Rented the car the other day -definitely a new adventure. A little, manual Fiat, I already feel like an Italian "rally races driver". I'm so American; having the freedom of a car has sent me on a high. I had no idea that I was missing the drug. In Seattle and Cortona I have been a proud, public transportation supporter and user, not just for environmental reasons but because it is fun to ride with the locals and look out the window. But now with my foot to the pedals, I feel very Texan (something I have never felt before but I see Texans as the quintessentially indulgent, big, American stereotype-sorry Lyn).
And like an American in a foreign country, I am super critical (and more than a little bit TICKED!) by their way of posting signs for directions to cities. Here's what seems to be the problem, Italians like to put directional signs to towns, just AFTER where I am supposed to turn, where as we Americans, put it just BEFORE, its called a WARNING, and I miss the American way very much. It's perfectly okay if they want to keep cars out of their quaint city centers so the tourists can stop and window shop for the same trinkets that are in every hilltop town, but then they better lay out better directions for how to avoid getting trapped in their maze of streets and ending up on a "Pedestrian Only" road.
My friend Mary Kay and I have had many great adventures in Siena, Montpulciano, Assisi, and Orvieto (pictures and stories to come.) The vineyards are starting to turn colors and there is a chilly, fall breeze blowing in.
In addition to the transportation signposts, I am receiving directions from Mike for the book. Let me just layout one such experience and let you interpret it the way you like. I have a Scientific America magazine from Mike's collection, dated December 2002, with an article entitled "The Enigma of Huntington's Disease" and it is written by scientists from Milan, Italy. Inside the article, Mike has placed a torn out editorial from what I thought was the same magazine issue but upon closer inspection it was from 6 months later, August 2003. The editorial ends with this: "Roman statesman Cicero noted, 'Although physicians frequently know their patients will die of a given disease, they never tell them so. To warn of an evil is justified only if, along with the warning, there is a way of escape.'"
It's just by accident that I chose to write this book in Italy, but as I see more and more signposts, I feel confident I'm in the right place.
About Me
- Rebecca Stodola Soukakos
- Seattle, WA, United States
- A young widow, newly married and mommed, after 4 years of wrangling, i've convinced my "older" parents to move to my city - from Chicago to Seattle. This is about my journey with them.
1 comment:
However, its clear to me that we Americans love to put the sign posts before the turn, but in such a location that even if you manage to see the sign and read it, at that point, you are too many lanes over from where you need to be to actually make the turn. So we really only "'warn' of the turn you are just about to miss", rather than the Italian way of "'informing' you about the turn you just missed".
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