Cities of an emerging nation

Curious country, Italy. It’s where I was born. And it’s taken a while to become a country at all, though it does seem to be emerging as one now.

One of my college lecturers told us that immediately after the Second World War, only 50% of the population was bilingual in dialect and Italian. The other 50% was monolingual in dialect.

Today, however, although I don’t spend much time in the deep South, it’s my impression that wherever you go people are fluent in Italian, which has emerged as truly a national language. That’s why I feel that the country is becoming, at last, a real nation.

Even so, some of the great divisions continue to exist. As if to prove the point, after travelling to Turin on Sunday, on Monday I went to Bolzano – or Bozen. Why two names? Because it’s in the Alto Adige, way up in the Alps, but that’s also called the Südtirol, the south Tyrol. The Tyrolean Tyrol is, of course, an Austrian province.

In other words, the Alto Adige – Südtirol is a traditionally German-speaking region which was once part of Austria. There are, indeed, still local movements calling for the province to leave Italy and rejoin Austria.

Bolzano, or Bozen, flies the Italian flag alongside the region's
And has the sense to feel proud of being in the EU, too

Even so, when I was there, I heard Italian spoken in the street at least as often as German, and I’ve not yet met anyone up there who can’t speak Italian if they need to. Moreover, as in other parts of Italy, the national flag flies proudly alongside the region’s and that of the EU on public buildings.

Still, Italian unity remains slightly out of step with local emotions. There are Milanese who are clear that Africa starts at Rome. For my part, I’m convinced that Austria starts at Milan.

Perhaps I should declare an interest: I was born in Rome.

In any case, so far am I from disliking Milan that it was with great pleasure that I arrived there on Tuesday evening. It’s a spacious city, with great avenues and fine buildings, the new alongside the old testifying to the continued dynamism of the place. A dynamism reflected in the people themselves: there are crowds on the streets, laughing, chatting and enjoying themselves. It is truly a joy to visit.

It’s just that, like Austria, the city seems to lay a little too much stress, for my liking, on order and efficiency. And some of those structures are rather more imposing than completely charming. At least to my taste. I feel that some buildings in Milan or Vienna weigh rather heavily on the Earth. They’re more impressive than elegant.

Rome isn’t quite as clean as one might like, the streets aren’t quite as free of potholes as one might hope, and the atmosphere is just a little more chaotic than an Austrian, say, might wish.

It’s also pretty corrupt. That has nothing to do with whichever party’s in power. Every party that ever secures the governance of Rome can be sure to have scandal pour down on its head within a couple of years or so. And, to my knowledge, always with justification.

But, boy, does Rome have soul. And charm, too. Taking the edge off the awe.

I realise that I may be alone in regarding Milan as Austrian. You may, in fact, find it slightly odd, because I view Bozen, which some residents want to make Austrian, as turning increasingly into Italian Bolzano. And, I have to admit, it isn’t just because a city’s in the North of Italy that I strikes me as Austrian. That’s the discovery I’ve made in Turin, a city that seduces me more every time I go there.

One of the many arcades in Turin

It’s a city of gateways and arcades. And along the arcades are cafés, restaurants and shops, each rivalling the next for charm and elegance. Where Milan seems focused on modernity and a pressurised existence, Turin preserves an older, quieter, more relaxed and, above all, more lived-in style. Lived-in, I should add, by people who know what it is to live pleasantly and in comfort.

One of the many gateways

And it has its amusing paradoxes too. Though it belongs to a country which has long been a Republic, it clings on at least in name to its royal past – after all, this was where the kings of Italy came from when the country still had kings. For instance, I had a wonderful cappuccino in the ‘Cafeteria del Re’, the King’s Cafeteria, complete with the symbol of a crown.

The king's cafeteria
Attractive place. Good coffee too

It’s not clear to me that a King would ever have frequented anything quite as common as a café, especially one that calls itself a cafeteria, but hey, something that’s royal in name only, with no king in sight, it’s precisely as royal as I like things to be. But then I’m a republican, as well as a democrat, a statement I hope will cause some confusion among my American friends.

Anyway, I was happy to be back in that fine city and confirm yet again that there is real charm in the north of Italy. A different kind of soul, more discreet and self-possessed than Rome’s, but soul nonetheless. It’s lovely. Perhaps my second favourite Italian city – Venice and Florence naturally being in a class of their own.

The taxi driver who brought me in from the airport told me that Turin was the most French city in Italy. Perhaps that explains my preference. Because France is the country of my second citizenship, whose passport I’m proud to hold.

And, I have to admit, I prefer it to Austria…

Black Friday and our sad mindset this side of the Atlantic

Black Friday is upon us.

It’s particularly remarkable on this side of the Atlantic. The Friday is black in the US because people are recovering from the excess of the Thanksgiving celebration the day before, or just need their morale boosted in the down that follows the high of a feast. Though behind that worthy goal lurks also the rather baser desire to make a lot of money by a day of sales in the shops.

In England, we don’t have the feast. We just have the Black Friday. The depression, in other words, without the celebration that led to it. But it’s still a wonderful commercial opportunity. Or at least shopkeepers hope so.

The problem arose because of the increasing disappointment of Christmas. This is the second most important feast of the Christian year. Believers worship the birth of Christ in December just as at Easter they celebrate the redemption of man through his agonising death followed by the miracle of his resurrection. Birth at Christmas, the even more glorious rebirth at Easter. .

Clearly, celebrating the birth of the Prince of Peace is a time for quiet reflection on the nature of God’s relationship to Man, the sacrifice of his incarnation and later death in pain for us all, and so forth. Where “so forth” covers over-indulgence in food and, above all, drink as well as the commercial miracle of a splurge of spending in the shops. Why, a great many retailers depend on Christmas for the bulk, if not the entirety, of their profits for the year.

Such are the benefits of a profound immersion in the spirit of Christian charity and restraint. An excellent arrangement. Serving God and Mammon, otherwise known as win-win.

Although it’s not that wonderful any more.

Britain has seen earnings falling for a decade already. There’s no sign of that ending any time soon, particularly following Brexit. Eventually, inevitably, loss of earnings power had to have an impact on spending patterns. Christmas just isn’t what it once was. Shops can’t count on it any more.

The answer was to find a way of incentivising expenditure at another time of year. And why not just a few weeks before? Adopting Black Friday seemed the obvious solution.

But we took it over without Thanksgiving. Meaning we have the depression not the celebration. The hangover without the party. 

What’s more, we don’t seem to be satisfied with just a single day of it, which after all is what the word ‘Friday’ would seem to imply. Oh, no. Ocado, which kindly delivers us our groceries, has gone for a long weekend of Black Friday. 

Ocado:
Black Friday from the 23rd to the 27th

And Debenham’s, the great department store, has gone for a whole week.

Black Friday week at Debenham's

This all seemed terribly British. After all, we are a nation steeped in the Protestant tradition. That teaches us that we are all, or nearly all, damned whatever we do, and life is a vale of tears. So when we take on a tradition from the US, why not take on the bleak and dismal bit, leaving out the part that might actually lift our mood?

But it’s not just British. I was in Italy over the last few days, and I noticed that even that great bastion of Catholicism has caught the Black Friday bug. Indeed, they too, perhaps out of increasing desperation over sales falling there as they are here, are wildly extending the understanding of ‘Friday’. In Turin, they’re going for a Black weekend.

Black Weekend in Turin

Maybe it’s a European phenomenon, not just a British one. Are we so short of confidence in our ability to emulate transatlantic flair and dynamism that we punish ourselves by taking on their harsher customs, and use them to try to dig ourselves out of our economic difficulties? Seems a bit of an indictment.

A sad thought. One to while away a Black Friday. As an alternative to spending the day in the shops.