Mr and Mrs Bean Go Camping in Puglia: Tales of Asian Loos and Other Inconveniences

Brand is all important on an Italian beach

Brand is all important in Italy. So before leaving for a camping trip to Puglia I had to invest in an expensive pair of sunglasses. How much you ask? Well, let’s just say more than the cost of a week’s camping, but the sunglasses play an important part later on in our story.

To get from Ancona, our point of departure, to Puglia is a long, long drive. As you go further South in Italy, it becomes hotter, the driving becomes worse and many more of those Southern Italian stereotypes turn out to be true. Like, for example, the food becomes incredibly tasty and jam-packed with flavour.

We arrived at our campsite near Gallipoli, to be greeted by a friendly youth dressed as a woman with very large fake breasts. The type of get up that would have my mother saying, what’s the country coming to, with moral standards like these?’ Our own immediate question was whether or not this had anything to do with Gallipoli’s reputation as cool gay resort of the moment, but it turned out to be just the meet and greet routine of our campsite.

I should probably add at this point that I am more into glamping than camping, and more familiar with the type of campsite in Devon or Suffolk where we are alone, camping alongside some illicit Scrumpy marketing operation or out the back of a pub. But this year we were going on holiday with some friends with kids, and what is a minefield of hassles for adults is a bundle of fun and adventure for children.

So this supersite, with campervans, caravans and hundreds of tents was a big shock to the senses. Never mind, once our transvestite welcomer had done his piece, an almost Germanic efficient system processed us and sent us on our way. Tents these days are so easy to erect that there is nothing worth mentioning about this aspect of the trip. Except perhaps for tent pegs. Whilst we managed to keep feet and toes intact, the odd primal scream during the night provided evidence of an impact. Seasoned ‘campies’ use bottles of water and other artefacts to anchor guy ropes and ensure there is no tent peg directly outside the entrance for that long hike to the loo during the night when senses are part functioning and eyes half shut.

And there we have it. The hardship of camping is not cooking, for you can always eat out. It’s bumping into tent pegs, long treks to achieve anything and loos, loos, loos. How can you schedule your morning ablution ritual when several hundred others are playing the same game? It was quickly apparent that there was one proper loo for 8 other Asian loos, and everyone of course wanted to use the real one, more or less at the same time. Some made their intentions obvious, queuing with newspaper in hand or clutching a packet of fags. For some reason these days Doctors never seem to mention the health benefits of cigarettes keeping you regular, especially when mixed with real ale. Unfortunately the Germanic management systems did not stretch to a loo booking system.

I swear the proper loo was occupied for four solid, continuous days, a testament to someone’s cooking prowess or lack of roughage in their diet, or else someone quietly passed away in there. Why would anyone want to install an Asian loo anyway? They may be easier to clean but labour is cheap in Southern Italy.  Few Westerners have the muscle tone to effect a proper squat and the shoe (or worse foot) -drenching flushing action was completely out of place in a site boasting four stars and campsite of the year awards. So luxury is really having your own Western loo, or an en suite bathroom, in which to read the Financial Times or your chosen literature at your leisure or these days do a little nerding on your I Phone. Bring on the Winnebago!

The Bean moment occurred in the campsite supermarket. In Italy, you have to don surgical gloves before selecting your fruit or vegetables. One size fits all and what may easily fit some dainty Southern Italian becomes a somewhat tight fit on my large hands proportionate to my six foot four frame. So after a small struggle I carefully selected six ripe peaches, placed them in a bag and continued around the supermarket, heading for the dairy counter. Suddenly I realised the bag had burst and I was leaving a trail of peaches behind me. Easy, I returned to the fruit counter, donned fresh surgical gloves, picked up the peaches, returned them, and selected some replacement ones. Oh, and I had to take some of those lovely ripe plums too for good measure. Once more I set off for the dairy counter. Once again I realise I am leaving large clues of my progress, this time with a trail of ripe plums, deposited like some incontinent dog’s doings at one metre intervals.  More surgical gloves, several long minutes later testing plastic bags, and soon I am making good progress to the dairy counter again.

Ping! A lens falls out my very expensive sunglasses. I stop to retrieve it, thinking some surgical gloves would have come in handy at this point as my hands are a little greasy with suntan cream, but refusing to countenance yet another trip back to the fruit counter. It doesn’t matter that my vision is now blurred until an old lady asks me to help her by taking something off a high shelf. I can barely make out the packet, so it’s not too surprising perhaps that I dislodge several packets and start a sizeable avalanche of spaghetti, orechiette, fusilli, penne and macaroni. Time taken to buy 6 peaches, 6 plums, a few yoghurts and a loaf of bread? Approximately 45 minutes. Percentage of friends involved in hunt for me: 100.

Most things went smoothly after that until we decide to use the Laundrette on the last night. Here’s a little Bean test for you. There are four machines. Three are white and an unknown brand, the fourth is stainless steel and states ‘Miele Professional’. None actually states anything useful like ‘washer’ on it in any language. Which would you choose? We place all the clothes in the shining Miele, select the programme ‘Coloureds’, and the only strange feature is that there is nowhere obvious to put the soap. Maybe this is the professional part of the machine we think, and throw in some detergent through the main door. In with the token and the Miele Professional bursts into life. It is only then that the noise it makes and the emission of hot air gives the game away that it is in fact a dryer………..Never mind, stop the machine, wash the clothes by hand, return them to the dryer and what should have taken 5 mins to load and leave has taken nearly one hour. Of course, nowhere did it say that this machine was a dryer, and with that your Honour we rest our case!

The point is with camping, you really have to organise or plan very little entertainment or sightseeing because you will spend most of your time queuing for the only non Asian loo, trailing 5 mins backwards and forwards to the shower block to wash dishes, get the shampoo/towel/toilet paper/shaving foam/soap or whatever else you have forgotten, or performing other basic tasks. But in this campsite it probably does not matter if you have no time to go out. The best meal we had all week was in the campsite restaurant and it was dirt cheap to boot.

Below left: these sea urchins did not stand a chance. An Italian delicacy despite or because of their dreadful flavour, reminiscent of  Durian fruit to which they bear a surprising physical resemblance

Below right: the Beans enjoy a drink just as the loo became empty

Ferragosto in Trieste, the Natural Capital of Nowhere: Tropical Nights where Santa Barbara Meets Feast of the Assumption

Free Entertainment in Trieste

This year in Trieste August 14^th was not a day for the beach. A sombre dark sky for much of the day signalled the Gods’ displeasure with something or other, and this mood was not to be broken until the party started later on in the evening. But maybe it was simply that the party had been very good the night before, and even the Gods needed some down time before limbering up for more tropical dance grooves.

Friday night’s free entertainment was a band called Morcheeva. They came to fame in the 90s, a sort of more populist version of Massive Attack. Their single Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day reached Number 7 in the Italian charts, a much better result than the band achieved in their home country England. Perhaps the lesson is that Italians will buy anything with Rome in the title, for the song had nothing to do with Italy or Rome and everything to do with the sort of slushy pop that has no pretence of didactism. Along the road the band fired their singer, called Sky, lost out in popularity, and have now re-hired her and are attempting a come back. Morcheeva were slick and danceable. The highpoint of their regulation length show was predictably a version of Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day.

So why is Trieste the natural capital of nowhere? This description hails from Jan Morris’s book ‘Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere’. Morris first visited Trieste as a young Welsh soldier at the end of the second World War. Trieste curiously haunted Morris and following a sex change, she re-visited the city as an elderly woman.  It would be hard to invent a more fascinating story than hers. The transition from a young rookie, suffering from a confused gender, to an older woman, and her changing view of Trieste. Returning after so long, she charts Trieste’s history, its meaning in her life and juxtaposes patriotism and sex, two of her favourite topics. Such a mixture of themes could go horribly wrong, but Morris holds all together through her wit and command of language.

The full quote from Morris’s book is that Trieste is the ‘natural capital of the nation of nowhere, a home for those bound together by the common values of humour and understanding, usually exiles in their own communities but probably numerous enough to form a nation’. Morris may be right in her analysis, or was this more an allegorical reference to her own state of mind? An alternative theory might be that Trieste’s joie de vivre and tolerance is simply a product of its regular changes of proprietor.

Goths, Byzantines, Lombards, Hapsburgs, and German occupiers have all held the reins. Even Tito occupied Trieste for 40 days, its position as the only natural port in central Europe proving just too attractive. With Joyce an erstwhile resident, and one of his pupils, Svevo, also achieving literary fame with a little help from the great man, it is perhaps no wonder that Trieste appears more in discursive essays than in guidebooks or the travel sections of newspapers. But miss it at your peril.

Back to the music. As the day wore on the Gods stirred themselves and organised the firmament for the next party. The sky cleared, rumbles of thunder that had threatened during the day receded into the distance. Perhaps they had been no more than the sounds of deep slumber in the heavens.

The evening entertainment was none other than Sicilian Trumpeteer Ray Paci and his band, Aretruska. Not content with being a fine musician-trumpeteer, vocalist and arranger-Paci has a well-developed social conscience and is a strong supporter of Amnesty International, Amref and other good causes. His music mixes Brazilian and other Latin, ska and mestizo. From the first verse of the opening song, the carnival atmosphere  began, and the crowd danced ever more wildly and energetically, driven by the horn section and underpinned by a Bahian percussionist.

The musical odyssey took us through cumbia, bossa nova, samba and Bahian beats. The Feast of the Assumption is called the Festival of Santa Barbara in Bahia and would have been celebrated simultaneously. Paci and his band would have been more than welcome guests there and musically would have blended in seamlessly. The band seemed in no hurry to stop playing, and Paci said the party would continue after the concert, around town. The finale was the band’s parody of Madness, and my friends swear that the statues of Mikeze and Lakeze, figures from Trieste folklore, were swaying along in time, paying homage to this internationally flavoured musical feast.

Giotto and the Hedgehog

Today we’ll deal with lighter themes. Italy in summer, and more particularly Padova in August. Like all Italian cities there is an exodus to the coast and foreign resorts, but the August shut down, I’m told, is less than previously, with people taking shorter breaks or realising there is a good tourist market to be exploited.

With temperatures around 30C during the day, dropping to 24 or 25 by night, life moves outdoors particularly during the evening. Sure, some of our favourite bars for the evening aperitivo may be shut, but there are plenty more. Unlike an English heatwave, there is rain. It comes in sudden thunderstorms that roll down from the mountains, their stentorian grumble signalling fresher air and temporary coolness. The flowers and vegetation are a panoply of colours, creating exotic evening scents that waft in the breeze.

There is plenty of free outdoor entertainment. Earlier this week there was a superb jazz concert with the group playing on a somewhat lobsided stage in the middle of the river that would have had every jobsworth UK health and safety officer reaching for the electricity switch. Portello River Festival http://www.portelloriverfestival.org/new/index.php?lang=english

The music was great and as the tempo speeded up the stage bobbed up and down in rhythm. Last night there was improvised theatre.

There’s a whole array of ‘sagre’ (plural of sagra).   http://www.provincia.pd./index.php?page=guida_sagre_feste

These are local village festivals involving food, drink, and music (this is Italy after all…..). Sagre have their origins in village fairs which themselves may derive from historical pageants or Saints’ days and often feature some specific foods. Tonight’s is dedicated to fish and horse meat (yes, sis, I will only eat fish!), others feature frogs, chestnuts, and onions among other foods. To play it safe head for one featuring cheese, or olive oil. Some claim to feature wine, akin to a pub stating ‘we sell beer’.

Back in Padova, there is a whole gamut of paid for al fresco entertainment. A personal favourite is the open air cinema. No money back if it rains, but in Padova, the weather is generally predictable, and the occasional storms sharp and short. The two open air cinemas take place in beautiful parts of the medieval city. One of these is set in the gardens of the Giotto museum, which backs onto the  Scrovegni Chapel, decorated by Giotto and one of the masterpieces of the early renaissance.

And the hedgehog? A showing in this venue of the sensitive film adaptation of Muriel Barbery’s novel the Elegance of the Hedgehog. As with virtually all movies in Italy, the film is dubbed into Italian, which limits the appeal to tourists.

I’m sure Giotto a man of great humour would have approved. Giotto’s best friend stated ‘there was no uglier man in all of Florence’, but the artist’s humour was revealed when Dante once visited him.  Dante asked how a person who painted such beautiful things could create such plain children to which Giotto riposted ‘I made them in the dark’.

Il Sorpasso-The Italian Economic Miracle

For the second time the Italian economy overtook the UK in terms of economic output at the end of 2009. Much of this comparison is ‘academic’ as output is measured in terms of a nation’s currency, so the oscillations of the Pound and the Euro provide a ‘yo yo’ instead of a constant yardstick. But perhaps the point is that the Berlusconi government, whatever you might think of the man, is turning in similar or better results compared to the Brown /early coalition government in the  UK. Of course, better or worse are debatable, in terms of what measures you examine, and I don’t want to instigate a heavy technical discussion here, simply to pull out some interesting themes.

So our first theme is that the Berlusconi government despite the constant whiff of scandal is delivering a good economic performance compared to the UK and France, if not reaching the heady heights of the German economy.

Theme number 2 is the large percentage of the Italian economy attributed to the ‘black economy’. La economia sommersa is estimated to be 27% of GDP.To give that perspective, the UK’s Black Economy is estimated to be of the order of 12% of GDP while the UK’s defence budget is around 3% of GDP. So in the UK the black economy is four times the size of our huge defence budget and in Italy….well you get the picture.

The large size of the Italian black economy is often given as a reason why Italians appear well off, at least in the North, despite the recession.  The black economy includes legal activity where taxes are not paid and also illegal activity, where of course taxes are never paid.

Mafia activity in Italy is estimated as around 20% of GDP. Deduct this from the total black economy and at 7% or so, the other part of the black market-legal activities where taxes are not paid-may be similar in size to the UK.

But here we are beginning to guess somewhat. What we can say is that if Mafia activity really accounts for 20% of the Italian economy, then that represents the same proportion as the drug barons accounted for in Colombia at the height of the cartels powers. Of course, there are big differences in those activities. In economic terms, the drug traffickers in Colombia controlled a huge illegal export business, adding a hugely positive balance of payments, while the Italian activity mainly swells domestic activity.

Enough economics for one day: just linger on the size of the Italian black economy, its Mafia component and the nightmare of controlling an economy with so much beyond the scope of politicians. And as in Colombia, where the drug barons offered to pay off the national debt, the fortunes made in these illegal businesses would be more than sufficient to rid Italy of the shadow of public debt.

Author’s Note

I deliberately do not quote statistical sources in these blogs, which are not intended to be articles on the economy, but where possible I use official sources and try and verify figures from 2 sources. Economics is an inexact science at  best, and estimates of illegal activity and the black economy even more difficult to achieve. The point of these blogs is to present comparisons and look for the stories behind the headlines.

More on France versus Italy

The tourism spend figures give a different picture compared to the visitor numbers by country. In Europe the order changes to Spain (EUR 42 billion), France (EUR 39 billion), Italy (EUR 31 billion). So if Italy with only 54% of the number of tourists going to France is gaining 80% of the spend, it underlines my theory that the numbers recorded for France may include many more day trippers.

The figures for hotel nights spent in the country by non residents bear this theory out too. Here Italy records 51% more nights than France.

There is another measure called ‘tourism intensity’, defined as %age of total GDP (economic output)contributed by tourism. The top 10 in terms of tourism intensity within the E.U is in descending order Spain, Ireland, Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, Sweden and Luxembourg. There we have it: France does not even figure.

Apologies that this blog is heavy on the numbers. But we have proven that there is more to tourism than simply counting the number of tourists arriving in a country. We have also shown that the combined pulling power of all Italy has to offer-Rome, Venice, Florence, Pisa, Sienna etc-is outperforming France by certain criteria. Let’s call this one a draw!

Roof of the Duomo di Padova

Grand canal in Trieste

Why France is Twice As Attractive As Italy……

The official world tourist statistics show France in No.1 spot in the world rankings with 70 million visitors annually. France is followed by the US, Spain and China respectively. Italy comes in in fifth place with 43 million visitors annually. The rankings and annual number of visitors do not change much year on year, according to these same statistics. And yet something does not seem right here.

How can France outperform the collective attraction of Rome, Florence, Pisa,Venice and Sienna? It is difficult to see from where the French pulling power is derived. For cities, Italy would seem a clear winner. Beach resorts is more of a toss up, while skiing should see victory for France. Could it be that France surrounded by more countries and with many Brits arriving on one day booze cruises counts more day trippers than Italy?

Other statistics claim Venice receives 30 million visitors a year, meaning, if the world tourism rankings are to be believed, there are only an additional 13 million visitors in all the rest of Italy.

Don’t worry: I am not going to let this subject go until I have examined spend and other data to see what lies at the bottom of this mystery. And please comment with your theories.

Pictures above: Ponto Vecchio, Florence and Garisenda and Asinelli Towers in Bologna