Lessons Learned In Italy
A few years ago I had cancer. When you get cancer, or probably any "oh my god" disease, you make the "list of stuff I'm going to do if I don't die". Hanging out in a villa in the middle of nowhere Tuscany was one of the things.
So a year ago I decided that it was time. I found a ridiculously large pad in the middle of Chianti - slept 29 or something - and rented it. (FYI, when you look for a ridiculously large pad in Italy you search the Internet - which brings up tons of these pads. What I found is that EVERY real estate rental company on the planet represents the exact same pads. They also promise "concierge services" and tour arrangement etc. Some are probably good, but not mine. Luxury Retreats is not a good one. Downright awful, actually.)
Anyhow, I drank a little too much wine one night and started inviting all of my wife's relatives. Thankfully, some wimped out! I ended up bringing my 6, my sister-in-law and niece, father-in-law, The Clark family of Washington, D.C. (6 - cousins), The Prigmore clan (6) and the Bowker (3.25 - she's preggo) bunch. 23 Americans and a preggo Italiano (which was brilliant planning on my part) to translate. We piled onto a Lufthansa airplane for an 8pm departure to Munich then Florence.
When you buy 24 plane tickets, a year in advance, you'd think an airline might be appreciative, and toss a little upgrade or two my way, but no. I'm only 4 foot 2 but apparently airlines design coach class to accommodate people who either have legs shorter than 12" or for sadists. Having no butt isn't helpful either, as being the 11 millionth person on that seat meant I'd have been better off duct taping myself to the bathroom door and sleeping standing up. The good news is my wife is 6 feet tall, 5'8" of which are legs. The better news is between my 3 and 5 year olds, the young 3 year old Bowker sire, and the 5 year old Princess Leah, there were lot's of unhappy campers. The crew of nice young Germans were very diligent, making sure that everyone was woken up to see if they wanted coffee every 14 minutes.
The only flights that ever land early are the ones you don't want to land early because you are asleep. We landed early in Munich and slumped our way through the airport, got on a euro airport diesel bus, drove to France it seemed, and ended up at our twin prop 1947 sea plane bound for Florence. Everyone got on the plane (most ducking) and I was last as I had to gate check my fanny pack. (Took plenty of ribbing for the fanny pack, but when handling 6 passports, boarding passes, and dough, it's all about function over form). The plane held approximately 28 people. I had 24. As the last one on the plane, I said hello to Helga the Beast flight attendant who promptly yelled at me to take a seat immediately as "ze flight vill leev now!". Trying to accommodate her request, I sat in the single seat in row 2 - avoiding my seat in row 17. Helga almost spit out a lung. "Das ees bizness class! Go to yur zeet!" First, let me say I love Germans - just not Helga. Second, let me say that this could have been a scene from Meet The Parents. There was absolutely no difference physically between the business class seat and the "normal" seat. They were both 40% smaller than the one I just got out of, which was 40% too small for me. There did appear to be a napkin with something embroidered for a headrest, but otherwise, they were the same. I was dying to find out if they got two bags of pretzels up front, but I passed out instead - only to awaken to hear the pilot announce the good news - we were going to land in Genova instead of Florence - no extra cost! Genova is a good 3 hours from Florence - if you have a car, which we did not, as they were in Florence.
A few minutes later we were informed that we were not going to Genova, but to Bologna instead. Since I'm a huge fried Bologna (the food) fan, I was pretty psyched. Plus, it was an hour closer to Florence. The crew let us know that the good folks at Lufthansa would provide us bus transportation to Florence, now while inconvenient, we could think of it as a free tour.
The Bologna airport is the approximate equivalent of the Albany, NY airport - but it seems nicer because it's in Italy. So 24 of us wait for our bags - which only the Clark Family of Washington, DC had checked because the rest of us are so smart we sent our Fed-X. We ended up having to check 4-5 of our carry on bags as Lufthansa has a policy that apparently says if your name is Steve and you buy 24 tickets you can only take one carry on per person and yes, that knapsack is a carry on. (Nice side note: my niece, Erica - age 14, knew we'd be in Italy over the fourth of July, so she wisely packed up a box of "sparklers" and a lighter in her carry on, thankfully found by her mother prior to her arrest). Every bag except one made it out. That was my 15 year old Daughter's bag. Very bad bag to be the lost bag. Very, very bad. The good news is that apparently Lufthansa never flies to the Bologna/Albany international airport and as such has no employee's there, so there was no way to report the bag being missing. The better news is that a local was nice enough to tell us that I had a better chance of dating Sophia Loren than getting a bus to Florence, as there are only 11 buses in the city and they have all been booked by Ferrari for their 60th birthday extravaganza. I swear as he is telling us this (not really us, mostly Patrizia my Italian plant) I can see Lufthansa crew scurrying like rats through a secret door. Oh well, what can we do?
We go and exchange piles of American cash into much smaller piles of Euro's and seek a lot of Bolognian cab's. 250 Euro's (each) later, 20 of us arrive at our villa and 4 of us arrive at Aeroporte Firenze in search of our rented vans. The Firenze airport is akin to the Worcester airport, only with more people. I had rented 3 of our vans from Europecar (I didn't, Amex did) which is much different that CarEurope - which is where I headed only to find a sign in Italian (we didn't bring the translator, big mistake) that said "come back Tuesday - ish". Panicking, I found my car rental thing and called the number on my euro phone. +11, +01,+, 1, etc. etc. Finally I found the combination that made it ring. Eurocar answered and I began explaining my situation - asking how I could get someone to come let me have my vehicles. The very nice English woman was confused - her answer was "come to the window" - to which I replied "I'm at the window, and you are closed". After a few minutes of that confusion, I heard an echo. 11 feet (approximately 3 meters) to my right, was the woman I was on the phone with - at the EuropaCar window.(Sort of like the Peoples Front of Judea, for you Python fans) Whew. 10 minutes later we loaded ourselves into three of the sweetest diesel powered, 6 speed manual Milk Trucks you've ever seen. (Side Note: There is something to this whole diesel thing, I drove about 8000km in a big, boxy Milk van and spent less than $100 bucks in fuel).
Mark Bowker became the leader for the 45km trek to our villa - mostly because his wife is Italian. After only 3-4 wrong moves, we somehow arrived. 18 hours of hell, but we made it. The place was a total pad. Giant (80x35 foot) infinity pool. Villa on top a huge rolling hill with no one around and 360 degrees of spectacular Italian landscape. Plus, there were two cases of wine on the table. It was show time - almost.
It turns out that Fed-X didn't exactly explain all the customs forms required, and as such, no one had any luggage but the Clark party and 3 of the kids. 3 days in the same getup I just flew across the world in couldn't have been nice for anyone. I then got Amex to talk to Lufthansa, who told them I had to file a claim, which I couldn't do, etc. etc. The next day I spoke to Munich headquarters, and a nice man told me I could do it online, which would have been great had I had an internet connection. When I finally found an internet connection, it turns out my friend was a big fat liar, as you can't file a missing bag claim online. I gave up. The bag ended up on my front steps a day before we got home - which is something I guess.
All in all, the trip was molto bene. The Italians have it figured out. No one is in a rush to do anything - ever - except when they are driving. Then they become insane daredevils, driving cars that don't qualify as actual "cars", going 80 miles an hour on the wrong side of a 10 foot wide winding mountain road like the cops were chasing them - which they weren't, because the cops don't exist, let alone chase anyone.
The food was simply superb - even the junk food was better. The fruit and veggies were amazing, and don't even get me going on the Gelato. We made it a mission to try every Gelato bar we passed (and every bottle of Limoncello and wine as well). I don't think I had a lunch that lasted less than 2 hours. We toured winery's, ate lunch with a wine maker (named Bruno Rossini - what else is someone named Bruno Rossini going to do in life?) who spoke zero English. It was awsome.
My wife and I escaped for a night to Bologna - where we were dropping my home run hitting 12 year old son, Jason, off to spend a few days with his best friend Jesse (yes, they live a mile from each other) - who's folks happen to summer in the Italian Alps (because somebody has too). Jess and I stayed at a fancy euro Grand hotel (which, FYI, there are 3 of in Bologna, so don't tell someone to meet you at the Grand). We lunched with Jesse and his mom, and walked around. Everything was closed because it was Sunday, or because it was Charlie Chaplin appreciation day, I'm not sure which. (There were tons of Charlie Chaplin things everywhere, so either he is from Bologna or he is the Bolognese equivalent of France's Jerry Lewis). That was fine with us. We decided to stay in the fancy hotel for dinner. We had the place to ourselves - an ornate room with a hand painted ceiling by some famous guy 500 years ago. It was beautiful, and more importantly, the entire restaurant staff effectively worked for only us. I scored a great Sassicia for half the dough that you'd pay here (a '99, which you probably can't even find anymore) and the Primi and snacks were outstanding. Things were great, until the reason everyone hates American's arrived.
Joe Hedge Fund Windbag the 4th and his wife were seated in the diametric opposite corner from us - about 40 feet away or so. He proceeded to speak at about 4 times the appropriate decibel level, with full on F bombs every 6th word, about all things great and bad with regard to REIT's, the market, the private equity deal last week, etc. His wife said zip for at least 30 minutes while the bag o wind belched forth his arrogant, annoying moronity designed to impress someone who wasn't there. When she finally was allowed to speak, she said something to the effect of "the REIT portfolio that blah blah blah is carrying is suspect due to the exchange rate issues AND questionable lease holdings" which immediately made us realize that she was not his wife (no wife would tolerate that much blow hard b.s.), which made it worse, because now we knew all this bravado was intended to impress this poor woman. She must have been subordinate to the blower in some way, as she sounded far too intelligent in the 14 seconds she was allowed to speak to listen to this clown. As if that's not bad enough - in mid sentence he whips out a napkin and proceeds to blow his nose - making a 15 second sound that can only be described as the same noise a very heavy table (one with a marble top) being dragged across an unfinished tile floor by a grunting Steffie Graff would make. At first my wife and I just looked at each other. Then we busted out laughing. He went right on talking. The two waiters just stopped what they were doing - like they became cast members in the Matrix - and just stared. It was excellent. The waiters headed for the kitchen, where I can only hope they instructed the chef to poison the idiot. He proceeded to perform this majestic horn honk about 4 more times, each time with a little more "oomph". Two of the times I swear he didn't even stop talking during the act itself.
By that point I was liquored up, and really wanted to belch as loud as I could. The high, arched ceiling was great for magnifying sounds like that, so why not take advantage. Unfortunately I wasn't gassy enough, and Jess wouldn't let me try to make armpit farts.
I took pictures of dead popes, which I think is OK. The Sistine chapel and the whole Vatican are some amazing things to see - though you might have thought it was actual torture watching our teenagers. I like the fact that the Vatican charges 13 Euro's (roughly $18 US with our crappy dollar value) - cash - to tour the joint. In 2000, they had 30,000,000 visitors. The Catholic church does OK - but they don't take American Express. We toured Rome, in a bus, with a German tour guide who was adverse to walking and Sun, so that didn't go so great but it was OK because it was about 4000 degrees out, and we had a 2 hour lunch.
Florence is a great city except for the ridiculous array of street vendors selling the exact same stuff. Pisa was similar - the tower was cool as anything, but to get to see it you have to walk by 1100 identical tacky gift places with the exact same stuff. Jason did get some nice Pope rosary beads for no known reason. The Gelato was good everywhere. So was the wine.
Which gets me to the real problem - you can't drink Chianti anymore. It turns out that 98% of all Chianti is junk. The economics are such that the bottle, cork and label cost about 3 bucks. Disregarding the cost of growing, harvesting, and aging the wine itself,let alone shipping and distributing it, let alone any profit for the retailer, it only goes to figure that if a store is selling a bottle for 4 bucks (which was about the average), the contents of the bottle couldn't be too great. This was a sad realization.
Instead, you need to buy SuperTuscan's - which may be comprised of the exact same sangiovese, merlot, et al grapes, but don't have the bargain basement Chianti moniker so wine makers who care have an outlet to sell good wine.
I drank a bottle of 100% Merlot from Podere la Cappella (can't remember the name of the wine) that was simply unbelievable. They also had a SuperTuscan that had the same 80/20 sangiovese to merlot blend as their Chianti Riserva that was approximately 11 thousand times better. The good news is even the crappy wine is good in Italy - even when it's cheaper than the water.
There are lots of other little stories I could tell (like when Mark found the baby Porcupine and the kids all played with it, or when we came home to a herd of cows and bulls in our driveway, or when Tony Prigmore had a 60 year old Italian lady on his lap kissing his cheek while he downed his Limoncello) but I won't.
I can point you to pictures if you care - it's pretty easy to see where my pal's Leonardo and Michaelangelo got their inspiration.
Oh yeah, while the Italians may seem slower and better looking with nothing to do - they are one of the more advanced societies around in terms of adopting automation and ending tactical manual labor jobs. You can't find a person working at a gas stations or most of the grocery stores in Italy - everything is computerized and automated - which would be great if you spoke Italian and could figure out how to actually use those machines.......
sucks that you had cancer dude, Italy is nice if your friends with a local or bring soomeone along who speaks Italian, otherwise your just kinda wandering around hoping to run into something you know. driving there is great though, tight roads, plenty of good turns. awesome.
Posted by: used jones | April 30, 2008 at 12:51 PM