Link to talk is posted between newsletters 282 and 283
May 2008
Monthly Archive
Fri 30 May 2008
Fri 30 May 2008
A Weekly Newsletter Takes a Vacation
As of June 2 I will arrive in the USA for a five month stay. So “This Week in Italy” will also be on vacation, perhaps a complete one or one punctuated by occasional issues.
Film Featured on My Web Site
For those of you with nothing better to do, there is a video to view on my web site. It is of my talk on April 12 in Gettysburg on “Making Sense of Italy and Italian: An American in Tuscany.” The one hour talk takes a while to download; after it is downloaded you can put it on your desktop or elsewhere to watch it at your leisure. There may be a slight gap in first seven minutes of the video, but otherwise it seems to be ok.
Well Armed Italian Police
Italy has many police forces, and all of them carry guns. Florence police officers and unions, however, have said that they do not want to carry batons for additional protection. Because of the strong norms against police violence in Italy, police are very reluctant to use their guns so one might think they would want another weapon that is less lethal. Traffic police say, however, they are only in charge of traffic and simple behavior laws. More life-threatening situations are not part of their job, and they don’t want batons. This is classic “it’s not my job” Italian thinking; you better hope that you don’t get mugged when only a traffic cop is watching. The use of possible batons is related to a concern expressed by many politicians about safety and security in the cities. The police in Florence (in an area dominated by the political left) see this concern as a political ploy of the Italian right that is not justified by the facts.
A friend who is a local policeman in Pistoia told me that at one time his squad carried batons. Citizens were often asking them why they carried this additional weapon. Eventually the police asked not to carry the batons because of the negative citizen response to them. Just another example of the difference between Italy and the USA as to distrust of the police.
Garbage Crisis in Naples and Surrounding Area
The army is helping to collect the garbage, but where to take it? Some facilities to burn garbage are being built. All attempts to open new landfills near Naples have been vigorously opposed by citizens in the areas of the proposed new facilities. As for now the garbage is being sent by train to Germany to be separated (remember the Neapolitans don’t bother to separate their garbage) and processed there. As you can imagine, this is a tad expensive.
A Convicted Murderer Finally Goes to Jail
Four years ago a young boy was found dead in his home, and eventually his mother was charged with the murder. Her conviction has now been affirmed in the final appeal. It appears to many that she may in fact believe that she is innocent because she has repressed the memory of the event. Of course, there is also the possibility that she is innocent, but she certainly has had fair trials. The newspaper of one of the Communist parties in Italy called for the government to grant her a pardon – not on the grounds that she is innocent, but on the grounds that she has another child and it would be an appropriate act of mercy to pardon her. Without expressing any opinion about this request, I still feel secure that no political group in the USA would launch such a proposal at the point that the woman is beginning her 16 year sentence.
In a web poll by one of the national newspapers, 62% thought the woman should go to prison, 26% favored house arrest, and 11% favored an immediate pardon. (Think what the results of a similar poll might be in the USA for such a crime.) There are three reasons to send someone to prison. The first is to deter other persons who might commit a similar crime. A woman crazed enough to kill her own young child is not likely to deterred by the punishment given to another who did the same thing. The second is incapacitation; prevent the person from committing more crimes by putting him or her in prison. I don’t think the woman in this case is likely to commit more crimes. The third is simply punishment. You did something wrong, and now you have to pay the price. On this third point, Italians to me seem much more dubious about the value of prison than do Americans.
Refund of Train Ticket
In January 2007 I and a friend missed a train connection to Florence in Vienna because a train from Poland was late. Because we had purchased our tickets for the trip in Italy, we had to buy new tickets in Vienna for a later train and then seek a refund in Italy for the tickets for the train we missed. On February 8, 2007 my friend, who handled our refund request, made her first visit to the train station in Florence to seek a refund. It took about eight visits in total for this task. The refund check was finally issued on April 9, 2008. I think the paperwork involved the railroad authorities both in Italy and Austria. I think also that they spent more money in employee time processing our request through all these channels than the amount of the refund check itself.
The Future of Italy
You can find articles and books in Italy that predict an economic and/or social meltdown of the country within the next decade or so. These writings are backed by strong factual arguments. Still, the best bet is that Italy will in the future, as in the past, somehow muddle through. The pessimistic scenario that Italy faces is not a complete breakdown, but a continuing slow decline as it is unable to deal with basic underlying problems. Thus, Italy will not become a third world nation, but its presence among the group of leading industrial nations will more and more become a anachronism.
Italy Leading and Italy Trailing
On the news were two items on same night. One noted that among Italy, Germany, France, and Spain, Italy has about six times more armed bank robberies in a year than the next highest country. The second item noted that Italy trailed all other western European nations in the quality of facilities to teach science in the schools.
Those Wonderful Gypsies
As I have mentioned in Italy the gypsies have become the poster boys for “bad immigrants” – much to the relief of the Albanians. I’ve also suggested in the past that many gypsies probably are integrated into the economy rather than simply begging and/or stealing. A newspaper survey reports that a majority of gypsies have a regular job, and only 2% are on the street begging. I can’t judge the accuracy of this survey in that, if one asks gypsies how they earn a living, as a disliked minority, most are going to say that they have a regular job rather than admit to being beggars or thieves. Maybe the survey had other means to assure its accuracy.
Shooting a Thief in Your House
Recently a man in Florence surprised a thief who had entered his house and shot him. Unfortunately for the homeowner, the thief was fleeing when he shot him. The law in Italy and in the USA is the same: you can use lethal force against someone if you are threatened with immediate serious physical harm. If someone is fleeing, at that point you may not be threatened by him. The USA has the jury system. In Italy trials are conducted by judges although there is sort of a “mini” jury system at one of the appeal levels in that the panel of judges may be supplemented by two distinguished citizens or so. In this case, in the USA, if the lawyer for the man who shot the thief could come up with some theory (however flimsy) that he felt threatened by imminent physical harm, the jury would be most likely to find him not guilty. I am not sure that in Italy the judges would reach the same result, and my guess is that the citizens on the panel of judges don’t carry much weight in the decision.
My Latest Article in “The Florentine” –the English Language Newspaper of Florence
Whom do you prefer?’
by Robert Nordvall
Obama or Illary?’ I’ve lost count of how many times an Italian has asked me this question (with the wonderful silent H). Before John McCain sewed up the Republican nomination, I don’t think I was asked once about whom I preferred in his party. Furthermore, I have no recollection of Italians asking me, during the presidential primary season 2004, whether I preferred Dean or Kerry.
Of course, Italy’s interest in American politics in general is usually high. As the subprime mortgage crisis in the USA shows, problems that seem to be limited to the United States in fact spill over into European economies. Even beyond the economic sphere, the policies of the most powerful nation have implications throughout the world.
Yet this year the interest of Italians in the American presidential race goes beyond the typical level. Why?
In a country whose politics is particularly geriatric (for example, the last two national leaders, Berlusconi and Prodi were both born before the start of WWII, and many members of Parliament seem to stay there forever), Obama and Clinton look like a breath of fresh air. A word rarely used to describe Italian politics is ‘change’. Regardless of whether the next president is McCain, Clinton, or Obama, the politics in the USA will change. Even McCain, who favors staying the course in Iraq, will not be running on a platform of preserving the Bush legacy.
Although there must be Italians besides Silvio Berlusconi who think that George Bush has done a good job as president, you don’t meet them very often. So change from the Bush years is particularly appealing here.
Italy is unusual among Western European nations in never having had a woman leader; nor has a woman led a major political party. Italy’s percentage of women in Parliament is the lowest in Western Europe. Thus, the idea of a woman president in America piques the interest of Italians, especially since she is a woman they know through her years as the president’s wife. The unpopularity of President Bush in Italy has its flip side in the generally high opinion Italians have of Bill Clinton. Clearly some of this rubs off on Hillary.
Italians know, too, the history of racism in the United States. So Obama’s candidacy raises the fascinating question of whether this racism has now abated to the point that a black person can be elected president. One leading Italian politician, Gianfranco Fini, said he does not think that this is the case, but the fact that he would even comment on this point shows the high level of interest in the issue.
A recent letter to the editor in an Italian newspaper said, ‘In Italy, we need a candidate with the same characteristics of Obama, an honest and sincere person, who works for Italy and for Italians. I would surely vote for such a candidate’. If unsuccessful in getting the Democratic Party nomination or winning the general election in November, perhaps Obama or Hillary should come to Italy to start a new political career.
A recent example of American election fever in Florence: ‘Bridges for Obama-Yes We Span’, which took place on the Ponte Vecchio on May 6, 2008.
We welcome contact from Republicans living in Florence or around Italy that would like to share their events and stories with us!
Bob Nordvall has lived for six years in Pistoia in retirement. He has written a number articles on Italian customs and culture for The Florentine and writes a weekly Internet newsletter on life in Italy (www.thisweekinitaly.com).
Tue 27 May 2008
Alternative download here
Thu 22 May 2008
I’ve mentioned before that Italians sometimes use an English work or phrase when there is a perfectly good Italian one that expresses the same idea. Recently, candidate for national President of the Council, Walter Veltroni, substituted English for Italian in a not totally appropriate way. He said “As the Americans say, ‘I know my chickens.’” Well Italians do say (in Italian) “I know my chickens,” but I haven’t heard any American say it recently.
He was one of the original major personalities on Italian TV which started here in 1956. He is still seen today. He was born in USA, moved to Italy as a young boy, then moved back to the USA after WWII, and finally in 1953 returned to Italy permanently where he produced and starred on the Italian versions of some American TV shows, the most famous being the Italian copy of the quiz show “Double or Nothing.” He spoke Italian when he arrived, but his Italian was less perfect than that of someone who lived all his life in
A friend from the
This ancient language, allied to languages like Welsh, is being revived in Breton. I don’t know how “dead” it was prior to the revival. The town name signs are now both in French and Breton. I am often surprised in
No surprise here; they are better than those in
We took a bus from one town to a second city where we got a train to take us back to our car at the starting point of our trip. There would be a 15 minute interval between the time the bus arrived and the departure of the train. My companion asked what we should do if the bus was late and we missed the train. The clerk at the station looked as if my friend had asked what we should do if an atom bomb fell on the bus. With a look of disdain, the clerk simply said “it won’t be late.” A little different than
As in
Very good, very expensive, and not highly traveled. I wonder if the high cost discourages drivers from using them. If you are willing to pay the high fees, you have a very pleasant journey.
We were not in
Fri 9 May 2008
I’ll be bike riding in Brittany in north of France next week so probably no issue of This Week in Gettysburg will be forthcoming.
Tax Returns and Privacy
In Italy all income tax returns must be filed via computer. If you don’t hire an accountant to do your taxes, you can bring your information to the local tax office, and a clerk there will enter your data into the computer. Here Italy is more automated than the USA. Tax returns are filed in the city where you live, not in a national center. The Italian equivalent of the IRS made all tax return income information available through its web site. If you knew the city where X filed his return, you could go to data for that tax office and find his information in an alphabetical file. The tax agency said this was public information. The agency charged with protecting privacy in Italy (Italian privacy laws seem to be more strict than those in the USA), when it discovered what was done, ordered the tax agency to block its web site while the privacy agency investigated the matter. It may still be the case; however, that if you physically go to the local tax office, you can access the income data for tax returns filed at that office, but for now, you can’t access such data via the internet.
Cigarette Smuggling in Europe
In the USA cigarette smugglers would buy cigarettes in southern states with low tobacco taxes and sell them at a discount in northern states where prices were higher because of higher tobacco taxes. There is a similar phenomenon in Europe. In Poland cigarettes are much cheaper than in Germany. Near the Polish border an enterprising company takes a group of senior citizens each day on a short bus trip from Germany to Poland. In Poland they are treated to coffee and a nice dessert. All they have to do is sign a paper that they are bringing back to Germany the maximum number of cigarette packs that a citizen is allowed to bring in from Poland. In England couriers get on a low cost Ryanair flight to Spain (which has low cost cigarettes). While in Spain they eat and drink for free before returning on a cheap flight back to England. Their only luggage coming back is a box with the maximum number of cigarette packs allowed to be brought into England.
Speaking of Ryanair
I often fly this low cost airline. For a few Euros more you can get priority seating which means that you get on the plane first. There are no assigned seats. On the plane, however, all seats seem to me to be the same. All the rows are crowded together; the planes have more seats in them than is typical. Perhaps priority seating allows you to sit near the front and get off first when the plane lands. Anyway of a recent trip, apparently the priority seats in front had not been filled. I was one of the last people to board, and the steward asked me to sit in the front row. This in fact was the only row in the whole plane that had comfortable leg room. If I were very tall, I’d pay for priority seating on Ryanair but only in this front row.
Overestimating the Speed of Italian Bureaucracy
I wrote recently how I had applied by mail in September 2007 for a renewal of my Permesso di Soggiorno (permission to stay in Italy) and got a notice to pick it up at the local police station on May 8. Well, it wasn’t quite a notice to pick up the new Permesso. Instead it was an appointment to have my fingerprints recorded on the new electronic system. I had been manually fingerprinted when I arrived in Italy. It will be another 50 days until the Permesso itself is ready. All in all it will be 10 months for my application to be processed. In the old days, when all this had to be done in person (no application by mail), it took about four months.
Working in Italy
The Italian labor market is much more regulated than that in the USA. For example, Italians who have a regular job (not one of the many jobs that are “under the table”) work with a contract whose terms are either specified by law or by the union to which they belong. When the government desired to facilitate entry of young people into the labor market about 10 years ago, a law was passed that allowed special kinds of temporary or part time contracts for such new workers. Now of course the claim is made that jobs which formerly were filled by workers with regular contracts are occupied by workers with these special contracts which provide fewer rights to the laborer. My guess is that the highly regulated labor market is a negative factor in the overall functioning of the Italian economy.
A Few Notes from My Weekend Trip to Germany
I went to Germany to see my son’s family. While there I noticed a German translation of a book by an American author. On the title page it did not say “translated from English by…” but “translated from American by…”
I saw a cartoon in a German magazines in which all the top political cartoonists in Germany were sitting around a large round table. In the center of the table was a picture of Berlusconi. The cartoonists were drawing nothing on their pads. The message was “how do you make a joke about a guy who himself is a joke personified” or, in other words “how can you ridicule a guy who has already done so many ridiculous things.”
I speak very little German, but in Germany there are opportunities to talk Italian. At the Italian ice cream shop near my son’s house, the staff is Italian as are the persons who run the outdoor pizzeria in a park close by.
Sex Life of Italian Couples
According to a recent article by an Italian sexologist, the sex life of Italian couples is in serious decline, and the main reason is that the decline in the male sex drive has tripled in the last 10 years. Don’t ask me how he measured this phenomenon. Four out of ten Italian couples no longer have sex together.
The article reported a growing trend of men avoiding sex with their partners and going to prostitutes or engaging in virtual encounters on the Internet. The summary of the report I read did not talk about married men having sex with a mistress or girlfriend. It is my impression (not verified by research or personal experience) that open extra-marital affairs are more common in Italy than in the USA. I think an Italian wife is more likely than an American one to say “I don’t want sex with him. If he gets it somewhere else, that’s o.k. with me so long as he doesn’t divorce me and supports our family.”
Lovely Ladies on TV
On the TV screen there was a view of four young, attractive women standing together. Were they movie stars? Were they TV personalities? No, they were the four women chosen to be members of the cabinet in the new Berlusconi government. Now a woman can certainly be beautiful and highly competent for any kind of position, but you can be sure that for Berlusconi, beauty comes first and competence second. He makes openly sexist remarks about women which don’t seem to bother most Italians although they would be fatal for an American politician.
Auto Insurance
Although liability insurance is required in Italy, as in the USA, collision insurance is not, and in fact few people get collision insurance. It is prohibitively expensive. (I don’t know if the finance company requires the motorist to have collision insurance if the car is subject to a car loan.) Why is so expensive? One might think immediately that Italy has many more car crashes, but this is not true. Liability insurance here is does not cost more than in the USA. I had a suspicion why the cost was so high which was confirmed by an Italian friend. With collision insurance it is easy to cheat the insurance company. If you need 300 Euro you can take a hammer to your car door and claim there was an accident. You can still drive the car with the banged in door. This could happen in the USA too, but as I have written before, Italian businesses, in many contexts, think that if there is a way for the consumer to cheat the business, many Italians will automatically do so. There is a very low level of trust in one’s fellow citizens in Italy.
How to Fill Space in the Newspaper on a Slow News Day
I’ve mentioned before that the paper can always run a story about the bad train service. Another standard is an article about the malfunctioning legal system. This week, in a two page spread titled “Justice in Chaos,” the local paper recounted the following four items. First, a confessed murderer who was released from prison because his trial was delayed too long was rearrested for drug crimes. Second, a convicted rapist, who was also let out of prison through a procedural error, was intimidating local residents. Third, a case about the distribution of the inheritance of an apartment was finally closed, after 66 years. Finally, a professor won his case, started in 1990, challenging the procedures of a competition held to fill four open posts at the University of Palermo; the victorious plaintiff, however, is already in retirement.
Watching Over a Patient in an Italian Hospital
I’ve mentioned that if a family member is serious ill and in the hospital in Italy, at least one family member is often with him or her at all times. Occasionally the family will hire somebody to be with the patient when a family member is not present. If somebody is hired, it is because the family may worry that the hospital staff will not be attending to the patient’s every need at all times, but when family members are present it also reflects the idea that this is what a family should do for a member who is seriously ill even if the family is totally confident that the hospital staff will care well for the patient.
Sat 3 May 2008
Although most organizations do not have formal dress codes, in the USA women in different types of positions tend to dress differently. There is a type of woman’s business suit worn by female executives. At the other end of the spectrum, a cocktail waitress might well wear something far less formal. In Italy, on the other hand, woman at all levels of the job hierarchy are more likely to dress is a “sexy” manner than in the USA. A friend told me about an armed police guard at Rome airport. She, of course, was wearing her police uniform, but she had long glued on red nails and spiked heel shoes. To him it looked a little incongruous for someone sporting a machine gun.
You can still afford to vacation in Italy this summer. The following periods are still open for rental (at rock bottom prices) at my apartment in Pistoia: July 6-31 (all or any part of this period) and September 7-13. If interested, contact me at bobnordvall@hotmail.com
I’ve noted that Italian university students tend to go to a university close to home to which they commute. This attitude goes beyond the undergraduate years. A friend who works at University of Pisa tells me that most graduate students there are from Pisa area and attended this University as an undergraduate. Furthermore, almost all have the same goal, someday to secure a position as a university professor – at the University of Pisa. Since professor positions do not arise frequently at the university (professors don’t move from one university to another), this hope of the graduate students is unrealistic.
Among eight European nations surveyed, the one with the highest rate of reading the Bible is Poland where 38% of the adult population read at least one Bible passage within the last year. For the USA the figure is 75%. Italy, France, and Spain have figures respectively of 27%, 21%, and 20%. Of course in Catholic countries reading the Bible is less a part of the religious culture than in Protestant nations, but even Great Britain, which is nominally half Protestant, has a Bible reading rate of 36%.
My son Andy and his writing partner have another short humorous video on the web at http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/323ec4cb50. After viewing it, you can click on “funny” or “die.” As always, a vote of “funny” is requested.
Because of the pricing of cell phone services in Italy, Italians use text messaging much more than Americans do. On an Italian TV fiction show, I saw a unique service using text messages. The husband in this show discovered, upon a visit to the bank, that his credit card account was overdrawn. Both he and his wife had cards for this account. The bank officer discretely suggested that the husband avail himself of the service under which he receives a text message on his cell phone every time the credit card is used. Needless to say, his phone was buzzing often. I don’t know if this service exists in the USA.
Political promises come in many flavors. Some are general such as “take steps to improve the economy.” Others are quite specific. One of the most famous of these was that of Papa George Bush “No new taxes – read my lips.” Some believe that Bush’s failure to keep this promise hurt him badly in the election of 1992. Berlusconi has made a tax promise too in both of the last two elections – “If elected I will abolish the i.c.i. tax on first homes.” Since Berlusconi has a large majority in the new Parliament, it is easily within his power to fulfill this promise. A newspaper survey, however, notes that less than half of the Italians believe that he will do so. Unlike Bush, he will not pay dearly at the polls if he does not do it.
A second promise Berlusconi made was temporarily to move his seat of government to Naples at the start of his new term and to take action there to bring the garbage crisis under control. It would take a long time to solve this crisis, and nobody expects him to stay in Naples that long. The question is whether he will at least make a ceremonial stay in Naples or simply ignore this pledge. Stay tuned.
There was a letter in a newspaper from a woman in Naples. Her neighbor is a German lady and when the writer of the letter parks illegally outside the apartment house or improperly disposes of her garbage, the German lady calls the police. The woman from Naples noted that in this apartment complex there is a family with much domestic violence and there is also a child who is under-nourished. The writer asked why the German lady was not calling the police about these more serious problems of her neighbors.
Of course, this is the classic argument of the person who is stopped by the police for speeding and asks why the police aren’t spending their time catching rapists and murderers rather than apprehending speeding drivers. I noted that the writer of the letter did not say that she herself was helping the neighbors with the more serious problems.
In a country where respect for the law is low, people still like to give excuses for why they don’t obey the law. People are unlikely to say “I don’t obey the law because it is more convenient for me to ignore it.” The letter from the woman in Naples is a classic example of how some Italians justify their behavior. Italians are certainly not the only people in the world who present such justifications; let’s just say they do it more often than folks in more law-abiding countries.
It turned out that many workers who traditionally had voted for the Communist or other left-wing parties, voted this time for the far right. Why? Probably a lot of reasons, but one is that the center-left government was not able to deliver on its promises of economic betterment for workers. These workers now seem to be moved by the social agenda of the right to control immigration and crime. The center-left made economic promises it could not keep; the center-right will not be able to do much about crime and illegal immigration. In fact, the immigration law now in force is one passed by the center-right. Italy’s economic, immigration, and crime problems (and many others as well) have structural dimensions that can’t be fixed by passing some new laws.