A Word on Italians

In truth, this clip is not really representative of the Italian people; I didn't really come across any situation this dire during my total of eleven days in Rome, Sicily, Venice, and the Sardinian airport from hell. But it does do a good (or maybe just amusing) job of reflecting upon the cultural divide between Americans and Europeans, especially that between Americans and Italians.

Now, let it be known that although I am of thoroughly mixed ethnicities, I identify with my Italian-American heritage as much as anything else. I have an Italian last name (Grillerio was actually abbreviated to Griller at Ellis Island), grew up on Italian food and traditions, and am Roman Catholic. My great-grandfather, who immigrated alone at age 13, is a legendary figure in my family and he lived to be so old that I got to know him as a child. So I truly expected to love Italy and Italians.

In some ways, they didn't disappoint. They all spelled and pronounced my last name correctly (in fact, better than I do/can) and cooked delicious food. From what I could tell, their lives revolve around their families, their faith, and their food, an admirable lifestyle and one that seemed to encapsulate the older generations of my own family as well.

But I knew from the day I got there that there was something offsetting about Italian culture. It took me a while to admit it, but being stuck in airports for fourteen hours forced me to acknowledge the truth: many Italians are simply lazy, rude, or both.

Now, I'm sure I'm going to catch a lot of flak for this, and this is not to suggest that I didn't meet many Italians who were extremely nice and/or extremely hardworking, or that I myself (and many other Americans) am known to be anything other than lazy and rude. But in the Italy that I saw (with the exception of Venice, which revolves around tourism), values like hard work and common courtesy simply weren't prized.

It was in Olbia Airport that I came up with my Theory of the Italian Peoples. It's quite simple, really. Around 100 years ago, Italy - especially Southern Italy - really sucked. Most hardworking, decent Italians who had the means left for America. All the lazy, rude, and/or privileged ones stayed behind. Nowadays, their descendants reflect that divide, only magnified by 100 years of separation from each other.

You want proof? Look at the style of play of American teams coached by Joe Paterno, Joe Girardi, and Tom Izzo (to name just a few successful Italian-American coaches) vs. the Italian national soccer team. The Americans' teams reflect hard work, respect, and honor, values instilled in Italian-American culture (and American culture at large) by the immigrant experience. American athletes as a whole play through injuries, hesitate to make excuses, and value sportsmanship. When they don’t, the public vilifies them (see: Rodriguez, Alex, or James, LeBron). Cal Ripken, who never won a title after his rookie season, is nationally beloved for his grittiness and his sportsmanship, not because his teams won (they didn’t). The Italian national team flops and dives, fakes injuries and yells racial slurs at opponents, in order to win the referees' favor. They don't care how they win or who they dishonor along the way; all they care about is themselves. What's worse, Italians love them for it.

I had a great time in Italy and would go back again despite the way I was often – and I mean often – treated in my role as tourist or customer. But there is no doubt in my mind that our Italian cousins are just that: cousins. They definitely aren’t siblings; they grew up in a home with different values and different rules. We may have more in common than we have apart, and there are certainly aspects of their culture (especially their appreciation for relaxation and their care for the poor) that I and many others find preferable. Having been there, though, I for one am glad to have grown up in this country instead.

Venice

Venice is a lot like Orlando, FL (rustic charm and history vs. plastic tackiness aside). As far as I could tell, it was full of crowds and overpriced food and souvenirs, and not too many people actually live there (on most days there are more tourists than residents in the entire city). It feels a lot like one big theme park.

But if Orlando is the place you must see before turning ten, Venice is a place to see before turning dead. In other words, it's a perfect bucket-list destination, even if you can see most of its sites in a few days. It's definitely the most beautiful city I've ever seen; just getting lost in it (which is easy enough to do) is an attraction all in itself. A few things that stuck out to me:

1) Definitely the coolest attraction in the city is the Doge's Palace and St. Mark's Square. Once upon a time, the Venetian Navy dominated the Mediterranean world and the small city-state challenged the massive Ottoman Empire as a center of regional trade. Venice was a republic - albeit one with a complex system of government that would strike most Americans as quite foreign - and had a figurehead leader called the Doge who was elected for life. The palace was one of the most beautiful buildings I saw in all of Europe.

2) Although it seems like kind of a cushy job, being the Doge had many, many downsides. He was expected to be the lifelong servant of the Venetian people, not their leader or king, and he was reminded of this whenever he went outside to give a speech to his people (or indeed upon being inaugurated). Standing at the top of the Great Staircase, he'd be dwarfed by gigantic statues of Mars and Neptune, meant to symbolize for all the people his relative insignificance. What's more, from his angle (which I got to see) he was being mooned by both Gods (and it's hard to describe the extent of the mooning going on here; these are massive statues). I'm not sure if that was intentional or not, but I would have preferred a different greeting upon leaving my home.

3) In fact, the Doge couldn't really leave home, and he had to get special permission if he ever wanted to leave Venice (keep in mind that this is a lifelong job). The palace map room is known as one of its most beautiful, but it struck me as an extremely sad place. I imagine the Doges of Venice looking upon a vast world they'd never get to see, wondering what adventures lay outside the city borders, their huge palace a prison where they were always watched. It seems to me a very lonely existence.

The Blog is Still Alive!

You probably thought this blog was as dead as the corpses in the Palermo Catacombs. Maybe you found some other amateur blogger to fill your days with laughter, tug at your heart, and bring you brief moments of joy and enlightenment. As you read this, you're probably filled with the same sense of shock, awe, and ecstasy as Pam had when she found her dead ex-husband in the shower in place of the man she'd married the night before.

I'm not going to go down the Dallas route and pretend that all of Season 7 (i.e. the last two weeks of no new posts) was a dream, although it may have seemed like a nightmare for my devoted readers. Let's just say I lost my way in a sea of Weeds and Dexter episodes, but I'm back where I belong now. I hope we're never apart again.

P.S. Obviously this all means I've been extremely lazy the last couple of weeks. My bad.

A Long Day and a Cold Beer

There's a famous scene, in Lawrence of Arabia, when Lawrence emerges from the desert and orders a glass of lemonade at the officers' parlor. On the worst day of my travels, when I lost all motivation to keep going on, I thought about that scene. I thought that if I finally got to my hostel, at the end of the day, I'd order a single, cold beer and just sit back and relax with it.

My miserable day, of course, is far too long to describe in a blog, and there are of course parts of it that aren't worth going into detail. Some memories, like the check-in clerk who ignored me and two other Americans for 35 minutes before ushering five Italians through the gate just before the day's last flight to Venice took off, are simply too recent and bitter to relive. Others, like the question of where my bag was or how I could get it, the small plane that crashed on the sole runway just as we were ready to leave Sardinia behind (nobody was hurt), or the extended journey from Verona airport to my hostel in Venice (only took 3.5 hours!), are just too outright traumatic. Just know that during a single 24 hour period, I was treated like dirt by the baggage handlers, check-in clerks, customer service reps, claims officers, and pilots of Alitalia, all on separate occasions. My journey, which originially should have been no more than 4 hours door-to-door, ended up taking 16, most of which was spent in one of Italy's smallest airports.

So, did I handle myself with restraint during this time period? It depends on how you look at it. Click on the video above and you can see my general behavior toward pretty much every Italian at that moment. I think, actually, that my failure to kill anyone was indicative of remarkable restraint.

In any case, when I finally did get to my hostel at 12:45 AM and ordered that beer, I enjoyed it to the fullest. Mentally and physically exhausted, my anger had run out. A whole day in Europe had been wasted by incompetency at every level of Italy's social pyramid (more on that in a future post). But at that moment, as I felt the coldness against my fingers and in my throat, and realized there were no more connections to run to save for the inviting bed to sleep in, life was good. And that's how the worst non-tragic day of my life ended on a high note.

Sicily

When I told people the itinerary for my trip (Dublin-Amsterdam-Istanbul-Greek Islands-Rome-Madrid-Sicily-Venice-Berlin), one of the most common remarks I received was "Why Sicily?"

I wanted to see Sicily for three reasons.

1. Adventure: to travel alone in a place like that, a little bit off the beaten track, would offer a different experience than major city after major city
   
2. Heritage: my great-grandma left Palermo as a little girl with her family more than 100 years ago. 1/8 of my heritage came through that island and that city, and I wanted to see it first-hand
3. Food: I love to eat. My dad learned how to cook in large part from the aforementioned great-grandma, and I grew up in suburban New York where Sicilian cuisine has left a large imprint on our delis, restaurants and holidays. I wanted to get to the source of it.

So, keeping those things in mind, here is my time in Sicily, in a nutshell:

• The Sicilian countryside is the most beautiful I've seen. Unfortunately, I only passed through it on trains and buses. But it looked really nice.
• The beaches, too, looked beautiful. But the day I had penciled in for the beach was cool and windy, so I skipped it. This is one of the bigger regrets from my trip.
• Palermo is the dirtiest city I've ever been to. By a lot. This statement includes Guatemala City, Sarajevo, and the Mods at Boston College. There is garbage strewn throughout the city, and when you think about that fact it's important to remember that, since Palermo lacks modern toilets and sewage systems, that garbage is full of dirty toilet paper.
  
• There are also buildings throughout Palermo, some in large clusters, that have not been fixed or demolished since they were bombed during the Allied Invasion of Sicily. For those who aren't history buffs or math wizards, that was in 1943, or 67 years ago. Small parts of the city look more devastated by war than most parts of Sarajevo did when I was there three years ago, just twelve years after the longest siege in modern history. I found out after my trip that the locals refer to the postwar period as the Sack of Palermo because of its mafia-fueled deterioration. In any case, it's pretty gross/depressing, especially since they could make lots of €€€ off of tourism.
  
• Catania, on the eastern side of the island, is much, much nicer than Palermo. In the shadow of Mt. Etna (Europe's largest active volcano), it seems like a golden paradise compared to the regional capital
• In terms of my heritage: it was very cool to see familiar last names (Catano, Siracusa, Leonardi, etc.) around the island, and...
• I am so grateful to my ancestors for leaving there. Putting aside the fact that I wouldn't exist if they hadn't, I was repeatedly blown away by the realization that almost none of the gifts and opportunities afforded to me in life would have been there if I was raised in Sicily (unless, and only maybe unless, I was one of the richest people there)
• The food in Sicily is as good as advertised and is dirt cheap. You can eat like a king for €15 a day. I had the best calamari, eggplant, and cannolis of my life there. I also highly recommend trying horse, which they seem to take great pride in but oddly enough isn't found at the Italian deli near my house.
  

Sicily was definitely the least enjoyable part of my trip, but I expected that going in. I wanted to have an adventure and get in touch with my heritage while eating very well, and I did that. As a traveler, I'm much more seasoned for having experienced it.

(Thanks to Boots in the Oven for the photo)

The Boss, R.I.P.

I hate to interrupt my travel stories again for another sports commentary, but I can't help myself. The fact is, no stranger brought me more direct joy in my life than George Steinbrenner.

I never met the man, and I do not mourn his death as I would that of a friend or loved one. He was in many ways a bad person: he illegally funneled cash to Richard Nixon's reelection campaign, once paid a lowlife to dig up dirt on his star outfielder in an attempt to embarrass him, and treated the vast majority of his employees like dogs (from his managers and GM's right down to his secretaries). His meddling with the Yankees probably cost them a handful of more championships. He rapidly priced working-class and middle-class families out of Yankee Stadium after the mid-1990's, threatened to move the team out of the Bronx for decades, and then plowed over a neighborhood park - a beloved piece of greenery in the South Bronx - in order to build the new stadium for his billion-dollar franchise. His obsession with winning was as much motivated by personal shortcomings as by his devotion to Yankee fans.

But he did win. 7 championships and 11 pennants since 1976, for a franchise that was in its Dark Ages when he took over three years earlier. He poured the teams profits right back into it. For him, the Yankees weren't a cool toy or a status symbol or a business; they were his passion. Ticket prices may have been raised over time, but much more of that money went to payroll and his charities than to lining his own pockets, even after his shipping business went under and the team became his only source of revenue. He seemed to sense the happiness and unity the team could bring to the many people who called New York home, from the Wall Street executive to the South Bronx bus driver to the 8 year old little leaguer on Long Island, and he did everything in his power to chase it. He may have been a ferocious, angry, and arrogant man, but he also had a soft spot for children and working people and the disadvantaged.

More than anything else, though, I think he just wanted to be loved. By all accounts his father was a good but tough man. Some say he bought the Yankees because they offered him celebrity he would have never had in Cleveland. At the end of his life, when his years of tumultuous ownership were forgiven by his legions of fans and they gave him standing ovations upon his increasingly rare stadium appearances, he was often moved to tears by the outpouring of affection for him.

At the end of the day, he was a flawed man, by moral, financial, and baseball standards. But he cared more about the happiness of his fans than about the size of his bank account, and whatever his motivations were that is a fact worth acknowledging. These days, few athletes and owners care about anything else. A man of many contradictions, that is an environment Steinbrenner himself helped to create and foster. The truth is, though, that any fan-base in sports would kill for an owner like him.

As a Yankee fan, I had him. For me, his death isn't worth mourning. But his colorful, controversial, contradictory life? Definitely worth celebrating.

(Thanks to Talk of New York Sports for the photo)

Where Dead Mean Lie

So, those pictures above are pretty much exactly what they look like: a bunch of human corpses. These are from the Palermo Catacombs: by far the strangest, creepiest place I saw on my trip (or in my life, for that matter). According to Wikipedia, the catacombs were made for monks in the 16th century when their cemetery grew overcrowded, but mummification and burial there eventually became a status symbol for the people of Palermo.

The middle picture above is of first monk to be buried there, in the 1500's. The child is Rosalia Lombardo, who died of influenza at age 7 in 1920 but still looks ready for a game of ring-around-the-rosie. Of the roughly 8,000 mummies that line the walls, most fall somewhere in between in appearance. Perhaps because of their condition, taking photos there is prohibited. I owe a great deal of thanks to Kimberly King's website, which has a bunch of pictures and is definitely worth checking out if you want to get a feel for the place.

Walking the corridors there, I was struck by the realization that one of my own distant ancestors or relatives could be among the dead who were thoroughly creeping me out. Seeing that many mummies and corpses really forced me to reflect on the meaning of life and death and the role our bodies play in both, and after wondering through the catacombs I've reached an important decision: I definitely want to be cremated.

The King of Wishful Thinking

I'm gonna break for a moment from catching up on my travel stories to comment on the spectacle we witnessed last night. LeBron James - the King of Cleveland, the most popular player in the game, and the heir apparent to Jordan's throne - laid all of his titles (and many millions of dollars) aside in the hopes of winning now, later, and often.

My football team went 3-14 my last two years of high school, and my wrestling career began with 23 consecutive losses. To lose like that is awful. It's humiliating, frustrating, and excruciating. But it's also part of life. At some point, you need to learn how to lose with dignity and grace.

Never mind General Patton, who famously said that "America loves a winner and will not tolerate a loser." The fact is, we're almost all losers. There's a hell of a lot more alumni of losing football teams than of state champions. Literally all of our ancestors were on the losing end: slaves, defeated tribes, refugees, or at best those with no hope for a better life back home. Our unemployment rate is growing every day, and in Cleveland it's only worse. We root for underdogs not because we hate the favorites but because we identify with those who aren't supposed to succeed, who aren't supposed to make noise or inspire, but who hang onto their one sliver of hope, believe in themselves and the impossible, and persevere until victory is in sight. We love when our teams win precisely because it's rare (even the Yankees lose more years than they win). And we hate cheaters and those who win without class because they steal victory from those who ply their trade honestly, because they represent the unfair world we live in and because most of us don't cheat at school or work.

Losing so often in high school didn't make me happy with defeat. But it did inspire me to train harder and to treasure every moment I spent with my teammates, representing my school and town in competition. It's why, when my high school's team eventually did make it to the state championship game three years after my graduation, they inspired happiness in every alumni to ever don the uniform. Their victory was a credit to every garbage time player who worked their ass off on losing teams and every all-section player that stayed in town to play with and for their friends instead of taking their talents elsewhere.

James wouldn't know anything about that. He meant everything to northeast Ohio; he was their sliver of hope, their consolation prize for decades of decline, their message to the world that Cleveland will rise triumphantly from its ashes. Players leave their teams all the time for money, and occasionally for a shot at a crown. We grudgingly tolerate the former; it is a business, after all. And we usually tolerate the latter; few people knock Ray Bourque or Karl Malone for seeking rings in the final years of their careers. But never before has a player of James's stature left everything in their prime - the hometown loyalty, the money, the boyhood favorite team (Bulls), and the glitz of the big stage (NY/NJ) - in pursuit of victory on a mercenary team.

Leaving adoration and money on the table in pursuit of victory doesn't make LeBron James a bad person or a coward, despite what many are writing. He was right to say that he doesn't owe anything to the Cavs, and one could argue that he doesn't owe anything to Ohioans. But he did owe something to himself. Last night, we finally saw the results of what happens when even the most talented athlete in the country is doted on and worshiped from age 15. He's immature, and he doesn't grasp what victory really is; he seems to think it's as simple a concept as playing alongside the best players in the game.

John Candy may have said it best in Cool Runnings. "A gold medal is a wonderful thing. But if you're not enough without it, you'll never be enough with it."

The Joy of Traveling

The following post was handwritten into my journal while I was traveling through Sicily on June 26, less that 24 hours after my arrival there.

Three thoughts as I wait for my next train to arrive:

1) I had a blast jetting from major city to major city with my friends, but there is something to be said about the experience of simply traveling, and it can't be done by plane. After a while, for all their differences, big cities are big cities (even Istanbul), and large airports are all the same. Traveling alone by train through the Sicilian countryside and coast (or via ferry to Ios, an 8 hour ride through the Aegean and the islands) is an entirely different experience. It loans itself to self-reflection and an appreciation of true beauty. Right now, the main highlight of my day is not where I'm going. It's simply going.

2) Sicilians don't speak much English, but they do speak very, very fast Italian, Trapani is the most Catholic place I've ever been (even more than Rome), people can be sort of rude, and food is highly valued. I can definitely see its imprints on New York culture; I feel strangely at home here in a distinctly foreign land.

3) There are three certainties in life: death, taxes, and finding a Chinese restaurant at any corner of the globe. I've seen Chinese restaurants in rural Guatemala, Sicily and Bosnia; I sometimes wonder if Chinese food sustained Shackleton and his men during their long trip home.

Sicilian Hospitality

Some of you might notice that I'm behind on my posts, as I'm currently back in the glorious USA. Well, it wasn't always easy to blog in Europe; there had to be a perfect convergence of affordability, availability and free time for me to write. With internet rates that sometimes exceeded €5/hour and distorted, foreign-language keyboards, the opportunities were quite rare. In any case, I will spend the next few days posting some delayed entries that were handwritten into my journal. The following was a reflection on my first day in Sicily.

When I was a young griller, my dad and I used to make annual car trips from New York to the my grandpa's place in the Florida Keys. Among the many highlights and lowlights of our adventures - such as throwing up all over my dad's new leased Cadillac following an overly ambitious breakfast buffet at Bob's Big Boy - there is one that stands out in my memory above all: the Stardust Motel.

The first time my mom and sisters made the trip with us, we grew somewhat road weary in southern Georgia and had to stop for the night at the Stardust, the only affordable motel we could find. To this day, the name Stardust is synonymous in my family with griminess and parsimony. I never thought I would find an equal in my life, even as I embarked on a month of backpacking. I was young, naiive, and innocent.

I got into Trapani late last night. Trapani is a small port town on a peninsula in Western Sicily. It's the sort of place I'd have never visited or even heard of, but it's where Ryan Air flies into on the island (they use a small former military airport). The bus into town dropped me off at the harbor, which thrives during the day (and where ferries can take you to Tunisia, i.e. Africa). Late at night, though, it was dark, deserted and desolate. Walking alone with my backpack, I felt extremely vulnerable.

I eventually found my Bed and Breakfast - the Casa Malvarosa - on a side street so narrow that only bikes can fit through. I picked the Malvarosa because of its affordability; much to my horror after booking a late flight into Trapani, I discovered that the town has no hostels. At €25 a night, the Malvarosa was appealing despite its horrendous reviews.

It wasn't a huge shock (having slept in the Stardust, I should have known), but sometimes you really do get what you pay for. The outer door of the courtyard was locked and the buzzers - of which there were several - only had last names; none was labeled as that of the Malvarosa. The first I rang prompted the emergence of an aggravated (but clearly accustomed to the annoyance) Sicilian man, who told me who to ring. I was delighted to find that the owner, a woman who lived in the upstairs of the apartment, didn't speak a word of English. The courtyard and apartment were filled with statues and paintings of the Madonna and other saints, but they didn't seem to be interceding on behalf of the Malvarosa or its guests.

On the inside, the B&B is essentially an old, run-down apartment. The plaster on the walls was peeling, mold dominated the bathroom - where the toilet seat was cracked in half - and there was a general griminess to the bedroom floor that deterred me from walking barefoot. The sheets were dirty - telltale orange-red stains indicated the potential presence of bedbugs - and the room was windowless. But...it was late, I was exhausted from three weeks of traveling, and it was a room for myself. I read for a little while before falling into a deep and restful sleep.

There's a couple of lessons to be learned here. First, sometimes Ryan Air flies you into the middle of nowhere; if you then stay at the cheapest place you can, you will really, really be getting what you pay for. Second, when you're tired, you can sleep anywhere. And third, I'm picking up foreign languages quickly. "Malvarosa," for instance, is Italian for "Stardust."

Thanks to Saul Young's KnoxNews Blog for the photo. Unlike the room it pictures, though, the Malvarosa lacked carpeting, air conditioning, and abundant lighting).\