Watching Terni Go By

Yesterday Eleonora took me to Orvieto, a lovely city of ancient buildings and traditional tufa bricks. However that wasn't the best way to learn to drive so we had to make time to maneuver in the city where the test would take place. As it happens we spent a considerable amount of time circling the headquarters of the communist party. The symbols of a different era looked like a movie set, possibly featuring Warren Beatty or something.

Picture the scene, Eleonora hunched over the wheel me peering out the window trying to ignore the chaos she is sowing in the street while trying to get the perfect picture of the red flag flying here. We were circling a square where the traffic was intense and unyielding and she was swearing like a fishmonger's wife. "I don't think the examiner will appreciate that too much," I remarked as she got cut off one more time. "I need to vent now, before the exam." "Vent away," as we took another turn around Piazza Dalmazia.

I failed my driving test the first time I took it and then I went to driving school and got it the second time around. I did pass the motorcycle test the first time but I learned to ride properly by reading magazines and learning about counter steering and shifting my body and how to look ahead around corners and stuff like that. Just looking at the text book gave me stress:

It's nice to be old sometimes, when it feels like they can't just keep on testing you forever. Then again when I think about it we get tested all the time, at work, by doctors and even our driving ability gets called into question as we age. I have long had the belief that motor vehicles do more to criminalize us than anything else. Check this black SUV below, dou8ble parked totally illegally blocking the street. Go right, I told my pupil, which was when the cyclist wobbled into view. She managed to get through without killing or breaking anything.

Telephones used to be useful tools. Now they have the capacity to be useful and enormously irritating all at once. At least this mature bike rider was smart enough to stop to talk. Another obstacle overcome. Check out the miles and miles of pink Soviet style cement in the background. This is not medieval Italy.

The Romans called Terni Interamna, the city between the rivers but of the past only a few blocks remain. Everything else is modern, functional and not terribly attractive to tourists. Which is odd as the myth of St Valentine was born here. Bishop Valentine of Interamna agreed to marry a Roman soldier and Christian girl and got killed for his efforts in furthering the path of true love.

This is not a town where you will hear foreign visitors admiring the architecture. Urban planning is scarce and parking is a nightmare. Many of the streets make Key West look spacious, and vegetation is non existent.

I find Terni more appealing to me for those reasons, it lacks any veneer of sophistication or worldliness, and it's inhabitants are parochial enough they would drive Madame Bovary to excesses of adultery through boredom. But as I am an outsider the petty problems of an overweening leftist city government, the constant fear of closure at the steel mills and the summer oppression of extreme heat are incidentals to me. Perhaps they enhance my pleasure upon returning home to my small verdant island in the stream, where foreigners come and gawp and visitors can't stay away.

Parking is a useful skill in a town as crowded as this.

Gently, gently the impulsive 19 year old student backed her Alfa into the narrow spot. She never touched the little Fiat 126 though she came close a couple of times.

Roads are torn up, orange cones are enough to cause a learner a few headaches. she handled them. She's been riding a Vespa 125 around town for a couple of years so these things must seem natural to her. The state of the streets makes Key West streets look as smooth as billiard tables.

A little highway work to show she can merge with traffic, making me long for wide open spaces even as we turn around and go back into the concrete jungle.

More obstacles...grass mowing this time.

And my favorite moment of the afternoon as we planned to turn right onto the main strip Via Cesare Battisti and we pulled up to the intersection. My pupil banged her head on the wheel. The green Fiat Panda on the left was parked, as in no driver anywhere, right on the street corner. The white van on the right was double parked and overlapping the side street. "Can I turn left?" she asked, we can do this I said. We did too but it wasn't easy.

I cannot imagine making a living doing this.

 

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Driving To Orvieto

It's a world class cathedral in Orvieto and its quite spectacular especially from the outside. Inside they charge three Euro for an adult admission and frankly its not worth it in my opinion. the beauty is here for all to see:

This is the opening paragraph of the English language Wikipedia entry for the city: Orvieto is a city and comune in Province of Terni, southwestern Umbria, Italy situated on the flat summit of a large butte of volcanic tuff. The site of the city is among the most dramatic in Europe, rising above the almost-vertical faces of tuff cliffs that are completed by defensive walls built of the same stone called Tufa.

The Romans called it Urbs Vetus but archaeologists say the city was an ancient center of Etruscan civilization predating even the Romans by a good bit. Unlike the typical Italian hill town, Orvieto is flat once you have driven up the side of the mountain it sits on.

Orvieto was something of a frontier town being the first large city in the Papal States on the road from Florence to Rome. It was also a papal refuge in times of trouble as the place had its own water supply and could be rendered impregnable. Nowadays the St Patrick's well is a tourist attraction and the city has reverted from a cultural center (St Thomas Aquinas taught here in the Middle Ages) to a dozy little town of twenty thousand with a summer influx of tourists.

I'm not sure why Orvieto is my favorite town in Umbria, and Tuscany too maybe, but perhaps it has to do with topography. The level streets and narrow alleys don't have expansive views, unless you are on the edge of the city, and this gives them an unusual intimacy. Claustrophobia perhaps but I never feel hemmed in, in Orvieto.

I used to come here to escape rural life, to see a movie and people watch much as I do nowadays. Every time I go back to Umbria I like to pay at least one visit to Orvieto. The white placard shown below prohibits vehicles from entering the city center so walking is required, with only a very few exceptions.

I used a driving lesson for Giovanni's daughter Eleonora to come to see Orvieto, and as, in all of her 19 years she had never seen the city we went for a walk to look for a late lunch. Which we found off the main drag and she told me about her studies for her MBA at Perugia University with graduation she hopes in 2015. She wants to have a career and be independent she says and she wants to be in business. Her main drawback? No English to speak of. Perhaps I should have given her English lessons rather than driving lessons.

In my defense let me point out it was Eleonora who directed me to the odd sight of people lined up patiently waiting for...the loo. For some reason it seemed odd to us. perhaps we have smaller bladders or more imitative but it seemed to us there were easier ways to take a leak in a town filled with tourist venues. On the other hand it seems laudable that the city has put out at least one pay toilet for public use, as over worked as it is.

Ancient water systems still produce drinking water on demand, and it tastes good too. I do see a lot of people weighed down with plastic bottles but public drinking fountains are still quite common in Italy.

The Tiber Valley as seen from the ring road descending from Orvieto.

Which ring road led us to the New Town of Orvieto at the base of the hill an agglomeration of modern apartment complexes and commercial buildings called Orvieto Scalo where we saw a beetle industriously scuttling down the street:

He put on an impressive turn of speed.

Further on we resumed our driving lesson with a vengeance as traffic got all blocked up Key West style. "What do I do?" the student asked. Press on I said but slowly and don't panic. It was close but she did fine.

We had satisfied my desire to see Orvieto again so then I felt honor bound to let the student report on her progress to a bevy of her aunts at home in the village where I used to live and they still do. How's school? How's driving? How are your parents, washed down by the inevitable espresso and with all the howdy-dos done we went on our way. A driving lesson as driving lessons should be for everyone.

When I was a kid I used to marvel at American tourists who seemed to walk around with their eyes on stalks and their heads permanently turned up to stare at buildings that I as a callow youth took for granted. Now that I am the American tourist I get the other point of view and these villages are pretty.

"I love that sign" Eleonora said, "like there's a Hard Rock Capitone" an insignificant little spot on the map at the top of a steep hill to which it has given it's name. I obliged by taking a picture.

The Alfa Romeo Mito driven by the learner is not an easy car to drive, certainly not to drive well. It has six speeds which can be confusing for one not used to a close cluster gearbox, the engine is small but the car is light so it isn't hard to slide around if you aren't careful. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I don't usually spend a day with a 19 year old but perhaps I should widen my horizons. It wasn't all bad, not at all.

 

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A Walk With Giovanni

It was my second to last evening in Terni, I has food shopping to do, I had bags to pack and weigh, I had decisions to make about which riding clothes to leave behind for my next visit, hopefully next July. All that could wait, we had an evening together to do nothing more serious than talk.

 

Italians love to talk and I find it draining. With Giovanni its in a good way as we talk about our families, our lives, our common history, the economy, politics and traveling. Giovanni (the cardiologist) isn't allowed to smoke in the house but he has a rather nice balcony cultivated by his wife for the purpose. His home is quite lovely though from the outside it is rather austere compared to the older buildings across the street. I caught this one near sunrise:

Giovanni's home in the heart of Terni, the second province of Umbria is on the second floor and his kitchen is hidden behind the balcony with the plants. His wife loves to grow things.

Giovanni has been working as a cardiologist for thirty years in the local hospital but he isn't every political and thus not very ambitious so he hasn't risen in the administration which is okay by him. He likes his work and does a lot of private practice to earn a good living. His work in the hospital gains him a public pension and pays off his education funded by the state, the private practice buys him motorcycles, German cars, an RV and vacations. At home he sweeps the kitchen floor like any dogs body.

His mother in law lives up the street and at age 92 she is still driving, and is sufficiently alert to beat her son in law and his daughter at cards. Signora Giuseppina startled me by winking and twisting her mouth using "secret" signs to tell me what cards she was holding. We were using traditional Italian cards, a pack of forty in four suits reminiscent I am told of the Tarot pack. My hand was terribly weak, no high cards, no face cards, no aces. We paid the price.

Giovanni was into it trying to get his daughter to meet his expectations. We beat her back thanks to my partner's high cards. Tre sette is an ancient game I learned as a child and we passed many summer afternoons throwing down cards and shouting ourselves hoarse in the village square waiting for the heat of the day to pass. Its a game that requires players to follow suit and the three is the top card, then the two and then the ace. Scoring is a little complicated but if you can remember cards you can do well. Giovanni thinks he can keep count of the discards.

 

It was a pleasant way to pass an hour as Eleonora took a break from driving lessons and Giovanni and I waited to take an evening walk.

We ended up thrashing our opponents as was right and proper. I had a much better hand later with lots of faces, colors and a big fat ace in the form of a plump bird with a crown on its head.

Waiting for Giovanni to get his myriad things together to go out I stopped in his study to read a motorcycle magazine which was where I noticed once again the picture of him getting married some thirty odd years ago:

And Rossana his wife trying on his beret which he wore during his year long national service (now abolished in Italy). Time has passed.

My suitcase was a reminder of the present as I struggled to get my wife's food requirements into my bag, flavored pasta, jars of truffles, particular Italian candies and my favorite toothpaste, The Captain's paste. Eventually I got the bag to 48.7 pounds, just under the fifty pound limit, using the digital scale my wife had thoughtfully provided. No overweight charges for Mrs Beattie's little boy!

Shopping was actually quite easy in this vast spacious ipercoop (hyper-co-op) as they call the enormous Costco-sized supermarket complete with underground parking and every single product you might want, including three dollar coconuts and equally expensive limes

Finally we got out walking and cruised Corso Tacito, Tacitus Street if you can imagine such a classical name for a thoroughfare. My hotel where I stay when in town is on Pliny The Younger Street! The first casualty I noticed of Italy's deepening recession was Mickey D, a former Internet site which I found useful. A friend of mine told me cold pasta at MacDonald's is one his favorite fast foods. I never got to try it but he is a gourmand and highly recommended it.

This elderly Vespa 50 is the spitting image of my first ride bought by my mother in 1970, except mine was orange. "You wanna buy it?" a voice boomed out as we (I - Giovanni is no Vespa fan) admired it.

"It spent thirty years in my garage. I pulled it out last year to save gas, gave it a new paint job and I ride it to work every day, and I really like it," the pizza parlor owner told us with some satisfaction. I told him I hope to do the same with my 1979 P200 if I ever get it back from Pennsylvania where it will be restored, soon I hope.

There was market stall selling hunting gear for the newly opened Fall hunting season. Italians love to go out and shoot small birds with large shotguns and they roast the starlings and sparrows over an open fire for dinner. If you have never been presented with a roasted feather-free small bird as prized treat and been required to bite the brains out of the little bald cooked round head and express deep appreciation you haven't lived. I hate hunting and won't do it.

We next stopped at Vitali Amleto, the Honda dealer on Via Roma where Giovanni bought his Benelli moped forty y4ears ago. The new-ish CB1100 was on display and we admired it for a while. I don't see where it is better than the Bonneville actually but it is a nice bike.

And this 350cc survivor with 1500 whole miles on the clock carries the original Vitali sticker from when it was brand new. I nearly bought one of these in 1976 but I went with a Moto Morini 350 Sport instead and never really missed electric start and turn signals.

That was all the nostalgia we needed to walk and talk about the past and how much better motorcycles are now but how much more fun it was to be less regimented back then... the usual. "Hey Giovanni!" a bum hailed us from his seat on a nearby wall. It turned out he was waiting for his wife and we exchanged pleasantries. Giovanni always has trouble introducing me as American or something. I call myself emigrato which all Italians understand as people have been going abroad for work forever. When Giovanni insists I am American I re mind him that my family has lived in Umbria for three hundred years after moving there from Viterbo before that. My ancestors were Etruscans, not from the Mayflower.

Terni is a modern city built on a grid pattern, bombed flat in World War Two to discourage production of steel and guns but there are parts of this non-tourist town that have a certain aged beauty.

Of course we got flagged down again, this time it was Antonio, Giovanni's younger brother and the living breathing stereotype of a spiffy fashionable successful lawyer. These two professionals would give my late Jewish mother-in-law palpitations. Antonio rides to his office in the pedestrian zone on an electric bicycle and he took off after wondering vaguely about a possible dinner date as silently as a witch on a broom. I remember him as a twelve year old boy bugging us, his elders, to come out and play. Time passes.

Giovanni doesn't make time to go to the movies and I am not fond of the dubbing used in Italian films. The voices are strained and as weird as it is to see Italian voices coming out of Hollywood actors the artificial quality of the dubbing voices bugs me much more. Normal delivery is apparently frowned upon. Oddly enough I n Italian movies made these days normal voices are the norm. Fancy a Saturday late show starting at quarter to one in the morning?

A bit of excitement to remind me how glad I was to be away from work. Firefighters were busy being admired by a small crowd as they removed a loose piece of guttering battered by winds and rain that fell on the city while we were riding around the Alps in blazing sunshine.

We meandered home with some fried rice balls to supplement a dinner of left overs, all talked out and ready to think about bed. A game show on television did nothing for me, though there are a couple of original detective shows on Italian TV I'd like to watch. Don Matteo about a sleuthing priest in Gubbio is a huge success and Commissario Montalbano is about an eccentric and willful policeman dealing with crime in Sicily. To watch the videos at home I'd have to get a converter and blah blah blah. Better not to get attached! One day all electronics will be universal I'm hoping.

And so to bed. Tomorrow another day a last ride and then back on the plane home.

I was glad to get back filled with memories to carry me through the winter, a photo album on Picasa with several hundred pictures and lots more things to talk about next year.

 

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