Trip to Florence no. 1, part two

General Life Comments:

I am so grateful that Middlebury has laundry machines; taking half an afternoon+ to hand wash all one’s clothes would be difficult to manage amid all the work and whatnot. But I can deal with it while here, at least, given that I don’t have an immediate time constraint on most of my assignments for the term. Hah, the other night I was chatting with someone from Middlebury and they mentioned having to spend all day doing homework, and the really odd thing was that my brain went “……….. oh! That’s right, there is lots of very time-consuming work back at Middlebury! I almost forgot!” Given that I’ve never had a lack of homework back at Midd, plus working one or two jobs at a time, plus something of a social life, I’m amused at what 2 months away from that super-busy-ness has done to my memory, even after having been through language school.

Today has been generally uneventful, although I guess I can say that I continue to quite enjoy my linguistics class, I’m getting an idea about the intended scope of my geography class, am still quite relieved that that doctor won’t be living here, and have found that I can once again appreciate listening to some music that was emotionally off-limits for the last half-year, or at least start to do so. All of which are good things! Oh! I also finally received my absentee ballot in the mail! Exciting! I get to be a participating, responsible citizen and vote for the first time! (Ok, that’s too many exclamation points there…) I’ll be heading over to the post office first thing after class tomorrow morning, and will proceed to once again negotiate with the postal workers about the best way to mail something quickly. Goody.

That reminds me: some people long ago asked for my mailing address, and at the time I wasn’t sure what it would be or if I could actually reliably receive anything here. I most definitely would not trust packages to arrive in either a timely fashion (i.e.: before I go back to the US) or in one piece (as I’ve heard enough theft stories), but simple, flat letters should be able to arrive, if anyone is interested in sending me anything ever. My address is: Elisabeth Hahn, Corso della Giovecca 168, Ferrara 44100, Italia. It’s best to have my name like that, since my landlords might possibly be confused if any of my other names/nicknames were on the envelope instead. I also need to get around to sending postcards to people at some point…


Immigrant-Watching in Florence:

So where was I? Oh yes, on the Ponte Vecchio. Something interesting that we observed on the bridge, and then actually intentionally watched for a little bit on the other side was … the immigrants. Sounds terrible of me, I know, but it was true. Let me explain. You see, Italy has a huge issue with illegal immigrants, with the bulk coming from northern Africa and the Middle East, logically enough. This is some of what I know about the immigrant situation here, which I’m sure is not the whole picture, given that I am neither a specialist in this, an Italian, or one of these people. They are usually extremely poor where they come from, young, and the most common way for them to be able to afford the journey to Europe is to make a deal with someone who functions rather like a pimp. This boss gets them into Europe illegally, gives them a place to stay with other immigrants (usually horrific conditions at first), teaches them a bit of the language of whatever country they end up in, and gives them merchandise to sell, focusing on the tourist market. These people then sell low-quality touristy wares on the city streets, and have to give a large percentage of the profits back to the boss – hence the pimp aspect, or perhaps indentured servitude – and get stuck in this position for years.

This is, however, waaaay better than what happens to the majority in Italy that get jobs working for such bosses in agriculture or factories. Unfortunately, the higher the immigrant population in an area, the vastly greater the crime rates, which builds the Italian prejudice against them, making it more difficult to get an education and better jobs, making more desperate idiots resort to crime as an additional source of income beyond their terrible farm/tourist-rip-off payments. This is true of Ferrara, which is surrounded by farmland, and has just enough bustle in the commercial/tourist center to have a few Africans selling fake designer handbags on the streets, as well as a strong correlation in rising crime to rising immigrant numbers.

As Florence is such a major tourist attraction, even for Italians, I saw literally a few dozen groups of these hawkers in a relatively small city area in just one day. They work in teams on a particular block, with at least one person on the lookout on the corners to warn about approaching police (which is what leads to why they can be interesting to watch in turn). I even saw what I’m taking as evidence within these groups of the pimp/boss system: across the variety of neighborhoods through which I walked, ALL the Arabs had the same sets of poster-prints of famous Florentine art which they laid out in rows along the street with the same techniques, almost ALL the Africans had the same kinds of fake designer handbags which they carried in/laid out on square white sheets of apparently the same size, and ALL the Asians each had the same three sets of wares (toy cars, mini camera tripods and woven-grass animals on strings) that they carried in shopping bags. Totally and absolutely divided by race, not even talking to each other and never having the same products as the other kinds of immigrants, although they did give each other the warning signals when on the same street.

Being illegal immigrants and not allowed to harass tourists or local citizens for their wares as they do, these people seem to be absolutely terrified of the police, who in turn seem to enjoy terrifying them as though it were a game – the cops slowly drive around the block again and again, and every time the car is spotted coming, a signal’s given and the panicking sellers scoop up 20 feet of posters in one smooth move (they’re overlapped carefully for this purpose) or wrap up their sheet of bags or toss the toys and tripods into the shopping bag in maybe 5 seconds.

It’s frankly impressive to see a street lined with such sellers frantically and suddenly disappear into the crowd in 5-10 seconds as a cop car pulls around the corner, and then reemerge a quarter block down, quickly set up, and soon after repeat the whole process. I feel bad for these people, but I don’t need to waste my money on pieces of crap that I don’t need, were probably badly made, and are probably damaged by the constant movement, so of course I didn’t buy anything. Nor did anyone else I saw in the streets for the whole day and a half; and I only saw one succeed in selling some cute toys to a family with kids in Venice (the sets of merchandise are different in Venice, and the sellers less common). All that seemed to be missing from the similar situations we talked about in the Global Economy and Italian 252 was the famous line “Vu compra?” that is the stereotypical immigrant butchering of the Italian question “will you buy?” or “do you want to buy?”

So yeah. That was interesting to actually get to observe, having heard from the distance of a Vermont college classroom about this European underclass and their organization. The rest of Friday night consisted of a delicious dinner, talking more with the family, and my first ever by-myself ride in a taxi or stay in a hostel.

I’m going to split this up now, in case I get too tired to finish tonight and to make the pieces more easily identifiable for those of you who read my super long posts in installments. Next up: 1754 stairs and a most satisfying view.