The drug of choice for young, club going Italians: psychedelic mushrooms dissolved in Nutella.
Found under cow patties in mountains near work-hard, play-hard Milan, these red, polka-dotted Amanita muscaria shrooms are plentiful. Dealers mix about 10 of the fungus in a jar of jam or the famously addictive hazelnut spread Italians consider a national treasure.
“We older consumers have eaten these mushrooms for ages, thanks to the hippies who passed down the knowledge. Nowadays mixed in with sweet stuff, the young kids go for it too,” said “Mauro” a drug dealer/factory worker interviewed in leading daily Corriere della Sera.
Though possession and sale of the mushrooms is illegal in Italy, business is booming. A jar of the psychedelic snack goes for 16€ (about $25).
Popularity of the DIY hallucinogens has increased thanks to stricter controls on discotequers drugs of choice like ecstasy, said Francesca Assisi, a toxicologist who also recently published a book outlining all the species of hallucinogenic mushrooms in the Lombardy region.
Head to the maestro’s hometown in Tuscany, where a spanking new amphitheater will be unveiled at this year’s Puccini Festival to celebrate 150th birthday of Giacomo Puccini. The curtain rises June 15 (through August 23) in the tiny lakeside village of Torre del Lago, where the opera legend spent most of his adult life, and where he composed Madama Butterfly, La Boheme and Tosca (pictured). Puccini always wanted his operas to be enjoyed al fresco, and the new 3,200-seat facility was designed to afford views of the composer’s villa (now Villa Museo Puccini), set between Massaciuccoli Lake and the Tyrrhenian Sea.
Pilgrims to Puccini country can stay in nearby Lucca, at the recently restored 19th-century hunting lodge Albergo Villa Marta. You also get to eat like the composer, whose letters from Milan to la mamma while studying at the conservatory there contained entreaties to send hearty Tuscan fare to the homesick artist. One thing Puccini might not have bargained for: mosquitoes love balmy Italian breezes. Open-air opera acolytes should come slathered in repellent.
Full story on Globorati.
Historic Italian outdoor firm Ferrino concocted a travel kit for pilgrims hoofing the thousand-year-old Way of St. James to Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
It comes with a super light, feature-happy backpack, waterproof map holder and lightweight sleeping bag sure to come in handy on those long, cold nights; the whole shebang costing a parsimonious €99 euros. A few friends have trekked from Milan to Northern Spain, returning with sore shoulders and mostly horror stories. Hmm. The combo would probably also come in handy for the slightly less ambitious Francigena pilgrim trail in Italy. Image courtesy Ferrino.
If, as some scientists claim, 80 percent of taste is linked to smell, you’d better follow your nose to Europe this month. New York Times perfume critic Chandler Burr leads a series of scent dinners in Rome and Florence, curated by Context Travel (who insist on calling their scholarly guides “docents”), the evenings are part lecture, part feast and part exploratory scratch-n-sniff.
On June 10, you can sample the pantry perfumes in Rome at Casa Bleve, nestled into the ancient bath complex built by Marcus Agrippa. Another dinner will be held in Florence on June 11 at the new Four Seasons residence club Palazzo Tornabuoni, where the fabled Medicis broke bread in the 15th century.
Full story by Nicole Martinelli at Globorati.
Cell phones will now tell Italians when the tide is high in Venice. The city government just launched a free text message alert system for the floods which frequently put La Serenissima under several feet of water.
Intended to assist waterlogged locals, the only real requirement for signing up is an Italian cell phone. These timely texts could save a lot of headaches for anyone traveling to the city, especially in the fall flood season, normally a great time to visit Venice since it’s less plagued by tourists.
These acqua alta alerts let users know up to 36 hours before floods hit, keeps them posted from three to six hours before storms and lets them know when things are clearing up and water is ebbing back into canals.
Chalk up another one for that particular brand of Italian genius: students have designed T-shirts bearing formulas and tricky grammar rules to get through high school finals.
Web site “scuola zoo” (zoo school) is giving away 10,000 T-shirt cheat sheets, available in six different styles; nail-biting students need only pay shipping costs. Creators Paolo and Francesco claim that fashion smarties won’t be stripped of this helpful accessory during tests.
In Italy, the comprehensive exams required for a diploma following five years of high school are the stuff of nightmares. Called “maturità” (lit. maturity) they are a rite of passage most recall vividly. With the advent of cell phones, many overtaxed students are trying to get high-tech help.
T-shirt info, including math, Greek and Latin head scratchers, is printed upside down for easy reading for the wearer, but also bears right side up info on the back — to help out fellow test takers.
The motto for the shirts is: “What’s not ingrained in your brain is printed on the T-shirt.”
Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Last Supper” in Milan got a multimedia makeover thanks to British director Peter Greenaway. You can still catch it in Milan until September 6 when it’ll be packed up for an international tour promoting Italy’s Furniture Fair.
Visitors see the ravaged Renaissance masterpiece in a new way with lights, voices, sounds and images layering over the work, centering around the moment when Christ announces the betrayal of one of the apostles.
Greenaway’s film was intended to run on top of Leonardo’s original fresco, but although the project has been hyped for months, the Italian government woke up a few days before the launch and forbade any such artistic happening given the extreme fragility of the work.
Instead, the film projects over a life-size copy of the fresco at the Sala dei Cariatidi, normally closed to the public, in Palazzo Reale near the Duomo. I elbowed my way into the press preview, where the video is projected over a convincing replica of the fresco — thanks to an extremely high-res digital photo — while the room is divided by a long white table with white plates, cups and bread similar to the one in the artwork.
Viewers are sandwiched between the fresco and a back wall where up-close fragments of the fragile painting and portraits play across a screen — leading to a tennis-game effect since it’s impossible to know where to be look during the 15 or so minutes of the piece. (My friend and I both missed the final moment before the writing comes up on the wall because we were looking in the wrong direction. If you know how it ends, please email me.)
Though the experience would improve dramatically following a glass or two of Chianti, it is worth a gander, especially for the dramatic use of back lighting which seems to make the painting move towards viewers.
This is the latest in a trio of Greenaway’s projects in Italy — he “peopled” a newly-restored palace, the Venaria Reale, with 200 HDTV short films and used the same multimedia approach to enliven Milan’s recently inaugurated Design Museum.
If you go:Palazzo Reale
April 16–Sept. 6
Opening hours have been extended, too:
Mon., Tues., Weds., Sunday 2:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
Thurs., Fri., Sat., 2:30 p.m. - 10:30 p.m.
Admission every 20 minutes, tickets €5.
From the Duomo, walk all the way through the courtyard and up the huge stone staircase on the left. You’ll have to walk through part of the Canova exhibit to get there, there are combined tickets if you want to see both.
Heading to Turin’s International Book Fair tomorrow for the launch of a tome on the history of YouTube (”YouTube: La Storia”), with the author Glauco Benigni, ace entertainment journalist Alessandra Comazzi of daily La Stampa, RAI multimedia guru Renato Parancandolo and, uh, me (nervous, anyone? Just a leeetle). Where & When: May 8, noon, Palco RAI. Come up and say hi if you attend.
The inaugural day looks like it’ll be charged with drama (this is Italy after all) with President Napolitano expected to give an opening speech affirming special guest country Israel’s right to exist that has critics lining up.
Thought this poster advertising a friendly soccer match in Milan between Tibet and Padania (supporters of Italy’s thuggish Northern League party) was some sort of Sambuca-induced hallucination.
But authoritative Italian daily Corriere della Sera reports the game is the real deal.
Billed as an event where “for two peoples seeking freedom” compete, it’s not clear whether there’s an actual soccer team from Tibet (though there were some fellow exiles when the Dalai Lama spoke here in December, it’s hard to imagine where they’d come up with 11 good men for sport), it’s an interesting publicity move for the Padanians, who are in an entirely different kind of struggle to get recognized as a land.
The political party just won a nice chunk of support in recent elections, but it’s predicted they’ll have to tone down the usual rants against foreigners and secession from Rome to fit in. It’s not the first extra-political event they’ve created, after all they did invent the Miss Secessionist beauty pageant, currently in its 10th year.
Info:
No entrance fee but door donations go to Tibetan Children’s Villages, an organization founded by the Dalai Lama’s sister.
Wednesday, May 7, 8:45 p.m.
Civic Arena, Parco Sempione
Milan
If Italians are trying hard to get what they need, economy-wise, at least they’re having good sex.
Italians are among the top orgasmers worldwide, tied for first place with Spain and Mexico, enjoying the big wow 66 percent of the time they have sex, according to the Durex Sexual Wellbeing survey. The global average? A measly 48%.
It may be a question of slow sex — a little like the slow food concept — that
helps Italians do it better.
Italians who declare themselves fully satisfied with the intensity of their orgasms spend nearly twice as much (an average of seven minutes) on foreplay compared to under 4 minutes, globally.
Some 44% of Italians who reach orgasm regularly said they’d like to spend more quality time with partners, as opposed to a 38% global average.
The condom company’s yearly poll, which asks 26,000 people in 26 countries about life between the sheets, also found, however that Italy’s Casanovas are still not quite satisfied, with only 64% stating they’re fulfilled by their sex lives.
The survey also confirmed that home-bound Italian mamma’s boys and girls still favor Fiat sex (not surprising if you have followed the “Love Park” saga), 82% have had sex in the car.
Not to be outdone by New York, a restaurant in Italy’s fashion capital has opted to equip the menu with calorie counts.
The American initiative, already weighed down by an appeal, would only cover restaurant chains. But the Ristorante Romani, which voluntarily decided to list just how many calories the risotto alla milanese packs is an upscale, family-run venue in the city’s historic center.
“It’s a question of transparency and propriety,” owner Maria Ciaramella told newspapers. “It’s also the best way to meet the needs of our customers — both men and women — who will soon have to face the dreaded swimsuit test.”
To do it right, the restaurant brought in Italian dietitian to the stars Nicola Sorrentino. His outside expertise means there will be no flubbing on exactly how much the tortelloni with scampi, figs served with a “cascade of flowers” (edible? do those count as carbs or protein?) may bulge from your bikini.
Other items under scrutiny include linguini with lobster and cherry tomatoes, risotto alla pescatora and Chateaubriand with potatoes. It’s hard to imagine the truly diet-conscious even glancing at dessert items such as tiramisu, torta della nonna and the house specialty, a killer Neopolitan ricotta cake (pastiera alla napoletana).
With prices hovering around 45 euro a head ($70) sans vino, I haven’t been there since the dot-com boomlet allowed me to entertain clients on the company tab, but have heard that last year’s slight makeover has made the place even more comfortably old-school than it was. Image courtesy Ristorante Romani.
Accurate, timely tsunami alert systems have proved more elusive than the Loch Ness Monster, but a new prototype testing the waters in the Atlantic may change that.
Three-ton Geostar (Geophysical and Oceanographic Station for Abyssal Research), set down about 150 kilometers off the coast of Portugal in the Gulf of Cadiz, will monitor movement and water pressure until the end of 2008.
Geostar squats 3,200 meters below the surface on a site known for tectonic twinges — the epicenter of the 1755 Great Lisbon Quake and resulting tsunami — where researchers expect at least three or four small seismic events during testing.
Milan police have put the glittering booty from a million-dollar jewelry heist online in hopes of catching the thieves. February 24, masked bandits busted into Damiani jewelers as employees were getting ready for a VIP bling fest.
Platinum rings with diamonds, rubies, emeralds and sapphires are among the 50 stolen pieces from the store in central Corso Magenta after masked thieves dug a hole in the brick wall of the neighboring palazzo to get at the goods.
So yeah, if someone just gave you an unexpected (and unexpectedly large) token of appreciation, this would be the time to raise an eyebrow and contact Milan police at squadramobile.mi@poliziadistato.it , or just ogle the hot merchandise here.
Move over Duff beer: a red wine called “without bitterness” with a small part in a successful sitcom found a producer and debuts this week at Italy’s premier wine fair, Vinitaly.
It first had a fictional cameo on “I Cesaroni,” (The Cesaronis) a prime-time show airing on former Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s flagship Canale 5.
The grape got into the act in an episode that aired mid-March where gruff uncle Cesare and patriarch Giulio team up to buy a small vineyard, after a small lottery win.
Respected family-run winery Cantina Cerquetta, producers since 1793, liked the idea so much they created an IGT blend of Merlot and San Giovese and a white Frascati, proving that real life sometimes goes down even smoother than fiction. More at Spot-On.
An international design competition aimed at religious objects has extended the deadline until April 4 in hopes of getting more entries.
Called “deisign” (God-sign), promoted by the diocese of Cuneo and part of Torino’s year-long stint as World Design Capital, the competition aims to enhance and promote all spiritual, cultural, historical and emotional expressions of holy Catholic symbols.
The Torino Design Capital site says winning entries will demonstrate “a careful eye on the past for the forms of religious art over the centuries converses with the future and with other cultures through the present, involving contemporary expression.”
So nudge yourself beyond the bad English on the official site (”similarly a papery or cd-rom or dvd-rom will be predisposed for every elaborate”) and get cracking with those chalices, baptismal fonts, robes and crucifixes.
Prizes are mentioned — but sans details — as is a public show. Of course, eternal rewards are a given.
Not many bespectacled, mild-mannered politicos get rallied with a Village People tribute. Here in Milan, supporters of Walter Veltroni, former mayor of Rome and rival to Silvio Berlusconi, shot a video for YouTube on a 65 euro budget (about $100) to the tune of “YMCA.” (NB: It’s since been removed for copyright violation, but searching “I’m PD” should bring up a mushroom copy).
Everyday supporters star: a mom and daughter in the Castello Sforzesco park, a bartender — a nod to the hardworking city’s aperitif ritual — an old guy on a bocce court, a kid on a scooter outside the hall of justice and a soccer team.
Though slightly-off tune grammatically ( the refrain “I am PD” partially in English means “I am Democratic Party,” referring to Veltroni’s party), you got to hand it to them for overall catchiness.
And, more importantly, they’ve injected a series of “go vote” (vota) into this version. Though the country’s known for very high voter turnout, apathy has been an issue in these snap elections, with popular figures inciting people not to bother going to the polls. Anyway, it beats the pants off Berlusconi’s candidate kit.
A celebrated Renaissance statue is getting an extreme makeover in public thanks to a laser modded from the medical field.
Tourists mill about a frescoed room as Donatello’s “David,” saucily clad in only a hat and sandals, lies belly up on wooden supports in Florence’s Bargello Museum.
Since starting work in June 2007, restorer Ludovica Nicolai has already liberated his left side from a dark, opaque patina lavished over the bronze in the late 1700s.
A portable neodymium YAG laser donated by El. En. — similar to those commonly used in glaucoma surgery or to zap spider veins — performs much of the magic.
Possibly the only thing more off-putting than an exhibit dedicated to shit is an interactive exhibit dedicated to shit.
Excrement is at the center of a show at the Museum of Natural History in Trento called “La Cacca, History of the Unmentionable” on until March 28.
“We’re using shit from the animal world to teach kids about ecology,” said museum director Michele Lanzinger. “Our intent was to and to teach about their digestive processes, looking into the differences in species, lifestyle and diet and possible alternative uses for organic waste.”
A part of the exhibit, curated by zoologist Osvaldo Negra, features animal feces with signs encouraging visitors to guess from which beast it came from.
Kids aged 4-12 get guided tours geared to their age level, visits also feature a “shit treasure hunt” and snack featuring chocolate goodies.
Milan’s mercurial culture councilor Vittorio Sgarbi had threatened to put on a shit show — instead we’ve got some nude photo exhibits to stir up controversy - interesting that Trento had to courage to it.
A young Italian woman swooned over a replica of Antonio Canova’s “Venus and Adonis” statue on display at a tourism fair.
Francesca Fraticelli burst into tears, then fainted after admiring the adoring glance of Venus and the gelid grace of the plaster copy — though hard to compare to the original 1795 work in marble — brought out to attract visitors to the Canova museum. (The finished version is housed in Geneva).
Fraticelli, who has a degree in art history, works as cultural attaché for the province of Chieti in the Abruzzo region. Luca Zaia, president of the Canova Foundation, helped her get back on her feet and escorted away from the statue. The next day, revived and perky looking with red-framed glasses, she nonetheless told Italian television news that she would avoid testing her mettle by looking at the statue again.
Symptoms including dizziness, palpitations and shaking normally associated with Stendhal Syndrome — first studied by Italian psychiatrist Graziella Magherini — are often reserved for foreigners unused to seeing so many beautiful treasures crowded together possibly also suffering from heat and the after-effects of a gelato high.
Like to test whether Italian art can produce a good fainting spell? Milan’s Palazzo Reale hosts a Canova exhibit with statues on loan from the Hermitage (including the much-awaited “The Three Graces“) until June 2.
Take a model, not a super skinny one, and chuck her in a bathtub full of spaghetti sprinkled with tomatoes and basil. That’s an anti-anorexia message, right?
This is the latest lip service to the toothpick model scare as Milan buckles down (or up) for Women’s Fashion Week, which runs from Feb. 16-23, latest images from Milano Moda Donna here, calendar in PDF here.
The brainchild of up-and-coming designers Dario Di Bella and Giovanni Premoli, the stunt had the placet of city officials, who have previously made noise about losing the stick figures lurching down catwalks in Italy’s fashion capital.
“There’s no reason fashion models have to be a size four,” Dario Di Bella, who works for label Premoli, told Italian papers. “It wouldn’t change anything about the way the clothes look or the overall image of our brand. “
Rental mannequins on show for the almost-naked lunch were size eights, as will be the ones doing their little turns on the “young designers for young people” catwalk February 20, organized by the city, where Premoli will also show. No word about what happened to the pounds and pounds of unwanted pasta used to make the weighty statement.
Italian singles, tired of being in the shadows for St. Valentine’s day celebrations, have proclaimed their own saint and feast day.
After all the hearts-and-flowers nonsense is over, the unattached fete themselves on February 15, the feast day of San Faustino.
The idea launched in 2002 by three single friends who formed a “Single Pride Association,” in which cross-dressing mascot Platinette crowned a “Single of the Year.” It stood for day of awareness of the ’status single’ with a special focus on the problems and discrimination faced by people who are not married.
Since then, the association and its portal are no longer — leaving San Faustino in the hands of club owners and lonely hearts agencies who organize speed dating nights from Sicily to Milan.
Still, singles couldn’t hope for a better protector.
Renaissance genius Leonardo Da Vinci, who worked in Milan for 17 years, inspired 2008 Carnival festivities here.
The best part? A huge confetti-making machine in Via Mercante. It takes old newspapers and turns them into free packs of coriandoli (”confetti” in Italian means almond candies used as wedding, birth or graduation favors) for the kids.
Inspired by his machines (like the wooden models in the Tech & Science museum here), it theatrically shreds newspapers then whooshes them up a clear chute. They are packaged and sent down through another chute outside, where a young lad in costume hands them out.
Italy’s most stylish city celebrates Carnival fashionably late. Milan follows its own calendar, according to the Ambrosian Rite (named after patron St. Ambrose), so the party ends here on Saturday (”sabato grasso,” fat Saturday) and Lent starts on Sunday.
Saturday’s parade (floats, bands, etc) starts at 3 p.m. (from Via Palestro) and the festivities carry on after it winds up in Piazza Duomo ending with an acrobat/dance/fireworks extravaganza that starts at 10:30 p.m..
Keep an eye out for silly-string slinging teens and costumed tots; clubs are the way to go for adults who want to dress up.
More Carnival celebrations around Italy here and, in Italian,here .
MILAN, Italy — For the first time, Democrats living abroad from Auckland to Ontario are voting over the internet in a global primary. And a few states may allow expatriate voters to vote online in the general election come November.
For now, expat voters will, in effect, add an extra state to this year’s Democratic National Convention. These voters without borders will elect 22 delegates, weighing in with about as much influence as Montana or South Dakota.
Voting is currently open only to Democrats. Republicans Abroad split off from the Republican National Committee and can hold neither in-person nor internet votes in the primaries. For the estimated 6 million Americans who live overseas, red tape and the vagaries of far-flung postal systems leave traditional paper absentee ballots with all the accuracy of a message in a bottle.
Americans abroad requested nearly a million ballots in 2006 elections, but only about a third were cast or counted, according to a government report.
More from Nicole Martinelli at Wired News.
A building code infraction of five inches closed Italy’s parking lot of love, about two weeks after it opened.
Instead of accepting the usual DIY certificate of the layout, inspectors took tape measure in hand to check out Luna Parking, in Bagnolo Cremasco about 25 miles southeast of Milan.
Turns out that although the 38 semi-covered stalls were fine, the distance between the security booth and the entrance wall is five inches too narrow. While they were at it, they discovered the bathroom signs were too high.
So they closed the place down.
Unusually precise Italian bureaucracy?
More likely that local Catholics, who staged a church vigil for park-n-ride sinners before the grand opening, had their prayers answered.
This is the latest safe place for nookie to shut down.
Marco Donarini, out €300,000 euros for the faulty lot of love, told papers he found the episode “incredible.”
When the confetti starts a flying for Carnival in Venice today, organizers hope costumed party goers will make the folks at home jealous by posting photos, blog accounts and videos from the just-launched Wi-Fi network.
The drug of choice for young, club going Italians: psychedelic mushrooms dissolved in Nutella. 
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