In The Competitive Advantage of Nations Michael Porter argued that Milan was good at making shoes for two reasons: practice and an educated clientele. His was a story of positive feedbacks before the concept blew up due to well....positive feedbacks. It's a simple idea: The more shoes you make, the better you get at making shoes. The better you get at making shoes, the better your clientele gets at recognizing and demanding really great shoes.
I learned tonight that the same logic applies to gelato. I'd been going to local neighborhood gelato places -- seeking out authenticity. Tonight I went to the glamorous gelato place -- La Freaccadiicio Ridiculo Gelato (or something like that). The place is all orange. It should be in Amsterdam. The "special" tonight was riccotto, marscapone, cacao in a cream base. I mean get real. No way. I forced it down, slowly with the itsy bitsy plastic spoon they hand out. How exactly centuries of chain smoking Italians saying ''too much marscapone" or "I think the chocolate's not dark enough" led to this sublime creation will remain a mystery. I was happy just to be along for the ride.
On day 9, two things begin to happen to the touristo. Whereas you once glamourized everything Italian and denigrated the Wal-Marts, processed food, and modest architecture of home, you now start to miss the small things. like say grass, or perhaps a tree. The nearest tree's about a quarter mile away and it belongs to the church. Yet at the same time if you're in a `real' city like Bologna (and not say Paris, Venice, or Florence) you start to get a sense of the rhythms of the place. Mysteries like "how do people drink wine from five to seven, enjoy a gelato from seven to eight, and then eat dinner from 10 to midnight every night without collapsing?" reveal themselves.
The answer: there are three sets of people. The wine drinkers live outside of down. They relax, have wine, wait for the traffic to clear. The gelatos, they're people who're heading home after going out for a walk and they'll perhaps have a little dish at home, or perhaps not. The late night dinner people -- they've been working or
hanging at home and decided to head out for the evening.
Another mystery revealed concerns the main piazza and the neptune fountain. The area is so beautiful, yet it's not very crowded (see left). The cafes offer lovely views of a 900 year old church and probably the second best public library I've ever seen. It used to be a castle and then the residence of the pope's envoy to Bologna. In the event you're interested, the best public library I've ever seen is two blocks away. A quick FYI, towns that have had universities for more than 800 years have an early start on building good libraries. The answer to the mystery is the $5 cokes. Even though the tourists are few, the locals will pay the price just to enjoy the view.
The class I'm teaching continues to be fun. The students seem more engaged each lecture. I'm learning to go more slowly and to make fewer referenes to Mike Dukakis. And, I'm realizing how lucky I am. This is a good gig. We should all be so lucky. Nine days around Italians and you learn to enjoy life a bit.
And so, as wonderful as it is here, for the first time, I notice that the sounds of Bologna outside my window include no birds.
