At last, Top Gear in Italy

Some time ago, I wrote a little post with some suggestions for improving the TV here, one of those suggestions included adding a decent motoring programme, like Top Gear which I got back in the UK.

Well, for a couple of months now I’ve been buying the Italian version of the Top Gear magazine, and it is not at all bad. Then I noticed a few ads, including one whole bus which was covered in an ad for the Top Gear motoring programme.

Finally, car mad Italy gets a good programme about cars, motorbikes and all things motoring, I thought. About time too, even if the programme is part of the Top Gear franchise, and therefore, not Italian in origin.

However, there is a downside. Isn’t there always? The downside is that to see Top Gear you need to have a subscription to Sky, which, incidentally, we almost had, but for some mysterious reason (possibly because I was always a bit short with the Sky telesales people – I hate telesales), our Sky subscription was never activated, even if we now have Cartoon Network and CNN.

What the heck, I can at least read about exotic and un-environmentally friendly cars in the colourful Top Gear magazine. And Italians finally get a magazine that is a) not as dull as ditch-water and b) is not a thinly disguised car manufacturers brochure.

Stocking the Shop

Rooting around on Amazon trying to find things to add to the two shops I recently added to this blog has been proving to be an interesting exercise. I’ve started to add an ‘Italian Regions’ section and I’ve discovered that there are not that many books about the northern regions of Italy. Tuscany, as you may imagine, has had plenty of books written about it, whereas Trento, where the majestic Dolomite mountain range can be found, has not generated any where near as much literature.

I suppose I can understand why in that I imagine that northern regions are possibly a bit too mountainous for many, and that those looking to move to Italy tend to aim for the areas with a milder climate. Personally, I would think about living in the northern areas, and especially the some of the more mountainous zones, however, having seen areas such as Tuscany, Umbria, and the like, I can understand why such areas are able to attract the attention of those looking to set up a new life there.

I have not, so far, got to trawling for books about Sicily, but I am curious to see just how much has been written about the region. This evening we watched a rerun of Montalbano, which is a series of stories about a police commissioner who is based down in Sicily. I had not seen this particular episode before, and it was as fascinating as ever. The landscapes, and the interior shots of enormous homes that do not appear to have been decorated for at least a century.

The more I watch the Montalbano series, the more I am intrigued by Sicily. It almost appears that the place is stuck in a time warp, indeed, if it were not for the fact that Montalbano dresses in a reasonably modern kind of way and knocks about in a beaten up old Fiat Tipo, the whole series could take on the air of a period drama set in the first part of the 20th century.

Then, but I’m not sure this is deliberate or not, there are the car-less streets, which are at a stark contrast with the car-lined streets of Milan. Sicily looks to be an odd place, and even my other half, who has been there (and has Sicilian origins), will only say that I really need to go there to see how it really is. But she does seem to be hinting that the Montelbano tv series really is rather close to reality.  This reaction only serves to intrigue me yet further.

One of these fine days I shall go down there, and in the meantime I might even buy a book of photos of the island from my own shop.

Italy holds an odd attraction for me, its horribly frustrating at times, but living in Italy is a bit like living on the edge of a huge and mysterious forest. At first, your curiosity draws you into this forest, and, after a while, you find another forest within that one, and this forest is equally mysterious and enthralling. Next there is another forest, and so on.  Eventually you become lost in this web of forests, well not so much lost, as trapped, or, rather, imprisoned within your own fascination.

Italy is such a series of forests. Initially, it’s suave tentacles writhe temptingly around your feet, but then, and ever, ever so slowly, they start to rise until they envelope you, and finally they start to penetrate, and continue penetrating deeper and deeper until they finally reach into and touch your very soul.

That’s it, once you’ve lost your soul to Italy, you become condemned to spending life in the enchanted boot.

I believe my soul has been defiled.

Not a lot of people know this – Francesco Rutelli

Apparently, Francesco Rutelli, the present Italian Cultural Affairs minister, once replaced the Italian flag which flew at Palazzo Montecitorio with that of the Vatican. I have not been able to discover in exactly which year Rutelli did this mischievous act, but it was interesting to hear about it from my former wannabe Italian politician student.

At the time of this act, which was a direct protest against the influence that the Vatican exerts on Italian politics, Francesco Rutelli was a member of a radical political party. In another radical incident, he also spent a short time behind bars after having very publicly smoked a joint, which he inhaled.

Alas it now seems that the formerly radical Rutelli has become absorbed into the repetitive instability that is mainstream politics in the Living Museum, and it is highly doubtful that he will carry out such an overt protest ever again. I suppose you could say that Rutelli has fallen upwards.

Actually, I understand that Rutelli is proposing himself as a candidate for Walter Veltroni’s former post, that of Mayor of the Eternal City. Interestingly, Rutelli has already been the Mayor of Rome, and preceded Veltroni.

In a country which regularly shies away from the new, the regurgitated Rutelli may well be in with a pretty good chance of being elected Mayor of Rome yet again.

Pizzeria Photo Gallery

It was pizza night tonight, although it was not the standard Italian type pizza, but the ‘pizza al trancio’, which is the ‘deep pan’ version of the traditionally thin pizza. There are two pizzerias near us that do this type of pizza. One is Da Giuliano which is located at the Corso Sempione end of Via Paolo Sarpi in Milan, and which has been there long enough to have become something of an institution in these parts.

Oddly enough, I’m not a great fan of the Da Giuliano deep pan pizzas. I find that they are just too heavy and I don’t like the texture of the pizza base. Luckily, there is another of these places, Da Mimmo, which is at 2 Via Alfredo Albertini. This street is a small side road that connects Paolo Sarpi with Via Canonica. Anyway, I prefer the deep pan pizza that is place does, even if, I have to say, I don’t really like the Italian deep pan pizza that much.

My other half does though, so we often find ourselves either eating there or bringing some of this substantial pizza home, as we did this evening.

The Da Mimmo pizzeria is a strange place. The thing that strikes you is that everything is very Spartan and functional. It is also a little dated and looks as though the place was last done up back in the sixties or seventies. As you walk in you see about three or four rows of long brown melamine tables, which are set up banquet style, and if you eat there, you may well find yourself sitting next to people you don’t know.

Actually, in general Italian restaurants are not intimate, and the tables are often set very close to one another. And if you are the only people in the restaurant and another group comes in, you can bet your bottom dollar that they will sit themselves down at a neighbouring table. OK, enough of the set up of Italian eateries.

What is interesting about the Da Mimmo pizzeria, and makes it worth a visit, if only for some pizza to take away, is the selection of stunning photos of desert landscapes, African people, and four by fours ascending and descending dunes which adorn the walls. This evening, as often happens, my curiosity got the better of me I asked about all the images.

It turns out that the owner of the pizzeria loves going on tours to Africa, and has been doing so for many years, hence all the photos. At the moment this gentleman is somewhere in the midst of Lybia on a ten day tour of the country apparently. The he take photos are not digital, but of the traditional film variety.

This pizzeria cum photo gallery, which is closed Sundays, is actually quite a fascinating place, and it is cheap, and popular with the locals. If you do try it out, do not forget to spend a few minutes looking at all the images.  They really are very good.

Mugging in Milan

This post has been updated to make it more accurate – Alex Roe, 22.02.1008.

I was rather worried to learn from the guy I work with that he had been mugged a couple of weeks back.

As if mugging in any circumstances were not bad enough, this case is worse. You see, this guy was attacked in the centre of Milan in the Duomo underground stop, on a Sunday, and while he was with his little daughter.

Apparently, while he was getting on a train, he was brought down rugby style, and then held down while an accomplice stole his wallet from his back pocket.

As you do after such an event, you head off to the nearest police station to report the miscreants. And as he arrived at the police station, my friend found himself in the midst of a whole group of people who had also been victims of what was a well organised and executed mass mugging.

The other victims were a mixture of foreigners and Italians alike, and many had lost money, credit cards, and important personal documents. The muggers, and there were five or six, my friend told met, were in their mid-thirties and may have been Italian.

In view of the brazen nature of these attacks, it should have been possible for the police to have caught up with the criminals. No such luck.

My friend suggested that the police use the CCTV system to identify the perpetrators, but was surprised to discover that the underground station video surveillance cameras were not working on the day of this rash of nasty attacks. Great, not.

In view of this potential problem, and I don’t know if action has been taken, it would be a good idea to carry two wallets if you venture into the centre of Milan via the underground railway system, the yellow line, at the moment. Put one in your back pocket, in which you can put 10 Euros or so, and hide the other in a less obvious place. Then, in the event of a mugging, at least the thieves would think they had got what they were after.

On no account try to remonstrate with these interesting gentlemen. Unless you are Rambo, you will most likely come off very badly.

Just watch you back, and keep your eyes open for signs of unwanted attention down in the underground stations, and, if something does raise your suspicions, keep your wits about you.

The Dragon’s Revenge?

Anti-Chinese feeling in my area of Milan appears to be running a little higher than usual. Someone seems to be getting some kind of warped pleasure out of scribbling ‘Cinesi merda’ (‘Chinese shit’ is the translation) on the walls alongside Chinese run businesses in Via Paolo Sarpi and its immediate vicinity here in Milan.

Oddly enough, the Chinese residents of the area have not taken to writing ‘Italiani merda’ on the walls in the area, or have they? Well, I don’t really know. So, I wondered, how do you write ‘Italiani merda’ in Chinese.

Well, out of sheer curiosity I asked the bar staff of Chinese origin in a bar I pop into on Sundays for a quick coffee to write ‘Italiani merda’ in Chinese. These people chuckled a bit at my request, smiled, and then obliged, with one of them writing the offending words on a paper napkin.

Ah, I thought, now I’ll know if the Chinese are getting their own back. Except for the fact that I discovered, about two minutes later, that I could not even work out which way was the right way up for this group of two, what I assumed to be, words. I don’t even know whether the writing was a translation of the offending words, or a Chinese equivalent, to be honest. The writing could have read ‘Who is this idiot asking such a stupid question’, or worse, for all I knew.

This rather pointless act of abject curiosity has brought me to two conclusions.

First, it really would be pointless for the Chinese to go around scribbling ‘Italiani merda’ all over the place in Chinese, as the Italians would have no idea they were being insulted.

And, secondly, I doubt whether there are that many graffiti artists in China, as it would take them ages, in their elegantly complex language, to write anything on the walls there, especially seeing as the spray paint cans beloved of those who write all over the place are not the most precise of instruments.  If anyone would care to correct me on the existence of graffiti artists in China, then please do.

PS We went for a Chinese meal in one of the restaurants near us this evening.  And it was very good.  Indeed, the fame of this particular place has even reached as far a field as Genova, or so I discovered from a friend of mine from Genova this evening.