The Honest Truth

Find out why you don’t need an audioguide to learn about Renaissance art…

We’re standing in front of Mary and Jesus.

“What do you notice about the painting?” a thin Italian man passionately asks the American couple beside me.

Jesus looks like a midget, not a baby, and Mary’s all…cartoony and distorted. They look…Egyptian?

“It’s flat,” says the salt-and-pepper-haired man in a golf shirt. His manicured wife nods.

“It’s flat,” the Italian man repeats, drawing out the words. “You know why?” he asks suddenly, moving around them and gesturing with his hands.

The man,  dressed sharply in a black cardigan and wears glasses, explains that in the 13^th century, people still believed biblical figures were spirits rather than real people. Artists, to reflect the belief, depicted them in flat, unrealistic ways.

Oh, so, it’s not Egyptian…

I smiled at the newfound information, feeling smarter by the minute. He is the perfect guide: Smart. Passionate. Local. Only problem, he isn’t mine…

I was ready to pay for information. I really was. I showed up at the Uffizi gallery in Florence,  45 rooms of the most famous Renaissance art in the world, at 8 a.m., to join the already lengthy line up.

After an hour of watching a screen with big red lights that predicts the wait time, I got in.

The scale of the place is overwhelming, and though I usually don’t spring for an audioguide, I justified this as an investment in my education.

I stand in line to rent one and the polite woman asks me for a driver’s license or passport.

I give her my temporary license, the only valid I.D. I have on me.

She turns it over and tells me it’s expired.

I try to explain my valid license was mailed after I left for Europe, but she’s heard it all before, and turns into a curt, machine-like employee.

“Non posso fare niente (I can’t do anything)” she says, as the image of my audio-guided self smugly learning about renaissance art deflates and is replaced by me staring dumbly at room after room of meaningless paintings…

God works in mysterious ways. I find the Italian man within minutes of walking into the overwhelming hallway, lined with marble statues and frescoes of creepy cupids. He tells the American couple the gallery is so huge, he’ll just show them the gems.

Screw the canned British ladies voice telling me to press 5 for more info on Italian depictions of Madonna and Bambino. I’m with this guy…

The crowds of people made it easy to “knowledge-drop” (get it? Like shop-lifting, but with…nevermind). I put my headphones in, just to be stealth, and follow them into the next room.

We stop next at a painting by a Flemish painter depicting the Adoration of Christ. There’s people huddled around, and I’m able to blend in flawlessly. The 15^th century piece is divided into three panels (only two here due to lack of space), and the middle shows the three shepards kneeling before Jesus. It’s a very realistic portrayl, compared to the 13^th century depictions.

Our guide explains how having the background of a hill on the left and right panels (the left shows the Three Magi on the road to Bethleham) introduced a new perspective Italian painters tried to emulate.

In the next room, we come to Bottecelli’s “Birth of Venus”, where the crowd is so big you’d expect George Clooney was standing in front. This is good for blending in, and I stand so close to my unsuspecting guide we brush shoulders.

He explains how the name of the painting is a misnomer, because it depicts Venus coming back to life, rather than her birth. He draws our attention to the Greek god of wind on the left, blowing the her towards the goddess of seasons on the right that hands her a cloak.

“Do you like the painting?” he asks the couple.

“I think her expressions a bit weird,” says the American guy.

“At the time, this wasn’t considered a great painting, and Venus wasn’t considered very beautiful,” he says. Our guide explains her long neck, and the way her left shoulder slopes didn’t comply with the style of strict classical realism of Leonardo da Vinci or Raphael. It was only later Botticelli’s artistic license became appreciated.

He takes us through the next couple of rooms, asking about our responses and passionately explaining the narratives (The god on the left in this painting is turned away because he’s married.)

After the Leonardo DaVinci room, and two hours later, my group decides they’re going to take a break before going through the second half. To avoid sitting beside them in the hall, I linger in the last room, thinking over what I’ve learnt.

I linger too long, and by the time I come back out, they’re nowhere to be found.

I do what any good Italian would, and have an espresso on the rooftop café of the gallery. I enjoy the view of the old bridge, and figure I’ll catch up with “the group” inside.

No cigar. They are nowhere to be found. After getting over the insensitivity of this, I latch onto another guided group. The gallery official, short with grey hair, is explaining Titian’s 16^th century masterpiece, Venus di Urbino. She says to a group of six the portrait was commissioned by the Duke of Urbino (who was around 50 at the time), as an instructive model for his 14-year old bride. It was considered very scandalous, and Mark Twain dismissed it as “the foulest, the vilest, the obscenest picture the world possesses.”

His wife should be seductive, illustrated by the goddess’ pose and inviting stare, as well as faithful, illustrated by the dog in the corner.

Interesting information, but this woman lacks the character of my Italian art aficionado, so I ditch for some alone time with the masterpieces.

I’ve experienced my own renaissance: This guy has taught me how to look at religious art by looking for the stories, and understanding how the style of the painting shows the artists’ interpretation of the bible or myth.

When I come to the end of the gallery, after another two hours of rooms filled with art up until the 18^th century, I decide to revisit some paintings not considered “gems” by my tour guide.

I smile to myself past the flat depiction of Madonna and child that means so much more than it did four hours ago. My attention is drawn to a group huddled around a big 13^th century depiction of Christ’s crucifixion. My interest is perked. We didn’t go over that one. I shimmy over to hear what all the fuss is about.

The guide is from the museum, and has short, chin-length black hair. She describes things with a straight face, and moves her group quickly from painting to painting. I miss the description, but follow them into the next room. I put in my headphones on, and cast my eyes downwards.

She plants her group of obedient tourists in front of a painting and tells them to move in close. There are less people at this hour, and barely a crowd to blend into. I take a step forward to better hear, but the guide shoots me a glance; a guard dog showing it’s teeth.

She’s onto me. The honeymoon is over.

I find my way to the gift shop and feel inspired to make a contribution. I pick up a book called “Understanding Religious Art” that explains that stories of the most famous art in museums around the world.  It’s heavy, and overpriced, but easier to pack than an Italian tourguide. That’s what I call an investment in my education…

My first night in Budapest I get a too-warm welcome.

“How did you find this place?” asks the man sitting at the bar. “It took me ten years.”

It’s quite simple: I arrived just hours ago in Budapest and my enthousiastic 22-year-old hostel owner sat me down with a map and pointed out his favourite spots. He said it’s strange this bar advertised on a tourist map, as it’s always filled with local people.

After walking around in the dark, mist-shrouded Budapest, it started to rain. I took out my map and went in search of that warm, local place to rest my tourist ass.

When I arrive, Kiadó (which means for rent in Hungarian) is exactly what I expected: a cozy, basement bar with wooden tables and tall glasses of beer. I walk up a couple stairs to where a  man in a black t-shirt and ponytail leans against the bar, smoking a cigarette and drinking a beer.

“You speak some english?” I ask, stuffing my map in my pocket.

“A little,” he says, disinterestedly.

“Can I still eat?” I say, making the international motion for eating.

“Yes,” he says, and I sit down on a big, padded chair in front of the bar.

On the chairs beside me sits a couple, glued to eachothers’ faces. The girl, who looks like Scarlett Johansson, has red, puffy eyes. Whatever happened, the baby-faced guy looks happy to enjoy the “making-up”.

To my right a group of friends take up a couch and some chairs and in front of me a few regulars warm their barstools.

I stare at the paper menu written in Hungarian. Salat must be salad, Goulash I know, Leves? Kolbasz? Bab?

The pony-tailed man comes over I say shyly I’d like something to eat, but…(the international symbol for “I don’t understand this menu”).

“It’s possible,” he says, not answering the question. “Drink?”

I say a glass of white wine and he nods.

After slowly sipping my wine, I realize my fantasy  of the bartender bringing me a myriad of Hungarian delicacies isn’t happening. It was lost in translation.

I try to make eye contact and hold up my menu, the international sign for “I’d like to order.” He seems more interested in drinking his beer.

Finally, I wave him over. “Maybe you can choose something for me?” I say, pointing to the menu.

He shrugs like he doesn’t understand, and then, as if everything is suddenly clear, he flips the menu over to the english side.

Koszonom,” I say. Thank you, in Hungarian.

I order a big bowl of an interesting sounding soup: deer ragout with red noodles. I slurp it down, order another glass of wine and sink back in the comfy chair.

The man at the bar with slightly graying hair and a blue zip-up sweater keeps looking over. He’s drinking red wine. My bartender is rolling a cigarette, and feeling confident from the wine, I go up to ask if I can have one.

“Do you know how to roll?” says the blue shirt man who I’m now standing beside.

“Yes,” I say, defiantly, thanking god I taught myself to roll a joint.

The bartender nods towards his tobacco, I take a paper and roll a cigarette.

“Where are you from?” the man asks me.

I tell him.

“A Canadian on her first night in Budapest, ends up here,” he says. “That’s so strange. It’s a very special place.”

The man is from Budapest and his English is a little rusty.  He now lives outside of the city, but has two businesses here. He comes in every Tuesday to check up on them, and Tuesday night you can find him on this very barstool.

“Do you want something to drink?” he says, rightly sensing I’m preparing to go.

Okay.

“Two rums,” he tells the lanky bartender with a long beard sitting behind the bar. “Sit down,” he says, motioning to the stool beside him.

The bartender brings three shots and joins in on the cheers. I down the whole thing, and after putting the empty glass on the table, realize they’ve only drank half.

“You didn’t know,” says the man laughing, after I point this out.

He has a dimpled smile, confidence with women, and in his tastes.

We talk a bit about my trip, and he tells me he’s spent some time in Italy. I tell him I love the language, and he says he doesn’t like it very much. To him, Italians don’t sound like native speakers of their own language.

?!?!?!?

I ask him about life in Budapest and he says he loves it here, but not to live. Too many cars with crazy drivers, too much theft and backwards people.

He order us another rum and writes down his perfect day in Budapest: a thermal bath at one of the many bath houses, a turkish dinner at a restaurant near my hostel, and a drink at a bar near the opera house. He titles it “Sunday menu.”

Feeling tipsy, and noticing that most people have cleared out, I thank him and try for a second time to leave.

“You’re going?” he says, surprised.

“They’re closing.”

“It’s flexible,” he says, smiling.

He insists I try a liquor called Palinka, a type of Hungarian Schnapps. I choose the  plum favour and ask him if he’s having on too. He says no. It hurts his stomach too much.

Well no shit. If there was any plum in there I’m too distracted by my burning windpipe to notice.

There’s nobody left in the bar and the bartenders are packing up their things. We both stand up to go, and the bearded bartender hands the man a rose. It’s his daughter’s second birthday, tomorrow.

The man walks me to the corner I have to turn down to get home. Then he says the garage where his car’s parked is nearby, and he’ll give me a ride.

When we get to the parking complex, the man can’t find his car. He curses his driver for telling him the wrong floor, and we ride the elevator to the next one up.

To make small talk, and to clarify some questions floating around in my head, I ask him if he lives with his daughter. He says yes. I ask him where his daughter’s mother lives. “We live outside of Budapest,” he repeats, confusedly.

Right. You, your daughter, and your wife.

I don’t mind that he’s older, but I’m not up for helping him have some good ol’ fashioned extra-marital fun.

Once we arrive on the fifth floor, he still can’t find his car.

He tells me to wait while he looks on the floor above.

I say I think I’ll just walk.

“Why? You have to wait here just a few minutes.”

“Trust me,” I say.  “It’s better if I walk.”

“Is this because my car is lost, or because I have a wife…” he asks.

I tell him the latter.

“So what? I drive you to your hostel, we kiss, and you leave for Canada.”

“No,” I say, shaking my head.  “I can’t do that.”

He gives a half-laugh, like he can’t believe what I’m saying.

“Alright,” he says, and walks away.

I walk quickly in the other direction, and once outside of the parking garage, find my spot on the map. I start in what I think is the right direction, but stop at the next corner to be sure.

“Need some help,” asks a young guy in perfect English, walking a dog.

I show him my spot on the map.

“You have to go this way,” he says, pointing to the opposite direction I’m going. “I’m sure, I used to live there.”

“Where are you from?” I say.

He looks at me suspiciously. “Seattle,” he says, pausing, then adding: “But I’ve lived here for ten years. Do you live in Budapest?”

“I wouldn’t be holding a map if I did,” I say, and thank him for his help.

Walking away I think maybe I should’ve said yes, and told him about a little bar where all the locals go…

On a farm in Tuscany, dinner tastes extra sweet for a reason…

Tonight, something strange is happening at the dinner table: we’re eating cake.

It’s strange because Pierangelo, the man whose farm I’m staying at, doesn’t like sweets.

He’s made one amazing meal after another, going way beyond the typical Italian fare of  pasta, meat and pizza. Pierangelo cooks vegetarian casseroles, tasty soups and bean-based dishes, all of which we wash down with local red wine.

But never dessert.  He doesn’t have a sweet tooth.

I arrived on Pierangelo’s farm six days ago, a paradise 625 metres up in

the Tuscan mountains with over 100 chestnut trees, 20 rows of rasberry plants and six donkeys. I’m here to help with the annual October chestnut harvest, along with a hodge-podge of foreigners.

There’s the 60-something couple from small-town Quebec who speak exclusively french (save for the man who has a basic english vocabularly) and the 20-something couple from Brooklyn, one of whom speaks pretty good Spanish.

Pierangelo has a working level of both Spanish and French (though he insists he doesn’t understand Quebecois, as does his partner Cristina, who knows a little French).

Then there’s me, who knows the Quebecois accent well (and probably speaks with it a little) and speaks Italian. The Brooklyn couple dubbed me Nicole Kidman from “The Interpreter”.

The french couple is working on farms to save money during their 3 month long Italian trip, the American couple are making their way to Russia to do the Transmongolian railway that ends in China, and I’m here to learn Italian. We all came together for the common good of chestnuts.

Every morning we go off into the woods to collect the chestnuts. They fall from trees in big spiky shells that look like the things you’re supposed to avoid in a super mario game. You crack the shell open with your foot or gloves and take out the chestnut. If a falling shell one hits you on the back, the thin spikes (a type of tannin) make your skin itch for days.

I can’t describe the feeling of being in the middle of the woods, surrounded by huge chestnut trees, listening to the rain-like sound of shells periodically falling and donkeys roar. Land before time shit.

The afternoons we were free and around 8:30 p.m. we all meet for dinner.

Pierangelo’s kitchen perfectly fits the rustic Tuscan stereotype. In the middle is a long, dark wooden table, where he casually places slices of white bread for every meal. There’s a warm, orange hue to the walls, and the shelves are home made with pots and pans hanging in every direction.

There’s  one communal room in the house of which the kitchen takes up half.  Dividing the two sides is a big white furnace, and the living is made up of a couch, a small t.v. and a big loom.

Pierangelo is in his 50’s with a mop of curly grey hair, an earring, and a soft, lispy speech. He escaped to the countryside from Florence when he was a teenager, in protest of Italian politics and a life of consumerism. After living on a commune in the Tuscan country side, he and some friends started building houses in Borgo San Lorenzo, the mountain property he lives on now.

He had met Cristina a few years before, who was living on a different commune, and she moved in with him. They had two kids (now young adults) but never married and act more like friends.

Pierangelo has travelled a fair bit, which accounts for his international cuisine. He spent time in Africa, and South America, fostering his passion for hiking. He’s a quiet man and oddly calm. He never made us feel guilty for kicking back in the afternoons when his day was half over.

It’s riding with him in the car that I learned the most about him. He tells me the problem with calm people is that they bottle everything up, and then explode. And speaking of bottles, Pierangelo has the bad habit of keeping one beside him in the cupholder, and on a long trip, stopping every now and then for beer at a roadside bar.

The curious, but maybe normal thing for functioning alcoholics, is that his demeanour never changed. His face was always a reddish hue, but he maintained his calm, pleasant composure.

Cristina drinks like a bird. A quarter glass of wine at dinner and she’s done. She’s a nurse at an old age home and hates her job. She’s a lanky 46-year-old with a child-like demeanour: she touches my arm a lot, talks quietly and says things under her breath like a student trying not to get caught.  She has pieces of died red hair around her short dark hair that match her red-framed glasses. She says though Pierangelo has many good qualities, his drinking isn’t one of them.

When she comes home from work tonight, we’re already on dessert.

For dinner, Pierangelo bought us each a ball of Mozzarella di Buffalo, the more expensive and delicious sibling of cow’s milk mozzarella, and made a soup with rice and vegetables.

There was no second course because instead, he serves us scacciata (a type of croissant like pastry also used for savoury pies) with a grape filling. Since it’s not too sweet, he likes it.

After we eat, the Quebec couple does the dishes and goes to bed. The Americans stick around, because the guy, Rob, is feeling sick, and Cristina’s prepared him a bucket of hot water with drops of teatree oil to help his breathing.

The phone rings and Pierangelo stands up to answer it. He says a couple of words in Italian, and takes the portaphone outside.

Rob suddenly lifts his head from over the hot bucket and says “Is it his birthday?”

“Noooo,” I say, thinking since I spent the whole day with Pierangelo and he didn’t say anything, it couldn’t be.

To be sure, I traslate to Cristina.

“Si,” she says, casually. “Lui non piace dirlo a nessuno (He doesn’t like to tell anyone).”

I tell Rob he was right. “How did you know?” I ask.

“He said something about being another year older,” he says. “I guess my Italian’s pretty good.”

For us city kids, not celebrating a birthday wasn’t gonna fly.

“Should we sing?” I ask excitedly. “Let’s light a candle.”

Cristina hesitantly agrees, but on the condition Pierangelo knows she didn’t spill the beans.

We find a tea candle, light it, and put it beside what’s left of the cake. We top up his glass of red wine.

We turn off the lights, and prepare for his entrance. In the meantime, I teach the americans the Italian words to Happy Birthday.

Finally, after our eyes are long accustomed to the one candlelight, we hear the door open.

We burst into a butchered version of “Tanti Auguri.”

Pierangelo smiles, and looks suspiciously at Cristina.

“Rob ti a sentita al telefono (Rob heard you on the phone,)” she says, innocently.

We turn on the lights and tell him to make a wish.

Pierangelo nonchalantly blows out candle and when I ask him what he wished for, he vaguely says he’s always thinking of wishes. He says he’s had enough cake but takes the wine voluntarily. Then he tries to squirm out of the birthday spotlight and change the subject.

I ask him why he didn’t say anything, and he predictably says he doesn’t believe in birthdays. It’s just another day where he’s older than someone who’s 52.

The cake? The mozzarella? Okay, he admits, those were for the occasion.

That night we drink more wine, and Pierangelo ends up attaching a hammock across the living room and falling asleep.

It’s nice to know that even the most humble of farm men, if secretly, still commemorate another year gone by.