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Just in time for summer vacation traffic, Trenitalia launched a one-line announcement likely to make it the butt of more jokes: the lost and found offices have been “temporarily suspended.”

With more Italians staying closer to home in belt-tightening measures this year — 73% will not leave the country, according to one poll — trains are likely to be more crowded and chaotic than usual.

No word on when the service will pick back up again — or if it will. Trenitalia suspended the service citing budget reasons, according to daily Corriere della Sera. In 2008, it held 3,800 lost items — ranging from umbrellas to dentures, surfboards to cell phones — and returned about half to their rightful owners.

Now what? It’s up to local governments.

So If you leave your camera on the Florence-Venice train or want to be a good samaritan with that found iPod, you’ll have to go to the lost and found office (ufficio oggetti smarriti) of the city you land in.
And cross your fingers.

Related stories:
Free Trains to Italian hotels

Italy Tracks Tardy Trains

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Roman police have issued a safety sheet that, while strong on common sense, makes a vacation in the Eternal City sound devoid of the merrymaking that makes Italy such a draw for tourists.

The how-to on keeping safe and enjoying Rome (surprisingly in decent English) downloadable from their website starts off by reminding tourists (and by tourists, we mean women) why they came: “Rome is a safe city and its people are welcoming,” but some of the advice they hope tourists will keep in mind is a bit of a downer.

First the useful info:
– in an emergency, call either 112 (local police) or 113 (carabinieri). (They left out the medical emergency number, 118.)
– women get a 10% taxi discount at night as yet another “pink” initiative.
– numbers for 24-hour women’s anti violence centers: (06) 5810926 or (06) 23269049.

Alas, though most of the advice is common sense, it rules out what draws many women visitors to Italy: don’t wear any flashy jewelry, drink in moderation, do not accept drinks from strangers, do not accept invitations from strangers and stick with the people you came with.

Ok, so Rossano Brazzi was never going to roofie Katherine Hepburn’s bellini (though he is shown in the “Summertime” poster staring intently at her with a large drink in hand) but has Italy become so dangerous that visitors are well advised to glare at the locals suspiciously while clutching half glasses of wine singing “O sole mio” wistfully to their American counterparts? And given the hundreds of stories, romantic and bittersweet, about foreign women in Italy, are they really expected to?

Image courtesy @ polizia di stato

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By many accounts, Italian men are some of the laziest in Europe when it comes to lending a hand at home.

According to the national association of house husbands, 70% of Italian men never cook, 90% have never, ever, ironed a shirt, 95% have never done a load of wash.

With the financial crisis hitting Italian households, that may change. Some 34% of Italian women have cut back on household help, a recent survey by Coesis announced. They’re also looking to husbands and family to start lending a hand, researchers noted.

It’s about time for men to step up and help out, says the house husband association.

“Women are really sick of it, they’re used to having to pay to get the help they might expect from a husband or partner,” said president Fiorenzo Bresciani. “If they can’t afford that, now’s the time to re-discuss who does what around the house. Men are definitely the ‘lazy sex,’ we want to show them that real men do help out.”

Born in 2002, the Tuscan-based association, which offers master classes in home management (”the science of ironing,” anyone?) now counts over 4,000 members.

I suspect the biggest challenge may be men over 50, who have never helped out and probably don’t see much reason to change that. A lot of younger Italian guys I know are great cooks and decent about taking care of la casa.

Does your Italian man help out around the house?

Photo courtesy Italian Household Association

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Fellow reporter and friend Eric Sylvers is on the road again, this time he and three friends are walking the lower half of Italy’s pilgrim route to where the boats once left for Jeruselem, the Via Francigena del Sud, 500 kilometers (310 miles) from Rome to Otranto, Puglia.

While the northern part of the trek — from the Gran San Bernardo Pass in Switzerland to Rome he did in 2007 was fairly well marked, this leg sounds like the epitome of the road less traveled.

His daily blog, with tons of photos and video, about the peregrinations tells of having “celebrity status” in Campania and getting lost:

“Just before Amorosi we had been through a town called Ruviano were we made the acquaintance of Giuseppe, who left nearby Avellino for the United States when he was 19 and lived there for 50 years before coming back to retire to his native Campania four years ago. Colorful Giuseppe kept us occupied for quite awhile and so it was with the slowest of paces that we made our way towards Solopaca, our intended stop for the evening before our push to Benevento tomorrow.

After getting lost in the hills near Solopaca for a good 90 minutes we came to the very disheartening realization that as there was nowhere to sleep in the town and we were going to have to walk further and away from Benevento. Disheartening as that was, we eventually ended up in a small hotel on the edge of a picturesque small lake. The walk, which was under a scorching sun, had us weaving around some hills until we had some proper climbing on the approach to Solopaca.”

Fascinating — though I’m more likely to sign up for the trek when it’s a little less adventurous…

Image courtesy / copyright @ Eric Sylvers

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25 years ago, Italian families ate more meat, drank more wine but put less fish and pasta on the table. La famiglia also usually shopped in small local stores — there were five times fewer supermarkets — and 85% of the time ate at home.

These are some of the changes tracked in a study (.pdf Italian only) by national food industry lobby Federalimentare to mark its 1983 founding, back when Socialist Bettino Craxi first stepped into office and pop hit “Vamos a la Playa” had Italians singing into their watches.

Rapid changes after World War II first revolutionized Italian eating habits, breaking some long-standing stereotypes. In the early 1950s, the Italian mamma spent a good chunk of her day preparing a hearty lunch, while her new millennium counterpart, less likely to be a stay at home mother, spends just a third of that time in the kitchen.

In the post-war period, Italians also spent half the family income on food. From 1983-2008, money spent on groceries dropped eight percent to 17.7% of the budget. They now eat 10% less meat, 10% more pasta and bread but about the same amount (18%) of fruit and veg. Beverages have flip-flopped: Italians now spend 5% of the budget on juice, bottled water and soda, five times more than in the 1980s when that same percentage was allotted for wine and spirits.

Some staples of the Italian postwar diet that have now disappeared include smoked herring (often eaten with polenta), tinned milk and carob beans, sucked like candy.

Image used with a CC license, thanks orsorama

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A new guide book for Catholics is designed to lead them back into church by reviewing the services.

Journalist Camillo Langone, also a long-time restaurant reviewer, sat in pews all over Italy to write over 300 pages on weekly mass ceremonies. What makes a good mass (communion given in the mouth, incense) bad mass (electric guitars and too many tambourines), is, much like a restaurant, up to the reviewer, who in this case describes himself as a “fervent Catholic.”

It’s not the first guide book to church going, but it’s the first in Italy, seat of the Vatican and country where the flock is fleeing rapidly. The battle may be an uphill one: 90 percent of Italians are baptized Catholics but only about a third are churchgoers.

Langone’s “Guide to Mass” also reviews the priests of over 200 services, whether their sermons are creative or soporific and whether the church architecture (poor acoustics, hot summer and cold in winter) is conducive to prayer.

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Milan buses are plastered with bright red posters reassuring recession-anxious consumers that if there’s a financial crisis, the Salone del Mobile is the answer.

That confident attitude sums up the buoyant mood at the 48th annual International Milan Furniture Fair, which started here on Wednesday and runs until Monday. In a city where fashion is king, design makes the most of its yearly five-day spotlight by showcasing the weird and the wonderful.

Exhibitors at the Massimiliano Fuksas-designed fairgrounds were up 15% to 1,496 from 2008 according to the organizer, Cosmit. Organizers expect to surpass last year’s record of nearly 350,000 visitors. Indeed, antsy lines for the metro, elbowing around the big-name stands and the crush to procure a restorative cappuccino are as fierce as ever.

Full story here.

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Graphic and industrial designer Mirko Ginepro came to my notice with the iPod table for last year’s international furniture fair.

Keeping in the pop-culture theme, this year’s effort for the fair’s fuori salone is a wooden lacquer book case in the form of a giant Pac Man, called Puckman (the original name of the video-game icon), with companion ghost lamps.

Ginepro was inspired by the enduring icon of Pac-Man, he spent long afternoons spent playing Pac-Man against his sister on a Commodore 64 — now he plays it on his iPhone.

If you’re in Milan, it’s at the Nhow Hotel in Via Tortona.
For info, prices etc., here’s his website.

Image courtesy @ Mirko Ginepro

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Milan recently gave an extreme makeover to the permanent design collection at the Triennale Museum.
The Triennale Design Museum launched in 2007, but gets a complete over haul including a rotation of the 400 or so pieces on show every two years.

The somewhat murky, nocturnal feel of the inaugural exhibit designed by Peter Greenaway (“The Obsessions of Italian Design,”) was replaced in March by “Serie Fuori Serie” (lit. custom-built series) an airy, bright set-up curated by furniture and industrial designer Antonio Citterio.

The new exhibit, which again puts such humble objects as the stove top espresso maker and the Valentina typewriter alongside prototypes old and new, explores the ties between Italian industry and design innovation.

Pro: the to-scale prototypes and rarities (including a Ferrari, the Alca Volpe pictured above, folding bikes, several scooters and a Piaggio Ape) are definitely worth a look. And the more quotidian objects are still interesting, as you’re bound to recognize something you own — like the two Milanese sciure overheard discussing Plia fold-up chairs — or, in my case, realize the junk store finds may be knock offs of Joe Colombo glasses designed to help assist drinking while smoking.

Contro: It’s still just a small part of the full collection, so good to kill an hour or so (especially if you visit the excellent café or outdoor summer bar) but probably not much more.

Triennale Design Museum
Viale Alemagna 6 (metro stop Cadorna)
Tickets 8€
Hours: Tuesday - Sunday 10:30 am- 8:30 pm
Thursdays 10.30 - 11:00 pm (entrance with an aperitif)

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Banks in a small Italian town with too many Mario Rossis are using nicknames to tell customers apart. If the lovely lake region of Bellagio, near Como, has a fault it could be that locals tend to stay in the region and pick the same first names.

In the town of about 3,000 people, two thirds share the same two last names, the local white pages show about 1,300 of them have the last name “Gilardoni” and about 750 are called “Gandola.”

Often given for professions or physical characteristics (how would you like to be known as “nitpicker” or “saw mill?”), the ones used by local banks in Bellagio are also in dialect and have sometimes been handed down for generations. It’s not the first time Italians have resorted to nicknames to tell each other apart, they appear in the phone book of one Sardinian community.

Bellagio’s predicament is an indication of the trend that Italians are back to using traditional saint’s names for their kids instead of foreign names. National statistics bureau ISTAT found (.pdf) that if there are about 30,000 traditional names, half the time parents pick names for their children from just 30, the most popular currently are Francesco for boys and Giulia for girls.

Image used with a CC license, thanks to berniecb

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