What Every American Should Know About Europe

by Melissa Rossi

  Prince Charles (b. 1948): Heir apparent, His Royal Highness Prince Charles Philip Arthur George, Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester, Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles, Great Steward of Scotland, and Knight of the Garter is beginning to look a bit tired; it must be exhausting just remembering his title, and perhaps his regalia just doesn’t shine as brilliantly as it once did. But while patiently waiting for his chance on the throne, he busies himself writing articles and letters to Parliament with suggestions, and now he has a new hobby: organic food. Charles oversees the 1,100-acre organic farm at one of his estates and sells the chem-free greens under the label Duchy Originals, with tens of millions in profits going to nonprofit organizations.24 No wonder they invite him to head so many—200 at the last count.

  Camilla Parker Bowles, Duchess of Cornwall (b. 1947): The stars uncrossed in 2005, when Prince Charles wed long-time lover Camilla. The couple was forced to repent publicly for their previous adultery, and there was talk that the wedding might cost Charles the crown, but the prince never looked happier. The marriage was met with lukewarm response by the tight-lipped British public, mildly appeased that, should Charles ascend, Camilla won’t be queen; she’ll only be a princess consort.

  Prince William (b. 1982): Handsome elder son of Charles and Di—his mother nicknamed him DDG for “drop dead gorgeous”—William likes to cook, but probably won’t indulge in his father’s habit of donning kilts for public affairs. “It’s a bit draughty,” he explained to Vanity Fair. One might not think he’d mind the breeze; he’s been known to show the “full monty” at parties while strutting to the seventies hit “YMCA.” Some object to the nudity, others to the song. He may someday steal the throne from his father—well, at least, if it is put to public vote.25

  Prince Harry (b. 1984): The young ‘un has a wild look in his eyes, is a demon on the polo field, and had a little “cannabis incident” when he was in boarding school. Caused a furor when he showed up at a 2005 costume bash in Nazi uniform. He soon apologized (via publicist); Charles demanded he take a tour of Auschwitz.

  HONORING THE SCOTS

  A few fine minds born in Scotland:

  Adam Smith (1723–1790): Supporter of free trade and capitalism, economist Smith essentially created modern economics with An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.

  Samuel Johnson (1709–1784): Penned the first widely used dictionary, published in 1755 as two heaving volumes.

  James Boswell (1740–1795): Boozy travel writer and attentive biographer of Johnson.

  Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894): The sickly traveler best known for Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

  Alexander Graham Bell (1847–1894): He invented the telephone when in the U.S. but Scots claim the Edinburgh-born inventor as theirs.

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930): Physician, war correspondent, historian, and spiritualist Doyle brought Sherlock Holmes and Watson to life in 1887.

  Besides writers Jan Morris, Dylan “Do not go gentle into that good night” Thomas (1914–1953) and Roald “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” Dahl (1916–1990), the most famous Welsh are entertainers—actors Richard Burton (1925–1984), Anthony Hopkins (b. 1937), and Catherine Zeta-Jones (b. 1969), and singers Shirley Bassey (b. 1937) and Tom Jones (b. 1940) among them.

  Posh and Becks: Reigning celebrity couple. Take a dashing, talented soccer player (David Beckham), hook him up with a luscious sexpot (Victoria Adams, aka Posh Spice) of pop-music fame, and what do you get? Too much ink wasted on trivial matters, such as what Posh packed on her trip to Madrid and with whom Becks slept last week.

  The Tories: Losing ground and face for a decade, the Conservative Party, which dominated British postwar politics, is making a comeback. Sticking new heads on the leadership spears has helped: David Cameron (b. 1966) is making the party sexy, environmentally friendly and youthful, targeting the young voters. Even though he’s get a rep for being slippery—Labor calls him “the Chameleon”—Cameron has all the right creds, and the ladies find him adorable: a New Woman poll voted him one of the world’s sexiest men.

  Animal Rights Activists: Hard-core activists are making death threats against heads of research centers that test on animals.

  London mayor Ken Livingstone: Not a wallflower

  Ken Livingstone: Mayor of London, 2000–present. Love him or hate him, rebel mayor Ken Livingstone stands out. He landed the 2012 Olympics for London and responded to the July 7 attack by making sure the city immediately got back on its feet and the subways; he even launched a promulticultural campaign in the bombings’ wake. His controversial 2003 “congestion charge” is now popular—it reduced traffic in the capital by 18 percent—he chastised the U.S. Embassy for refusing to pay it. Never called shy, this son of a sailor and a circus performer marched in protests against the Iraq war and called George W. Bush “the greatest threat to life on the planet”—hours before the president rolled into town. Named 2003 “Politician of the Year” by the Political Studies Association, he got in hot water in 2006 for likening a Jewish reporter to a “concentration camp guard” and for saying he “longed for the day when the Saudi royal family are swinging [i.e., hanging] from lampposts.” A disciplinary board suspended him from office for a month for his comments to the reporter—but the media stood up for him, and his suspension may go the way of London’s double-decker buses which now only run on historic routes.

  ISAAC NEWTON (1642–1727)

  Sir Isaac Newton, grandfather of the Enlightenment and the first of his family to read, set the world spinning in numerous new directions. The boy who had showed little academic promise—teachers said he was dull—was suddenly struck by a force of brilliance in his late teens. Some say his curiosity was aroused by strange symbols in an astrology book that kept him awake for days and made him a channel for revealing the hidden knowledge of the universe. In bouts of mania he invented the reflecting telescope, figured out the nature of color, devised calculus, and established laws of physical motion and gravity—most realizations coming to him in the three years leading up to his twenty-fifth birthday. He explained the orbits of comets and the pull of the moon on the oceans; he had ideas for improvements to everything from clocks to windmills; and in 1686, his most famous book Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy was published, inspired by the descent of an album.

  Best known for his ideas on gravity, Isaac Newton received weighty approval from Brits in 2003: when the BBC conducted a vote on the World’s Greatest Briton, Newton won it.

  News you can understand: The Guardian (www.Guardian.co.uk), Economist (www.economist.com), BBC (www.news.bbc.co.uk)

  4. ITALY

  (Repubblica Italiana)

  Fractured Beauty

  FAST FACTS

  Country: Italian Republic; Repubblica Italiana

  Capital: Rome

  Government: Republic

  Independence: 1871 (unification completed); 1946 (king abdicated, republic born)

  Population: 58,134,000 (2006 estimate)

  Head of State: President Giorgio Napolitano (2006)

  Head of Government: Prime Minister Romano Prodi (2006)

  Elections: President elected by electoral college and assembly of delegates for seven-year term; prime minister appointed by president, confirmed by parliament

  Name of Parliament: Parlamento

  Ethnicity: Italian (and clusters of German, French, Slovene, Albanian, and Greek Italians)

  Religion: Predominantly Roman Catholic (also Protestant, Jewish, and Muslim)

  Language: Italian (official) and numerous dialects; German (Trentino-Alto Adige); French (Valle d’Aosta)

  Literacy: 99% (highly questionable statistic)

  Famous Exports: Columbus, Lamborghini, molti scandali

  Economic Big Boy: ENI (oil and gas); total sales 2004: $79.31 billion1

  Per Capita GDP: $28,400 (2005 estimate)

  Unemployment:
7.5% (December 2005 Eurostat); south has 20% or higher unemployment

  EU Status: Founding member

  Currency: Euro

  Quick Tour

  From the chiseled Alps in the north to stone farmhouses with woven grape pergolas, from gondolas that sail past sinking palaces to Rome’s crumbling Colosseo, Italia is a feast for the eyes. It is also a daily extravaganza of food. While every culture values eating, here all existence can be summed up in two words—Buon appetito—uttered before every meal. As one Italian explains, “If you have food, and a good appetite, then your life must be all right.”

  MANGIA, MANGIA!

  Forget money, palazzos, amore, fast cars. Whether fiery penne alla arrabiata, cheesy polenta, or prosciutto-wrapped melon, nothing is more important to Italians than food. This is the land where si mangia bene (one eats well) is the highest compliment and where proverbs exalt the dinner table as the only place where one doesn’t age. Simple flavors—sweet tomato sauce or ricotta-stuffed ravioli drizzled with sage butter—reflect more than close ties to the earth: a whole system of laws, some written and some verbally imposed, guides food from garden to stomach. Heaven forbid that the beloved mozzarella di bufala—served at room temperature—comes cold or from a cow. A stale pastry at a café warrants a ticket from food police. So aphrodisiacal are white truffles shaved over pasta that law prohibits them from being carried on trains, and cappuccino is a breakfast drink only; don’t even try ordering one after lunch. Sprinkling cheese on fish is taboo, and risotto is made only from Arborio rice, so adored that smuggling it out of the north was once punishable by death (Thomas Jefferson risked it nonetheless). Never mix basil and oregano; wine should be bottled and grape leaves trimmed only during a rising moon. Above all, dining must never be rushed. It’s no surprise that Italy spawned the anti-microwave, antiprocessing, anti–fast food movement called Slow Food.

  The court jester of Europe, Italy is just hard to take seriously. Known for switching sides midwar, Italia is a place where leaders rarely last a year, porn stars are thrust into the senate, and corruption courses through her veins like a vital nutrient. Custom-made for a holiday poster—Roman ruins, Tuscan villas, and fab food all rolled into one—the country isn’t as lighthearted as it appears. Finally booted from office in April 2006, former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s longest-running leader since WWII, was a dangerous clown; the country’s approach to unwanted refugees is medieval; and the land that holds many of history’s architectural treasures is the target of scary terrorist threats. And let us not forget the ever-present Mafia, whose activities have been even more frightening lately.

  BUMBLING BERLUSCONI

  A flamboyant billionaire who owns most of Italy’s national TV stations, major magazines, and book-publishing houses, an advertising agency, a newspaper, and the AC Milan soccer team, ex-PM Silvio Berlusconi of the Forza Italia Party was conflict of interest personified. He sacked journalists who criticized his laughable political performance, while his TV stations distorted his impact, showing him addressing cheering crowds in packed auditoriums when in fact he was droning on in a half-empty room.2 Formally accused of numerous corruption charges, including bribing judges, Berlusconi shoved through laws in his own self-interest, such as the one granting him legal immunity while in office (another legalized cooking books). His hatred of Italy’s judiciary was illustrated when he tried to do away with bodyguards for judges—necessary in Italy’s Mafia-ridden society—effectively signing their death warrants. Even though 70 percent of Italians opposed it, he signed Italy up in loud support of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and sent some 3,000 troops in for postwar cleanup. But Berlusconi, formerly a lounge singer on cruise ships, is best known as a leader whose foot was perma-lodged in his mouth. Always a joking fool, he likened himself to Jesus, announced that Chinese Communists boil their babies, appeared on camera flipping off Spain’s foreign minister, offered a German parliamentarian a lead role in a movie about Nazis, suggested that Mussolini had only sent Jews on vacations, and made light of dead refugees floating in Italian waters—for starters. He turned the 2006 elections rancorous, and among other things, called supporters of opponent Romano Prodi coglioni—or “dicks.” Demanding a recount after Prodi won the election, Berlusconi has threatened to lethally weaken the Prodi administration, and even though he finally lost his grip in 2006, one thing is for sure: Berlusconi will be back, alas.

  In the five years of Berlusconi’s reign, little was accomplished in Italy. The economy ground to a screeching halt, intelligence powers expanded—Italians are now believed the most “bugged” in Europe—and the number of terrorist threats from radical Muslims exploded, some of them pointing a finger at “the incompetent Berlusconi” as the reason they were considering an Italian attack.

  Since 2001, Italian police and carabineers have cracked several militant cells, including one that planned to pump cyanide gas into the U.S. Embassy in Rome.

  Meanwhile, Italy has serious problems. Among the most pressing are the boats of dead and dying refugees showing up on Italian shores. With 2,500 miles of coast, the country draws hundreds of thousands of Albanians and Africans, but allows few in legally; the 20,000 or more clandestini who slip in each year typically can’t find work, and make do by prostituting themselves, pushing drugs, stealing, or selling toys in squares and fleeing at the sight of police. Given the thousands of ships and rafts of wannabe immigrants in Italian waters every year—one report estimates that 2 million would-be immigrants will soon be heading toward the peninsula—the problem is not going away. But Berlusconi’s government didn’t seriously address it, except by giving the Italian coast guard and navy the legal power to force vessels to turn back before they reach port. One member of Berlusconi’s coalition, Umberto Bossi, suggested that Italy simply sink any immigrant-filled ships that come near.

  When Berlusconi finally handed over the car key in spring 2006, low-key and brainy prime minister Romano Prodi, who’d held the premiership from 1996 to 1998, inherited a boatload of problems, including the fact that his coalition is destined to be weak and short-lived. The world’s fifth largest industrial economy is merely limping along. The unemployment rate is near 8 percent (20 percent in the south), industry is not competitive, government and business alike are riddled with corruption, and the country’s biggest corporation, the milk empire Parmalat, is mired in fraud charges. Crime is rising, the Mafia is wearing new hats, and the country is so divided in incomes and opinions that some have suggested politically sawing it apart.

  THE MOB’S NEW TRICK

  Known for running heroin, trafficking sex slaves, siphoning off government-funded projects, and demanding “protection” payments, the Mafia has learned new tricks. Long involved in trash collection, they are now toxic-waste disposal professionals. Beginning in the 1980s, recycling laws required industries to safely dispose of lead, arsenic, carcinogenic chemicals, and radioactive materials. Costs for disposing of the materials were high—until mobsters showed up with proper permits (provided by corrupt officials), offering services for a tenth of the price. Winning contracts from paper mills, tanneries, and chemical companies, the Mafia load trucks with carcinogenic cargo. Sometimes they offload the poisons in municipal landfill sites not meant to hold hazardous waste, but the thugs don’t care—they own the sites. Sometimes the waste is dumped into the ocean or thrown into deep holes that leech into water supplies. Recently, the Mafia sank to a new low: they mixed the deadly sludge with fertilizer and, posing as salesmen, gave it to farmers to try free of charge. Thousands of acres of prime farmland were contaminated, cows and buffalo in some towns produced toxin-laced milk, and the cleanup cost billions. Cancer rates also soared—in some areas around Naples, they quadrupled within a few years.3

  In April 2006, police finally nabbed Italy’s most wanted: Bernardo “The Tractor” Provenzano, kingpin of Sicily’s Mafia and on the run for forty years.

  The land that led the Renaissance now funnels creativity mostly into design, writing,
and slick cars, but her creative ability to solve problems is sorely lacking. Bella Italia is nevertheless beloved: for her food, her culture, her enduring Roman architecture, and her Renaissance art—not to mention her flirtatious men, who are frequently mistaken for angels by those who don’t speak Italian and don’t know what the li’l angels are saying.

  VOCABULARY BUILDER

  Three of the most popular phrases in melodic Italian start with va which means “it goes”:

  Va bene: All goes well!

  Vá via: Go away!

  Vá fa ‘n culo: Up yours!

  History Review

  Ancient Greeks were among the first to settle what is today Italy, but the group that most put its stamp on the land was the toga-wearing, wine-swilling Romans. It wasn’t just their poets and historians or their architectural skills that made them hugely important. Nor was it their fighting ability and expansionist nature per se. The most enduring legacy that Romans left to not only Italy but all of Europe was their stone roads, which, for the first time, connected much of the Continent as one. That all roads lead to Rome underscored the cohesion of their society, as did the fact that they created the first enduring transit ways. Countries left out of the Romans’ developmental loop—Ireland, for example—were left out of progress for centuries.