The Padova Chronicles

Election Season

It's election season in the US again, and as always, I get lots of questions and comments from my European friends.  Here are some common ones, and my answers. 

In terms of the election itself, this map pretty much says it all in terms of what people throughout the world think about who they'd like to see win:  http://www.economist.com/vote2008/ .

Electoral System

One of the most common things people wonder about is the electoral system used in the US, especially after Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000, but ended up losing in the electoral college.  The explanation for the electoral college system is that it creates a need for candidates to do well in a wider area, giving places like Wyoming, with few people but a lot of land, a chance to not be consistently outvoted by far away urban areas.  San Francisco, for instance, has more people than the entire state of Wyoming, so the way the electoral college works gives a bit more weight to places that otherwise might be ignored.  Furthermore, the voting is "winner take all", which tends to concentrate power in the middle. 

Linus Torvalds (yeah, the Linux guy), writes about his view of the US elections here: torvalds-family.blogspot.com/2008/10/stranger-in-strange-land.html , complaining that the US system doesn't have proportional representation like in his native Finland.  However, when he calls the US system "polarizing" he is right only in that the US system creates two large, centrist "poles" rather than some of the more extreme parties that can thrive in proportional systems.  For US readers not familiar with the idea of how proportional representation works, it's pretty simple: everyone gets to vote for a political party, and then those parties are assigned representatives according to how much of the vote they received.  Linus is right that this allows everyone to vote for someone who best represents them, but unfortunately that also includes extremists.  Modern Italy still has a communist party, as well as groups on the right who are unrepentant of Mussolini's rule.  The US system, thanks to the median voter theory that comes into play with two strong parties, tends towards the center.  Now, some people may not care for where the center is in the US, however, at times it has been advantageous to have a system that pushes towards it.

Another problem with proportional representation comes into play when you have coalition governments, as is very often the case in Italy.  Say you have left wing parties A and B, with 45% and 10% of the vote, respectively.  Since they're on the same side, they form a coalition.  But say party B is actually the communist party, which has some different notions from the mainstream left wing party A.  What happens?  Party B, with only 10% of the vote, can threaten party A that unless they get their way, they leave the coalition and new elections must be called.  This isn't just a theoretical example, either, it has happened in the past in Italian politics: it leads to shaky, unstable governemnts and small, more extreme (or more corrupt, opportunistic centrist) parties having more power than they deserve.

Not to say the US system is perfect, but it does have some advantages.  I don't know anything about politics in Finland, but it seems to be an orderly, well run place by all accounts, so perhaps the electoral system isn't as important as the attitude of the people and politicians.  I could imagine the Finnish Founding Fathers declaring boldly "We'll all hang together, or... we'll freeze to death - it's cold out there!".  Perhaps a country with that kind of attitude places a lot of value on coming together to fix problems that work for everyone.

A further problem in Italy is that proportional representation puts a lot of power in the hands of the political parties, who get to choose their list of candidates for the elections.  The idea of something like an open primary, like in the US, is very new to Italy.  Romano Prodi put together one a few years ago, but it's not an entrenched tradition.

 Guns

I'm not a gun owner, and have never fired one.  I would be in favor of further restrictions on their ownership and use in certain areas of the US, but a lot of Europeans don't understand that, especially in the western US, gun ownership and hunting are part of the culture, and not an unhealthy one either.  Mark Thoma, a left-leaning economist, sums it up very well in this post about growing up with guns: economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2008/04/guns.html

Health Care

While the economics behind it are complex (and interesting) I don't think the US system is particularly defensible.  There are some good things about it, but by and large, I'm far happier with health care in Europe, in large part because it's so much simpler: if you have a problem, you go to the doctor.  When you work, you pay taxes that go towards the health care system.  If you lose your job, you can still go to the doctor.  All in all, this system is also a lot cheaper than in the US.

Local Politics

Of course, what most Europeans see in the US are the things that are glaringly obvious, different, or affect them, such as foreign policy.  What they don't often get to see are the local politics, which I think are actually something that works pretty well in the US.  At least in my home town, Eugene, becoming involved with politics at the city level was something that was within reach of anyone, really.  During my job as "shop boy" at Paul's Bike Shop, Paul ran for and won a seat on the city council.  Paul is a smart entrepreneur and good salesman, but he's anything but a slick politician.  Like many people, he did his term, and then bowed out, going back to running his business.

I suspect that local politics throughout Europe are as varied as the people and countries here, but if you go to the US and have an opportunity to look into things, it's an interesting side of the country that is not as visible to outsiders.

Italian Court Rules Against Friday

The name "Friday" that is. Or rather, Venerdì, the Italian word for Friday. The court found against parents that wanted to name their son "Friday", saying that the name would subject the child to scorn and ridicule. The case was apparently brought to court after the registrar refused to write down Venerdì as per the parents wishes. I suppose I see the point, but I'd have to side with the parents: it's not the place of a court to decide what names are ok, and which aren't. If the child doesn't care for their name, they can always get it changed later on, and perhaps use a nickname in the meantime. If kids want to be mean, they'll find a way in any case, whatever name someone has. For an extreme example of bad naming, here is the story of the family who named their sons "Winner" and "Loser":

Oslo

As the Norwegian Air Shuttle 737 dropped out of the clouds, a scant 100 meters above the ground, and bounced and rattled its way down to the runway, I got my first glimpse of Norway. Lead gray skies, wind whipped evergreen trees, and misty rain made for a foreboding landscape indeed. One in which it is not difficult to imagine the harsh Nordic gods like Thor and Odin doing battle with giants and trolls, and a far cry from the wine, women and song of the Greek gods such as Apollo.

One often forgets how far north Europe is in general: Naples, in southern Italy, is at the same latitude as New York. And Oslo is pretty far north even for Europe: if it were in Alaska, it would be somewhere between Juneau and Anchorage. And with high latitudes comes a sun that stays relatively close to the horizon, rather than arching high overhead as in more southerly climes. When it's cloudy, that low angle means that there are that many more clouds to pierce, so between four and five in the afternoon, it was already getting dark, whereas it was still fairly light out at that time the following day, when the weather was nicer.

My stay in Norway was brief; way too short to really get much of an idea about the place at all, so I'll limit myself to some notes.

• It's expensive. Luckily, my host was kind enough to cover most of my costs, but things aren't cheap there.

• English is very widely spoken, and most films and tv shows are shown in the original languages, with subtitles, which has to be helpful.

• Norwegian has a fairly "neutral" sound to this English speaker - not as melodic as Italian or French, nor as guttural as German.

• There are less than 5 million inhabitants, around the same number as the Veneto region in Italy.

• Wood isn't a very common building material elsewhere in Europe. Even here in Tirol, with all its forests, it's used in combination with other materials. In Norway, many houses appeared to be constructed of wood, and when my host took me on a tour, we even went past an entire church built of wood. It reminded me of my home in Oregon to some degree.

• People drive like Oregonians too: slowly and respectfully. Which is great, unless you're in a taxi and hoping to catch a train! (I did, but for once I wished for a bit zippier drivers).

• The hotel I stayed at was beautiful, with a view of the fjord that Oslo is on. It's not a big, dramatic fjord enclosed by sheer cliffs, like those on the west coast of Norway, but was beautiful nonetheless.

• As a resident of Austria, I suppose I should be offended for my host nation that Red Bull is apparently banned from Norway, for having too much caffeine. Seems silly to me - people know what they're drinking.

• Alcohol is tremendously expensive. I guess there is not a lot to do in the winter months, particularly if you don't do outdoor sports like skiing (and even then, there isn't a lot of daylight), so there is a temptation to imbibe to pass the time.

• To me everything felt quite modern and efficient. Hard to say though, since I saw so little.

• Between the wan northern light and the dark, cold woods, there is a sort of natural beauty that's hard to describe without seeing it in person, and is different from anything else I've ever seen. Not that I really went anywhere out of the way, just in the hills around where my hotel was, to take a few pictures.

• As cold and harsh as the climate is, it's hard to believe people have been there so long. The first settlers must have been some very tough individuals.

Visiting the Veneto: Cittadella, Castelfranco and Bassano del Grappa

This part of the Veneto is special to me, because it was in Bassano del Grappa (or more accurately, at the Albergo dalla Mena in Romano d'Ezzelino) that I spent my first days in Italy, in 1994. But let's go back a few years before that:

Like Montagnana, Cittadella (which, as can be inferred, means "citadel") was an outpost constructed by Padova in 1220, when it was a city state, prior to being assimilated in the Venetian Republic in 1405. Like Montagnana, it then declined in importance, and its walls stayed intact. In towns that were busy, growing places, things like city walls, rendered more or less obsolete by the invention of the canon, were often torn down and used as building materials. As in some of the other smaller towns discussed previously, Cittadella is not someplace to spend hours on hours, but is a nice stop to discover something that isn't on most tourists' lists.

Nearby lies Castelfranco. Originally built as a fortress to demarcate Treviso's territory in 1195, it was the reason Padova felt they needed their own bastion, and created Cittadella. You can see their relative positions on a map (zoom out if you have a small monitor) - Cittadella is the circle on the left, Castelfranco the square on the right. Once again, not a big town, but worth a look. Giorgione, one of the more important artists in the Italian Renaissance, was born in Castelfranco, and left for Venice, where he made a name for himself. The Cathedral has some of his work. As a side note for "tifosi" of cycling like me, the current (2008) world champion, Alessandro Ballan, is from Castelfranco Veneto!

If you have a car, the small hilltop town of Asolo is a nice place to relax in the afternoon. Despite being a very small town, its advantageous (and beautiful) location means that it was inhabited since prehistoric times, and had its share of history, as the Wikipedia page describing it narrates:

The town was originally a settlement of the Veneti, and was mentioned as Acelum in the works of Pliny.

In the early Middle Ages it was under the jurisdiction of the Bishops of Treviso and a possession of the Ezzelino family.

Later Asolo was the capital, and seat of the court, of the fiefdom of Asolo, which was granted by the Republic of Venice (to which it belonged) to Caterina Cornaro, the former Queen of Cyprus; in 1489 it was granted to her for life, but in 1509 when the League of Cambrai conquered and ransacked Asolo, Caterina fled to exile and died in Venice a year later. Under her reign, the painter Gentile Bellini and the humanist Cardinal Pietro Bembo were part of the court. Caterina's personal theatre was later purchased by Ringling (of Ringling Circus fame), crated up and shipped to Sarasota, Florida, where it was reassembled. The Asolo Theatre remains there today, where it enjoys a renaissance of theatre performances.

The rolling hills near Asolo are a great place to spend a bit of time if you are tired of busy cities, and has been for some time: the English poet Robert Browning moved there. One other thing to see in the area is the Villa Barbaro, another one of Palladio's masterpieces.

As an aside: perhaps it is not so interesting for most tourists, but I've always wondered at how productive, and how specifically productive the area around Bassano del Grappa is. High-quality Asolo hiking boots and shoes are made near the town, as are a number of other brands of cycling and motorcycling footwear. Two of the best bicycle saddle manufacturers are in the area, as are numerous bike clothing manufacturers. What with campagnolo bicycle components, which are made in nearby Vicenza, you could very nearly put together an entire bicycle and set of bike clothes made entirely within the Veneto.

Bassano del Grappa is the final stop on our tour of the northern Veneto plains, and as I mentioned above, holds lots of good memories, as it was the first place I stayed in Italy. It's not a big town, but it's much more substantial than Cittadella and Castelfranco, and given its important location near the base of the mountains, where the Brenta river leaves the Valsugana for the plains, has been inhabited on and off since prehistoric times. It's easy to spend an afternoon visiting most of the historic center, including the famous bridge over the Brenta. A strategic crossing point, the bridge has been destroyed and rebuilt numerous times - most recently after the second world war, when it was destroyed by the retreating German troops (there are still some bullet marks visible on nearby walls). Indeed, Bassano was also a focal point during World War I, when the nearby Monte Grappa (from which the town takes its name) was the last line of defense between the Imperial Austro-Hungarian army, and the wide open plains of the Veneto. Clearly, it had to be defended at any cost, and was. Thousands of soldiers lie buried in a monument at the top of the mountain.

These days, the mountains to the north of Bassano are an altogether more pleasant place, and will be covered in a future article on visiting the Veneto. Bassano itself is a great "base camp" if you're a cyclist like myself: you can do anything from leisurely cruises on the plains to the south, hilly rides east and west, or serious climbing expeditions in the mountains to the north. The climb up Monte Grappa is more than 20 kilometers uphill!

Nice live images of Tirol

I discovered some nice web cams run by the Tirolean government. The images today are particularly pretty, as it was very cold yesterday and snowed up in the mountains. Clicking on the images opens larger versions. These, and a few more, may be found at the following link: Looking down at Innsbruck from the Patscherkofel mountain: View from the Nordkette (currently lots of clouds and some snow - not much to see). This isn't near here, but as of Saturday morning, is a beautiful scene, with the mountaintops covered with snow: