actually splurge on an entire meal, and so far I've only had one course instead of all three (or four if you counted dessert). I also like the fact that at just about every restaurant you can observe the staff and waiters standing around smoking in between serving meals and drinks. There's a certain kind of honesty to be found in this type of service that I really appreciate. I mean, chances are the person cooking the food also has a cigarette dangling from his mouth, and inevitably there are small deposits of tobacco and traces of nicotine in the pasta that is served, yet the though of this really doesn't disturb me at all. If anything, it probably adds to the authenticity of the flavour.
Florence, like many cities I've been to in Europe, is fairly small, or I should say compact. I've come to really enjoy this because it's possible to get a sense of the layout of the city fairly quickly, and it enables me to get from one point to the other in relatively little time. There is a lot to see and experience in Florence, and it left me with a pretty good feeling. Anita and Ronak, I'm sorry that your time here couldn't have been a bit better, and it's too bad you couldn't have stayed longer. It didn't rain at all after the first day, I swear, although God knows we could have used it. The heat is finally catching up to me, and while it's not necessarily slowing me down, I feel as if there is an ever-present layer of sweat covering my body, and I feel as if I might as well shower in my clothes, since they often feel damp at the end of the day anyway.
Florence was the center of the Italian Renaissance, and as a result, works by some of the great Italian masters can by seen here. At the Galleria d'Uffizi, for instance, works by Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael and Michelangelo can be found, but sadly, early Renaissance works by masters Splinter and Shredder were not included in the collection. I also made it over to the Galleria d'Academia, where essentially you pay €10 Euro to see one statue: Michelangelo's David, copies of which can be found in various spots in the city and can be seen for free. Nevertheless, it is quite an amazing piece of sculpture, and is absolutely worth seeing for its attention to anatomy and proportion.
It was also here that Anita, Ronak, Angela and I received helpful tips by a kindly old Scotsman on how to avoid being taken advantage of by pickpockets, and where Ronak risked life and limb to capture a photograph of David, despite the threat of being severely reprimanded by museum security. I say this with a bit of irony since the security consisted of a hodgepodge of the best of the rest when it comes to Italian security, which is questionable to begin with. We actually stood around for some time debating whether or not these people were in fact security, because they had no visible identification, and they all looked and acted the way you would expect someone to had you seen them in the street having a long political debate with a banana. These folks took their jobs incredibly seriously though, and I could have spent an entire afternoon just watching them corralling the hordes of tourists trying to snap a picture of David's naughty bits with their digital cameras.
Florence is one of those cities, like Paris, that you need to experience at night. It's not that there is anything spectacular going on, but the city takes on a kind of character that is slightly different than during the day. There seems to be fewer people in the streets (read: tourists) and there is a much more relaxed feel. There were a number of open air shows going on while I was there, so I spent the last two evening sitting back and blending in with the locals (as much as a blonde haired, blue-eyed person can), while listening to a variety of live music. I enjoyed the fact that whenever the Italians sing in English, they have a tendency to sound exactly like Bob Dylan, no matter the song.
Since I was only an hour and a half away from Pisa by train (which usually means two and a half by Italian train standards), I decided to take a trip there for part of the day. It's interesting how much pop culture influences our perceptions of the worlds, and how different reality often is. Not to say that the Leaning Tower was unimpressive, in fact it's quite remarkable. After seeing an episode of "The Muppet Babies" where Baby Kermit, as Leonardo Da Vinci, inadvertedly hit the tower with his flying machine causing the tower to lean in the first place, I expected it to be learning quite a bit more than it was. It was a pain trying to get a shot of the tower that made it look like it was actually leaning, which, I suppose, makes seeing it in person all the more important. The tower also seems weirdly out of place, since it is in the same piazza as an enormous Basilica and a Baptistry, and as far as I know, serves no religious function, nor a separate practical function either, other than to charge tourists €15 Euro to climb to the top.
Something that I found interesting in Florence is what I'll refer to as open-air organized crime. Throughout the city you'd be hard-pressed not to run into nomad street vendors who peddle mostly counterfeit goods such as bags, hats, sunglasses, and prints. These vendors have an incredible system going that enables them to essentially set up their display of goods and similarly remove it in a matter of seconds. This is necessary, of course, since it is illegal for them to sell the stuff (I'm guessing since it takes business away from legitimate vendors) and it's also illegal for people to buy from them as well. So there is an interesting cat and mouse game that emerges as a result of the bizarre relationship that exists between these counterfeit vendors and the police, who are in charge of enforing the law, yet don't really do much in terms of actually taking any measures to prevent this from continuing. Whenever the police would show up on the scene, the vendors would pack up their goods, which are usually transported in a large bedsheet or a cardboard portfolio, and would wait until the police left in order to set up again. What's always best in terms of people watching is when the policshang around the area, and you see these guys pacing back and forth waiting for the window of opportunity to make their move.
The reason why the authorities seem to allow this kind of presence to go on in the city seems to be a simple matter of demographics: the vendors, being predominantly African in origin, simply don't have any other opportunities, it would seem, so they have no choice but to resort to this way of life in order to survive. Instead of trying to integrate the immigrant population, the goal it seems is to keep them as marginalized as possible so as to not disrupt the status quo of Italian society. I suppose the Italians are content with having them perform some form of semi-legitimate work instead of outright criminal activity that might prove a detriment to tourism. These guys are up at the crack of dawn, and a lot of them are still out into the early hours of the morning. In this sense they earned my respect in an odd sort of way, and I seriously question how such a system can continue, especially since Europe's population is in decline, and it becomes more and more reliant on immigration to keep its economy alive.
Next: A Roman State of Mind in the Summer of '69.
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