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Published: March 28th 2010
Florence = Fun. By May Ciao, as they say in Florence. We have been here a couple of weeks and are loving it. We love it for many reasons.
1. It feels more like home than anywhere we’ve been (see Paul’s contribution below). You may think that it’s bad to feel like home when you’re traveling, that we should want something different, but I guess when we’ve been gone so long, it’s nice to have a place that feels like home.
The other day Ella and I found a playground. For the first time in 7 months, she had fun on a playground. There was equipment that was challenging and big enough for her yet safe enough for me too. She was so happy.
2. Our apartment is primo (that means great). It is big, airy, well lit, on a quiet street and has a dishwasher and oven (neither of which we’ve seen since we’ve been gone). It is so great to go out and explore and then come back and kick up our feet and read or write or nap.
3. Florence has a mostly pedestrian historic center. I really like walking around Florence. There
aren’t busy streets to cross. There’s hardly any traffic to contend with. The streets near us are all cobbled, with old buildings built up on both sides. The streets wind around and about town and open up into sweet little square piazzas with a church usually at one end. We wander around and enjoy exploring. I walk to a farmer’s market about twice a week. It takes me about 15 minutes, and it’s such a pleasant way to start my day. It’s fun to walk instead of relying on public transportation.
4. The sights are fantastic. We have mostly seen early Renaissance art. We’re kind of working in chronological order and so started with early paintings and sculpture. Paul has a special, long standing interest in this art, but the rest of us are genuinely interested too.
After seeing all the Byzantine art in Istanbul, it’s very apparent what changes were happening in the art here. We can see the painting that first tried to make three dimensions on a 2-D canvas. Also the one that first showed real human emotion in a painting. It’s all been way more fascinating that I expected. We usually go to one
church or museum a day, but the churches are so chock full of art that they fill us up.
5. Last, but certainly not least, the food is heavenly. We haven’t even eaten out at a restaurant! The ingredients I can buy at this nearby farmer’s market make anything I cook so delicious. We have fresh pasta every night almost. Even just putting real butter and fresh grated parmesan cheese on the pasta is one of the most delicious things I’ve ever eaten. Our salads have good olive oil and balsamic vinegar and fresh crumbled blue cheese. I wake up looking forward to dinner. I’m having fun cooking too because everything turns out so yummy!
We also take a walk every night after dinner and get gelato (Italian ice cream). I’m not sure what makes it so good, but it’s the best ice cream I’ve ever had. Some of the flavors are familiar (like chocolate chip, coffee and dark chocolate) and some are new (like pear, apple and orange) but every flavor I’ve had makes my mouth sing. It is very fun to wander around in the evening eating gelato.
So every day is good here. I’ve
had several near perfect ones already and it’s only been a couple of weeks. I sleep well, eat well, learn a little bit every day, and walk. It’s all good in Florence.
US Culture = European Culture. By Paul One thing we’ve really noticed in our time so far in Florence is how profoundly and fundamentally European we are in the United States, at least those of us of European descent.
Traveling to Europe after six months in Asia and one month in Istanbul has probably given us an unusual perspective on the core European-ness of US culture. Typically when people from the US travel to Europe, we come from the US, so we notice the things that are different from the US. For us, coming to Europe from Asia (and being a bit worn out with cultural differences), we noticed the many, many things about Europe that are the same as the US.
When we first got here, May and Ella and I commented many times on how Florence feels like home. One morning at breakfast we listed out some of the ways that the two cultures are the same. I jotted some notes,
Ella - Dome - Florence
Ella and May climbed the dome of Florence's Cathedral - this is the view from the top.then wrote it up for us all. Some of the key things we have noticed are below.
We don’t mean these comments in the spirit of “The US / Europe is good and Asia is bad.” We mean them in the spirit of “I often felt like a fish out of water in Asia, and now in Europe I feel like a fish totally back in its water.”
Kid culture. The first time we realized we were “home” was when we had a plane transfer in Athens, heading from Istanbul to Rome. There were several large groups of Italian teenagers on the plane with us from Athens to Rome. They acted just like teenagers in the US, and we were shocked. It was a pleasant, amusing, entertaining sort of shock, but it was a shock.
The Italian teenagers stood up in the plane and shouted to each other and laughed uproariously. They got out of their seats and went and chatted with each other. They listened to their MP3 players with large headphones and nodded their heads and danced in the aisles and put their headphones to each others’ ears. They flirted with each other, and giggled.
A few girls fell asleep, and their friends put dabs of lip gloss on the end of the sleepers’ noses, and they all thought that was just the funniest thing. Overall, they were really loud, and they were having a really good time.
In Asia, kids and teens were comparatively calm, quiet, well-behaved, and well-mannered. They too laughed and giggled and flirted, of course, but it was all done with relative reserve and calmness. That sounds like a stereotype, and it is - but it’s also true, in our experiences.
There is something here about how we raise our kids, and what we expect from our kids, and how our kids are in the world, and how they interact with each other. In the US and Europe, the ways kids are in the world appear to be exactly the same. In Asia, it appears to be fundamentally different. Not better or worse, just different.
Land shaping culture. The countryside around Florence looks pretty much like the countryside around Asheville. The land itself is similar, because we’re at roughly the same latitude and Europe has roughly the same climate.
More noticeable, though, is how we as people
shape the land. In Europe and the US, we shape the land in exactly the same way. In Asia, it’s radically different.
Farms are the most concrete example. When we pass a farm in Italy, the farmhouse looks different, and they may be growing different crops (olives, for example). But the approach to farming is the same, and the way the land is shaped is the same. There is a farmhouse among a fairly large number of fields, and well-used, familiar farm implements scattered around the property. The fields are marked off in roughly the same way and in roughly the same size as the fields at home. You can look at it and relate it to the farms you see in the US - it all makes sense. You can imagine living there. It would be just like living on a farm at home.
I could never make sense out of farms in Asia. The fields were often smaller than at home, and there were often small houses all throughout the fields, so you couldn’t tell exactly which houses were the farmers’ houses. Or there were fields with no houses around for miles, and I couldn’t figure
Gelato
At least once a day, and sometimes twice, we eat gelato (Italian ice cream). Yum. out who farms them. I didn’t often see the farm equipment laying around, or if I did, it was farm equipment that I had never seen before. I couldn’t figure out how they use the road system to get their crops to market. Nothing I saw made sense to my US understanding of farming. I couldn’t imagine living on an Asian farm; I couldn’t picture how the daily work would happen.
Take this one concrete example and multiply it out to cover all of the ways that we shape the land - the way we build our road systems, our factories, the amount of space between our towns and villages, the way our towns and villages are arranged…. In all cases, US land-shaping looks exactly like Europe, and fundamentally different from Asia.
Another point loosely related to this one: In Asia, life spills out onto the streets. Even in winter in cold places, stores are open-fronted and restaurants are open-fronted or have tables on the sidewalk. People are selling stuff everywhere on the sidewalks. People are sitting or standing in groups on the sidewalks, just living life and talking. In Europe and the US, life happens in public
or private indoor spaces, and we use the streets and sidewalks to get from one place to another. In Asia, streets and sidewalks are public spaces where most of daily life occurs.
Body culture. There is something about how we hold our bodies in the US and Europe that is the same. I didn’t realize it until we came to Italy after six months in Asia.
In the US and Europe, we are obviously bigger physically. But that’s not it. In both the US and Europe, we hold our bodies differently from most folks in Asia. We sort of lope along and bob along when we walk. We half-slouch; there is a looseness to our torsos as we walk. Our legs sort of roll us along. When we’re not walking, we’ll often lean against something, again half-slouching and relaxed, with a sort of loosey-gooseyness in our torsos.
In Asia, most people appear to me to be more erect, tighter in their bodies. They look and feel more purposeful when they move, like they’re going somewhere in a hurry (which they usually are). There is less of a relaxed, loping look to the way they hold their bodies,
Ella's Studies
Ella has a Florence activity book that she fills out around town. These are statues on the Orshanmichele Church, Florence. and more of an erect, purposeful look. It’s hard to describe, but it feels real to me.
Religion culture. This one is obvious, but important. The US and Europe share a common religious culture in that both are Christian. We loved being in Buddhist and Muslim countries, as we’ve written. But it is very homey to be in a Christian country again.
I have no idea what happens in an Islamic mosque or a Buddhist wat, or how I should act (what I should do and not do) when I’m in one. In Italy, I know exactly how to act in a church. It’s totally familiar and comfortable.
I take this for granted. I’m not an active Christian at all, but I’ve realized that culturally I’m Christian to the core. It’s what I know and understand. It’s familiar and homey.
The word “religion” comes from the Latin words “re” (again) and “ligare” (bind together, like a ligament). I’ve realized on this trip that even when I’m not a part of any Christian faith community, and even when I don’t get much meaning out of the Christian stories, I am totally bound together with Christians and Christian
culture. Christianity is simply what I know, what I have experience with, what I’m familiar with, what I understand, what I am.
That bound-togetherness through Christianity is another way that US culture = European culture.
Worldview compatibility. A related one, and one that’s hard to articulate, is the way that the US and Europe share a common worldview.
Europe’s intellectual history - the history, art, music, architecture, philosophy - is shared with the US. Europe’s intellectual history is also built from the same basic set of cultural frameworks that we use in the US.
It’s broader and deeper than shared intellectual history and cultural frameworks, though. A year or so before traveling in Asia, we traveled in Mexico. Viewed from Asia, Mexican culture too feels basically the same as US and European culture.
Once when we were in Asia, we were talking as a family about how Asia was so different from the US, and how Mexico was basically the same as the US. Jordan said, “A person from Mexico would think the same things are funny as a person from the US. That’s not necessarily true in Asia.”
That’s true in Europe too:
A person from Europe would think the same things are funny as a person from the US (or from Mexico). That’s not necessarily true in Asia.
Bathroom culture. Finally, and perhaps most profoundly, it’s nice not to have to worry about squatty potties. Squatty potties, the norm throughout much of Asia, are basically a porcelain hole in the ground, and you flush by dumping water in it or pushing a flusher similar to our toilets.
It was always hard for Ella to aim her pee on a squatty potty, and she would almost inevitably splatter her shoes or pants. She was always good-natured about it, and laughed at herself, even though it got a bit old.
To capture the differences between Asia and the US, Ella once said, “In Barnes and Noble, you don’t pee on your shoe.” That’s a pretty good summary of the mild challenges we faced in our daily lives as tourists in Asia, and how and why we often longed for home.
It’s a pretty good summary of cultural differences, too. In Europe, as in the US, there are no squatty potties. To rephrase Ella’s statement: In both the US and Europe,
Fresco Detail - Florence
A detail from a Renaissance fresco. you don’t pee on your shoe. That’s much more significant than it immediately appears.
A few others. There are a few others that we noticed, that are worth mentioning briefly.
Traffic culture is the same: People in Italy drive with similar unwritten rules to those we use in the US, and park their cars in ways that make sense from a US perspective (neat rows, designated spots).
Food culture is the same: People in Italy eat the same food we eat, and they package and sell their food just like at home. In Asia, much of the food is unrecognizable to us. Also, food processing takes place in the market, and your food is swimming or squawking just before you take it home.
Commerce culture is the same: When you walk into a shop in Italy, it feels just like walking into a shop in the US. The shopkeeper says hello and waits patiently as you look around (rather than coming right over and being very helpful and walking around beside you as you look).
Interpersonal interactions culture is the same: There is something about how we do our regular interpersonal interactions that’s the same
in Europe and the US. Most concrete is how we use “please,” “thank you,” and “excuse me” in the same way in Europe and the US. These are all used in Asia, but used slightly differently from the US and Europe.
Language is the same: This is obvious, but Italian is basically the same as Spanish, and pretty much the same as English. English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian all share Latin roots. That makes it extremely easy to get around and communicate. It makes a huge difference in feeling “at home” to be able to read the local script and understand what people are saying to you.
Those are the biggies. The bottom line is that our culture at home in the US is totally congruent with what we are experiencing here in Europe. We are European to the core.
Sometimes it appears that European-American folks in the US have lost touch with our European-ness, and on some level that may be true. But at a basic level, we are completely European.
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Louisa Goebel
non-member comment
Florence
It is fun to read your comparisons for Asia, America, and Europe. Glad you have such a nice place to stay. The ice cream could get me back there! The bathrooms on the trains in India are something I think I blotted out of my mind until you refreshed my memory. Heard about Jordan's big honor. Congratulations! Love, Louisa and Paul