If you could take a year off to live as an ex-pat in a foreign country, where would you go? For me, it would surely be France. But where, exactly—Paris? Beaune? Provence?
I suppose it’s just as well that this isn’t a real option for me since I can’t make up my mind which part of France I’d settle in. For Barry Frangipane, taking a year off was an option, and he didn’t hesitate over the destination: with his wife, Debbie, and their dog and cat in tow, he headed off to spend a year living in Venice.
Frangipane (with co-author Ben Robbins) reports on their experiences in The Venice Experiment: A Year of Trial and Error Living Abroad.
How much you like this lightweight little book book will depend somewhat on how you feel about the chatty, informal prose style, but I’m sure you’ll find much to like about Barry and Debbie. They are intrepid, enthusiastic, generous and appreciative visitors who are willing to do whatever it takes to become a genuine part of their adopted community.
Learn Italian? They sign up for classes five days a week at the Istituto Venezia, and when they graduate three months later, not only are they proficient enough to converse with Italian friends and neighbors, they’ve also formed new friendships with fellow students from around the world.
In fact, the most impressive thing about Barry Frangipane is his willingness and talent for befriending all sorts of people. Shopkeepers, the local firemen, the owner of his favorite gelateria, his landlord—all become friends with whom the Frangipanes have dinner, and drinks, and coffee (I actually began to worry about the amount of caffeine Barry consumed; “On a typical day,” he writes, “I would have four or five espressos on my way to the market, as every friend along the way would want me to stop and have coffee with him.“). Frangipane even chats up a couple of local beggars, and after learning that that they are ex-Yugoslavians trying to find work in Italy he begins dropping off bags of groceries for them and even ends up being invited to dinner at their place, which happens to be a barge. Of the many bonds he forms, the most touching one is surely his friendship with his eighty-year old neighbor, Gastone.
T he Venice Experiment does not turn out to be entirely la dolce vita. The Frangipanes’ tribulations include having to move to another apartment midway through the year, and they have to contend with the unpleasantly hot Venetian summer, but all things considered, every day really is a buona adventuare.
At the beginning of their adventure the Frangipanes seem a bit squeamish about the local cuisine, as Barry writes of “forcing down” bites of fish lasagna and “chewy pieces of fried squid,” but by the end of the year they are gobbling up Venetian specialties such as Bovoeti (tiny snails skewered on toothpicks) and “Sarde in Saor, sardines cooked in onions and sautéed in a vinegar sweet and sour sauce.”
I would have liked to hear more about their culinary exploits, and I certainly wished thirstily for some descriptions of the wines they drank. Prosecco is occasionally mentioned, though never in any mouthwatering detail, and I found myself gnashing my teeth when he alludes to such things as “a bottle of red wine” (what kind of red wine?!) or writes, “We relaxed with some wine and a variety of grappa” (dio mio, tell us more about that grappa!).
Oh well, these minor complaints stem only from my own personal obsessions, although I’ll bet anyone reading Wine Review Online would feel the same way. So maybe what we all need to do is take a year off for our own “Experiment.” And when that happens let’s hope that we all reach the same conclusion Barry Frangipane did. “As we learned each time that we walked out of our Venetian apartment,” he observes in the final paragraph, “it’s not the destination that’s important, it’s the people we meet along the way that make all the difference.”
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