once say one bulb that was not working.

Swedish Lumber

I read once that in the days of the tall ships, Sweden supplied much
of the wood used to make the masts. It makes sense. There are many
tall straight trees here.Italy is very wooded by the trees are
smaller and much less majestic. In Sweden wood is used everywhere in
construction; in Italy you see wooden construction only in the far
north that was once part of Austria

Bicycle Riding in Sweden

There was a bike path from the town where I am staying Vähmus to the
next large town, Mora. But the traffic is so light on the road from
Vähmus to Mora that you don’t feel any need to get on a bike path
for safety. Sweden has 9 million citizens. Italy has 60 million.
Sweden is one and one-half times the size of Italy

Ecological Consciousness

The Swedes are very concerned about the environment. In general
this is a country of “waste not—want not.”But in one area the
Swedes are not particularly protective of the environment and
resources. They drive large cars. There are fewer SUVs and pick up
trucks than in the USA, but otherwise the average car is as big here
as in America.(In addition they are great collectors of large
American “classic” cars from the 1950s and 1960s) The roads and
streets are wider so large cars are less of a problem than in Italy,
but large cars use more gas. I’m sure Swedes couold give me 1001 reasons
why they need to drive large cars. Bit, in fact, smaller cars certainly
would be
adequate to transport the Swedes to where they are going at the
speed they drive.

Peace in Scandanavia

For centuries the countries in Scandinavia fought each other just as
did the other nations in Europe. Often the nations closest to each
other have the most bitter rivalries, but it seems that the
Scandinavian nations get along quite well with each other. They
often can understand each other’s languages (with the exception of
Finnish that is related to Hungarian—but the Finns learn Swedish in
school). There seems to be substantial interplay between the
cultural life of the countries.

English in Sweden

Although the Swedes learn British English in school (as do all
Europeans who study English in school) they speak like Americans
without much if any accent. The English they hear on TV , in the
music and at the movies is American English. At the Nobel museum
in Stockholm I listened to taped interviews from Swedis radio of
the 1950s with William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway. In these
the Swedish interviewer did talk with an obvious Swedish accent.
So the unaccented English of today’s Swedes may be the result of
seeing a lot more American TV and films.

The Opera

I went to see the opera Eugene Onegin at Dalhalla. This is an old
limestone quarry that has been converted into an outdoor theatre.
The acoustics are wonderful. It was sung in Russian with electronic
Swedish subtitles, but we watched at videotape of the opera two
night before we went to see it, and my cousin explained the plot to
me as we watched the tape. The stage at Dalhalla is set in the
middle of the pond that is at the bottom of the quarry. This would
be a good place for a rock concert; the audience could not mob the
stage. Bt the end of the performance it was plenty cold; they rent
blankets to those who don’t come fully prepared.

Italian Men

I have a friend who came to Italy to study and married an Italian.
She tells me that about half of the group of 20 women who came from
her University to study that year in Italy ended up marrying Italian
men. Maybe I ought to start taking lessons from the Italian men on
how to win the women. One time on TV in the USA I saw an
explanation of the Italian game of Bocche. The French have a
similar game. You bowl a little ball in the middle of the lawn, and
then you throw larger balls to get as close as you can to the little
ball. The Italian explaining the game did not speak English so
there was a translator. The American announcer asked, “how do you
grasp the ball before you bowl it?” The Italian replied “gently like
you hold a woman.”

The Escape of German General (Keppler)

I wrote last week about his escape from hospital in a suitcase on
August 15 many years ago. A feind sent me an Italian newspaper
article on this event from the year 2000. It presented various
theories on how the wife was helped in this escape by either Italain
government agencies or by organized right wing groups. The author
was not sure exactly who had helped her–only that she must have
received outside help. In Italy nobody believes the official
explanation about a controversy. In the USA there is debate about
what happened when JFK was assassinated, but at least some people
accept the official account of the Warren Commission. In Italy almost
nobody would accept this explanation.

A Little More About the Middle of August

The classic story in Italy about how everything closes down in middle of
August is this one. Many years ago there was in a Hospital in Italy a
German general who the Italians had tried and imprisoned after WWII for
ordering the death of the Jews in Rome. At this time he was still
imprisoned. He was quite sick and his weight had fallen to about 100 lbs.
His wife came to see him in the middle of August. She brought a large
suitcase. He left with her in the suitcase. Nobody noticed. He spent his
last few years in Germany. His escape was a political scandal in Italy. I
don’t know if Italy asked Germany to return him. If they did and the
Germans said “no,” (which I doubt), a simple phone call to Tel Aviv could
have got him back.

Fans at Church

Last year I got for my church some hand fans to use in the summer. I got
them while standing in line in New York at TKTS (the half price ticket
office) and they advertised “Menopause—the Musical” including the words to
that great him “I’m Having a Hot Flash.” Even though I attend the American
church in Florence, the Church is still in Italy. So the fans got lost
before ever being used. So this year a good friend in New York sent me
another supply from TKTS. These advertise “Chicago” and “Wonderful Town.”
This time I placed them in the pews myself.

Political Parties in Italy

I had an item in last week’s newsletter about political divisions in Italy.
Of course, not everybody in Italy belongs to a political party, but party
loyalty among members is much stronger here than in the USA. Italy for
hundreds of years was made up of city states in a constant state of war
among themselves. One friend says that the strong loyalty to parties and
the divisions between them may in part reflect this history of contentious
partisanship in Italy. It also reflects in part a legacy of Italy’s Civil
War of 1943-45. In the USA too, the divisions of the Civil War took a long
time to heal.

A Trip on a Low Cost Airline

I went to Sweden on Ryan Air, one of Europe’s low cost airlines. They tend
to use more obscure airports. I started in Pisa (which is a convenient
airport for me) and went through a small airport outside Brussels to a
“Stockholm” airport that is about 60 miles from Stockholm. They don’t use
tickets. They don’t assign seats at boarding. You pay for any food or
drinks. One of the two planes I took had been retrofitted so it had more
seats than is usual on such a model. It would have been quite uncomfortable
for a tall person. Still the planes took off on time and arrived on time.
Someone once said to me “today a plane is just a bus in the sky.” Other
than going first class, this is ever more true of major airlines. The
economy airlines simply take this trend to its logical conclusion.

Eminent Domain

In Italy as in the USA, the state has the right to take private property for
state use (such as building a road) upon paying the property owner a fair
price. In Italy if a building is considered a historical building, before
it is sold, a copy of the sales contract must be filed with the state. The
state has the right to buy the property first at the contract price. This
presents a delicate problem. Sales contracts routinely understate the
actual sales price so the seller pays less tax on the sale. But if the
sales price is stated to be quite low in the contract (compared to the true
value), there is the risk that the state will come in a scoop up this
bargain. From what little I can tell, the state does not often exercise its
right to buy the property. So sellers often “run the risk” and keep in the
contract the low sales price. If the state were cleverer, it would (if it
is legal) exercise its option and then resell the property to the buyer
stated in the contract at the true value. It would be a quick profit. Also
this practice would quickly put an end to the understated prices in these
cases.

An Explanation About Violence

I mentioned last week that in the USA a cop killer who engaged in a later
shoot out with the police would probably be killed in that interaction. In
the USA the police (quite understandably) show no mercy to one who has
killed a fellow officer. Also one a person has done so he is seen as
unusually dangerous so that strong force against him is seen as justified.
In Italy when “The Wolf” was hot by a policeman, he was shot in the head and
fell to the ground. As far as I can tell he was not shot again or not shot
so many times that he was dead on the scene. All this was on a busy street.
If the policemen had put more bullets in him, which would have been easy,
it would have been seen in Italy as “excessive” and subject to criticism and
investigation. Compare this to the USA, where the police put 41 bullets
into a guy they mistakenly thought was a drug dealer who was reaching into
his pocket to show them his identification, not a gun. New York City paid a
hefty civil settlement to the family of the man, but the police were not
found guilty of any criminal conduct. (In the USA police work is seen as a
difficult and dangerous job and the police are usually forgiven for
mistakes they may make in the execution of that job.) In Italy in such a
case it would be very likely that the policemen would go to jail. Italy,
unlike the USA, has a memory of the police under a dictatorship – this makes
the country far more leery of “official” violence even though there is
substantial interpersonal and criminal violence in the country.

A Walk Around Pistoia

Here is a typical journey for me. As you leave my house, you turn left at
corner down Via Della Madonna. Immediately you see a ceramic Madonna
imbedded behind glass is a building wall, I used a night photo of this for
my 2002 Christmas card. Along this street I pass: (1) the new Internet Point
opened by an African family –it is only one when the screen instructions are
in French because the owners and many customers are from French speaking
Africa, (2) the shop of imported African goods next door owned by an
acquaintance of mine, (3) the Church of the Madonna from which the street
takes its name which, although the façade was never completed, is said to
have the third largest church dome in Italy, (4) the watch repair shop of my
friend Gian Franco – always with jazz music emanating from it, (5) the new
Pizza restaurant half owned by an American that is so far a great success,
and (6) the American bar owned by an American woman and her Italian husband
where I often stop to get a chocolate chip cookie or a brownie. At the
corner is a large Palazzo in which my friends Giovanni and Anna have one of
the few Bed and Breakfasts in Pistoia.

Crossing the first cross street you enter the narrow Street of the
Goldsmiths. Near the corner is always the same menacing looking beggar
dressed all in black. He has no sigh telling a tale of woe; you know that
any money to him goes first for drink and then for a little food. Still
many people stop and talk to him and drop a coin. The shops along here are
small and not highly expensive. At the end of the street are two permanent
outside stalls where the owners sell belts, purses, scarves, sunglasses,
etc.

This street emerges into Pistoia’s jewel –The Piazza of the Cathedral.
This quite large and the open space is flanked by the City Hall, the Court
Building, the Cathedral, the Bell Tower, the Bishop’s Palace, and the
Baptisty. Here on Wednesday and Saturday the semi-weekly market is held. In
the wall of the City Hall is embedded a metal “yard stick” that was used for
centuries by merchants of the market to measure the cloth for the buyers.
Among the decorations on the town hall is the shield of the Medici family
with its 5 balls, reflecting the time when Pistoia was under the dominance
of Florence.

Exiting the Piazza you soon pass the large bank building that was build
around 1900 to resemble a 16th century Florentine palace. Next is the ugly
modern Post Office building. You arrive at Via Cavour which has more
elegant shops that the Goldsmith’s Street. It also has the tobacco shop that
sells envelopes and stamps and has a mailing scale –this is now my “post
office.” It also has a large church called St John’s Outside the City. This
church is less than 200 yards from the Cathedral, but at the time it was
build it was outside the first set of city walls.

Here you take a little detour into the small piazza where the daily fruit
and vegetable market is held. The old town well is in the middle with the
wolf (the symbol of Rome) on the top of it. This piazza is the hang out for
local hippies, a few of them quite old. Their late night music and carousing
is a subject of complaint by residents living nearby. Here too is one of
the few pubs in Pistoia—these stay open late while bars are closed at 8.
Another source of noise for nearby residents.

Returning to Via Cavour, you pass the nice bar where the owner ( a very rich
man) talked the city into giving him a budget allocation to keep him from
closing this historic bar because of lack of profits. This bar is in a
building that originally was part of the church complex of St. John’s
Outside the City Down a small street here is the Internet Point I visit
each day. .Soon you come to the newly opened café with outdoor seating that
in the summer often has live musical entertainment. No neighbor would think
of complaining about the noise from this music.

Then down a small alley to my house. In this alley I often find a clothespin
or two on the ground. When they drop from the clotheslines up above, the
owners never retrieve them. I now have about twice as many clothespins than
when I started with the one pack I purchased. My Italian friends laugh at
me when I pick them up off the street.

At night the street lights are a sodium vapor type that cast a yellow glow
on everything. At 10 am on my walk I would encounter many people, from noon
to two almost nobody, at 6 pm almost the whole town, and at 10 pm again
almost deserted streets.