I’ve been gone for a few months and this blog has not been updated since I left, but please believe that there were very good life reasons for the absence.
Here’s a few thoughts I’ve had during my time away.
I got a chance to see Rome, Venice and many villages in the Former Yugoslavian republic.
Venice lives up to its reputation as one of the most beautiful cities on the planet, though it does so as a dying city. Irony.
Today’s Venetians are a mix of blue collar gondoliers, dock workers, small shop owners and tourism services employees, but the seasonal residents as well as many of the tourists are a distinctively richer group. My wife and I couldn’t help but feel under-dressed walking through the city even though I was never dressed in anything less than a linen suit, and she was what she was – a young, beautiful woman dressed well enough to be noticed at any New York art show.
Prices in the cities trattorias, cafes and boutiques are duly adjusted to take advantage of the shoppers profiles. Two espressos and a small croissant cost us 15 Euros. Murano glass is more expensive in Venice than in the US, and the clothes cost double what they do anywhere else in Europe.
In the midst of this expensive expanse, one set of products stands out – quite miraculously – for its affordability. Italian leather. Every street has a boutique that sells gorgeous hand made bags for all sorts of occasions, from mere accessory to elegant office professional.
I would have thought that hand made leathers would command a top-most premium price. In fact, they did. Years ago, in an age before the Chinese came to town. Venice’s newest residents are Southern Chinese and they have monopolized the leather making business.
There is really only one way to tell that these bags are not simply “Made in Italy” but are “Made in Italy, in a Chinese-owned Factory,” and that’s by the zippers. My wife noticed it first. The seams and button work on the bags were superb, but the zippers still felt like they would break at any minute.
If you’re wondering, we did buy a bag. The quality was fantastic despite the zipper and it was at least a hundred Euros cheaper than anything else we considered buying. In one of Italy’s most iconic tourism capitols we had bought an iconically Italian souvenir that was somewhat comically Chinese.
So it was that in leaving Venice I began to think about Europe’s least talked about new immigrants.
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