After finally managing to pack all the stuff my parents wanted me to bring them from the great land called North MareCa (i.e. Tylenol, Crest toothpaste et al... guess Italians have never heard of basic pharmaceuticals) I was able to put my own toothbrush somewhere in the suitcase and hop the plane to Frankfurt with its dour Teutonic flight matrons, who looked as if they would be happier hoisting the bodies of their fallen warriors (or beer kegs) over their shoulders on a frozen German battlefield rather than serving us endless rounds of coffee. We hit the Frankfurt airport at a cheery 7 am (their time), and this sense of joy in the new day was reflected in the gigglicious reception we received from the passport elves, who appeared to be resurrected corpses propped up only by their heavily starched faux-army uniforms and several rounds of chain-smoking (by the way, everyone in Europe smokes like chimneys everywhere and all the time, and they actually do use the smoking/non-smoking sign in their airplanes over there). We were herded onto a tiny Lufthansa Airbus with more laff-a-minit flight staff and our tummies were introduced to the meaning of "acute takeoff angle". Spirits undampened, we pulled into the Venice airport around 9:30 am, with fog so thick we only realized where we were when the runway was suddenly 20 feet away from our faces. My parents practically whizzed themselves with excitement at our arrival, and quickly began our therapeutic nutritional course of cheese and wine.

part 2: dead guys

In Italy, the passion for saints (and bits thereof) makes voodoo look positively bourgeois. The local church in Padova and one of the main tourist attractions is dedicated to St. Anthony, and contains not only his body on display but also his jawbone, tongue, larynx and assorted other body pieces embalmed for public display. Even at the low tide of winter tourism, the place is jammed with people trying to grab on to poor old dead Tony and hundreds of I've-been-saved-by-preserved-relics-here's-my-picture Polaroids adorn the walls. Even more disturbing, Fascism is on the rise again in this little city. Shades of Raiders of the Lost Ark with its occult-worshiping Nazis. The big square in the centre of town is actually two squares, one on either side of a huge building from the 1200s called the Palace of Reason. Originally a justice hall, it now houses a museum containing, among other things, the Stone of Shame (!!). People who had been tacky enough to get into debt got to be further publicly humiliated by sitting on it naked and having the local populace mock them for their financial incontinence. The lower part of the building and its surrounding piazzas are dedicated to fresh produce of every imaginable form, cheese shops, vinotecas, pasticcerias and butcher shops. Needless to say, we stripped bare and ran through the aisles in ecstasy, grabbing hunks of gorgonzola cheese with radicchio as we went. Wine is dirt cheap, as are right-from-the-ground veggies and fruits. My mom, like any good Italian matron, has already staked out her "favourite" vendor (you see, all the others are cheats and liars and don't give you the best price). For New Years' Eve, we treated ourselves to a 6-course meal (yep, it's not all you want to eat, it's all you CAN eat) and hit midnight being happily ill.

part 3: maybe open, maybe not: the quirks of italian culture

Italians have a lot of little idiosyncrasies that take a while for the North MareCan to figure out. For one thing, there is often no rhyme or reason to why a store may or may not be open. Entire towns seem to shut down for no apparent purpose, and everyone knows it/why but you, the visitor. Things close for at least 2 hours a day over the lunch hour, and everyone goes home to a big lunch. Then they may close for obscure saints' days, full moons, grandmothers' birthdays, etc. Walking in the streets between about 12-2 pm, you'd swear there'd been a bomb go off that you didn't notice. It's like the final scene of Westworld (before the robot buys it). But then, as 3 pm draws near, suddenly people appear, and by 5 pm the streets and stores are standing room only. Then, by 9 pm, everything dies again. Italians really do seem to shop every day, and things you buy are in tiny portions, ensuring that even if you don't want to shop daily, you have to anyway. No Club Paks or family-size econo-tubs for these folks.

Italy is also a place where they love to make rules, but not to follow them. Every stereotype about Italian drivers is true. People hurtle down the narrow streets of Padova in tiny euro-cars or on mopeds, often ignoring red lights, stop signs, the division between the street and sidewalk (which is really only the 2 extra feet on the side of the road) or one-way streets. Seatbelts, helmets, airbags et al are totally unheard-of. As you can imagine, Italy has a mysteriously high road mortality rate.

Speaking of rules, I just want those of you in the crowd who care deeply about moral issues to know that my parents' Catholic landlady personally inspected all sleeping arrangements for our stay. On pretext of helping my mother set up the beds, she cast an Italian momma's eye over the whole social organization of the household. By the way, her 3 grown sons still live at home (the oldest is 28) and do no housework---she hires a cleaning lady. This is completely normal over there.

Although ostensibly a culture which honours mothers, they have this charming tradition for Epiphany (Jan. 6): burning an old woman in effigy. I am slightly gratified at this display of misogyny knowing that every year plenty of idiotic young men blow off parts of their body trying to get that extra dousing of gasoline on the flaming old broad. I guess this symbolizes to us that after Mary gave birth to Jesus, she was rendered basically a useless pain in the arse, which had to be gotten rid of somehow before she embarassed everyone by becoming a hag.

part 4: gratuitous tourism: venice, bassano, and florence

As with all first-time European trips, we followed the "ABC" scheme of travelling, i.e. Another Bloody Castle, Another Bloody Cathedral. So, natch we had to head to Venice a couple of times, since it was only a 25-minute train ride away. Venice is a very unique city, and in the winter it's shrouded in a damp bluish fog that lends it an air of serious creepiness; the perfect place for Soon-Yi and Woody's wedding. Tourists always get lost in Venice, mainly because they expect it to follow logical rules of city planning, and like many things in Italy, it doesn't make any sense. Main streets and thoroughfares can actually be dark, dank alleys barely wide enough to swing a cat, and often streets end in canals or dead ends. Buildings were apparently placed wherever the builders felt like dropping off the stones in the 800s. Like mushrooms, bridges spring from unexpected places. We did all the usual touristy things: seeing a thousand Madonna-and-Child combos, checking out Peggy Guggenheim's villa-turned-museum (she appears to have had more money than God, and spent most of her life in a Venetian villa collecting ShihTzus and Picasso originals, tra la), and mangling the local dialect as we hung out in overpriced pasticcerias chowing down brioches. However, we considered ourselves morally superior to the MareCans who walked around in loud shirts and souvenir court jester hats.

Bassano del Grappa is a little mountain town whose chief industry is making, of course, grappa. They sell it in a thousand different kinds of bottles, many with pictures of the Madonna or various saints inside (Sir Ralph, patron saint of heavy drinking). It's also interesting since it got the crap shot out of it by the Germans during WWII, and everything is full of bullet holes.

We popped into Florence for a couple of days to museum ourselves to death. The city is monopolized by a giant domed cathedral, the product of a little pissing contest between Michelangelo and other challengers. Anyway, his was definitively the biggest, and I'm sure his male model for the naked "Bound Slave" statue would attest to that. Basically, the entire place was owned by the Medicis who definitely had more money than God (or, at the very least, God's money, since they built all the churches et al). Their palace sprawls over Florence in gratuitous display of fat, bloated wealth. For our trip, the weather rewarded us with almost-surreal Tuscan weather, the kind you see in cheezy commercials for spaghetti sauce: hazy sun caressing verdant rolling hills of olive trees with its golden light. Being products of the postmodern age, the real thing seemed rather fake to us compared to its media simulacrum. But never mind the weather or the damn museums, the best reason to go to Tuscany is the FOOD FOOD FOOD!!! I would throw over my own mother for the stuff they make there. Even the crummiest hole-in-the-wall place can throw together a pizza that will have you seeing God with every bite. By the afternoon of the second day, Chris and I were ready to puke if presented with another #%$! icon painting, so we went and saw the latest James Bond flick instead. In Italian. This meant we were unable to follow the devious and complex plot turns inherent in a Bond flick, and more importantly we missed Bond's witty rejoinder to the villain before he schmecked him.

part 5: consumption will fill the void

"Anything to declare upon your return to Canada?"

"Yes, um... some shoes."

"How many pairs?"

"Uhhh... five."

"Anything else?"

"Uh, yeah, some wine too. (ahem) One or two litres... maybe a little more. Ok, and a huge block of Parmigiana, jars of pesto, extra-virgin olive oil, and packages of biscotti. Ummm... fine, and a pantsuit and a cashmere coat. But that's it, I swear."

"And what about that bag you took as your only carryon and clutched to your chest the entire way home to make sure no-one got their grubby hands on it, and which at this very moment you are clinging to like a shipwrecked person to a plank of wood?"

Long pause. "Oh, this... one designer original wedding dress. I guess I have to visit the room with the rubber gloves to pay my duty on it??"

"Yep, come with me, young lady. By the way, what did your male partner buy over there?"

"(furrowing brow) Uh, I think he bought a belt or something."