Antica Tripperia Nerbone

Antica Tripperia Nerbone translates as “Nerbone’s Old Tripe Stand”  It is a well known Florentine landmark. Tripe stands are big in Florence. It is a local delicacy. And as much as we love all things Florentine, tripe is one delicacy that we have passed up for the last nine years and counting. Fortunately, “Nerbone” (ner-bon-eh) has evolved. Located within the large Mercato Centrale near San Lorenzo, Nerbone not only makes all the guide books, but is also featured in our culinary bible, L’Osterie d’Italia (a guide to local and regional dining in Italy). It is a place to go for a traditional Tuscan meal (i.e. antipasti, pasta or zuppa, meat or fish, side dishes of vegetables or salad, bread, wine) without any formalities or traditional ammenities whatsoever: no tablecloths, no wine list, no placemats, no waiters. It is located on an inside corner of the Mercato Centrale with the serving kitchen on one side of the aisle and a bank of tables on the other side of the aisle. You stand in line to make your selection, then take your tray to any seat you can find at a table across the way. Oddly, it all works out. By the time you receive your meal, someone else has finished theirs, so there is a place for you to sit.  Your table partners can range from local workmen on their lunchbreak to wealthy Japanese tourists. It’s the luck of the draw.

There is always a line. I think the tripe had put us off in the past, but this year we vowed to try it. We were also encouraged by a nice American woman who said she ate there every day. While they do still offer tripe, the rest of the menu is traditional Tuscan fare and it changes every day. You select whatever you want. The portions are ample. We both started with a beautiful risotto of leeks and pancetta. We split a large dish of lightly marinated artichokes and a dish of turkey slices in a delicate mushroom sauce. Add a half liter of wine and we were in Heaven. This, in spite of the fact that the mercato is not heated and it was a co-o-o-old day. We ate in our coats and hats. It only added to the unique culinary ambience... Not fancy, this place. But the food was really good. Oh, and did I mention that the whole thing for the two of us came to just under 25 euro? We’ll put Nerbone into our rotation of great cheap eats in Florence.

Protests on March 8, La Festa delle Donne

The banner reads "Journeys for
women, journeys for peace".

March 8 in Italy is the Festa delle Donne, the Festival of the Women and it falls on the International Women’s Day. Italian men mark the Festa delle Donne in a way that seems to resemble, slightly at least, Valentine’s Day in our country. Men are expected to pick up sprays of little yellow spring flowers which are called mimosa in Italy. The flowers are small and delicate and last no more than a day; Italian women note, ruefully, that the celebration of women also lasts no more than a day.

Marching through Piazza San
Ambrogio, near our apartment.
The banner reads "Free all".

This year the celebration was much more edgy. The Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, has not ingratiated himself to Italians in general and to Italian women in particular with his “bad boy” behavior. “Bad boy”, however, is too mild a way to describe his problems. Berlusconi has been accused of keeping intimate company with  young ladies who were under the age of legal consent in Italy. There were already financial and legal scandals in the public mind and the sex scandals have raised the temperature still higher.

Many women wore this sign.

Italian women, including Tuscan women, are not amused by the Prime Minister’s behavior. This year the Festa dell Donne in Italy was reason for demonstrations that gathered people from many points of view but the coarse behavior of the country’s leader dominated the concerns expressed by the women and men who marched to protest the behavior of their Prime Minister. 

The sign reads "Not just meat".

Here are some pictures from today’s demonstration in Florence.

La Fiorentina vs. Catania/ A Culture Walk

Due tifosi fiorentini

Florence played Catania this Sunday afternoon before 21,000 local fans (in Italian, fans are tifosi), two of them recent arrivals from the land of Otto the Orange. Since we were in the land of La Viola, the color of the Florentine soccer team, we put the orange aside in favor of, as they call it here, viola.

Florence won the match 3 to nil. Catania passed well but Florence’s two offensive stars, Adrian Mutu and Alberto Gilardino, were too much for the Catania defenders. Mutu scored twice in the first half on passes from Gilardino. Gilardino scored once in the second half on a pass from Mutu.

A family of tifosi viola

We spent an afternoon in a concrete stadium, singing and cheering with the Florentines. There was a good turn out of young and old and the fans were sometimes grumpy but never intoxicated since no alcohol is sold in the stadium. Perhaps a weak opponent against a disappointing local team had kept some of the more outspoken fans at home. Except for some occasional colorful language, it was a family-friendly atmosphere.

Florence has not had a good year; Florence is in eleventh place in the twenty team A league. Catania, however, is worse, fourteenth in the same A league. Interestingly, here the bottom four teams in the A league get dropped (or as they say, relegated) to the B league and, correspondingly, the top of the B league teams get promoted to the A league. Catania is staring that possibility, that terrible shame, straight in the face. Florence is not facing that fate but the Florentines are accustomed to a better performance than they’ve seen so far this year.

We attended the game with Sondra, a retired political science professor, who has many connections to our family, too many to begin to go through here. She enjoys the games and  likes to enlarge her considerable knowledge of colloquial vocabulary and usage.

A side note:  We hate to leave the impression that we’re in an artistic jewel of a city and that we’re only yelling at opposing soccer teams. Yes, we are yelling at opposing soccer teams but we’ve also had some pleasant uplifting experiences. 


Today we visited Orsanmichele Church in the center of town. It was a combination church on the ground floor and granary on the upper floors, an expression of Florentine pragmatism. The upper floors are now a museum containing the sculptures done by Florentine masters and placed in niches on the outside on the ground level. The outside niches now contain copies and the originals are out of the elements on the second floor.

Opposite end of the stadium,
reserved for the most serious tifosi

On Saturday we visited Medici Tombs. Michelangelo designed the space, designed the details, and sculpted seven statues. Two of the Medici, Lorenzo and Giuliano, were depicted as the Thoughtful Life and the Active Life respectively. In front of representations of the passage of time. Below Lorenzo and on his tomb are massive reclining figures of Dusk (left) and Dawn (right). Below Giuliano and on his tomb are massive figures of Night (left) and Day (right). Lorenzo and Giuliano face each other across the room and are turned toward a Madonna and Child on the wall between them. 


Seven pieces by Michelangelo in a somber space designed by the artist. It’s a lot to think about.

Mutu passes

But enough of culture. Sunday's soccer game drew a restless crowd. Until the first score there was quite a lot of coaching from the seats. Then people chanted MU TU for the Romanian striker who made the first score. A few minutes later the cheer was repeated when Mutu scored again. We were sitting in one of the ends of the stadium and this action was at the other end, in front of the most rabid Florentine Viola fans who were waving flags, singing, and cheering.

Gilardino scores!

The teams reversed direction for the second half and Mutu repaid Gilardino for his assists in the first half. In a play that developed in what seemed like an instant, Mutu drove to the goal, passed to Gilardino, and Gilardino scored. Somehow I caught the action that took place in front of us.

Is this really a good idea?

As the game closed some of the male spectators at the bottom of our section celebrated  the victory Green Bay-style by waving banners and their shirts. It was a sunny but cool day, a little too cool for a sane person to be testing the air temperature au natural.

At the end of the game Florence moved up to tenth place and Catania fell to sixteenth place. It must have been a quiet ride back to Catania.

Department of Wry Public Art

Florence is a city full of art, a city of art. There are tabernacles on the sides of many buildings. There are statues in courtyards and, of course, there are courtyards everywhere. There are impressive palaces, churches, and civic buildings adorned inside and out with paintings and sculptures. In fact, even our apartment is in a building with a lovely statue guarding the mailboxes in the lobby. (By the way, please see the Thursday, March 3 post for an important announcement.)

All this art is not lost on the current generation of Florentines. Which brings us to the ...

Department  of Wry Public Art

Florence uses international traffic signage, signs that give you useful advice about traffic and street layouts without words, only simple symbols. We’ve found two of these signs to have been slightly modified by local artists in amusing ways.

The first sign was near the soccer stadium, an area we visited earlier this week when we picked up tickets for Sunday’s game, Florence versus Catania. The sign is the international sign for Do Not Enter which was posted, in this case, on a one-way street. A slight modification has been made to the sign.

The second sign warns the motorist that there is a T intersection ahead. Perhaps the urban artist was inspired by the fact that the intersections ahead happens to be on the side of one of Florence’s main cathedrals, Santa Croce.

Welcome Home

Being here is easy. People welcome us back as if they were expecting us, and somehow we slip into our lives here. Urbano and Svetlana sell us ricotta and stracchino and prosciutto and olives. Paula and Patrizia sell us bread and cantucci. GianCarlo gives us treats - "don't ask what it is. It is just to enjoy eating" - and calls us his "bambini." Andrea and Francesco pour us bottles of sfuso from Montalcino: 3 euro per litro! Fabio introduces us to his friends, the regulars, at Trattoria Mario and proudly displays the pictures we've taken for him of us wearing Trattoria Mario tee shirts in front of various iconic American venues: Niagra Falls, the White House, the Capitol, the Washington Monument, the Golden Gate Bridge. We were even greeted with a "ben tornati" at Casalinga, a very busy, large trattoria in the Ultr'Arno.  There is a place for us here, and once we arrive, we just slip into it. Very comfortable. Very easy.

New Digs

This year we have a new apartment in Florence. We really liked the location of the apartment that we first took in 2003 and returned to until 2010 but the interior of the apartment should have been better cared for and was not. This year we found a new apartment, not far away, for a similar price. The map shows our old apartment on Borgo la Croce 15 at letter A and our new apartment on Via Ghibellina 51 at letter B. It’s about a 5 minute walk between the two apartments and, best of all, the Sant’Ambrogio market is near our new place.

A=new apartment, B=old apartment

The section of Via Ghibellina is old but not quite as old as Borgo la Croce which was built in the 1300s. The map shows Casa Buonarroti two blocks toward the center of Florence on Via Ghibellina. The building was purchased by Michelangelo for his family in the 1500s. The building is now a museum and includes two works from his teens, the Madonna of the Stairs and the Battle of the Centaurs. (And Mozart wrote his first symphony when he was eight years old.)

Door to Via Ghibellina

Our apartment is in a three-story building that may be as old as the Buonarroti house two blocks away. Here is a picture of the front door of the building in which our apartment is located. Proud, impressive.

Unfortunately, the hallway inside is very bare. The hallway leads to a courtyard where people park their bicycles, pigeons roost at night, and some of the forgotten or abandoned bicycles have suffered from the attentions of the roosting pigeons. We haven’t met the bike owners yet.

The hallway leads to a stairway that surrounds an open area that reaches from the ground floor to the third floor. Stairs, landing, stairs, landing, etc. with a large open space in the middle. The open space has been mostly filled by an elevator which may operate but may not; we haven’t tried it. Our apartment in on the second floor so the walk up isn’t too bad.

Maria Sofia,
Guardian of the Mailboxes

The apartment is quite nice. Two bedrooms, two bathrooms, lots of light, good heat, good hot water, everything works, nothing to complain about. (Is anyone booking a ticket, yet?) The space from the door on the street to our apartment door is, however, not impressive. The building is old and the common space has been left as is for many, many years.

But we are in Italy and Italy always has unexpected charms and/or curiosities. In a niche at the bottom of the stairs on the ground floor is a life-size statue. Please see the picture to the right. She is lovely, isn’t she? We’re mulling over a name to give to her. Do you have a suggestion for a name we could give to her? We'll add the name in a caption under the picture.

We look forward to hearing from you.

A Haircut With Gigi

As you may have noticed, each year as I leave home for Italy at the end of February, I'm pretty shaggy. There is a good reason for my accumulated excess of hair. It’s not an accident or an oversight.

During

Some years ago Annette and I noticed a barber in Florence whose first name seemed to be the name of his shop. “Gigi” in a cursive-looking script is written above his small barber shop on Via Pietrapiana, the street that takes us each day on foot from our apartment to the center of Florence. Gigi has his own shop; there is only one chair but a steady stream of customers. 

My first visit to Gigi some years ago was partly out of curiosity but mostly out of a need to get a grip on an excessive amount of hair. I remembered that the Magliozzi brothers close their show, Car Talk, with a credit: “Mr. Gigi does our hair.” Of course, this was a different Gigi, not a Mr. Gigi and not Signore Gigi (later he was clear that his name was simply “Gigi”.) 

I learned that Gigi is a great barber. Personal services in Italy tend to be good while services offered by official bureaucracies tend to be really bad. As a result, one tends to avoid the Post Office and the bank and look forward to a hair cut. He is quick and Annette likes the results.

After

I was so happy with that first hair cut that I plan to get shaggy during January and February and get a hair cut in the first few days after we arrive in Florence. That haircut lasts for a month and then I get another one at the end of March before we leave in a rented car for the south. A few weeks later we return to fly home but just before we fly, it's time for one last touch up.

Florence is an expensive city but a haircut done by Gigi costs 9 Euro. Gettin a haircut is a pleasant way to begin our time in Florence and catch up on the progress of the local soccer team. (Sadly, that’s a painful subject this year.)

The picture on the wall behind Gigi shows him in costume at a recent celebration of Calcio Storico, a historic re-enactment of traditional soccer in Florence. Judging by his description the traditional game was nothing like soccer today (calcio in Italian) but more like rugby but with fewer rules.

The picture above us shows Piazzo Ciompi, the piazza between our apartment and his shop, during the great flood of Florence in November 1965. The flooded arches are the Loggia de Pesce. If you’re curious, this picture shows the same structure today: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/Loggia_del_pesce%2C_firenze.JPG. Florentines, including Gigi, remember this awful event in their city’s history.