Opinionated post-modernist and post-renaissance thoughts on a visit to Italy

I had a conference in Milan and Chinni decided to make a vacation out of it. She joined me after my meeting on 4 July and we did two days in Milan, 4 days in Florence, and two days in Venice. I then went on to Rome, while Chinni returned to Boston via Milano. I had work in Roma, a couple of schools to visit. (Hey, somebody has to do the hard work, you know.) Here are some random observations.

Don’t go on a trip to Italy during their tourist season unless you want to feel like being on the platform when the Coromandel Express gouges out its passengers at Madras Central. (I can hear Shanti saying, ‘That’s why we rent a cottage in the Tuscany country side and don’t go to the cities.’) That’s true. There are thousands of people in all the tourist spots, students groups, professional tour groups and others assorted people jockeying for space on the pavements, in the museum hallways, and in the lines for everything. The only way to deal with it is to look at that as an important feature of your holiday and start guessing games about where they are from, their relationships with each other and so on. That can be fun. Really!

Italians are said to be known for style and design. So, in Milan, I went to a department store looking for clothing and found them all made in China. I then went to a specialized clothing store and found the fashionable Italian clothing made in Italy but sold at prices that you would need to take out a bank loan to be able to buy. A shirt for 170 euros! However, I am happy at seeing all the assault being made on Italian fashion sensibilities. Walking around the streets, I saw odd clothes. (Those tourists!). I found some of the slogans on blouses and t-shirts inexplicable. There was a woman with ‘Aggressive’ in glistening sequins across her chest; another guy who wore a t-shirt with ‘Go ahead Release You’ on it. Now, what was that? Perhaps it is all part of a Chinese plot to spoil the Italian fashion image.

Bathrooms across the world always contain a mystery. It is usually one of trying to figure out how the shower works after you have suffered bursts of cold water on your body. In the Milan hotel I stayed in before Chinni came, there was a cord hanging in the shower stall. I thought it was a clothes line meant to dry clothes but could not find a hook or place to tie the other end. When I asked another academic from New Zealand who was staying in the same hotel what the cord was, he said that it was to turn on the exhaust fan, but did not work in his bathroom. I guess mine was faulty too for I would only hear a slight buzzing sound when I yanked at the cord, which would stop when I released it. Two hotels later, in Florence, I met a similar cord beside which there was a sign painted on the wall which read, ‘Alarm – for Emergency use’! Now, I wonder why nobody responded to all the yanking I did in those other hotels.

Food: The problem with Italy is that you got to be prepared to eat Italian food. Which is OK for a change but all the time? By my fifth day, I was ready to eat anything other than a mixture of flour, pomodoro (tomato) and mozzarella cheese in different forms – as caprese (cold sandwich), as pizza margherita (hot, melted and sticky), or as pasta vegitariana. Chinni and I finally found a Lebanese restaurant in Milan where we could get some falafel, and a Chinese restaurant in Venice where we got some vegetarian noodle dish. Oh, and a heavenly Tandoor restaurant in Milan where Pakistanis made us some palak panneer and tarka dal. But many Chinese run regular Italian restaurants too so don’t let their presence in the doorway inviting you in fool you. And the gelaterria! They were great and made up for the missing calories! There are two to every street corner. Similar to ice-cream, they help to finish off a tiring day. (I have a couple of months to go for my next cholesterol check.)

Nobody drinks tap water in Italy. When you ask for water in a restaurant, they will offer ‘naturale (non-fizzy)’ or ‘fizzamente (fizzy).’ Both come in bottles. Restaurants charge you a minimum of 1.5 euro for a 50 cl bottle when you can get a 1 litre bottle in a grocery store for 0.50 cents. Now, during Caesar’s time, they established cast iron water posts at various piazzas (squares) in these cities from which water constantly pours out. There seems to be no way of shutting them off. So, after the first prohibitively expensive bottle of water, save the bottle and refill it at these taps. In case you are worried about quality, by now you must know that there is nothing that a few pellets of Pudin Hara cannot cure.

Museums: Italy continues to live off the Renaissance! The museums and the churches are lovely, filled with frescoes, statues, and paintings of unbelievable beauty. Not being a student of art history but one of economics, may I add here that the law of diminishing marginal utility rapidly set in. After the third museum, I could not distinguish between a Michaelangelo, or a Pampolini, or Vasari. They all looked the same. The statues outside in the street corners looked the same and as good to me as the statues inside the museum for which we paid from 6 to 15 euros as entrance fee. And the more popular museums required booking well in advance otherwise you waited for hours in line to get in.

Chinni, the project manager, had done her research and booked us at the more important ones, weeks before our departure. Chinni would also rent an audio guide in the museum, a digital hand held device that guided you through with descriptions, usually with some additional information giving you history and tidbits about the painting, al for an additional 2 to 3 euro. She would point out to me the highlights that I seemed to regularly miss. But when we went from room to room in the museums all the art began to look alike. ‘Did you see the Giotta fresco which was commissioned by Cosmo Medici the first when he had just won the battle of Lebano?’ Chinni would ask me while I rested on a bench. I would say ‘Yes’ because, well, I mean, I must have seen it right? (I did glance about each room.) Or was it in the previous room. Or the previous museum? Or, maybe, in the piazza in the previous town?

The Iffizi museum in Florence was monstrous, and the guide book says, competes with the Louvre in Paris and the Prado in Madrid. Both of which we have seen so we can check this off in our to-do list.

Often, the museum and church employees had a resigned attitude at the hordes passing through. Cameras would click and flash right next to a sign saying no photos, and the employee would be either chatting to his colleague or staring bored at her finger nails.

Tour groups with guides were often fun to watch too, and distracted me from the works of Michaelangelo. Many families were accompanied by youngsters, who would have frustration written on their faces as they clung to their parents’ arms hoping this was the last room of the museum.

Some of the guides have figured out what the average tourist wants and cater to it. So have the museum employees. When I stood near the bulletin board at the entrance to the Santa Croce basilica in Florence trying to figure out the map, a museum employee walked up to me and said, ‘The third chapel on the right has the two important frescoes. Michaelangelo’s tomb is in the middle on that side, across from it is Gallileo’s, and Dante’s is here.” She probably meant to add, ‘You Philistine, you can see those and get the hell out of here.” That’s what the guide books do to us. They point out these must see things, and those spots have all the crowd, and when you return home, someone is sure to ask, ‘Did you visit Michaelangelo’s tomb’ so I had better see it.

Chinni has been inspired by all the beautiful artwork. She plans to commission Sreshta to do a mural in our Palm Meadows living room. But I worry. Sreshta may instead decide on an installation and we would have a projector with images in one room and something on the floor in another, reducing living space significantly. Stay tuned for more on Italy.