Bridging the cultures

Sunday, October 2, 2011

We had a lovely afternoon meal with a family from Viterbo today. After lunch, we walked in the woods and then, around 6 PM, we drove over this bridge to the town of Blera with them.

Blera is a replacement name. It's original name was Bieda, but that means beetroot so it was recently changed. I don't know much regarding the politics of that decision, but this what I was told. While Blera has an Etruscan cliff necropolis that is actually part of the current day road, an ancient Etruscan bridge and Roman bridge (which you can see in the photo below), it was not an altogether outstanding town for me. Am I getting Etruscan and Roman history fatigue? Or...

Am I sick of bridges? I think I got stuck on the fact that there were no females to be seen. Seriously. We saw every age group of males: there was a cafe with around twenty men of the older set sitting about, a cafe with around twenty of the middle set males sitting about, and there were even groups of gangly teenage boys walking around or driving in their wide boy cars. But I only saw two females. One women was minding the bar we went into for ice cream and the other one was putting laundry out to dry on her balcony.

I could go further with that point, but that would involve discussing a certain Prime Minister or a certain American college student who recently made headlines because of accusations made four years ago, or even the.... But, I'm trying not to make judgements about my host country here. It's the Italian culture, after all.

However, there are moments when bridge building is challenging. At a recent birthday party we went to, Eleni was actually screamed at and kicked off the pick up soccer game field. She was told, "girls don't play soccer!" Eleni promptly erupted into tears.

What would you do?

Think about it while I share a photograph of a fig tree in Blera. Like the soccer field incident, I was actually far from the three bridges of Blera when I took this.

I wish I could capture the smell of this fig tree for you, but this will have to do.

Ok, intermission over.

I know it's not a culturally sensitive When in Rome moment, but I went ahead and stomped onto the field and took the soccer ball away from the boy who had it and made it clear that if she did not play, no one was playing. The game began again. Eleni played.

But, no one is at fault here, right? There are no soccer teams for girls in Italy and that is just the way it is. And, I guess my presence as a female walking around in Blera at 6PM was an anomaly and that is just the way it is.

Of course, these are only examples of what we see.

Rather, what we don't see.