Strikes in Italy

If you're going to Italy, there is a website that keeps track of upcoming transportation strikes. It's useful.

p.s. This is the 250th post. Huzzah! Meaningless milestone!

Story with No Point

Whenever I ride a certain bus, I try to sit in a double seat on the window side. My stop is near the end of the line, so that way I don't get shoved around by everyone else getting off, and it's not a seat for differently-abled people. By the time the bus reaches my stop, it's usually almost empty. However, it seems that whoever sits next to me almost always gets off after me, so that, when most seats are empty, one of the few people left on the bus is sitting next to me. Today I sat next to someone in a double seat, but on the aisle side. She was still on the bus at my stop, so this time I was in the other position.

(That was the story.) Speaking of buses, they seem to have decided to better enforce* the rule that you need a validated ticket to ride the bus. So they're checking tickets more frequently. I'm not sure we've posted anything about this before, so the way tickets work for city buses is: you buy a ticket somewhere, you get on the bus, you validate your ticket, occasionally people show up on the bus to make sure you have a validated ticket (and fine you around 40 euros if you don't. The fining process, by the way, 90% of the time includes a 10 minute argument). It's similar to the train ticket system.

* hand out more fines

When at Fault

This strikes me as a very Italian argument. If they do something wrong, someone will yell at them, and then they'll just yell back.

For example, while I was on a bus recently, the driver passed a stop people had requested, so they yelled to him about it, and he was like, "basta, basta!" ("enough, enough," with arm motions), and then he stopped. I've also seen something similar to the cartoon happen, where someone pulled out in front of someone else and yelling ensued from both the person who was cut off and the person at fault.

Maybe it's just a city thing. I don't know the difference.

More Observations

The bus drivers must be engaged in an ongoing contest to see who can wear out the brakes the fastest. They're all doing pretty well, because 95% of the bus brakes screech loudly.

Also regarding buses: no matter what stop I go to or at what time, I have to wait at least 15 minutes for the D bus. It's supposed to come every 12 minutes.

A little more on fashion (from previous posts): apparently heels go with everything. Also, in the winter, it seems the only accepted footwear for women is boots. It was kind of impressive to see stores go from selling nothing but sandals one day to nothing but boots the next.

Two projects that were progressing surprisingly rapidly for Italy were the renovation of the Santa Maria Novella piazza and the building of the tram lines. Then the SMN project ran out of funds and was temporarily halted, and the tram line installation was put on hold for a month around Xmas, because the store owners by the lines complained it was affecting business. That's more like it. Another funny thing about the tram lines is that some people don't want them running near the duomo, even though there's a constant stream of buses and cars there now.

The concept of customer service is still not known here, especially at Vodafone, which is the worst company in the world. It now out-ranks U-Haul's terrible policies, Bank of America's lying employees and website, and Telecom Italia's terrible policies and lying employees and website. When we were in the Vodafone store recently*, where the totally incompetent employees were not able to do anything for us again, a number of other people were in there with complaints. I overheard a conversation in English wherein a woman was explaining that she had recently bought a pay-as-you-go internet "service" from Vodafone, but when she tried to use it, she was only able to send one email in 4 hours. The response from the employee was that the woman should bring her computer in to the store to be tested, because the Vodafone service is "very good." The only accurate thing that employee said the whole time was when the woman asked for a refund for the time she wasn't able to use Vodafone's crappy service, and the employee told her, "In Italy, we don't give back money."

Italian mosquitoes don't die. It's freaking winter.

Something positive: I like the Teatro della Pergola.

* There are several episodes in the Vodafone saga we've skipped so far in this blog. Maybe eventually we'll post the whole thing.

Prato

Today's trip was to the nearby city of Prato. We took the bus, which was quite cheap (2.30 one way) and reasonably fast (~40 minutes). Once there, we walked from the station into town and stopped by the Biscottificio Antonio Mattei, where biscotti (or cantuccini or cantucci, whatever you want to call them) were created 150 years ago. We got a mixed bag of biscotti and brutti buoni, and then walked on. Since most of the sights were closed for the lunch break, and it was approaching lunch time, we went looking for a place to eat.
Prato, in addition to being well known for its textile industry, is also home to the largest Chinese population in Italy, and not having had any Chinese food for quite a while, we went looking for a Chinese restaurant. We wandered away from the center towards the west, and having seen more and more Chinese signs, were assured that we were going in the right direction. Eventually, we were the only non-Chinese left on the street, and we found a restaurant, though without a menu at street level. Still, we were hungry and adventerous, so we went into the Ristorante Ciao, which turned out to be a type of Chinese fondue place (again, we were the only non-Chinese in the place). We got a big pot of broth which sat on a burner in the middle of our table, and ordered various ingredients to go in there: beans, mushrooms, tofu, noodles, shrimp, etc. All in all it was quite good.
After walking back towards the center, we now visited the Duomo, probably the most important site of Prato. In here, we saw several fresco cycles, including the story of the sacred girdle, and magnificent frescoes by Filippo Lippi above the altar. On the outside of the cathedral is a pulpit from which the girdle is shown several times a year, designed by Donatello. From there, we went on to Santa Maria delle Carceri, another church with ceramics by della Robbia, and went through the Cassero, a mediaeval corridor from the Prato castle to the city walls on our way back to the station to take the bus back to Florence.

Bike

Already last week Marco, a colleague of mine, had kindly offered to take me to a bike shop he knew so I could look at some bikes. After Friday’s experience with the buses, I knew I couldn’t wait any longer to take transportation into my own hands. So this evening, I set off on the back of Marco’s ‘motorino’ (scooter) towards the store. The salesman there was quite helpful after Marco explained what we were looking for and fixed up the bike to make it ready to ride. After all, there was the small matter of getting from Calenzano, where the bike store was, back to my apartment in Florence. Since the sky was turning darker by the minute, I stepped into the pedals a little harder than I normally would have. Astonishingly quickly, I was back at the apartment – sure beats those buses!

Rant of the Day

This week I’ve been working in the lab and am being introduced to the experimental apparatus. This means that I’ve been staying at work later. I can’t stay too late, though, because otherwise I don’t have a way to get back home. The problem with having a science campus like the one here is that the bus connections aren’t all that great – for example the last bus towards the city center leaves at 7:45pm, and the absolutely last bus is at 8:30pm. Or so it stands written on the schedule.

Today, I needed to get some milk before the stores closed (most stores close at 8pm, others are open until 9pm), so I looked up the bus schedule and went to the bus stop at 7:30pm, which should have given me enough time, since the trip has been reduced to 20-30 minutes to the new apartment. The bus at 7:30pm didn’t come, but that wasn’t a problem, since there was a bus at 7:35pm (different route, but I take that one as well). That one didn’t come either, same as the ones at 7:39pm, 7:45pm, and 8:05pm. Since there was now only one bus left, and it was close to sunset, I decided to walk, at least to the place where I would have to change buses. After a little over 20 minutes of brisk walking, I came to the bus stop with a few minutes to spare before the 8:35pm bus was supposed to come. I guess you know what’s coming – that one didn’t show up either, so I walked for another half hour back home. Good thing too, because the next bus 15 minutes later apparently didn’t come either, since it didn’t pass me. Of course by now all the stores were closed.

You do have to wonder how something like this could happen. It’s not like there was a strike, since the buses that morning were running properly, and plenty of buses were heading into the bus depot, which is near the stop where I transfer. Maybe the bus drivers simply decided they didn’t want to work on Friday evening? I don’t have too much of a problem with buses being late on occasion or even the occasional bus not showing up, but at the end of the day when the bus schedule is pretty thin anyway, I need to be able to rely on public transportation to get home. And that simply does not seem to be the case here. The public transportation systems I encountered in Latin America were more efficient than this. And at least you knew in advance that you couldn’t rely on Charlottesville buses. Well, now I know that about Florence buses as well.

What I’ve learned is that I need a bike as soon as possible.

Fiesole

Today was another beautiful spring day -- warm, not hot, and sunny. I decided to take the bus up to Fiesole (pronounce: fee-EH-so-leh), a small town on the hills outside of Florence. That seems to be a pretty popular thing to do, and the bus was full of tourists. I think the bus authority wanted to take advantage of unknowing tourists, and this was the first time since I arrived that someone checked the tickets (and that they were validated!). Anyway, the bus made its way through the city and then up some windy roads and past some pretty impressive villas until it arrived in the main square of Fiesole about half an hour later. The town dates back to the Etruscans, and hosted a Roman settlement as well, of which an amphitheater and some other ruins can still be seen. I didn't actually visit these, since they cost admission and I'm waiting for Kristen to get here to visit places that charge money, though I did manage to see some of the ruins through a fence. I walked around a bit and then walked up a steep hill to a 14th century church and monastery, from where there's a spectacular view down to Florence in the valley. I've read that it's a bit cooler up here in the summer, and I can imagine that this place would be ideal for a picnic then.

First Day

The first day at work. A bit anxious, I left the apartment at around 9 am and walked to the train station (I still needed to get a bus ticket). I had been warned by my roommates that getting to the Polo Scientifico, where LENS, the place I work, is located, would take a long time. So I waited at the train station for about 40 minutes until the bus I needed showed up. I guess it's supposed to come every 20 or 30 minutes, but one failed to show up. Since the bus only goes directly to the Polo Scientifico between 7 to 9 am and 5 to 7 pm, I had to change in between and wait for a different bus. In the end, it took me about 2 hours to get from the apartment to work, which is not a good thing.
In the end, it didn't matter too much that I came so late, since the Professor that'll I'll be working for had an exam that he was administering. Even later in the day, he was pretty busy with meetings and paper writing, though we did manage to plan my first task: to apply for a Marie Curie fellowship that is due in one week. This would fund my second year here in Florence, and seems ideally suited to my situation: a European citizen returning there after a long stay in another country. We'll see how it goes.
On the way back from work, I stopped by a Coop (a supermarket chain) to get some milk and cereal and other necessities. Here, as with most other things, prices are pretty reasonable if you convert 1 Euro into 1 Dollar. If you try to use the real exchange rate, you will not want to buy anything. But I'm going to be earning Euros soon, so it's good. At the apartment, Claudio had invited a friend over and prepared duck with potatoes and red cabbage, which was pretty good. Also good was the fact that I didn't have to cook - the kitchen is pretty tiny!