Sono contento con il vino...

It is now official. I have now had as much wine since we moved to Italy as I had consumed in my entire life previous to this move, which is not very much.

On our previous visits to Italy we always enjoyed trying the wines available in the different areas, and I never tasted a wine variety I did not like. I make no claims to being a wine aficionado and I tend towards the drier varieties which are common here so I am always pleased with the selections.

When we lived in Corrales we would share a glass at dinner and occasionally when eating out and we were always on the look-out for a good bargain on wines from the Mediterranean area when shopping in different stores. New Mexico actually has the longest wine producing history in the United States; wines were produced there by the Spanish years before any wines were produced in California. Here in Italy wine is a part of life, as much as bread and water. Each region has its own wines and here in the Piceno region they are Rosso Piceno, Rosso Piceno Superiore for reds and Falerio and Pecorino for whites. (Yes that is Pecorino, like the cheese).

A friend at one of the local cantinas told us that you can’t have pasta without some wine; it just isn’t good for the digestion. Digestion is very important here, you certainly don’t see all the ads for heartburn remedies. Wine is also included in many of the meal prices in this area; a house wine served in a carafe. Despite the amount of wine that is served we have rarely see public drunkenness and when we have it has been someone who undoubtedly speaks English.

I had some of my family fooled for many years that I actually knew a lot about wine as they always enjoyed the wines we had with meals. That is, until I disclosed my secret for shopping for wine in the US; I usually looked for the red “Italia” stamp on the top of the bottle. With that mark we were never disappointed.

If you want more information on wines from Italy and the Piceno area, an excellent source is Brendan’s web-site at the The Roman Wine Company.

Polizia presence

I can’t imagine that there is such a thing as the ACLU in Italia – I think an ACLU attorney would have a nervous break-down if they vacationed in Italia. Here the police do things many Americans would not believe, but are just considered part of bella Italia.

Everyone in Italia is required to carry identification with them at all times and theoretically you can be stopped on the street and be required to produce your identification. For an Italian or resident this would mean their carta identita, for a stranieri it would be your passport. Not being able to produce valid documents technically can result in your expulsion from the country.

In Italy there are various police groups. First there is the carabinieri, the state police, who many people seem to have a dislike for in their Armani uniforms and black and white cars. Then there are the polizia which are local police. We have seen both polizia and polizia municipale. There is also the corpo forestale who I believe deal with the park areas. There is even a guardia di finanza who are responsible for tax collection and it has been reported that they can stop you outside a store or bar and require you to produce a receipt for your purchase, if you can’t then you and the merchant can be subject to fines.

On our first visit to Italia we were surprised by the presence of police in the airports with machine guns and this was several years before 9-11. Italia however, has a long history of internal violence that Americans would find shocking with various groups having planted small explosive devices in public places in major cities and the kidnapping of government officials.

When driving in Italia you can be subject to random traffic stops and there need not be any reason that you are being stopped. The various police will set-up along the side of the road and stand on the side with a little white wand with a red circle. If they point this your direction you must pull over and present your documents and well as those for the car. Many times the officers will be wearing bullet proof vests with a small machine gun slung across their shoulder. We have been stopped on a couple occasions at these and usually when they realize we are straneri we are waved off.

We have never felt threatened by the police presence nor do we feel unsafe in any parts of Italy. In fact we feel safer in the center of cities like Roma at night than we would in most major US cities.

Best packing material for shipping to expats

A couple weeks ago friends from New Mexico mailed us a package with various goodies that we have since enjoyed. In addition to those items I also enjoyed the packing material they used; crinkled-up copies of the 'Albuquerque Journal'. They had used the local newspaper as box filler and I carefully unfolded and smoothed out each page so I could then leisurely read them.

This may seem like an unusual item but it can be a simple pleasure to read some local news from far away. At least the newspaper can be recycled into the bin down the street where the usual “pop-corn” and bubble wrap ends up going into the trash.

Gasoline 24/7

Pump stations

Over the past few years gasoline service stations in the US have evolved into large facilities with multiple pump islands and of course the ever present “convenience store” selling over-sized drinks, snacks and alcohol. Italy has a different view on the gas station, one that actually includes some service. Granted on the autostrada you find service plazas that aren’t much different than what you find along toll roads in the US (I read that Autogrille has taken over the plazas on the PA Turnpike). But many gas stations in Italy are simply that, a place to get just gas.

In cities it is very common to see a gas station that is little more than one pump and a small booth, all of which takes up no more room on the side of the road than what will fit on the sidewalk.

Many stations here are also operational 24 hours with no personnel on site. This is accomplished with pay at the pump facilities for either cash or bank cards. Cash still seems to be the prevalent method of paying for fuel.

The word “service” is also an actual part of most stations here. Many facilities will have “servicio” (full service) and “fai da te” (do it yourself). The full service is exactly that, no need to get out of your vehicle they will pump for you, wash your windshield and if you ask even check your oil. Many times if the full service line is slow I have had attendants pump my gas at the fai da te line also. Sometimes it seems like the attendants don’t want anyone else messing with their pumps.

And for those who complain in the US about the price of gasoline, here it comes out to over $6.00 a gallon.

Primavera Italia

Weather & Wool

One of the things we enjoyed when we lived in New Mexico was the great weather, almost 350 days of sunshine and moderate temperatures. Since Albuquerque is in a semi-arid zone we had minimal precipitation and for many winters the nearby mountains lacked enough snow to allow for skiing. This winter however has been quite different for New Mexico as there has been an abundance of rain and snow since last spring and I read one story from there declaring that the multi-year drought is over. Albuquerque is now back to her normal temperatures of around 70 degrees with lots of sunshine.

Ascoli Piceno on the other hand has had a very dry winter while we are here; we have not had any snow in town which the locals tell us is unusual. I have also seen articles in the newspaper about the lack of mountain snow pack and that the rivers are unusually low and recently that Italia has set a record for the warmest and driest winter in 200 years. Things we commonly heard in New Mexico but which appear to be out of the norm for Ascoli. This does not mean that it has not felt cold for us here in compared to Albuquerque.

March has been mild here, but for the past week we have been seeing reports in the papers about winter coming back for another visit and it has been the talk of the town when you mention how nice it is outside. Monday it did cloud up and is a few degrees cooler but so far no winter weather for us though we have heard of snow in other parts of Italia to the west and north of us. When we lived in New Mexico I had little use for sweaters as most winter days the sun was out and in the car it would just be too warm for layers of clothing. This winter here in Italia I have lived in sweaters: wool sweaters. Our apartment has limited direct sunshine with the low winter sun so it feels cooler than I was used to in New Mexico but a nice wool sweater solves the problem.

Wool in Italia is a bargain, I have three sweaters that are at least 70% wool and I paid no more than 10 Euro for each one at the weekly mercato. Granted they are not top line quality but the style and color works fine for me. Wool blankets also start at less than 50 Euro in comparison to when we were in the US looking for one for our bed the prices started at least double that amount.

Any drive around the countryside in Marche or Abruzzo will show you why wool is such a bargain here – there are sheep everywhere. There are herds of them just outside of Ascoli and you can spot groups of various sizes on hillsides when driving to the north and south. I imagine soon they will start to see the shearer’s clippers to become next year’s sweater fashions.

Double the bureaucracy to change our address

PdiS address change

When we arrived in Italy we were living in Anzio which is in Provincia di Roma and that is who issued our permesso di soggiorno. To obtain our residenza in Ascoli Piceno we need to have our permesso di soggiorno changed to Provincia d’Ascoli Piceno. In Anzio we went to the local Questura and applied in person but late last year the Italian government changed this process.

We went to the Questura in Ascoli Piceno to see about having our address changed as I had read where other expats did this in a very simple process, some where the name was typed on the back with an official stamp. For us, not so simple. We were told we had to use the new system which is done through the Officio Postale. This is one bureaucracy, the Officio Postale, helping another bureaucracy, the Questura! We went to the Postale and picked up the necessary packet full of forms and instructions in bureaucratic Italian, and tried to figure out which of the forms we actually needed to use and what we needed to include with them.

After trying to decipher some of the language and reading through the Postale and Questura web-sites and still being confused, Valerie found a list of agencies on the internet that are supposed to provide assistance with completing the forms. I went to one of these agencies near our apartment and they directed me to another agency called CISL who would be able to help us. I looked up this agency on the internet and they appear to be a consortium of trade unions, but when we went in to explain our problem they politely offered to help, despite the fact that we do not have work permits for Italy.

The lady who helped us, Mary Lou, is from the Philippines and has lived in Italy for 25 years. She took control of what was needed, advising us of what documents we needed, some of which were not listed on any other sources we had searched. We needed to have our landlords write a brief letter stating that we were using their apartment, copies of every page in our passports, copies of our permesso di soggiorno and a form that stated we are who we say we are and of course a set of tax stamps for 14.62 Euro that I purchased at the tobaccaria. Mary Lou explained that they would input our information into the computer so there would be no need to complete the forms supplied by the Offico Postale and said we should come back in a few days.

When we returned at the end of last week to the CISL office we were provided with computer print-outs of our data and the documents we had previously provided. We were instructed to take these to the Offico Postale where we would sign them and they would be sent off to Roma. We followed these instructions, paid another 30 Euro each to have the packets forwarded by the Postale and now await notice that our permesso di soggorni have been updated.

When that will be…we don’t know. Hopefully not the seven months we waited for our original permesso di soggiorno.

Enrolling in the Italian health system

As of today we are officially enrolled in the Italian national healthcare system known as Servizio Sanitario Nazionale (SSN). Here in Marche the SSN system goes by the acronym of ASUR. Joining the system presented another batch of bureaucratic issues for us to weave through and, as has become the norm, it involved multiple visits to the ufficio in question.

The heath system is paid for by taxes levied against employers; if you are not employed, it is by a fee you pay. If you are employed you just take a copy of your work contract and some identification documents and you are all set with coverage for you and your family. If you are a student you pay a fee of less than 200 Euro. For those of us who don’t fall into those two categories and have spouses (or children) it gets confusing.

When we applied for our residenza (which is still pending more paperwork) they gave us a receipt in my name and said we could use it to apply at the ASUR office along with a form declaring dependants, “dichiarazioni sostitutive di certificazioni”. The majority of the information available on the internet deals with employees and students, leaving those not in those categories guessing. Everyone seemed to agree that you need the receipt for the residenza, your permesso di soggiorno, your codice fiscal (tax id) and pay a fee. No one mentioned the dichiarazioni sostitutive di certificazioni. The fee is 387.34 Euro, but the question is do you pay this once as a family or does each person in the family pay the fee? For that question we found a lot of conflicting information.

Two weeks ago Valerie and I went to the ASUR office which is just up the hill from our apartment, taking our documents. We thought we were all set to sign-up. Not so fast, the man at the window had to go ask someone else what we were supposed to pay and came back with two forms we needed to take to the bank and pay the 387.34 Euro for each of us – over $1000 for the two of us for the rest of 2007. Since we had conflicting reports if both had to pay or I could sign-up and list Valerie as a dependant, I finally decided to try and pay one fee and roll the dice.

Thursday I went to the bank and paid the fee and then trudged back up to the office and waited in line. Eventually when it was my turn, using my broken Italian I was able to provide the clerk with my receipt for residenza, codice fiscale, passport, permesso di saggiorno, receipt for the 387.34 Euro and the completed dichiarazioni form which stated Valerie as my dependent. The clerk had copies made of everything, asked what doctor I would want as my primary care provider, and then told me to come back the next day. Apparently she was in a hurry for another caffé as she put up her chuiso sign as I walked away.

Today I went back up the hill and there was a different clerk at the required window; again in my broken Italian I explained that the other clerk told me to come back today, he asked my name and cringed when I said “Schneider” as he tried to pronounce it. He retreated to the back office and came back with the copies of my documents and then had to input everything as I stood and watched. When finished, he printed a short receipt which he had me sign and gave to me and, if I understood correctly, said I should expect an official card in the mail in about ten days.

So after three trips to the same office and a trip to the bank, I have my receipt showing our enrollment in the Italian national healthcare system. Hopefully this is not something we will need to take advantage of any time soon.

Ascoli Piceno - Loggia dei Mercanti

Ascoli Piceno – Loggia dei Mercanti

For tours of Ascoli Piceno visit Panorama Italy.

Le Marche is historically an area where wool was and still is produced and this is evident in Ascoli Piceno. On the south side of Chiesa San Francesco, just off Piazza del Popolo is the Loggia dei Mercanti, or Merchants’ Lodge. This travertine structure was constructed in the sixteenth century and was used for trading by the powerful and wealthy wool merchants. On the wall of the loggia is a tablet with the exact dimensions for all of the tiles and bricks used in building the structure, a handy template if any repairs would be required.

Now this loggia is used by flower merchants each morning to sell their colorful selections and a favorite place for the younger crowd to gather under in the evenings.

Bring it on back

There are two things I have noticed here in Italy that would probably be a good practice in the United States, both deal with when you go shopping at grocery stores. If you want a bag to carry your groceries home you will pay an extra 5 centesimi per bag and then you must bag the groceries yourself. This practice encourages people to re-use bags as well as bring their own rolling cart or canvas bag. It is a common sight to see older ladies pulling their little cart along the streets in the morning after collecting their groceries for the day.

To use a grocery cart at the big stores you have to deposit either a 1 or 2 Euro coin. The carts are held together by short chains which require you to insert the coin to release the chain. To get your coin back you have to return the cart and reinsert the chain, and then coin pops back out. This insures that there are not carts left out amongst cars by lazy shoppers or along the side of the road.

Banking...the hard way!

Before we moved to Italy I had arranged our finances such that we can do everything we need by the internet, a bancomat (ATM) and/or a credit card. I have opened more than one account over the years on-line with out ever actually having to talk to someone, let alone meet someone face to face. In Italy banking just is not that easy.

We decided we should open an Italian bank account for some writing Valerie is doing and from what I had read from various sources this seemed like a rather straight forward process. I searched the internet for on-line accounts but with my limited Italian skills this created problems. I found one bank, BancaIntesa, that has accounts designed just for stranieri but they require a visit to one of their branches to open the account, which they seem to be the only bank that is not located in Ascoli. The Ufficio Postale has their own banking system but the account didn’t fit what I was looking for; plus we haven’t always had pleasant experiences at the Postale.

Here in Ascoli there is no shortage of banks from the cooperativa, risparmiare (savings) to branches of the national conglomerates like Banca di Roma and Banca Nazionale di Lavoro. I thought it would be best to start with one of the smaller institutions in hopes of getting better local service.

The cooperativa I went to had to make a couple calls and was not able to find out how to open a conto, or account, for stranieri like us; the account manager suggested we try one of the big banks in town. I then visited one of the big conglomerates who recently opened a new branch in nearby Piazza di Roma and when we went in to inquire about an account they were very helpful and accommodating but in the end said they too could not determine how to open an account for us.

It seems that in Italy bank accounts are classified by who you are: an Italian citizen, a foreign worker, a foreign student and then those like us who don’t fit in the other categories. Despite having money to put into the account, living in the city, having a codice fiscale (tax number) and our permessi di soggiorno we fell into a banking black hole. We just want to open a basic account to put some money in, we don't want take out a loan.

I tried one more of the big conglomerates and bingo, they were able to open an account for us. We had no new information that we didn’t provide the other banks but they just knew what needed to be done to activate an account. Unfortunately they are not the friendliest bunch in town so I will utilize their internet banking services as much as possible.

Italian Newspapers

Il Giornale

The newspapers here in Italy are different than those in the United States in a couple distinct ways. First of all there does not appear to be any type of home delivery system, you go to l’edicola to buy the paper from a vendor who sells various papers as well as magazines and usually some books and postcards. These vendors may be set-up in a small shop or a kiosk in a piazza or along the street.

The majority are distributed on a national basis with added regional content, for example here in Ascoli le edicole carry as many as 10 different papers. The big names are La Repubblica, Il Messagero, Il Resto del Carlino and Il Corriere della Sera. Each of these publications is associated with a certain political ideology and party.

There are no advertising inserts in the newspapers. I recall when I did door to door delivery as a teenager and always dreaded the mid-week and Sunday inserts as they would usually double the size and weight of the papers I had to carry. Here there is no marked difference in the size of the paper from one day to the next and there are no inserts for IKEA or Euronics.

One item I do miss from the US papers is the comics; there is no comic page and definitely no Sunday comic section. The use of editorial cartoons is also much more limited. This is unfortunate as I think both of these would be a help to me in learning the language.

For those who skip the sports section of a US paper you would have to overlook almost half of an Italian paper. I usually count as many as 15 pages of sports and of these 13 or 14 are usually just calcio, or soccer. They may be a couple stories on racing (cars, motorcycles, horses or bicycles) and some on the Italian and European basketball leagues. I will rarely see any articles on American sports and the few I have seem focused on Kobe Bryant of the LA Lakers.

If you really want sports there are three daily newspapers here that are devoted solely to sports: Corriere dello Sport, Gazzetta dello Sport and Tuttosport. These are always easy to spot as they are printed on a paper that is almost pink. Obviously Italian men are secure with their masculinity and do not shun the color.

In many cities you are able to get USA Today or The International Herald Tribune but these are not regularly available here in Ascoli, a result of the limited international tourism that we see. The bars here do have two or three copies of the newspaper out each morning to browse while getting your morning caffeine fix. We prefer either the Courrier del Adriatico or Il Corriere della Sera as they tend to have more on Ascoli and the Marche Region.

Lunch with expats in Spoleto

Yesterday we drove to Spoleto in Umbria to meet Art and Barbara Skinner from San Venanzo for lunch. The drive to get there was by way of Norcia and was only about an hour and a half which was surprisingly quick with beautiful mountain views. We met Art and Barbara in Piazza della Liberta and spent about two hours doing an abbreviated tour of the centro storico before going to Il Pentagramma for a relaxing lunch. We enjoyed a delicious lunch while trading expat stories but afterwards rain began to fall so we said our “Ciao”s and headed back to Ascoli.

Ringin' in your ears

Ascoli Piceno is a town of many towers, claiming to have close to one hundred in various configurations, some of which are bell towers attached to churches. These bell towers are put to good use here in Italy where if you listen closely you can hear bells tolling each hour and each quarter section of the hour, one tone to mark the hours and another the quarter hour. If you are out walking in town or have your window open you can not miss the sound of these bells.

I enjoy the sound of the bells, they are always on time. This is a sound I was not familiar with when I was growing up, there were no church bells in our neighborhood in American suburbia. The church I attended in my youth had bell ‘sounds’ but this was a recording, which just isn’t the same. We can hear bells from the Duomo San Emidio at Piazza Aringo and Chiesa San Francesco at Piazza del Popolo.

The bells not only toll the hour but summon the faithful to services on Sunday mornings. We have also heard them clanging away at other non-descript times and our land-lady informed us these may be signaling weddings or other special festivities. It is interesting to me to watch the bells ring as they swing out beyond the tower walls, looking like they will come loose and go flying out into the nearby piazza.


Ding-dong, ding-dong.

Ascoli Piceno - Chiesa di San Francesco

Chiesa di San Francesco

This Franciscan church marks the northern boundary of Piazza del Popolo. The travertine structure was started in the 1200’s but not completed until the 1500’s with the dome on the east end. Close examination of the side facing the piazza will reveal slight color differences in the stone indicating different periods of construction.

There are dual bell towers flanking the dome and an adjoining cloister which is in the finishing stages of renovation. The west portal has elegantly carved travertine with columns that are each a different style and lions that jut out from the wall, ready to roar.

The interior is modest but has some beautiful modern stain glass windows, some predicting recent events such as the Nazi occupation during World War II. This is a popular church on Sunday mornings where people gather in the piazza both before and after services to discuss the events of the week.

For tours of Ascoli Piceno visit Panorama Italy.

Italian electrical issues

We have always heard that the household electrical systems here in Italia were not quite up to handling the power loads Americans are used to. An Italian residential electrical system will have between 3 and 6 kW, most apartments like ours have 3 kW. If your appliances use too much power at one time the electricity cuts off. When we would rent homes here on vacations the agent always made sure to show us where the fuse box was located in case we tripped the power, but I don’t recall ever having an issue with this.

In our apartment we were here a couple months before we started to have some problems with the power switching off. This is easily fixed as the fuse box is right next to our front door, but still a nuisance. About three months ago we started having problems where the power would go off when our washing machine went into the spin cycle; it had not had that problem for the previous months we were living here. Being the fix it yourself type, I was determined to figure out what the source of the problem was. After running the washer a couple times with various appliances on I was able to pinpoint the culprit: the water heater.

The water heater and washing machine share the same little alcove and apparently the same circuit. If the washing machine is in the final spin cycle and the water heater clicks on – we have lights out. This would not be a big issue but that the water heater also supplies the radiant heaters for the house so we have adjusted to being sure that the spin cycle and water heater won’t operate at the same time.

True, from an American point of view this just seems wacky but just one of those little things Italians seem to take for granted and we have learned to adjust to.

Norcia, Umbria

Norcia

There are two towns less than an hour west of Ascoli Piceno which are very important to Italian culinary tastes, but probably unknown to most Americans. The first of these is Amatrice just across the boarder in Lazio and the home of Spaghetti all’Amatriciana which you can read about on Valerie’s blog. The second is the Umbrian town of Norcia.

Wednesday we took a scenic drive to Norcia which is up in the Monti Sibillini situated in a vast valley and is only about 65 kilometers from Ascoli. There is a relatively new road that tunnels through the mountains to get to Norcia, but we had heard stories from locals about the bad condition of the road. It seems Umbria and Marche have an ongoing argument over who is responsible for maintaining the highway. Despite needing a new coat of asphalt in some areas this road did not match our worst fears.

Norcia sits on the north end of the wide valley and is completely surrounded by its medieval protective walls with very little development outside them. Besides having a place in Italian culinary history, Norcia is also the birthplace of San Benedetto in 480 AD who of the Benedictine Order which is spread wide across Europe with as many as 40,000 monasteries at one time. He founded the famous abbey at MonteCassino. The center of town is Piazza San Benedetto with his statue in the middle and Chiesa San Benedetto off to one side.

Norcia’s culinary contribution is sausage and ham; in many places around Italy a butcher specializing in pork is called a Norcineria. Sausages come in all shapes, sizes and flavors as well as the delicious prosciutto. When you visit this town you will also see that tartufo, or truffle, is also one of their big foods. It is a type of fungus found in the forests of Italy.

I found it interesting with Norcia being the birthplace of San Benedetto and Assisi being the birthplace of San Francesco, both in Umbria, and both of well known Catholic Orders. There is a sharp contrast in the grandeur of the basilicas dedicated to each saint in their respective hometowns.

After we left Norcia we headed east to check the road conditions for getting to the Spoleto area and this looks like a very promising route for us to get to the Spoleto/Assisi area of Umbria.