Interview with an Italian: Alessandra on the train

I was going through my posts and I realized I never posted the interview one. I wrote it out, but I never posted that. Realizing that might be a problem, I decided to post it.

I conducted my interview with an Italian on the train to Naples when we were going to Pompeii. Rachel and I got separated from everyone else, and they had our ticket. The train was overbooked by what we estimated to be at least 100 people, so we figured the ticket collector wouldn't be by to check them. The train was literally standing room only. Rachel and I had to stand for about 20 minutes, but we were lucky enough to score seats across the aisle from each other when these little boys got off. Anyway, the ticket collector did come around, and we were pretty freaked out, but Alessandra, who was sitting next to me, pretty much explained the situation and got into a shouting match with him.

So after that, we struck up a conversation and I decided to interview her. I didn't have my paper with me, but I remembered the gist of the questions we were supposed to ask and got through most of them when I looked at the paper again.

Alessandra is from Naples, but she goes to University in London. She was taking the train back home to visit her family. She had been in Rome visiting some friends. She said that her family seems pretty patriarchal, now that she's been in London for awhile. They go to church together every Sunday while she's at home and then they have a big lunch together. Most of Alessandra's family still lives in the same neighborhood, so they all get together for the meal, which lasts all day.

Her family does eat dinner together. Her older brother, who is 29, still lives at home and eats with the family. She said that at the dinner table it was never really a competition for who talked; they all talked pretty equally and were valued but she can now see that they would defer to their dad. But she does say that her mom is the real head of the family and if you really want anything you have to go through her; you just have to ask her dad as more of a formality, but everyone knows that mom makes the decisions.

Alessandra's whole family goes on vacation together in August, she says. Her grandparents have a villa near Capri and they all go there for a few weeks in August. All of her aunts and uncles and cousins go, in addition to her grandparents. The family has been doing this for years. The Monday after Easter, Pasquetta, is also spent together as a family, as are all holidays. Alessandra said that it was really a big deal for her grandparents when she couldn't come home for Easter the first year she was at University; her parents understood that she didn't really get a break but her grandparents didn't and were really upset.

Alessandra said that she and her brother were pretty much treated equally. They didn't really have too many chores growing up because her mother doesn't work but they would always help out whenever they were needed. She would help out with the more "girl"y tasks, like cooking, while her brother would help her father more. She said that they were never really ordered to work, it was more of an idea of helping out and spending time with each other.

Alessandra said that her whole family gets along really well and they like to joke and laugh with each other a lot. There's a lot of teasing and joking, especially with her aunts and uncles and their nieces and nephews. Alessandra says that it's never mean-spirited. She also said that they are always complimenting each other when they see each other, telling everyone how beautiful they look, which she said is different than her experience in London.

I really enjoyed interviewing Alessandra. For one, it made the train ride go a lot faster. Also, she was really nice. She didn't have to help me and Rachel out but she totally did, and then she talked with me for awhile. I told her about my family, too, so it was more like we were having a conversation rather then me quizzing her for 45 minutes. She seemed to really enjoy talking about her family, so I could tell that they were a big part of her life. They seemed to do a lot more together than my family does, and my family does a lot together, much more than some of my friends. It was interesting to see how another person's family works, especially someone from another culture. It was especially interesting since she was just a few years older than me, so I could really relate to her. The interview was really fun, and not nearly as painful as I was expecting it to be.

And she told us when to get off the train. Which was good, because we might never have seen Becca, Rose, Gina, and Allie again. And Becca may have had a nervous breakdown.

What I miss

Reflecting back on the trip, and what I miss about Italy, there are many things I could list. And what I would like to take from the trip could number greatly as well. We were discussing this on the boat to Ostia Antica, when my nose was getting burnt. It blistered.

I said that the one thing that I would miss the most about Italy was the Italian attitude about life. How they value family and relationships over money. How everything seems to move slower and be more relaxed. How they seem to take more time to spend time with people, and how this is valued and not frowned upon. I have found that this really is the thing I miss most about Italy. I do miss the food, and the incredible architecture, and just the whole place; too many things to list, really. But if I had to boil it down, I would say that what I miss most are the values of the Italians. I don't know that I would jump to say that they are superior to American values, but I do think that they are of equal importance. Americans have so many stress-related health problems that I'm sure stem from our hectic lifestyles and the emphasis that we're placing on the bottom line of profit.


I personally believe that all the success in the world, the perfect grades, the perfect job, etc., don't really matter if you haven't enjoyed the process to get there. You have to have a balance. It can't be healthy to be stressed out all of the time, to be locked in a room, by yourself doing work. I think you have to balance that out with spending time with people and building relationships. When we look back on life, isn't that what we want to remember, the people we spent it with rather than the homework we did?

I think that's the most important thing that I learned while I was in Italy. You have to take time to enjoy what you're doing or it's really not worth doing at all. I want to be able to look back on my life and see the positive things. I want to make as much of my life as positive as I can. So if that means taking time from work to have fun with people. then so be it, because I think that in the long run that is probably more beneficial.

American Restaurants

Going to an American restaurant for the first time was so different for me. Before going to Italy, I hadn't thought anything at all about chain restaurants, and how almost all of the restaurants around me are chain restaurants. Coming back and realizing that was really a shock to my system. In Italy, there were really no chain restaurants at all, except for McDonald's, but I never went in there at all. I loved how all of the restaurants were different; no two were the same. You could order the same meal in two different restaurants and they would come out and be completely different. If you go into two different Applebee's and order the same thing, they'll pretty much taste the same. There really isn't that much diversity with the food here. Chains take over most of the restaurants, and most of the smaller, family-owned restaurants are almost obsolete because they can't keep up with the prices and the competition of the chain restaurants.

The experience within the restaurant was even different. The waitress came up to us right away and asked us quickly what we wanted to eat. She seemed reluctant to offer us more time to decide what to eat. She was very intent on us ordering quickly. After we ordered and got our food, she asked us if we wanted dessert, and when we said no, she brought us our check. We hadn't even finished our meals yet! There wasn't really anyone in the restaurant, but it still felt like they were rushing us out. We paid the bill but then we just sat around and talked, but when the waitress walked passed us, I could tell that she was irritated that we were still there. I did not feel badly, however, because there was no rush for us to leave. The place was pretty empty, and we didn't have anything to do. Why should we leave? For the first time in a long time I felt like I was being rushed out of a place. It was so different from the atmosphere in Italy. You didn't always necessarily feel like people were bending over backwards for you, but I always felt welcomed and that the restaurants had a generally friendly atmosphere. I feel like for all of the talk that the United States has about being so service-friendly that it's more superficial and fake and more lip-service rather than genuine.

So on the whole, I prefer the dining experience in Italy more than the U.S., and that's one of the things about Italy I really miss.

Home

Coming home was weird. Well, first of all, it was terrible because we didn't get in until 2 a.m. and I didn't go to bed until 4 a.m. I didn't sleep at all on the plane from Venice to JFK, maybe 15 minutes, and we had a five-hour layover. So when the plane from JFK to Pittsburgh was delayed, I was not a happy camper. I slept the whole time we were on the runway and the whole ride home.

But that's not why it was weird. I couldn't sleep through the night for probably three or four days, which was bad because I started work on Monday and needed to be up at 6.30 a.m. I was only getting about four hours of sleep and then falling asleep on the couch for like four hours. For some reason, I could not get back on cycle. I found that weird because in Rome, I had one day where I was kind of funky and then I bounced right back. I attributed this to the fact that I didn't really have anything to do--in Rome, we had a schedule to follow and stuff to get done. Here, I didn't really have anything to do until Monday, and I knew that it was just work (a summer camp for special needs kids) and I've done it for six or seven years so I didn't need to go to bed early. Which was a bad idea.

I'm still not completely unpacked. But in Rome, I didn't unpack for like five days, so I'm right on schedule. I just feel like it's weird being back. I'm used to building and people everywhere, and it seems so much duller here because there aren't people or anything anywhere, because my town is fairly quiet. I'm also used to that different pace, I guess. I'm used to moving slower and not getting that upset about anything, but just taking stuff as it comes. That's been a tough adjustment, especially with one co-worker who's always trying to get a rise out of me.

I wasn't really ready to come back. From the tour, yes, because I didn't like it as much as I did the whole Rome experience. I loved Florence, and Sienna and Venice, but I didn't like the pace or the set-up. I wasn't ready to leave and would have loved some more time in Rome. Maybe next year...

Il Palio--The Race

Il Palio, Sienna

We really hauled it to make it to the race on time. It almost felt like we didn't have to because we got there and pretty much didn't do anything for an hour. Literally, an hour. We saw one guy take a nap on a newspaper. All of the Siennese were milling around and talking, so I guess they weren't as bored as we were. Everyone seemed to know each other because even though Sienna is a city, it's a fairly small one, and if people are thrown together twice a year, I bet they get to know each other.

Finally, something happened! The carabineiri rode in, on horses. They did one lap around the track very slowly. Then, it looked like the one horse at the back was tripping. The guy at the front drew his sword, and then they all did and they took off at a full gallop around the track twice and then rode out of the stadium. It was pretty cool.

Then we saw Tom Hanks.

And then the parade started. It was pretty much the same deal as the bishop: the flag people came in, did their routine, took 20 steps, did the routine, etc. That ate up about two hours. That's because every contrada participates in the parades, although only 10 race. This year, only nine raced because one horse got hurt the trial night. Then they introduced the horses, one at a time, and they seemed a little high-strung.

There were two Americans sitting next to me. One of the guys was from Columbus; the other guy and his girlfriend were from Hudson, Ohio. That was pretty weird, that in the middle of a horse track in Sienna, Italy I would meet a bunch of people from Ohio. The guy from Columbus actually works in Switzerland and had read about the Palio and decided to come and see it if he was near Sienna and could. His knowledge proved to be helpful when the race began.

If you look at the picture, the start spot is in the upper left side of the circle. The men in charge stand on the wooden bridge. All of the horses line up around there, and one man reads off the order right before the race starts. The horse on the left inside (I think) determines when the race starts. He just starts, and the other horses follow him. That's when that position (whatever it is) is so important. In the Palio, there aren't any gates. There isn't a gun to start (unless there's a false start). I learned that day why in American horse racing the horses are put in those pens before the race.

So the guy started to read the names and a hush fell over the crowd. Everyone wanted to hear where their horse would be, and if he got the good spot or not. When the announcer was reading off the positions, the crowd really reacted. This guy in front of us, in a blue shirt, was really flipping out. I don't think his horse got a good spot because his was not too pleased.

The horses were mostly lined up when sounds of a scuffle could be heard. I couldn't really see anything because I was about a fourth of the way in the crowd on the upper left, near where the race starts, but I'm pretty short, so I couldn't see much--just the tops of some of the horses. Then, the announcer starts saying, "No no no, Drago! No no no!" Drago was one of the contradas. The scuffle started to heat up, but they controlled it, walked it off, and then the announcer read the order again. Well, the same thing happened. Drago was acting up. The announcer started yelling at him again, but it got more heated and then the gun went off and they took off around the track. That's when we learned how they started the race and what a false start was.

They lined up again, and the same thing happened. Now, the crowd's starting to get into it. They were pretty upset with the false start. The guy in the blue shirt was really flipping out. Some guy put his daughter on his shoulders and this man literally screamed at him to get the girl down--it's not like he could see from where we were anyway. The horses kept fighting, and the announcer kept yelling at Drago. The suits were starting to get upset. Some of them were shaking their hands at Drago, a few threw in some other gestures, and a couple just put their heads down.

The race got underway about a half hour and one more false start later. The Tortuca, favored to win, was in the back the whole time, which upset me. We couldn't tell who the winner was. Columbus told up that they announced it by draping the flag from the building on the other side of the judges' side. My guess was that the Goose won. He was apparently not the guy that this one couple was rooting for, because they were actually sobbing.

There was an altercation involved with the flags. Apparently, a difference of opinion existed between who won and who did not. The goose really did win, but another flag was put up at first, which angered the Goose fans. When the flag was switched, the other team's fans were equally, if not more, upset. One gentleman on the bridge was extremely angry and he was gesturing so wildly that I thought at one point he was going to fall off. The guy in the blue shirt was not happy, and I know this because I know some of the words he was saying.

It was interesting to see how people took the results. The geese celebrated with a parade through the town. Everyone else took down their flags quickly, as fast as we were leaving the city. There would be no flags flying but that of the geese. The goose won and none of the other contradas would fly their flags until August and the next race.

Il Palio--Preperations for the Race

On race day, we had to get to Sienna by a certain time because they lock the city down. To make sure that not too many people get in and out. It was too early for the race to start, so we split up and hung around, agreeing to meet in the square at a certain time to watch the race.

It was readily apparent that people were ready for the race, that this was a big part of people's lives. On the streets of the city were the different flags and they hung to represent which contrada you were in. We were all wearing our Tortuca scarves, but there wasn't any negative backlash if you were in a different contrada (neighborhood).

There were actually a lot of tourists in the city. We ate lunch in a restaurant next to some people from Florida, who were actually not in Sienna for the race. A lot of tourists come to Sienna for the Palio, but these people were just visiting the city and were actually leaving before the race was due to begin.

has two flag twirlers, who have to perform a flag routine for him, and then he blesses them. This is a very important part of the ceremony. The flag men have to train ten years before they can perform before the bishop. The We met at the square a good hour and a half before the ceremony was going to start so we could get a good spot to see. The pageantry involved with the Palio is almost more important than the race itself. It certainly takes up more time. Before the race, each contrada must present the riders and representatives to the Bishop of Sienna. The contradas are judged for their flags and procession and a winner is picked, separate from the winner of the race.

The parade was amazing. First, it must be noted that the members who are officially in the parade representing the contrada are all dressed in medieval costumes, FULL medieval costumes. The contrada's procession begins with a flag carrier, the flag of the contrada . They are then followed by other people, including the two flag twirlers and the duce. The duce is supposedly the "most handsome man in the contrada." He's dressed up in armor. Following behind the official procession may be other members of the contrada. For one contrada, the whole neighborhood came out, singing the song and waving their scarves.

The most amazing thing about this was the passion and pride everyone had for their contrada. Everyone took such pride in what they did and were so excited when the bishop blessed them. The performances by the flag twirlers were all greeted with such loud and excited responses, even though they performed them three times for the judges. Even though they were competing against each other, the spirit at this point wasn't tense, or an idea of someone failing so that another contrada could win. The idea was more of everyone doing well so everyone could look good.

We could only watch the ceremony until the Tortuca because we had to haul it to the race track because they shut the doors at a certain time, and if you're not in by then, you're locked out.

Massimo

Our tour guide's name was Massimo, and Massimo was one of the most interesting people that I met on the entire trip. The first time I met him, he really kind of scared me. I'd just taxied over to our hotel, which was near Termini, from Medaglie D'Oro. It was around 7.30 and I thought I was late. My mom was waiting outside for me, and it was the first time I'd seen her in a month. We grabbed my bags and went inside and then, all of the sudden, this 6 foot tall, skinny man is yelling, "Oh, PAM-ela!" in a very excited voice. I had no idea who he was. He told the desk clerk who I was, still in this very excited tone, and I was getting a little scared, but my mom told me that it was just Massimo.

Massimo was a really cool tour guide. He lives in Rome, and I thought he was a tour guide as his job but he's really not. He's a guide on his vacation. He's really an accountant (which might explain why he was so uptight sometimes) and he travels around with groups when he's not working. I can understand why he'd do it; living in Rome is expensive and he probably needs the extra money. He had a huge network of contacts that he was able to utilize when we went to different cities, giving credence to the idea that in Italy it's all about who you know. More than once the guides would mention the fact that they got the job because they were friends with Massimo, which I thought was interesting because in the U.S., we would down-play the friends connection because you never want the idea or thought of nepotism to cloud anything. In America, it's important to have gotten your job on your own and to make your successes on your own, without help. That's not the mentality of Italians, who rely on family members and friends for contacts.

It was very interesting spending time with Massimo because I really got to see things from a more Italian perspective. After probably his fourth day with the group, he began to refer to the group as his "family." That's a really interesting mentality to have. I'm not sure that members of the group really identified as family, but Massmio did because the Italian culture places so much more of an emphasis on families that his thinking is more family-centered than ours' is, perhaps.