San Donnino part 3: Dead man walking

Since the annual San Donnino festa is likely to be part of our life, and therefore of this blog, for some time to come, it seems like a good idea to present the details of his story all in one place, instead of continuing to dribble them out a bit at a time, as I've been doing. Here, then, is the man behind the holiday.

San Donnino, a.k.a. St. Domninus, is a distinctly minor figure in Catholic hagiography, pretty much unknown anywhere but Northern Italy. Therefore there's very little solid information about him; this is more legend than history. Domninus was born in Parma sometime in the second half of the third century CE and became a high official in the Roman hierarchy, serving as chamberlain and keeper of the royal crown to Emperor Maximian. 

A bas relief on the front of the Fidenza Duomo, below the figure of St. Simon Peter pointing the way to room, shows Domninus placing the crown on Maximian's head, apparently one of his daily duties.

You can see Domninus crowning Maximian in the lower right.

Maximian and his co-emperor, Diocletian, were pagan conservatives and in 303 CE they launched a vigorous campaign of persecution against Christians and other religious minorities. Christians were purged from the military, their churches were destroyed, their property was seized, and those who refused to make sacrifice to the Roman gods were sometimes put to death.

This didn't stop Domninus from secretly converting to the Christian faith. But in the year 304 Maximian discovered his chamberlain's heresy and ordered his execution. Domninus fled but Maximian's troops caught up with him just outside of what was then the Roman town of Fidentia as he was about to cross the river Stirone. They seized him and cut off his head.

But empowered by his Christian faith or some autonomic nervous response, Domninus rose up, picked up his severed head, walked across the Stirone. and lay down on the ground on the other side, cradling his head in his arms--a rather pointless gesture, but clearly miraculous. 

Another bas relief on the front of the cathedral shows Maximian wielding a sword on the left, on the right Domninus crossing the river with his head in his arms, and, in the center, the headless martyr being elevated to sainthood by two angels.

Interesting use of non-chronological storytelling.

The Roman soldiers, no doubt fearing that this was the start of a zombie apocalypse, apparently left the saint where he lay. Local Christians snuck out and hid the body of their latest martyr under some stones. 

A few decades later the bishop of Parma dreamt that a saint was buried in a spot by the Stirone, next to a brick inscribed, "Here is hidden the body of St. Domninus, martyr for Christ." With the assistance of this rather obvious clue, San Donnino's relics were found. The persecution of Christians having eased under the new emperor, Constantine, a small church was erected in that place to house what was left of the saint, whose name by now had been Italianized to San Donnino.

One day a man came to where San Donnino was buried to pray for help. His horse had been stolen and he wanted it back. Lo, the horse was returned. 

Walking while decapitated is certainly impressive, but not particularly endearing, and the miracle of the stolen horse seems to be neither. Nevertheless, San Donnino attracted enough devotees that the church had to be enlarged. over the next century or so. In the process it was noticed that, although the church had been built over the saint's remains, no one had kept track of exactly where they were. But a priest, inspired by divine intuition, discovered the saint's relics underneath the church in a sarcophagus labeled, "Here lies the body of the most blessed martyr Donnino." Again, this seems more obvious than miraculous, but perhaps you had to be there.

A more recent portrait of San Donnino inside the cathedral.

Donnino's posthumous popularity grew and more and more pilgrims began coming to pray in his church. So large were the crowds that one day as a group of pilgrims crossed over the Stirone the wooden bridge collapsed beneath them.  "But--a miracle!--thanks to the intercession of San Donnino no one was hurt, including a pregnant woman on whom numerous other people had fallen," reports the Fidenza cathedral's website. 

The pregnant woman and the collapsing bridge, also on the cathedral facade.

Perhaps because these miracles are a little underwhelming, in later centuries San Donnino developed a reputation for being able to cure rabies. It was claimed that sufferers who drank a mix of water and wine from a chalice after invoking San Donnino's aid were cured. A slightly more macabre version of the story said that the drink's efficacy was enhanced because one of the saint's teeth was embedded in the chalice. However he did it, curing rabies is definitely miraculous, since a rabies infection, once established, is usually fatal. 

This painting, by Cristoforo Savolini, shows Saints Borromeo and Appolonis (two other C-list saints) flanking Saint Domninus, who wears the outfit of a Roman centurion. I assume the dog is there because of the Fidenza saint's anti-rabies powers, although to me he looks not only non-rabid but like a very good boy.  

Poor San Donnino's remains were once again mislaid when some unspecified enemies of Catholicism razed the church in the 600s or so. But in the eighth century Charlemagne was en route to Rome to be crowned Holy Roman Emperor when (the story goes) his horse abruptly stopped at a spot by the Stirone and refused to go any farther. An angel appeared and told the soon-to-be emperor to dig for treasure in this spot. The treasure turned out to be San Donnino's relics. 

In a smart piece of medieval marketing, the village (borgo) where all these things occurred renamed itself Borgo San Donnino, and the structure housing the saint's remains became ever grander. In the 1100s construction of the present Duomo began and continued for a century and more. The cathedral became an important stop on the Via Francigena pilgrimage route, and the sculptures decorating the facade include not only images of the saint and his martyrdom but also numerous depictions of pilgrims making their way to Rome and the Holy Land.

Inside the cathedral is San Donnino's sarcophagus, which also features bas reliefs of his martyrdom and his miracles. Below the statue of the headless saint, the panel on the right shows, again, San Donnino crowning the Roman emperor. I'm pretty sure the panel on the left depicts the man praying for the return of his horse.

But the saint's actual bones (or what purport to be his bones) are housed in this more modern, more transparent crypt elsewhere in the Duomo.

You know it's him because his head is on his chest.

In the 1920s, when Mussolini's regime was seeking to rebrand Italy as Imperial Rome 2.0, the town fathers decided to change its name from Borgo San Donnino to Fidenza, a phonically updated version of the old Roman name. 

The saint and his cathedral nevertheless continue to loom large in the city. The Duomo is the city's most distinguished architectural feature, and although it's quite ascetic compared to the gaudy cathedral extravaganzas in many other Italian towns, here in Fidenza it's one of the few things of any interest to tourists. San Donnino's legend is part of the cathedral's appeal, and the town's, if only because it's so old and so odd. And the annual festa in the saint's honor is Fidenza's biggest event of the year and a source of community pride and pleasure. 

Whether or not San Donnino really carried his head across the river, whether or not he cured rabies or restored stolen horses to their owners, nowadays he is certainly doing a lot for Fidenza. It's no wonder they love him for it.

San Donnino part 2: Francigena interlude

Early Saturday morning I came out of our door a little after eight and was astonished to see the street clean and La Strega sedately serving coffee. Fidenza knows how to party and how to clean itself up afterwards.

I was out at this early hour to join Pam and a few other local exercise buffs for a walk along one small part of the Vig Francigena pilgrimage route, an event left over from the Via Francigena Festival a few weeks before. We gathered at the Piazza Grande, had our green passes checked, and took a van out to the little village of Castione Marchesi, about 8 kilometers (5 miles or so) away  There we disembarked and headed south to Fidenza on foot. 

We had excellent hiking weather that morning, overcast and a bit cool. As the Via Francigena heads across the Po Valley it's also ideal for us older trekkers, since the land is mostly flat as a pancake.

I think those are the Appenines in the distance, but don't quote me.

Almost all of our walk went through the farmland that surrounds Fidenza and other towns in this part of Emilia. We passed fields of alfalfa and cornfields that were being turned for next spring's crop. The crane by this barn is for an irrigation system.

Urban sprawl doesn't seem to be happening here, but it may start happening. We passed several barns and farmhouses that appeared to be abandoned.

No one home?

A railway station falling into ruins.

One thing I love about Italians is that food always seems to be on the agenda. Along the way our guide, Antonio, spotted some edible mushrooms he wanted to show us. ("I'd never eat anything growing along the road," the lady next to me sniffed.) 

We also saw a couple of hunters and their dogs out in a field, fortunately pointing their guns away from us. Others in our group, who sounded knowledgeable,  said they were hunting for pheasants or hares.

Although we were out in the country, we weren't on an unpaved track. The photo below is what a pilgrimage road in the country ought to look like, right? But it was just someone's driveway.

Instead pretty much our whole walk was on paved highways with no sidewalks and altogether very little room on either side. Despite their centuries-old history as routes for pilgrims and other foot travelers, these roads are not pedestrian-friendly.

Luckily there was very little traffic. But crossing this narrow-shouldered bridge over the busy autostrada was a little unnerving. Antonio took the lead and waved his neon-yellow vest whenever a car or truck came by to make sure they didn't accidentally mow us down.

Soon we could see the tower of a Fidenza church up ahead--not the Duomo, but St. Michael's at the other end of the oldest part of the city. It's poking up right in the middle of the photo below. 

A little while later we came out into the parking lot behind the train station. That's the back of the cemetery on the left. I found this juxtaposition--life and death, the excitement of going places and the tedium of stasis, the exhaustion of travel and the soothing prospect of eternal rest--a fitting finale to our excursion.

Back in downtown Fidenza we found the San Donnino festa once again in full swing, even though it was only 11 in the morning. Aperol spritzes (those bright orange drinks) are pretty low-alcohol, but still... 

After we thanked our guide and said good-bye to our fellow pilgrims, Pam and I made our way to a bar a little less central to the action. Even though there'd been no altitude involved, this was more walking than I'm used to and I needed a treat.

Our barista was happy to oblige with something a little less dionysiac than what the celebrants up the street were enjoying, though doubtless more caloric. I felt I'd earned it, though. I'd received my dispensation, and truly I felt blessed.

San Donnino part 1: Fidenza unleashed

Every year Fidenza marks October 9, the feast day of San Donnino, with a multi-day festa. We were last here for this event in 2018, and were amazed at how big a deal it was. The party for the town's patron saint was at least five days long, with additional events days before that, and what seemed like the whole population turned out to eat and drink and cram together to joyfully scream at each other over booming pop music late into the night. Our friends told us that San Donnino is bigger than Liberation Day, bigger than Christmas, the most significant public holiday on the town's busy calendar. And our street in the center of town is also the epicenter of the festivities.

Last year, with fear of COVID keeping everyone cowering behind their own doors, we were stuck in California and in Fidenza the festa was sadly truncated. There were a handful of art exhibits, a couple of outdoor talks and tours, a few food booths in an outdoor space where only a limited number of people--masked, of course--could be at any one time. It was hardly San Donnino at all.

In 2021, despite the threat of COVID still hanging over us all, people--particularly younger people--were ready to let loose again. And although this year's festa was shorter (the meat of it was really only three days long), smaller (with many fewer booths selling food, drink, and tat of various kinds), mostly outdoors, and strictly controlled (at least in theory), the party, while it lasted, was quite the bacchanal. 

This year's theme was the environment and climate change, always a major concern of the town's center-left government. To that end, a forest--a temporary and very tidy forest--was summoned into existence in the town's main square. A crew quickly rolled out sod to cover one end of the piazza and unloaded dozens of trees and plants.

The festa officially opened on the evening of Thursday, October 7, with a ceremony in the Piazza Grande at the other end of our street. We strolled down to watch, but after 45 minutes of speeches from the mayor, other officials, and a local priest we got tired of waiting for something to happen and went off to get ice cream. We later learned, from the mayor's Instagram account, that we'd missed seeing various people juggle flaming torches and light fountains of kerosene. I'm not sure exactly how that jibes with the environmental angle, but it looked pretty spectacular.

One thing that often strikes me when I'm here is how fuzzy the boundary is between government and the Catholic church, or at least the church's less institutional, more folkloric aspects. The festa is an unabashedly religious observance, complete with a special mass in the cathedral, and in addition to pyromania the opening event included a procession with banners emblazoned with a bevy of Catholic martyrs. Yet this party in honor of a Catholic saint is also an entirely civic event which welcomes atheists, Muslims, fallen-away Catholics and everyone else to participate--and with no evangelizing. I wouldn't want to see anyone's religion become part of our civic life in the U.S., but the Italians' willingness to deal with these contradictions in a spirit of lasciare andare--letting it go--seems charmingly on brand to me, particularly at a time when some of my fellow Americans are consumed with shoving their religion (or hatred of religion) down one another's throats.

On Friday afternoon loud music began pumping out of big loudspeakers in the center of the piazza, mostly American oldies interspersed with a few Italian chestnuts. In other neighboring piazzas other loudspeakers played competing music, and occasionally a live (and not wildly talented) band popped up. As afternoon turned into evening the volume rose. By 10 pm we could clearly hear every word of every familiar tune through our closed double-glazed windows. Amid all this, the forest, by now up and running, wasn't a particularly tranquil spot.

Selfies, anyone?

But the rest of our street was even less so. The bars' outdoor tents were crowded with people who were clearly thrilled to finally be all together again. The street outside our front door was almost impassable.

Che bella figura!

The stalls lining the other half of the piazza were selling beer and wine, cheese and sausage, and the official pasta of this holiday, anolini in brodo--little round Parmesan-and-breadcrumb ravioli in broth--at a terrific clip. And of course everyone was yelling at the top of their lungs to be heard over the music.

All eating, all drinking.

We retreated to our apartment and watched the final episodes of a silly Italian detective show, turning up the volume so we could hear the (mostly incomprehensible) dialogue over the roar from outside. The bar across the street, La Strega, where we often go for a morning coffee, attracts a young crowd in the evenings and usually plays loud music until about midnight on weekends. But during San Donnino it's  city loudspeakers that are booming out the hits of yesteryear, and when I fell asleep at around 12:30 the music was still going at top volume. Luckily, our bedroom is on the courtyard side of the apartment, but I felt sorry for our neighbors who aren't so lucky.

I woke up a little before 4 am, as I often do, and could hear that the party wasn't over. The music wasn't as loud, but someone still had a loudspeaker going. Peeking out our front windows, I could see that the bar was closed but thirty or forty people were still out in the street, talking, laughing, dancing, and embracing each other. If I had to guess I'd say they were pretty drunk, but they also seemed very happy. The street was a mess, though, with cigarette butts, discarded paper anolini cartons, and other trash strewn about. I went back to bed and fell asleep wondering whether Fidenza would have the stamina for another two nights of this.

To your health!

When we arrived here I was impressed not only that people were wearing masks pretty universally indoors, but that everyone seemed so good-humored about it. Ditto the rest of the COVID protocols here, which are a little different from what we were used to in California. 

Doing the right thing.

The small shops that line our street all have signs saying that only two or four or some other (usually single-digit) number of people can be in the store at one time. Additional customers dutifully wait outside, masked and spaced more or less six feet apart. And the staff inside are masked, too.

There don't seem to be maximum occupancy rules in large stores, like the Conad supermarket a few blocks away, where any number of people can go in whenever they like. But there, too, customers and staff are all masked. When we took a train to and from Bologna last week, to have lunch with some American friends who were passing through, I didn't see a single person on the train who wasn't masked. This despite the fact that there was no one official to enforce the rules; on neither our outbound journey nor our return did anyone even come by to punch our tickets.

I thought that we'd mostly given up worrying about catching COVID from handrails and countertops, but here both large stores and small ask you to sanitize your hands when you enter, and there's always a stand with an automatic dispenser or a pump bottle of disinfectant near the front door. It's a bit reminiscent of people dipping their fingers in the font of holy water when they enter a church. 

An even more mystical belief in ritual's power to defend against misfortune seems to hold sway in the nonprofit that sponsors our weekly qi-gong class, which is held in a public building that used to be a quite lavish Jesuit monastery. In addition to having their staff check everyone with a temperature gun when we arrive (a bit like being shot in the head), the nonprofit requires Pam, who's our teacher, to walk around the cavernous classroom before class begins spraying a heavily scented Italian version of Lysol into the air. What good this does in a large hall with open windows and thirty-foot ceilings baffles Pam and me and probably everyone else. But that's the rule and we follow it. 

Our qi-gong classroom, fully disinfected.

As an earlier post detailed, restaurants, theaters, and other places where people gather indoors are also supposed to check everyone's Green Pass to make sure they've been vaccinated. At the first restaurant we went to the waiter met us at the door to check our vax status, and I even had to show my Green Pass to go on that moonlight walk, which was entirely outdoors.

However, this is Italy, and Italians are suffering from pandemic fatigue just like the rest of us. Now that we've been here for a while, I am noticing that a lot of people are following the spirit of the regulations but not exactly the letter.

Take masks. Yes, everyone wears them indoors, and many outdoors as well, but an awful lot of people sometimes leave their noses hanging out. (This seems particularly true of the older men, though I haven't done a rigorous tally.) I myself have occasionally been guilty of this when my glasses fog up. I've also repeatedly strolled into a store or the railway station without remembering to put on the mask that I'd tucked away while I was outside. Then I realize my faux pas and scramble to remask before I'm mistaken for a Trump voter. 

Taking a breather.

Likewise with hand sanitizing. I see that not everyone stops to do it, and frankly often neither do I. If you're making several stops, and you've resisted the urge to pick your nose or suck your thumb en route, it seems silly to cleanse your hands each time you enter a store when you haven't touched anything or anyone since you sanitized them at another store a few minutes earlier. 

Clean hands, clean conscience.

The Green Pass isn't universally enforced, either. Yesterday we visited a rather fancy pizzeria where they checked our passes at the door very officially (albeit very hospitably). But a high-end place in neighboring Salso Maggiore that we went to last week asked to see our QR codes but didn't bother reading them. And two other favorite restaurants here in town didn't even ask, perhaps because we'd been there many times before, or maybe because they're pretty relaxed in general. Apparently so are we, since we sat down and ate without any hesitation.

If there is another outbreak here this month, as some fear there will be, all of us who are being less than perfectly rule-abiding will bear some responsibility, and perhaps some of the consequences as well. But so far that doesn't seem to be happening. How lovely if being merely sort of careful and doing only mostly what you're supposed to turns out to be enough to keep us all safe. 

Pilgrims' progress

Shortly after we arrived we discovered that Fidenza was putting on a festa--actually, they used the English word "festival"--celebrating the town's role as the midpoint for the Via Francigena (fran-CHIH-geh-na), a pilgrimage route linking Canterbury Cathedral in England to Rome and thence to southern Italian ports where the devout could embark for the Holy Land. This sign was part of the festival decor.

In medieval times the Via Francigena was Christians' primary way to get from England and France to Rome and beyond. A statue of the apostle Simon Peter on the facade of Fidenza's Duomo points south and holds a scroll reading, "I show you the way to Rome." It's often described as the world's first road sign. 

They went thataway.

Later the Italian road faded in importance and today it is much less well known than Spain's Cammino de Santiago. But both were part of a harsh spiritual discipline. Devotees were required to travel vast distances on foot and endure bad weather, disease, discomfort, and worse in order to affirm their faith, do penance, or petition for a cure.  

In recent years international tourists' interest in a slightly less strenuous version of playing pilgrim has not gone unnoticed. Offering a mix of exercise, spirituality, and pedestrian adventure, these walks--now with better shoes and Airbnbs, at least in some parts of the journey--are becoming increasingly popular. And so Italy and towns along the Via Francigena have begun publicizing its history and improving its accessibility.  

Fidenza has a lot of civic spirit, and it was already proud to be a stop on the Francigena. So it's no surprise that the town fathers have now decided to make an even bigger deal of celebrating the ancient road. Held this year for the first time, the Francigena Festival Fidenza is a big new addition to the town's busy calendar of festas, conferences, and other events. 

The festival included a lot of high-level discussions of history, architecture, food, and travel, featuring such luminaries as journalist and TV personality Beppe Severgnini and architect Mario Botta, plus a series of concerts and other performances. Jet-lagged as I was, I didn't attempt any of the talks. But one evening we did go to a lovely concert of medieval music, much of it pilgrimage-related, in the Duomo.

Singers were accompanied by a harmonium, a lute, a hurdy-gurdy, and scallop-shell castanets.

The next day, the piazza in front of the town theater was the stage for a troupe of professional flag-wavers, exponents of "the noble art of bandiera." Sporting medieval costumes and accompanied by drums and brass played by the town band, the sbandieratori put on an eye-popping display of color and coordination as their brightly colored flags flared in kaleidoscopic patterns and flew into the air. Even in an age of computerized special effects, this was pretty spectacular to watch.

Town notables were on hand, including an officer of the carabinieri (I think).

Like juggling, but with flags. 

The weekend also included several walks along local bits of the Via Francigena. One afternoon outing was canceled because of the threat of rain, but the next evening a night-time walk went on as planned, despite a chance of storms. Our neighbor Pia and I joined the moonlit walk, which went into a regional park just outside of town, a park whose entrance, hidden at the end of a little side street, had previously eluded all my attempts to locate it.  

We were given tiny flashlights to help us avoid tripping over roots and rocks. In the distance we could hear dogs barking and what sounded like the howls of wolves--and there are wolves in the wooded areas around Fidenza. Occasional flashes of distant (we hoped) lightning lit up the sky. It was beautiful out there in the dark but also rather ominous.

Pausing en route for some music.

The guide leading the walk talked about what it must have been like to travel the long pilgrimage route by yourself in the days when most of the countryside was as unpopulated as this park, and asked us to imagine the kind of spiritual reckoning that feelings of smallness and aloneness might provoke. We were hardly alone, though. There were about 35 of us, including several visitors from other parts of Italy and one each from the United Kingdom and France, as well as a local singer-songwriter who entertained us along the way with some traditional and original songs. We were modern pilgrims, pursuing the new grail of experiences.

Heading back to civilization.

Having often heard the expression "climbing the greasy pole" used to describe the struggle to succeed in politics and business, I was excited to see that the festival program included the source of this metaphor: a "palo della cuccagna," a Cockaigne pole, in one of the smaller piazzas. 

The name refers to the mythical Land of Cockaigne, where roast geese fly into your mouth and wine flows in the streams, a medieval European version of our Big Rock Candy Mountain. The game challenges contestants to climb a tall pole slathered in grease--lard in this case, I believe--and be the first to reach the prize at the top. The prize is usually a ham, and in this part of the world that means several prosciutti di Parma. 

At the top of the pole.

That day four teams competed for the prizes. These weren't random folks but men (mostly, plus one 12-year-old girl) in matching coveralls. They took turns trying to get up the pole, flinging as much lard off the pole as they could during the 30 or 45 seconds they were allotted in each round. In between attempts the players rubbed sand on their increasingly greasy coveralls, to make themselves a little less slippery. 

Little by little the teams crept higher on the pole by climbing onto the shoulders of the person above them. There was a net, but still it was a little horrifying to see people scrambling over each other to get at a ham, particularly since these hams were probably plastic.

Horrifying but also tedious as the event dragged on, despite the efforts of two loud-mouth announcers to inject excitement into the process. Well before a winner was announced, Danny and I gave up our seats and went on our own brief pilgrimage in search of refreshment. We settled into a bar near the Duomo and had some prosecco and a plateful of ham. All we had to do for it was present a credit card.  

Viva Italia!

I'm going to momentarily interrupt this blog's usual solipsism to give a more objective view of how Italy is dealing with the pandemic. My source is Stethoscope on Rome, a blog by Susan Levenstein, an American medical doctor based in the Eternal City. "Stethoscope..." has been a wonderful source of solid information about the pandemic, not just in Italy but all over, and particularly about COVID treatments and vaccines, good, bad, and worthless. I highly recommend it. 

Not long after we arrived in Fidenza "Stethoscope..." reported at some length on the state of things in Italy. Levenstein began by contrasting a photo of mostly maskless commuters crowding into the Tube in London with one taken in a crowded Italian train, where just about everyone was masked up. "Italy’s vaccination campaign is now neck and neck with the UK, and it’s based overwhelmingly on the highly effective mRNA vaccine," Levenstein wrote. "As you see, they’re good about masks too… and, not surprisingly, they’re having much less of a Delta surge."

With her permission, here's the rest of her Italy report:

Italy is doing a lot better than the US in terms of both vaccination rates and the state of the pandemic. As of September 12^th, 87% of Italians over 60, but only 78% of Americans over 65, were fully vaccinated (note the different denominators). And 81% of Italians over 12 and 74% of the entire population were at least partially vaccinated – compared with 75% and 64% of Americans. 

One way Italy has been encouraging vaccination is by making Green Passes (vaccination or recent COVID-19 or negative swab) obligatory to access everything from restaurants to long-distance trains. Just last night my husband and I had the mild thrill of having our QR codes scanned for the very first time, to see a dance performance. When recent demonstrations against the Green Pass managed to turn out only a few dozen people, hard-core activists decided to go for violence instead of popularity, putting together stashes of knives and brass knuckles for next time around, until the cops broke up the plot.

In October all employees will need Green Passes if they want to work in person. Teachers already have to show theirs at the gate, and vaccine refusers foot the bill for their own triweekly antigen swabs, as well they should. Hopefully vaccination will soon become mandatory for teachers. It already is for health care workers, and since August hardcore novaxers (fewer than 3% of doctors and nurses, but in some regions 10-12% of nonprofessional staff) are starting to be suspended without pay. 

Between high vaccine coverage, the Green Pass, and unwavering adherence to masking and distancing, Italy has kept the pandemic in check even in the era of the hyper-contagious Delta variant. Yes, infections  and deaths have gone up a bit recently: 

But there’s no comparison to the American horror show:

I

In one way, though, Italy is similar to the US: roughly speaking, where vaccination rates are low, case rates are high. If you believe in science, that’s no surprise at all.

Vaccination rates (left), weekly case numbers (right)

Passing

Before we got here we'd read how everyone in Europe who'd been vaccinated was getting a Green Pass, an app on their phone with a QR code that permits entry to concerts, museums, restaurants, and other public places. Eager for American tourists to help boost their economies, the European Union announced that the USA's unimpressive cardboard vaccination cards would also be accepted for entry to the continent's cultural goodies. But friends of friends, Americans in France, reported that their experience was that the U.S. card was regarded as valid proof of vaccination exactly nowhere. And we could find no information about how people who are not in the Italian health system could get in on the Green Pass action.

Then we discovered that California had its own proof-of-vaccination app, complete with QR code, and before we left for Italy we managed to download it onto both of our phones. Surely the two systems, California's and Europe's, would connect with each other.

Looks official, doesn't it?

What a ridiculous delusion. At our beloved local bar we quickly discovered that the Green Pass reader regarded the California QR code as meaningless gobbledygook. Luckily the bar has expanded its outdoor space, where vaccination requirements don't apply, and the weather's been great, so we were able to get cappuccinos and spritzes despite being undocumented. But I worried we'd be reduced to a solid diet of home cooking once the weather turns cold.

Pam took me over to the town tourist office, since surely they'd know how Americans can get in on local eateries and activities. But the woman there had never heard of the American vaccination card and assured us no one accepted it as a Green Pass substitute.

Now here's where the wisdom of settling in Fidenza, where Pam and Romano live, versus any other place in Italy was borne out once again. Pam took me to her local health office and through some kind of Pam magic got an appointment with a doctor who looked at our identity documents and our vax cards and tapped away at his computer for a bit and announced that we were now "a posto." Whether anyone can do this, or only friends of Pam and Romano, I do not know.

In any case, the next day we each received an email from the Ministry of Health announcing that our "green COVID-19 certification" was now available and giving us a special code. Danny printed out the emails (of course) and Pam told us to take them to the pharmacy across the street, because pharmacists seem to be central to the Green Pass system. 

At first the dottoressa behind the counter asked for our Italian health cards and told us that we couldn't get a Green Pass without one, and I feared we'd run into one of those insurmountable blockages that Italian bureaucracy is famous for. But then she studied the email for a minute and said, "Eh, va bene!" and a moment later presented us with paper print-outs of our Green Pass certificates.

We're legal!

We still haven't figured out how to get our Green Passes onto our phones, but the paper version works just fine. We proved it the next evening when we went to Parma to see a production of Rossini's Il Signor Bruschino at the Parma Conservatory, featuring some of Romano's students. The performance was held outdoors, in the Conservatory's large wisteria-draped courtyard, with seats placed far apart and everyone except the singers in masks. But even so, everyone in the audience had to first present their QR code to a gentleman with a Green Card reader, which beeped cheerily and displayed a big green checkmark as each person passed inspection. Our paper QR codes worked just as well as everyone else's digital version. The delightful production of Rossini's one-act confection, with Romano's terrific young singers, was the perfect way to celebrate.

We gave our passes another workout the next day when we went for lunch at one of our favorite local restaurants, a fixed-price lunch place with great atmosphere and solid homestyle food. It's all indoor dining so a Green Pass is required to enter. But no problem for us!

In tribute to Italy's commendably hard line on vaccinations, I ordered pesto di cavallo, that is, horse steak tartar. While American anti-vaxxers are consuming veterinary doses of the anti-worming medicine ivermectin--which they call "horse paste"--in the vain hope that it will protect them from COVID, I was happy to consume a plateful of horse paste, Italian style. It's probably no more effective as a COVID preventive, but without a doubt it's a lot tastier.  

For your own good

As we were getting ready to return to Fidenza, I fretted about the usual things--what to pack, how early we should get to the airport, how many issues of The New Yorker I should bring in my carry-on as emergency reading--and also about the risk of inhaling a Delta viron or two during the course of our journey. What had us waking up in the middle of the night before we finally got on the plane, however, wasn't the threat of  COVID but the ever-shifting list of COVID-related hoops we'd have to jump through before we'd be allowed back into Italy.

Remember when a passport and an airplane ticket were all you needed to board a flight from the U.S. to Europe? No longer. Lured by a low business-class fare, we'd booked tickets on British Air, which meant flying through London. But thanks to Boris Johnson's mishandling of the pandemic (or, some say, European bitterness about Brexit), anyone traveling from the United Kingdom to Italy had to get a negative COVID test result within 48 hours before arriving, a full day less than the 72-hour grace period for people coming direct from the U.S. And this was true even for those who, like us, were only going to be in Heathrow airport for an hour or two. 

Meanwhile the U.K. requires a "passenger locator form," so that if someone on the flight does come down with COVID, all passengers can be tracked down, although exactly for what purpose isn't specified. This is a lengthy form, to be filled out online, wherein you must specify everything from your seat number to any address you're occupying before, during, and after your flight. 

The European Union has its own equally extensive passenger locator form, also online. Both of these forms are supposed to be filled out at the last minute, and if anything changes--a leg of your flight, a seat number--you have to do the whole thing over again. 

Italy also wanted proof of vaccination before you got on a plane heading there. We had the vaccine cards showing that we'd gotten our shots last spring, but I worried that no one would believe these scraps of badly printed cardboard were really official documents. Shortly before we left we discovered that the state of California had quietly introduced an online version of the vax card, complete with a QR code. Figuring that would be useful, we spent considerable time wrestling with the California system and getting these documents onto our phones, since that seems to be the preferred way to prove your vax status among civilized people.

On top of all that, British Air urged us to input all of our information, including our vaccine status, into some third-party app that would theoretically allow us to breeze through check-in by showing that we'd already met all the above requirements. What a lovely idea, right? Even if it meant sharing our personal data with yet another faceless entity. Unfortunately, the app was something of a disaster, and we were frantically trying to get it to work right up until we left for the airport.

A selection of our travel documents, assembled by Danny.

Most stressful of all was getting the COVID tests. A rapid antigen test wouldn't do; a PCR molecular test is required. Our health system provides them for free, but with a two- to three-day wait for results. To make that 48-hour deadline, we had to find someplace that could turn the results around in less than 24 hours. Danny spent days scouring the internet and found several places that were happy to give results in a few hours but charged hundreds of dollars for this usually free test. Eventually he located a reputable outfit that worked out of Oakland Airport, about half an hour from us, and promised low-cost results in six hours. We made an appointment for Saturday afternoon, the day before our Sunday flight.

Unfortunately, their website proved to be chockablock with misinformation. When we arrived for our appointment we discovered that, despite what the website said, this location didn't do the test we needed. However, they were able to send us over to another site a few minutes away to get the tests. More worrying, we learned it might take up to 24 hours to get the results, not the six hours the website had promised. ("We know," the folks at the testing site said. "We keep telling them to fix it.")  With our check-in time less than 24 hours away, we spent the evening anxiously checking our phones, willing the results to appear.

Danny woke me up a little after 3 a.m. The results were in, and we'd tested negative. Now we just had to upload the test report and add that information to our various documents, which we spent a couple of anxious middle-of-the-night hours doing. 

We also tried to check in for our flight. But despite having all our information at the electronic ready, British Air informed us that we would have to go through check-in in person, so that our documentation could be reviewed. Remembering the endless check-in lines we'd waited in during previous trips, we decided to get to the airport even earlier than we'd planned.

Back in the days before there was an internet, Danny's travel preparations always included preparing a folder with all flight information, hotel reservations, and so on in writing. He's maintained that practice even as more and more people, mostly younger, do everything with their phones. And so his carry-on included print-outs of all our flight and seat numbers, taxi confirmation, locator forms, test results, and vaccine cards, and even a copy of our marriage license in case someone challenged the reality of our 50-plus years of respectability. I thought he was being silly, but I wasn't going to sneer at someone else's security blanket when I was lugging several months' worth of New Yorkers. 

When we got to the airport, though, we discovered that flying business class allowed us to prance past Economy's long, glacially slow check-in lines and step right up to one of the counters reserved for the plutocracy. Moreover, the woman checking us in was thrilled that Danny had all our information ready to hand on paper, and so was I when I watched a couple at the next counter trying vainly to locate their documents on a phone that didn't have quite enough signal. 

From there pretty much everything went as smoothly as I could have hoped. With several hours to kill, we strolled off to the mostly empty plutocrats' lounge for a free lunch and some time with the New Yorker food issue. At the gate, we boarded early and settled into our business-class pods with a glass of complimentary champagne. The dinner and, later, breakfast we were served were surprisingly tasty and the service couldn't have been nicer. And the lie-flat seats, though not anywhere near as comfortable as an actual bed, were a huge improvement over spending the night hunched over in Economy.

I should note that we wore N95 masks through all of this, aside from when we were eating and drinking, and that this was exceedingly unpleasant. You can tell those masks are really effective by how hot and uncomfortable they are, and trying to sleep while wearing one was an experience I don't look forward to repeating. But I am no anti-masker, and I was, if not exactly happy to mask up, certainly willing to do my part by wearing one. 

Masked up in Fidenza's central piazza.

When we arrived in Italy, our vaccination and test documents were accepted without problems, our taxi showed up only a few minutes late, and soon we were in Fidenza, sitting in the piazza with Pam and Romano and watching the sun go down as we sipped Negronis and nibbled on pizza. All the hassle seemed worth it. So did flying business class, even if next time we can't get a super-low fare. 

I do wonder, though, about all the data-gathering the pandemic has unleashed. Once the virus is finally defeated, will all these requirements become just a memory? Or will this be like 9/11, where the emergency of the moment morphs into a new normal that we all have no choice but to submit to? 

Now where were we?

When Danny and I left Italy in January 2020 we already had tickets to return in April. Of course that didn't happen. We settled into lockdown in California, anxiously reading reports about the devastating effects of COVID-19 on Italy's north, including our little corner of it. People kept asking me what was happening in Fidenza so I began blogging about what I was hearing from my Italian friends, ignoring my rule that "Quanto? Tanto!" is something I do only when I'm in Italy. 

But once it became clear that this was neither a short-term crisis nor one confined to Italy and other non-U.S. places, I abandoned my effort to chronicle Fidenza's pandemic woes from afar. I could offer neither first-hand observations nor any kind of expertise, and trying to fit dribs and drabs of information into some kind of narrative began to seem both pointless and deceptive. Or maybe I was just depressed, like everyone else.

Actually we've had a pretty good pandemic compared to most. We never got sick, we didn't have too much trouble getting vaccinated, and being retired empty-nesters we didn't have to worry about losing our jobs or homeschooling children. We'd even stocked up on toilet paper right before the lockdown commenced. And there are few better places to be under house arrest than the San Francisco Bay Area, with its excellent wifi, fabulous food, and vast network of beautiful parks.

We missed our Italian life, though, and the way being locked down seemed to accelerate the aging process had us wondering if we'd even be physically capable of  making the trip whenever the pandemic ended...if indeed it ever did.

So early this summer, when the surge of vaccinations in both California and Italy provoked a rush of giddy optimism in some of us, Danny and I bought round-trip tickets to Italy for early September. Surely by then life on both continents would be pretty much back to normal.

Alas, the Delta variant and its anti-mask, anti-vaxx, anti-"medical establishment" enablers have squelched that hope. But once we had our tickets in hand--and very  attractively priced business-class tickets, at that--giving up on returning to Fidenza seemed impossible. Our friends in Italy feared that the millions of Italians disporting themselves in vacation spots during August, plus the reopening of schools in September, would guarantee a surge in COVID cases and thence more lockdowns--lockdowns far more stringent than what we experienced in California. But we saw how well Italy's vaccination drive was going and how the number of cases in Fidenza had fallen to almost nothing, and we looked at the reassuring stats about breakthrough infections among the fully vaccinated, and we decided to go ahead. 

And so we are back in Italy, and thus far the risk seems well worth it. I'll let you know if that changes.

The view from our little balcony. I'm so happy to be here after almost 20 months away.