Sporadic Posting, Unconnected Observations

We left the Villa Fabrioni and the attentive hosts Sergio and Stefano, and after a night in Florence in a surprisingly good hotel near the train station (booked purely for convenience), we took a day-long train trip, first to Bologna where we spent a few hours marveling at the architecture, then on to Bari where we were to catch the ferry to Dubrovnik.

We had a momentary scare when the board first announced that our train was 50 minutes late, amid a number of “cancelletos.” But our train did in fact appear, and only 20 minutes late. While we were waiting, we struck up a conversation with a lovely young student from Argentina who–during our talk–asked me whether most young Americans were like those she met traveling. She tried to be diplomatic, but basically was appalled at how ignorant our college-age students were–not just about other countries and cultures, but about their own. She did not find this among her peers from other countries. It was difficult to argue with her perceptions, although I could assure her that there ARE bright and educated young people in the US. I must agree, however, that they are a minority, and that doesn’t bode well for our future.

And speaking for the impression left by our citizens, as we waited for the ferry, we met a truly embarrassing man from Florida. He took great pains to impress us–I assume he tries to impress everyone he meets, he seemed the sort–and he was everything we used to mean by the term “Ugly American.” He said he’d been coming to Italy for 20 years, and it was awful and getting worse. The decline, we found, was due to immigration, “just like at home.” I heard him talking to an English-speaking Italian woman about how dangerous the “dark people” were, and in lowered tones about Obama and his “socialism.” He told me he was an ex-Marine, so he knew how dangerous the Italians were (if he’d been describing their driving, fair enough, but he wasn’t), and proceeded to show me the knife he always brought to protect himself and his wife. All in all, a perfectly appalling specimen.

We got to Dubrovnik early the next morning, after a trip on a pretty gross ferry, and everything you have read about Dubrovnik is true. It is magnificent. The old city is a world heritage site, restored by Unesco, and it defies description. unfortunately, every tourist in the world has also read about it. The crush of tourism is unbelievable, and while a boon to the local economy, subtracts from the overall experience a bit.

At 2 in the afternoon, we boarded our small boat. We had worried because it only carries 12 passengers, and there are a lot of young, boisterous party people who choose to travel this way. We lucked out. We have 11 on board; five French, four Australians and us. Most are in their late forties or fifties, so we don’t feel QUITE so old. The trip has been fantastic so far, and I will write about the trip, the passengers–educated, thoughtful, and really nice–the next time I have internet.

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Disconnection from the Collective

Okay–I’ll admit it. I’m addicted.

Those of you who are Star Trek fans will recall the Borg–the species without individuals, who could not survive when severed from the Collective. I think I may be going in that direction. We lost internet two days ago (the whole village experienced an outage), and I felt utterly helpless.

Without internet, how could I look up information? How could I blog? What emails were going unanswered? To say the experience was anxiety-producing would be an understatement.

There are lessons to ponder, and not just that we may be becoming Borg-like. What would happen if a terrorist–or accident–took down the internet, or some substantial portion of it? We have created systems–banking, policing, communicating, etc. etc.-that simply would shut down if computerized systems no longer worked. Not to mention the psychic shock to our increasingly interconnected social systems.

I am one of those people who welcome change. Generally, I think technological innovation aids human progress. But I have to admit that our increasingly wired world has made it more difficult to disconnect, to be alone with our own thoughts and selves for extended periods of time. There is much research–and concern–that suggests these new technologies may be changing brain patterns in unanticipated ways.

In any event, I will have to cope with the experience for over a week, since it is unlikely that the small boat we will take from Dubrovnik will have wifi.

Blogging will be VERY spotty until we return to the US in early August. I know all of you will be fine–there’s plenty of other reading available to the connected.

If the last two days are any indication, I’m not so sure that I’ll make it.

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The Kindness of Strangers

What was that line from A Streetcar Named Desire about “always depending on the kindness of strangers?” Over the last day or so, that’s what we’ve done–and the strangers have been very kind.

We took a coach train from Berlin’s utterly magnificent new train station to Bologne, where we changed to a sleeper going overnight to Florence. Both trains were very nice–the 1st class coach was particulary spiffy. The sleeper itself evidently had been redone recently and would have been perfect had we not experienced what my family calls “the curse of Sheila”–no matter where we go, if there is a crying baby, it will be next to me. There was a very unhappy baby with excellent lungs in the next compartment; I could hear the parents desperately trying to “shush” him, but he cried most of the night. Needless to say, we slept fitfully.

We were pretty beat when we got to Florence, and (I hate to admit this) feeling stressed by our extended absence from wifi. This time, the trains didn’t offer internet access! (My god, how do they expect you to cope?) We saw an obviously high-end hotel, and had an overpriced breakfast in its restaurant in order to use the complimentary wifi.

Then our adventure began. We had the name of the Villa that daughter Kelly had booked, and the address shown on its internet site. It seemed clear that we should take a bus to the small town of Greve-in-Chianti, and a taxi to the Villa. We managed the bus, and thanks to kind strangers riding with us, also managed to disembark in the correct village (I tend to panic and get off too soon when I don’t know what I am doing and am inept at the language — both of which problems were present.)

Our first clue that we might have miscalculated came when we realized that there was no bus station. We walked across the street from where we had disembarked, to a bar/cafe, and asked the waiter whether there were any taxis that we might engage. He spoke halting English (a lot less halting than my Italian, admittedly). It turned out that there are two taxis in Greve, and neither was available. As we ate our lunch–delicious–he called the Villa for directions, and informed us that it was approximately 15 Kilometers.

We certainly weren’t going to walk, and our waiter said he could call a taxi from the next town, but that it would take an hour to arrive. So he called his father, who came a few minutes later and drove us to what proved to be a nearly-impossible-to-locate villa high in the hills around the neighboring village of–I think–S.Paolo. He had to stop four times to ask directions, and we made more than one wrong turn. He spoke no English, we speak no Italian except “gratzsi” (which I repeated fervently as we drove). I only hope the tip I pressed on him–he didn’t charge us–was sufficient.

Talk about the kindness of strangers!

I am writing this in a villa that has been restored and turned into seven or eight guest quarters of varying sizes, and waiting for the rest of the clan to arrive via rental cars. (Having driven in Italy before, Bob and I opted not to rent a car.) I hope they find this place; I’m not too confident!

We only got here because kind strangers took pity on two very tired, bewildered, elderly tourists.

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What Makes a City Liveable?

I have never been to Berlin before, although I have been to Germany several times, and if I thought about it at all, I suppose I expected a rather “monumental” and forbidding Germanic landscape.

I was wrong. This is first and foremost a livable city.

We spent time today doing the usual touristy things: the bus tour with running commentary in several languages, the obligatory looks at famous landmarks–I even bought a sweatshirt at Checkpoint Charlie (it was cold!) But the real highpoint of our too-short visit was the experience of walking around the neighborhood of our hotel.

We walked to a restaurant several blocks away that had been recommended by our son (aka the Tech God). He has been everywhere, and his restaurant recommendations are always flawless-he’s a real foodie. We strolled through streets lined with 4 and 5 story apartment buildings, a mix of restorations and new construction. There were pocket parks everywhere, with children on swings and slides, young people playing table tennis (and in one case, older men playing bocce ball). Bikes were everywhere–and Berlin has the same bike-share/rental that we’ve seen elsewhere. At street level, there was cafe after art gallery (dozens of them, as we are in the arts/gallery district) after retail shop after grocery market after “wein cafe”–all at small, human scale, and all very inviting.

Berlin has an enormous amount of green space–large urban parks and the ubiquitous small “pocket” parks. What it doesn’t have is the monotony of the US suburbs. There were no quarter-acre lots with grass; instead, there were flowerpots and small potted trees on balconies–and the density that makes all of the wonderful urban amenities sustainable.

Once again, mass transit was evident everywhere. The subway, we are told, runs on minute and a half headways. Buses are everywhere. There are plenty of cars and bicycles, of course, but you can get anywhere in short order on public transit.

What really impressed me was the general attention to quality–beautiful windows and doors, etc., rather than the large, poor quality construction that characterizes so many of America’s “McMansions.” (Contrary to what all those “make yours bigger” emails we all get, size ISN’T everything.)

Finally, we remarked upon the sophistication that comes with diversity; as our waiter tonight noted with pride, Berlin is a truly international city–home, he assured us, to over 250 nationalities.

There are remarkable museums and fantastic architecture here, but it is the scale and variety of the built environment, the prevalence of the art and music, and the investment in infrastructure that makes this so livable-and delightful.

If we Americans weren’t so smugly convinced that we know everything we need to know and that we are “exceptional” (in the good sense), we could learn a lot from cities like Berlin.

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