Our Notable Memories of Italy and Germany

By Victor Damico

Victor Damicos memoir begins in 1963 in Syracuse, New York, where he and

his wife Yvonne decide that she and their three children will move to Italy with

her parents while he works on a special assignment. Yvonnes Italian background,

language skills, and personal connections open the door to an intimate relationship

with the people, culture, food, and landscape of Italy that develops over decades.

Victor reveals his insights into the Italian system of healthcare, driving on local

roads, and sampling the pleasures of ne dining from one culinary region to the

next. Another job opportunity for Victor takes he and Yvonne to Munich, where

they explore the wonderful parks, cycling paths, and cafes and later venture into the

nearby countryside for hiking and exploring mountain villages, gardens, and spas.

This travel memoir tells the story of the authors travels throughout Italy and

Germany during the years he and his wife lived and worked abroad.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jun 25, 2016
• ISBN: 9781532000003

Victor Damico

Victor and Yvonne made many trips to Italy and Germany and lived together in Munich for four years. ey formed lasting bonds with the people they met abroad. e author has written four previous books about his travels. Victor resides in Syracuse, New York.

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Copyright © 2016 Victor Damico.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-9999-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-0000-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016909791

iUniverse rev. date:  06/25/2016

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

An Opportunity to Leave the Country

Chronicle of Learning about Italy and Germany

My Perspective and Feelings about Italy

Ivrea: a town where it all began

Vestigne: A village that offered us hospitality

Robbio: Home of a wonderful couple

Encountering Italian Mountains and Roads

Dining is Something Special

Mourning the Deceased

Observing Italian Approach to Healthcare

Dealing with Italian Bureaucracy

Benefiting from Italian Helpfulness

A Glimpse of Popular Cities

Some Special Travel Experiences

My Perspective and Feelings about Germany

Munich: A wonderful Place to Live

Establishing a Home in Munich

Working in Germany

Entertaining Visitors

Koblenz: Our second Home

Dining a Hardy and Friendly Experience

Fascination with Saunas

Moving about Germany

Visiting German Towns and Cities

Getting to know the People

Reflecting on Our Italian and Germany Experiences

Acknowledgements

Being aware of our travel memories makes me realize how special my wife made our marriage again Sheila Lange grammatical editing turned my manuscript into a document that read much more smoothly

Dedication to family and friends

Introduction

My wife Yvonne and I have had many opportunities to travel throughout Western Europe. We visited all the countries except for Ireland and Poland, and after the Iron Curtain came down we went into Hungary and the Czech Republic. All these occasions gave us many fond memories and I wrote about many of them in earlier books. However in Italy and Germany we were able to develop a special relationship because of the length of time we spent in each country. Our experiences in each nation were quite different. In Italy we got to know quite well both the land and the people because Yvonne spoke the language and her parents lived there for many years. We traveled to Germany on many occasions and lived in Munich for four years, but our unfamiliarity with the language limited our contacts with non- English nonspeaking people. As a result, we had a more impersonal and formal contact with the country. However, in each case we felt a unique attraction to the lands and their cultures.

I have written about these memories in earlier books, but now I wish to write about these travels in a way that tells a story about each country, how we connected with them, and why these recollections are so notable. Before embarking on our adventures, I will describe the features of our earlier life that made it all possible.

Yvonne’s upbringing was most unusual since she was not just born into an Italian family, but one that in many ways resembled a family living in her parent’s native Piedmont. Yvonne’s parents had emigrated to New York city from Ivrea in the Piedmont area of Italy. In 1934 Ines brought Yvonne into the world and stopped working to care for her baby. Ines and Lorenzo both spoke English, but rather poorly, so they addressed their daughter in the Piedmont dialect. After a few years, Ines felt she needed to go back to work to maintain their standard of living, so she approached her mother, Maria, in Italy to come and take care of Yvonne. Since her mother was a widow living by herself in Vestigue, a small village in Piedmont, she felt the request was a good opportunity. Maria arrived when Yvonne was four years old and her warm and gentle personality immediately created a loving bond with Yvonne. Her granddaughter’s language skills increased because Maria spoke not only the dialect, but was fluent in French since she had spent many years living in France. As Yvonne approached kindergarten age Ines decided her daughter needed to learn to speak English. She went and spoke to the principal of a nearby grammar school and convinced her to let Yvonne start school six months early. It took several years for Yvonne to feel comfortable speaking English, but she did extremely well in school, became an avid reader, and was consistently placed in rapid- learning classes.

Just prior to entering college and after her freshman year, Yvonne spent her summers visiting Italy with her parents. These travels created in her an interest in spending more time in Italy and she enrolled in the University of Turin for her junior college year. At the youthful age of nineteen Yvonne’s travels and college exposure made her a worldly New Yorker with a strong Italian flavoring.

Although we were both of Italian heritage, my early years growing up were quite different. Both my parents were born in America attended public schools and spoke only English to me and my sister and brother. I was very young when my grandparents passed away, so I never heard anything about their lives before they emigrated. Also, what my parents may have known about their lives in Italy was never told to me. In fact, I knew little of my own parents’ experiences in growing up. My father made friends easily and was street smart which helped him be successful as a real estate and wine salesman. My mother was somewhat naïve, but she transformed her early experiences working in garment factories into being a successful dressmaker working at home.

We lived in Queens NY, and when it was time to enter high school I received an education in electrical technology at Brooklyn Technical High School. I had never seriously thought about attending college until my senior year. Since my parents were not able to assist me financially in attending a college, I tried to get a job requiring some electrical training. With the war ended and men either entering the workplace or attending college, it was very difficult to find a career path. I found out about a junior college with a cooperative work program that allowed me to earn some money while I attended a basic engineering course. After two and a half years I received my degree and was accepted into NYU’s college of engineering located in the Bronx. I became a dean’s list student, graduated with honors, and was prepared to enter the work force. However, when I was taking a final exam, the chairman of the electrical engineering department offered me a fellowship to obtain a master’s degree and I accepted.

I had received a fine engineering degree, but I only learned what life was like outside the big city from what I read. An occasional trip into New Jersey was as far as I got from New York. I was a typical New Yorker who thought that being part of one of the most interesting and exciting cities in the world gave a person a sophisticated outlook. It took me a while to realize how wrong I was!

Yvonne and I met while I was attending graduate school and we dated for a while before she left to attend college in Italy. After long sessions of letter writing, we both realized that our future should be spent together. I left an engineering position to complete my draft obligation, and while I was in the Army we got married and lived in El Paso, Texas for a while. We felt a job outside of New York City was better suited to our aspirations and I accepted a position with General Electric in Syracuse NY.

We didn’t realize it at the time, but Yvonne’s language skills and travel experience coupled with my professional background that would create several interesting job opportunities would also lead to so many overseas adventures.

An Opportunity to Leave the Country

After coming to Syracuse Yvonne and I embarked on a very full and typical American lifestyle. I had some challenging work assignments over the next six years, while Yvonne had to cope with bringing three children into the world. We were quite happy with our life when an unexpected and unusual situation arose. I had an important and critical assignment on a large long- range tracking radar being developed for the Air Force. Its purpose was to track space objects and Russian missile launches from a site in remote eastern Turkey. The installation that was to take place in the spring of 1963 would require several months to complete, and I was expected to participate in the effort. However, I was faced with the obvious problem of how to support Yvonne in caring for three small children: Susan was five, Larry was three and Ray was twenty months. We discussed the situation with Yvonne’s mother, hoping that maybe she could spend a great deal of time living in Syracuse. When Ines and Lorenzo visited us in Christmas of 1962 we discussed things further and they had a solution that was a complete surprise.

They had been planning a trip to Italy to spend the summer of 1963 in Ivrea and would be willing to increase their stay if Yvonne and the children would join them. Yvonne was a bit shocked by the offer, but almost immediately she agreed it was a great idea. We then started to discuss plans for the visit. An apartment would be necessary and a car needed to be bought and delivered to Italy, and arrangements made to book ship reservations for everyone, since Lorenzo didn’t want to fly. We bought a Volkswagen Beetle to be delivered in Milan and ship bookings were made for early April. We shipped a large trunk with several items we thought would be useful in Italy and I drove the family and their luggage to New York. It turned out my departure had been slightly delayed, and I would be alone for several weeks while everyone would be settling into Ivrea.

When the ship docked in Genoa, Lorenzo’s cousin Angelo was there with his truck and Ines’ cousin Franco was also there with his car. That night everybody and their luggage were settled into Illa’s Hotel Nazionale. Illa was the wife of Lorenzo’s brother and they had run the one- star 15 room hotel with a popular restaurant for several years and when her husband passed away, she continued to manage it by herself. She was very hard- working and had beengenerous to Yvonne and her parents by giving them lodging and board during their several visits in the past.

Before they all arrived Angelo had located a new apartment that they could rent and the next day Yvonne went to see it (She was very anxious to move out of the hotel.) The apartment was suitable, but like most unfurnished apartments in Europe it needed a number of things to make it livable. It required lighting, a stove, a refrigerator, kitchen cupboards, and a wardrobe for clothes besides the usual furniture. Angelo knew a merchant who could help them acquire these items. Yvonne helped select the basic necessities to be bought and to negotiate the price for their use. The merchant knew the items would be used for only six months and he agreed to buy them back. It was one of Yvonne’s first experiences with Italian compassion.

It took two weeks to get the apartment ready, and during that time she got to also experience the compassion of the garage owner next to her aunt’s hotel. He had spent time being friendly to Yvonne and the children. When he found out that she would have to go to Italy’s largest city to pick up our car he felt it was a difficult chore. He offered to go with a friend and pick up the car for her, Yvonne was so thankful. Moving into the apartment presented some problems, but Yvonne was greatly relieved to leave the hotel and its lack of family privacy. Before she continued her new family situation, she had a date to meet with me in Rome.

In May of 1963 I found myself on a Pan Am flight that went to Paris and Rome before going to Turkey. Several weeks earlier my family and in-laws left by boat to take up residence in Italy. I made arrangements to extend my stopover in Rome, so that Yvonne and I could spend time together. We didn’t know when we could see each other again.

On my first trip across the Atlantic I was filled with excitement and anticipation and I still remember my brief stopover in Paris. The airport was so modern and the people looked and dressed differently.(I was getting my first contact with European culture.) Yvonne and I met at the Rome airport and took some buses that eventually got us to a small lovely pensione in the heart of Rome. The owner was glad to have Americans as guests and that evening he made cocktails for us. Afterwards we went out to dinner at a nearby restaurant and after dinner the proprietor organized the patrons into participating in a broom dance. It was like musical chairs without the chairs. Since Yvonne was the most attractive woman on the floor I soon found myself often dancing with the broom. The dancing was fun and provided me with some close contact with Italian women, but in all my later years eating in Italian restaurants I never again encountered such an activity.

The next morning the very nice owner of the pensione wanted to again please his American guests and he prepared a wonderful and substantial breakfast for us. At the time, a typical Italian breakfast consisted of rolls, butter, marmalade and coffee. After we finished eating we set out for a day of sightseeing. As we stepped out onto the one way street in front of the pensione we heard the screech of brakes and then I saw two cars almost have a head on collision. Both men got out of their cars and started arguing with one another. I couldn’t imagine what the man going the wrong way was complaining about. They continued arguing as we walked away; Yvonne and I were amused by the situation, but were not able to understand their behavior.

In my later travels in Italy I noticed other strange traffic situations. Parking on the sidewalk is very common, but even worse is parking by putting two wheels on a raised street divider and requiring cars to squeeze by you. I remember a small car parked so a bus couldn’t get around it. The driver got out and elicited the help of some pedestrians to pick the car up and put it on the sidewalk. At another time on a tour the bus was stuck in a traffic jam about a quarter of a mile from where it wanted to turn left. In the other direction the traffic was moving freely, so the guide got out and directed the driver to cross over into the opposite lane and follow her down the road to where the driver was able to make his turn. Italians are very resourceful and the ease with which they take liberties with regulations increases their effectiveness.

Before starting our sightseeing we decided to stop at a nearby Pan Am office to confirm my flight. The smiling agent took my ticket and after noting the flight information on her display she turned to me with a serious expression and said the flight would not be going to Turkey. It seems a revolution was taking place and the flight was being diverted to Beirut. I had no desire to wait out developments in Lebanon and decided staying in Italy seeing my family was a much more attractive option. We found that there was a flight to Turin, where Yvonne was planning to return to, in two hours. Our luggage was at the pensione and the airport was an hour outside of the city, so it seemed making that connection was not possible. Yvonne decided to call the pensione proprietor to see if he had any suggestions. After hearing about the problem he immediately said in typical Italian fashion "Nessun problema". He would have his maid pack our suitcases and would get a driver to take them to the Al Italia ticket counter. It was difficult to believe a person could be so obliging to strangers. Yvonne thanked him profusely and he just replied he was more than happy to help us. When we got to the airport our bags arrived with our lodging bill. We added a generous tip to our payment since we were so grateful for the help received.

Seeing my family settled into the apartment they had rented was such a treat. The long separation caused my two- year old son to avoid me for awhile, but I was overjoyed to see how happy and comfortable they were in their new surroundings. Their grandparents and other relatives made them feel welcome; in fact, we found all Italians are very partial and friendly to small children.

The first relative I met was Barba Baldo, Yvonne’s mother’s brother. He lived in a neighboring village of Vestigue and on Sundays he rode his bike into Ivrea to have dinner with his sister and her family. In spite of language difficulties, he played with the children and built up a wonderful rapport. This was somewhat unusual since the man was in his early sixties and had been a bachelor all his life, but Yvonne said he so enjoyed the children. After Sunday dinner and several glasses of wine Yvonne felt he wasn’t up to riding his bike to Vestigue about six miles away. So, Yvonne somehow fitted his bike into the little Volkswagen and drove him home.

Baldo had lived with his mother in a very primitive house in the village after she returned to Italy in 1950 after she spending years caring for Yvonne in