A Day Around The Lakes

Dear Blog,

We stayed up late last night, partly to adjust to the time zone, and woke around ten in the morning local time, took care of necessities like paying bills that we should have before we left, and headed out for brunch. It was brunch for us, and lunch for everyone else. Actually it was late lunch for everyone else, and we were lucky to get served.

We ate at a restaurant on the water again. Harry's Bar wasn't open, so we went to the hotel next door and sat outside in the sun. The temperature was comfortable, with cool air off the lake and warm sunshine from almost directly above us. Dozens of people were sitting in chairs, on benches, and walking on the cobbles nearby.

Two families drove up and provided us with an interesting contrast. An American couple with two children drove up, parked in the parking spot, unloaded some clothing to bring upstairs. The man took the luggage and disappeared. The children were in the back seat eating what looked like crepes. The woman stood near the back of the car, with down turned lips and we noticed she was crying. The kids were not being out of order at all, but she reached in the car and lost her temper with them, and came close to striking them with a fist. But she caught herself. Later the man came down, and spoke to her. Clearly they are not happy together, at least today.

A few minutes later an Italian family drove up. they parked in the middle of the damned road, with no consideration for anyone else. They piled out of the car (an alfa) and started looking around, as if they were visual ants trying to survey all the local food sources. They were disorganized, confused, but happy. The hotel manager came and asked them to move the car into a parking space. The driver looked at him as if the idea were something novel that had not occurred to him, then fitfully tried and finally succeeded in parking his car out of the way of traffic. Meanwhile, the ants continued their survey, and in somewhat chaotic fashion they chose a restaurant, frittered with the chairs as if not sure what they were for, then finally settled in to sit in them, and apply the same chaos to the menus, bread and tableware. They managed not to break anything except the silence and even then, only softly.

I think if I have to choose between the two families I would prefer the chaos and comfort of the Italian family, which appears fairly typical to me, to the stern loneliness of the American family. I just wish the Italians would learn how to park in a civil fashion. But perhaps this is a telling contrast. The American family was living clearly for someone Else's expectations, rather than their own, and the Italian family was living for themselves regardless of the expectations of others. While Italy is a fairly poor country by European standards, and they can't make a decent product to save their souls, without help from either the Germans or the Japanese, by and large they certainly seem happier.

This is especially true for the women. In the US it always seems like women are insecure and less comfortable in their skins. Especially the middle class women. This is in stark contrast to the comfortable expressions of the average Italian woman walking by on the street. I plan to think about this a bit more, but it doesn't quite make sense to me yet. Other similar problems do. For example, there are very few professional men in sight. Waiting for allora this morning I sat at a table outside a small cafe for an hour and watched people walk by. There were people from all walks of life. In particular there were a few older women, well dressed, but practical and neat, who were managing three generations of family around them. There were no men with these matrons. at one point, a Korean man made vulgar hawking nasal sounds nearby (my neighbor does the same thing. Is there some Korean sinus ritual I don't understand?) and she admonished the children not to look, to ignore him, and to move forward. When she gets to me and notices that I'm smiling, she rolls her eyes and shakes her head and says something in Italian I don't quite catch, but she conveys the universal idea of one's failure to understand the crudity of one's fellow man. How I know she is well read, is something I'm not sure of. It has to do with how quickly she responds the the environment. She is what is left in the west of European nobility. It is a meager morsel of the once glorious past, but a stalwart one determined to raise her family according to her standards.

But there were no men of similar stature. Most of them were ordinary folk. When Allora and I spoke about it she said that this was nothing to be surprised about. She said "Do you, or Jim, or any other of the executives you know walk around town?" And the answer is no. The more accurate answer is that none of us would enjoy sacrificing a weekend trying to herd three generations of children around such boring tourist sites. We would find something more interesting to do even if it was painfully physical and cost a lot of money. The fact that too many of the men were wearing pink or salmon colored pants was insight enough that they weren't the kind of people others trust with money. I mean, I simply would not let some guy over forty in a sleeveless polo and salmon colored pants that have seen to many laundry cycles with Tide handle my money.

I am not sure what this says about me, that I'm one of the guys walking around, even if I'm wearing khaki shorts, a braided leather belt, and a linen shirt from Indigo Palms, other than I prefer getting lost in remote places, and stumbling across a decent restaurant, to a beach or popular tourist attraction. It gives me insight into the common people which is why I travel. As a person who loves to watch people, this anonymity comforts my internally analytical voyeur and gives him something to amuse himself with. Maybe there are other closet entrepreneurs hovering in villages here. But it is terribly easy to spot them, simply by their body language, and I think that there is no camouflage that can hide them from me. So I think I am alone or nearly so in my adventure here.

As I was watching people a man on a bicycle stopped and spoke to a young woman. At first I thought this was yet another example of an Italian man giving ghetto compliments to an attractive woman. Even though she was not attractive. There were four young women, probably under twenty five, walking together, following two adults who were obviously parents or senior relatives. I knew they were Americans before they spoke, because they all had too many pounds, too bad a posture, and too lazy a gate, as if the only exercise they got was between the couch and the kitchen. In the sunshine, one of the girls had removed her shirt and was walking around in what was either a fashionable bra, or a bikini top. The man was a policeman and he had told her to put her shirt on. The mother was horrified. For my part, first, if you're overweight no one wants you to share it. Secondly, I never understand the classlessness of walking around without a shirt on, man or woman, except on the beach. I understand less doing so in a foreign country, and even less so in one where such things are not commonly accepted. Yet another American being a bad ambassador.

The trend in Italy right now is not very different from that in the US. Almost every woman is wearing jeans, strap heels, a tight elastic strap camisole shirt, some kind of layer over it, something with glitter somewhere, and a little jewelry. It's obvious that the average colorist in the US is slightly better than his or her peers in Italy, but it's also easier to work with brown hair than black. You notice that they are comfortable bearing their shoulders. But stomach's and backs are out of the question. The old conventions haven't apparently changed either: married women with children have a definite dress code. Unmarried men and women do as well. There is very little overlap in these dress codes. Men are more likely to be fit weight here when they are young, and more likely to be sodded smokers with pot bellies than I think at home. But that might just be the class of people we're seeing.

Personally I find this dress code comforting. I commented to Allora that the underlying social variable here, is that people stay in the towns where they grew up, even if they go to school. This is still fairly common here, despite the changes in the past twenty years. If you make that one decision you get the culture that they have here. Family is everything and everyone else is only vaguely important.

But enough about clothing, except for one interesting note: Allora found some guy taking what looked like up skirt photos as people walked by. That was charming. I would have done something if I had noticed. Which is probably why she didn't tell me until I'd walked by.

We decided to drive to Bellagio which is on a peninsula between two forks of a local lake.

There were beautiful homes along the way. 1-6M euros. There were post-communist little apartment buildings. There was a church, with a kitch-fair outside, near a breathtaking overlook. Unfortunately, it was the church of the virgin bicyclist or something. No kidding. A church to bicyclists, with monument outside. I am sure it was well intended but I found it ridiculous. Cycling is not heroic. I am sorry. I don't get it.

We found a wonderful hotel on the water and had dinner. Fish, from the lake. A lemon, butter, and caper sauce, and the fish was done perfectly. Every meal so far has been unassailable. I programmed a route along the water, and we headed home to the hotel at dark.

And the drive home was my only disappointment for the day. I should have had the Ferrari here. It was a road designed by fascists I'm sure, but a narrow curvy road along the water that just begged to be driven in a sports car, late at night, at speed, with hi-beams on. Allora says we should do the south of France in it if anything at all. But I'm thinking that these roads, by Mussolini's government-work projects, cannot be bested for a Ferrari with fresh tires. It's 2500 to ship it overseas. That's not any more than you'd spend on a rental car for three weeks. I can justify it if I drive enough. Can't I? Anyway, I did my best to enjoy it in the Saab, which is pretty comfortable in the lower gears.

We drove by wall after wall of elegant stonework meant to retain the hillside. Beautiful.

Anyway, I'm tired now and can't even try to be funny. Allora is putting pictures together for the blog. Hopefully she'll post a few.

Tomorrow we're going to Zurich and back.

Cheers

Curt