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The Florentine
Useful resources about life in Florence, Italy, focusing on the international community.
The whole world is full of cultural investigators, and today, it's just you, me and the fencepost trying to figure out why people do the things they do. There are tons of signs to scrutinize along the road to cultural understanding and they all point to how a population
For some people ‘sorry' is a sour word, too tart to keep inside the mouth, for even a moment. For others, ‘sorry' is like a cough-drop, slightly menthol-flavored and meant to relieve, not heal. And then there are those for whom it's not about words
If you ask Francesca why she became a tour guide, she'll tell you about having to inventarsi una professione after her university degree brought her nothing but harrying waitressing jobs during high season. In the end, guiding suits her. Francesca's ability to look a complaining client
When it comes to food, history and culture, the Italians and French are close rivals. However, Italy were recently crowned the undisputed master of passion, winning the title ‘best kissers ...
This morning, a newspaper whose name means ‘read' printed a headline that I've been trying to get my head around. One Italian in 10, it says, suffers from stress da rientro, a form of the blues that stems from one's disgruntled return to work and sudden withdrawal
A freelance photographer based in Milan, Dave Yoder has an ambitious fund-raising goal for an equally ambitious project: raising over 250,000 U.S. dollars to build a super high-tech camera that ...
Simone Ciabatti is a guide, a businessman and a proud Florentine who wants to share his city with others-and to do it in the most inventive way possible. For years, Simone has run his company, Accord Solutions, with an eye toward the innovative. His Segway tours, gelato tastings and
Italians rarely have middle names, but if my friend Paola had one, it would be ‘Intimidating.' She realizes I feel this way and doesn't mind it in the least. I truly like her, and she knows that, too. So different from my own phlegmatic nature, capable people impress
There is no way to sugarcoat this: Staying in the city with bambini during the scorching summer months of July and August ain't easy. It's hot. School's out. Even summer camp goes on vacation. Your friends and neighbors are at the beach. But fear not-all it
Living abroad is an exercise in acceptance. When you stop craving chocolate-chip cookies and consider Cantucci a satisfactory dessert instead of a jaw-breaking stone-age fossil, you're in. When the memory of sales tax becomes as faded as a tricolored flag left hanging since the last
My mother-in-law likes to tell my children the Tuscan joke about the cat that waited for the mouse to emerge from its hole in the wall. For three days, the cat sat outside the mouse's home, waiting, waiting, waiting. When eventually the cat barked ‘bow wow,'
In the movies, workers sit in cubicles and wait for the day they'll be asked to pile their picture frames into a topless box and take their bedraggled desk-top plant elsewhere. This happens in real life too and it's called ‘being fired'. If you are an
The little black dress was invented to make fancy hotel dinners bearable, even when the table is too wide to attempt to talk across it. Parties like these are called ‘functions,' and diners usually butter up their nearest neighbors rather than buttering their own bread. If you're a
Italians usually pooh-pooh precision, brushing off Anglo exactitude as neurosis pure and simple. Minutes matter little; promises are more symbolic than specific; plans evaporate as quickly as boiling water in a pot. And, hey, I get it. The hour hand on my watch hasn't worked for a century
I am about to give you the recipe for a perfect family Saturday afternoon in Florence. Grab the car, saddle up the motorino or hop on the number 10 bus and get yourself to the Tree Experience Parco Avventura di Vincigliata in Fiesole because this place rocks. A mix
