I fell in love with Turin a little, and I ended up staying there for five days and four nights, far longer than I had expected. I probably would have moved on a day sooner, except Turin has some wonderful museums, all of which are closed on Mondays, so I stayed through this past Tuesday so that I could check out one that I was particularly interested in visiting. Prior to my arrival, I knew very little about the city, other than that it had a famous shroud and that it hosted the 2006 Winter Olympics. It took almost no time to realize what a special place it is.
Turin is in the northwest part of Italy, in a province known as Piedmont. Not too far from Milan, these two cities have dominated the Italian economy for centuries. Some of Italy's largest corporations are located in this part of the country, and Turin is a city that wears that wealth really well. It is so beautiful--the Italian Alps are visible in the distance, the city has plenty of nicely manicured green spaces and a tranquil turquoise river, the architecture is spectacular, the museums are plentiful and high-quality, the theater and opera are well represented, and it feels like there's a bookstore on every street corner.
The people here are dripping with style--and I felt like I stuck out like a sore thumb in contrast. Theirs is the kind of style that is probably expensive, but the expense isn't what you notice--you notice the individuality and care and taste that go into the people's clothes and shoes and hair and accessories. Everything looks so carefully selected, like dressing is an artistic pursuit. Italian fashion reminds me of Catalan architecture: it's all about the style and vision--practicality and expense be damned! Even the women in the train station pulling their (matching) luggage and carrying their shoulder bags are teetering around in four inch heels and skirts. That is definitely not my sartorial sensibility most of the time, and especially when I'm living for three months out of a backpack with clothes that had to work in Morocco. Let's just say that in my flip flops and cargo pants, nobody is mistaking me for a local here. But it is such a treat to people-watch. In any part of the country, this is true to a certain extent, but in Turin, it is immediately noticeable.
I spent hours and hours just walking around the neighborhoods in Turin, sometimes taking photos, sometimes just looking. Oh, and eating and drinking. Especially eating and drinking! :) Turin is a great restaurant town, especially if you can find good neighborhood places. I went to a little family-run place east of the railroad station, and I think I was the only person there who wasn't from the neighborhood. It seemed to be me and a lot of regulars who knew each other. The menu was a half sheet of printer paper listing about four appetizers, four pasta courses, four second courses, and three desserts, which is just the way I like it because it means that everything is fresh and they're concentrating on a few things that they can do well on that particular day. The menu was in Italian, and usually I can figure out the options without too much trouble, but the words on this one didn't really register. So I asked the waiter what he thought was best, and I ended up with an out-of-this-world meal. :) It was a piece of tuna in a rich fish stock with a few tomatoes, capers, and some very flavorful fresh parsley, served over inch-wide long strips of fresh homemade pasta. And the panna cotta for dessert was amazing. If you're not familar with panna cotta, it is a white custard/pudding dish that tastes a lot like the best rice pudding you've ever eaten, only with a creamy smooth texture. Yum!
The only thing better than the food was the bumper crop of bookstores. I was amazed at how many I saw--I must've gone into 20 of them in just the few days I was in town. Even if the books are all in Italian and I can't read anything there, I still like to go in and peek: you never know what you're going to find. My favorite bookstore in Italy thus far was one in Lucca that had a cafe and a liquor license and a big selection--kind of like Kramer Books in DC, only not crowded. I was there on a weekday morning, but you could just see what a center of the community the store was--notices pinned up on the walls, well-worn easy chairs in the cafe, lots of knowledgeable clerks around helping people. That said, I was overjoyed to walk up a street in Turin and see a sign that said, "British Bookstore." The entire second story of the shop was loaded with books in English--yay!!!
I bought a book on post-war Italy, and after reading a couple of chapters, I realized that I needed more context from the years before. So the next day I went back and picked up another book that is even better, called The Force of Destiny: A History of Italy Since 1796. It sounds dry as a bone, but I know embarrassingly little about Italian history and the author is a great writer, so I'm learning and it's entertaining at the same time. Italian history turns out to be really good material to work with.
I was particularly glad to find a good book about Italian history because the museum that I had been so interested to visit in Turin was the Museo de Risorgimento, a museum dedicated to modern Italian history. It was closed for renovations until earlier this year, and I think they're still working out some of the kinks. It was a bit of a disappointment, particularly because they seemed to have some great stuff there, but they just didn't seem to be well-prepared for non-Italian speaking visitors. There was an English audio tour, but none of the staff could tell me in English how to use it, and the audio guide itself didn't include instructions. All I could get was a two-sentence introduction to each of the twenty-something rooms of the museum--the same introduction that was printed on a card in each room. (eye-roll). I know the guide contained a lot more information, but I tried everything to access it, and I could never get the stream of information coming out to match what I was seeing in the rooms. And all the text labeling the exhibits was only in Italian. I understand why they needed to do that--it would have looked cluttered to include English and/or French as well. But at the same time, I thought it would have been cool if they had made the place more accessible to visitors who are trying to understand Italy better. In the whole country, this would have been one of the finest places to go to learn about how modern Italy evolved, and yet the access was restricted mostly to Italians themselves. I thought it was kind of a shame, but at the same time I still feel guilty for being an English-speaker thinking that the world should revolve around English speakers. Oh well. I did get to see a room where the Italian parliament met for a few weeks, though, and the building itself was beautiful, so it wasn't a complete waste of time. It's always just sad to see near-misses that could so easily be great.
One museum in Turin that definitely did NOT disappoint was the modern art gallery. What an enthralling place! They did something there I've never seen before. They set aside four or five different wings of the gallery and let a handful of professors from various non-artistic disciplines gather together works of art that shed light on their areas of expertise. It was fascinating: a religion professor collected works of art that portrayed aspects of the soul. A psychology professor curated a wing examining mental illness and art. Each area contained works from vastly different ages and artistic schools, and they posted at the beginning of each wing a great introduction explaining some of the insights that the professors felt the works expressed. I've never seen a gallery organized quite like that before, and I thought it was really innovative and cool.
Turin was wonderful, but last Wednesday I finally packed up and headed to Ivrea, the nearest town to the village where my grandmother was born. Two trains and a commuter bus later, I was the first member of my immediate family to have returned to a place she emigrated from 98 years ago. To be continued! :)
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