Travels in the Riel World

I just finished reading a book called “Four Seasons in Rome,” by Anthony Doerr. One the surface, it’s the tale of a husband and wife who move to Rome for a year (for a writing fellowship) with their two children. The catch is that the children are twins and are only a few months old when the sojourn in Rome begins, so the story is really about learning to navigate Rome while also learning how to be a parent to two young boys.

The story is fun to read and has the added benefit of wonderful prose and interesting insights into Italian life. A sample of Doerr’s writing about Rome:

Every time I turn around here, I witness a miracle: wisteria pours up walls; slices of sky show through the high arches of a bell tower; water leaks nonstop from the spouts of a half-sunken marble boat in the Piazza di Spagna. A church floor looks soft as flesh; the skin from a ball of mozzarella cheese tastes rich enough to change my life.

And an observation about Italians:

“Italians,” our friend George Stoll says, “will stop anything for pleasure.” And the longer we’re here, the more we feel he’s right. Espresso, silk pajamas, a five-minute kiss; the sleekest, thinnest cell phone; extremely smooth leather. Truffles. Yachts. Four-hour dinners.

I’m always amazed when writers catch my eye with just the poetic power of their prose, and I love to discover random nuggets of cultural insight buried in manuscripts about other topics. On both of these counts, “Four Seasons in Rome” was a good read.

It’s no surprise that the French have a complicated relationship with the United States. One that is certainly reciprocated, as the Americans and the French seem to both love and detest what is most unique about the other’s country. This love-hate dynamic is uniquely examined through the prism of politics in a recent essayby Steven Erlanger in the International Herald Tribune.

An excerpt:

The French have always found American elections amusing, in a horror movie sort of way. They grumpily regard the American president as in some unfortunate sense also their own, but they see the campaign through their own cultural lens.

They value sophistication above almost anything, and so they regard their own hyperactive president, Nicolas Sarkozy, with his messy romantic life and model-singer wife, as “Sarko the American.”

But this year has been difficult for the French. Sarkozy has generally supported American foreign policy and has praised the United States’ openness and entrepreneurial verve. And the sudden emergence of Senator Barack Obama - black, and seen as elegant and engaged with the larger world - has sent many French into a swoon.

But the combination of two recent surprises - Governor Sarah Palin and America’s terrifying financial meltdown - has brought older, nearly instinctual anti-American responses back to the surface.

These two surprises, one after the other, have refreshed clichés retailed under President George W. Bush, confirming the deeply held belief of the French that the United States remains the frontier, led by impenetrably smug and incurious upstarts who have little history, experience or wisdom.

Even worse, from the French perspective, Americans are reckless optimists, incurably blind to the tragedy of life, to the weary convolutions of history and thus to the need for lengthy August vacations and financial regulations.

The much talked about Mediterranean diet appears to be in retreat - in the Mediterranean. Yes, strangely enough, the diet full of olive oil, fish and fresh vegetables that is considered one of the healthiest in the world is struggling to maintain a foothold in its home region. The culprit? Fast food. Check out this story in the International Herald Tribune for more.

Dr. Michalis Stagourakis has seen a transformation of his pediatric practice here over the past three years. The usual sniffles and stomachaches of childhood are now interspersed with far more serious conditions: diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol. A changing diet, he says, has produced an epidemic of obesity and related maladies.

Small towns like this one in western Crete, considered the birthplace of the famously healthful Mediterranean diet - emphasizing olive oil, fresh produce and fish - are now overflowing with chocolate shops, pizza places, ice cream parlors, soda machines and fast-food joints.

The fact is that the Mediterranean diet, which has been associated with longer life spans and lower rates of heart disease and cancer, is in retreat in its home region. Today it is more likely to be found in the upscale restaurants of London and New York than among the young generation in places like Greece, where two-thirds of children are now overweight and the health effects are mounting, health officials say.

“This is a place where you’d see people who lived to 100, where people were all fit and trim,” Stagourakis said. “Now you see kids whose longevity is less than their parents’. That’s really scaring people.”

That concern has been echoed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, which said in a report this summer that the region’s diet had “decayed into a moribund state.”

“It is almost a perfect diet, but when we looked at what people were eating we noticed that much of the highly praised diet didn’t exist any more,” said the report’s author, Josef Schmidhuber, a senior economist at the food organization. “It has become just a notion.”

Greece, Italy, Spain and Morocco have even asked Unesco to designate the diet as an “intangible piece of cultural heritage,” a testament to its essential value as well as its potential extinction.

I came across a great article about a movement that has sprung up in Italy to preserve the country’s culture of cooking and serving good food. Ah, but Italian food is always good, you might say. Perhaps, but the members of the Home Food movement contend that something of the country’s heritage is being lost - the sense that food is about more than nourishment or even taste. Rather, the culture of Italian food, they believe, is about bringing people together and about satisfying the soul.

“I am deeply convinced that one of the best things we have in Italy is our cooking,” says Marcante, 48, married, with four children. “Italy is one of the few places in the world that you move 10, 20 miles and you eat something completely different.” She goes on: “We have such an enormous tradition about the food and we have to absolutely preserve it.”

The Italian Parliament seems to agree. It is trying to protect the Mediterranean diet, citing it as an “intangible heritage,” by reaching out to UNESCO, the United Nations cultural organization, to recognize it as such.

But there’s a preservation movement burgeoning even closer to the kitchen. Called Home Food, this four-year-old cultural organization collaborates with the University of Bologna in the belief that “good typical food” and civility go hand in hand.

It also believes “good typical food” is disappearing in Italy. Hence, its mission to preserve and promote authentic Italian fare: the traditional recipes, the painstaking methods of preparation, the hug-and-kiss-on-each-cheek delivery…

“Eating traditional, local foods is an experience that brings satisfaction to the palate but, above all, is enrichment for the soul,” says Italian sociologist Egeria Di Nallo in an e-mail. A sociology professor at the University of Bologna, Di Nallo founded Home Food four years ago after being struck by how expedient and global Italian food had become both in restaurants and on the home front. And that, she found civility-shaking.

“Those foods are symbol and metaphor for a traditional way of staying together according to a cultural heritage that we are risking to lose,” says Di Nallo. She goes on: “Home cooks hold the key to our Italian heritage. So our goal is to access that wisdom, keep it alive and share it.”

The best description of the community-building culture of Italian food may come from this quote by Ornella Marcante: 

“Around the table, everything changes,” Marcante explains. “People feel better, more friendly, more open. And even in the family, if there are problems, when we sit down at the table and we try to solve them in front of the dish of pasta, it’s different. It’s easier.”

Check out the whole story, which includes some traditional Italian recipes.

If you’re searching for a more authentic and less glitzy destination by the sea, Sarah Wildman recommends Costa Brava - the sparsely populated coastal region of Catalonia in northeastern Spain. She wrote about a recent trip there for the International Herald Tribune.

On the small roads between Cantallops and Llançà - two names that were barely dots on our map of Catalonia in northeastern Spain - the lush mountain greenery turned quickly to farmland rolling out for miles around us and filled with sunflowers and bales of hay.

We were traveling from the interior mountains of this Spanish autonomous region to the Mediterranean. Again and again, rising up in the near distance, came fantastic, if dusty, terra-cotta-colored medieval hamlets and equally ancient churches and farmhouses. On the streets everywhere the lingua franca was Catalan, not Spanish, and amid all the tourists that descend from France and elsewhere, a local pride seemed to pervade the scene, against a backdrop that fell away suddenly, breathtakingly, into the sea.

In Llançà we stopped at Platja Grifeu, one of the village’s perfect beaches, with clear tropical-looking water to swim in. At the beachside restaurant, I ordered a tortilla española, the ubiquitous potato omelet of Spain. It was, improbably, the best tortilla I had ever tasted. I savored it, facing the sea and the local families sunning themselves, in this tiny village about 10 miles from the French-Spanish border on a road that looked like nothing more than a scribble on the map.

By some small miracle - and preservation efforts that have helped to control development in Catalonia - the Costa Brava has maintained an authenticity and a refreshing resistance to change that keeps this stretch of the Mediterranean radically different from the southern coasts of Spain. Fishing villages still feel like fishing villages, medieval mountain towns are still hushed at siesta, and artists still paint on the streets of Cadaqués.

The country of Belgium is a remarkable success story considering the simmering tensions that have persisted for decades between the country’s Flemish-speaking north and its  French-speaking south. The International Herald Tribune has a fascinating article today that discusses the links between culture and country, while contemplating the difficulties of keeping two cultures happy within a single nation.

The German newspaper Die Tageszeitung a few days ago called Belgium the “most successful ‘failed state’ of all time.” The Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme offered to resign last month, saying that the “federal consensus model has reached its limits,” and that he couldn’t bring harmony to the country’s Flemish and French-speaking regions, raising the specter that this nation of 10.4 million might split up for good.

For the umpteenth time. Belgium’s perennial woes have been much reported upon. The country keeps muddling on, as it has for decades, with per capita income exceeding that of Germany, the world’s leading exporter, although maybe a tipping point has been reached…

It’s about culture in the end. In its escalating dysfunction Belgium demonstrates the inextricable link between culture and nationhood…

Els Witte is a Belgian historian. At her apartment, up the street from the headquarters of the European Union in Brussels, she pondered the bad marriage of French-speaking Wallonia and Dutch-speaking Flanders.

“A language is a culture,” she said. “In Belgium the two cultures know very little about each other because they speak different languages. There are singers known in one part, not in the other. Television is different, newspapers, books.” …

The other afternoon Francis Dannemark was at home in Brussels… “I don’t think it will, but for the first time I really believe Belgium could disappear,” he said… “A Flemish friend,” Dannemark said, “put it to me this way: ‘Flanders has nothing in common with Holland except language, and the Flemish and Walloons have everything in common except language.’ But there’s almost no communication between the two communities, except through rock music, which everybody sings in English, and sports, which transcend everything.”

The Portuguese city of Lisbon has often been an afterthought when considering the great capitals of Europe, but that seems to be changing. Lisbon is getting increasingly good press of late, culminating in this nice profile in the travel section of Sunday NY Times, which focuses on the city’s vibrant arts scene.

After all, this wasn’t a metropolis with a well-established avant-garde tradition like Paris or Berlin, but dowdy old Lisbon, a small Catholic city that is best known for inexpensive seafood meals, throwback cable cars and faded colonial architecture from Portugal’s long-vanished international empire.

But on a balmy night in March, the throngs filing into the complex made it clear that the city was more than ready for a bit of progressive bohemia in their remote corner of the Continent. Looking like the assembled listenership of some Portuguese version of National Public Radio, a buzzing crowd of tweedy academics, tattooed cool kids, bourgeois couples and bespectacled grad-student types fanned out to sample Fábrica Braço de Prata’s typically diverse offerings: a jazz combo, a reggae outfit, a Leonard Cohen documentary and a 1 a.m. after-party featuring D.J.’s and alternative bands.

“It’s creative in all areas — theater, art, music, dance,” Mr. de Roubaix said of the venue’s appeal, clearly pleased by its unexpected success. “There’s a fast turnover of events and shows that keeps the place very dynamic.”

The same could be said for 21st-century Lisbon…

Portugal languished for much of the 20th century on Europe’s geographic and cultural margins. From the 1920s until the 1970s, a repressive dictatorship smothered the nation, sending the creative classes fleeing to London and Paris and severely stunting any potential arts scene. The economy also slumped. Once the center of a global trade empire, Portugal sunk into notoriety as Western Europe’s poorest nation.

As dust collected on Lisbon’s monuments — Roman theaters, Moorish edifices, Gothic churches, Baroque squares — the city became the Miss Havisham of Western Europe: a relic, forgotten and forlorn.

The last of the Western European capitals to experience a cultural bloom, Lisbon is avidly making up for lost time. All over the city, an upstart generation is laying waste to the sepia-toned stereotypes and gleefully constructing edgy and forward-looking ventures amid the time-worn monuments and quaint cobbled lanes.

Few people think of Bulgaria when contemplating a European vacation, but Tim Jones found the country to be an intriguing mixture of the old and the new. He reported on his experiences for the Chicago Tribune.

This is a dark, fascinating and, unfortunately, forgotten country, an Iowa-sized Balkan beauty with snow-capped mountains and lush green fields. It is here that the undeniable forces of the New World order meet a stubborn Old World speed bump defined by donkey carts, shepherds, a sclerotic and often corrupt governing bureaucracy and an economy that, for the most part, lags behind its old Eastern Bloc brethren.

Don’t come to Bulgaria if you’re looking for some glossy European elegance interspersed with Starbucks and all those Western, touristy accouterments that make travel so comfortable and reassuring.

But do come if you’re up for something a little wild and pretty rough around the edges. Come if you’re interested in watching the noisy, tectonic shifts of a former communist satellite in awkward transition to wherever it is it’s going. Come if you’d like to see the Old World, before it’s gone.

According to a global survey sponsored by the British magazine Monocle, the Danish city of Copenhagen has the highest quality of life in the world, edging out Munich and Tokyo. The U.K. Independent published a story about the survey.

For many it conjures up little more than beer and Lego, but Copenhagen has been crowned the best city in the world in a survey of global urban treasures.

The Danish capital was awarded top spot for its quality of life and status as a cutting-edge design centre, said the authors of the report, which looked at factors from the ease of buying a good glass of wine at 1am to the quality of architecture and the number of cinema screens.

Researchers … praised the city’s compact planning, its “frictionless” transport system and infrastructure, as well as its contemporary buildings, top-notch restaurants and renewed focus on environmental issues.

Seven of the top 10 cities in the quality of life survey were European. Tokyo was the top Asian city at #3, Vancouver led the North American list at #8 overall, and Australian cities Melbourne and Sydney came in at #9 and 11.

What happens when a prominent Thai businessman takes over a British football team that is managed by a Swede? Perhaps a clash of cultures was inevitable.

Regardless of your interest in sports, there is a fascinating recent article in the Financial Times that illuminates many of the cultural differences between Thailand and northern Europe. The story specifically recounts the management issues that arose between Thaksin Shinawatra, former prime minister of Thailand and a wealthy entrepreneur who last year took over the Manchester City Football Club, and Sven-Göran Eriksson, the team’s now former manager. The article includes numerous insights for anyone who works across cultures. An excerpt:

Mr Thaksin … is fond of promoting “modern” business techniques, yet he remains steeped in Thai culture. He tends - like most Thais - to trust family, friends and old associates, above all others. So he placed loyal executives and a son and a daughter on the Manchester City board.

A boss who commands awe and respect in Thailand will also expect to be obeyed in a fashion that Mr Eriksson may have found alien. “Over the centuries, the kings of Thailand have been feared and adored. Thais have grown to expect a leader to demonstrate a blend of authoritarianism and benevolence,” writes Henry Holmes in his book Working with the Thais .

There are arguments among academics about how deferential Thais really are these days, but no one doubts that society is much more hierarchical than in the west. The nuances are complex but, crudely, traditional Thai bosses delegate less and are less inclined to discuss their plans with people outside their inner circle.

“Traditional Thai and western management practices are like night and day,” says Stuart Raj, an expert in cross-cultural management.

The Thai boss is very likely to be a rather paternal figure, who is never “off duty”. Every meeting with subordinates is, in this sense, formal. A senior Thai is expected to consult with his juniors but to have the authority, strength and wisdom to make his own decisions. On the other hand, as a father-figure, he is expected to look after his loyal staff, family and friends…

Mr Eriksson, from conspicuously egalitarian Scandanavia, may not have been comfortable as poodle, as he might have seen it. Once relations had cooled, the Swede would most likely have found himself further outside Mr Thaksin’s circle of favoured advisers and - as wins became rarer - increasingly distrusted.

Any sharp comments Mr Eriksson might have made will have been taken badly. “Thais are extremely sensitive to criticism. Everything is about relationships, so criticism becomes very wounding,” says Somjai Pakapasvivat, a Thai management expert at Chulalongkorn University.

Most visitors to Venice experience the famed canals in a gondola. That is, when they’re not walking along the canals, crossing bridges over the canals, or having dinner at a canalside table. But David Kocieniewski wanted a more authentic experience, so he and his girlfriend spent some days paddling the canals of Venice in their own kayak, an experience he then wrote about for the New York Times.

They helped fleeing Romans evade Attila the Hun and held a glittering city aloft for more than 1,500 years. But the wooden pilings rising out of the Grand Canal in Venice are so decayed that as we clung to them one afternoon it wasn’t at all clear whether they would be sturdy enough to prevent us from capsizing into its murky waters.

It was rush hour in Venice, so the canal’s usual tumult of crosscurrents and tides was churning with the wake of water taxis, ferries and delivery boats. Each volley of waves slapped against the side of the inflatable kayak we were using to cross Italy’s most storied waterway; the pilings were our best chance to avoid being immersed in it.

This probably wasn’t quite what my girlfriend, Audrey Lynn Gray, had in mind when we first started thinking about a trip to Venice…But as novice canoers, we were intrigued by the thought of exploring the waterways ourselves…

And for a traveler seeking a sense of place, there is little to compare with the sensation of drifting through the same waters as Renaissance princes, past 17th-century palazzi with mollusks embedded along the waterline, while a parade of delivery boats putt by and gondoliers shout “Oye!” as they approach a blind turn to warn other boaters they’re tilting around the corner.

Madrid and Lisbon. Since the capitals of Spain and Portugal are so close geographically and share a Latin European heritage, one would assume they have nearly identical cultures. In some respects this is true - if you’re doing business in either place, for instance, you’d better be adept at building relationships and be patient with time and deadlines. However, as Peter Mandel discovered during a recent trip, there are also many differences between these two Iberian cities. He wrote about his discoveries for the Chicago Tribune.

Spain and Portugal are like fresh sangria and old port. They are different tastes. And while the euro has helped make each prosperous in unimagined ways, the two are like neighbors who roll their eyes at the shouts and spicy smells that drift from next door.

Here is his impression of Madrid:

Spain’s capital and biggest city, Madrid doesn’t change its accent for a tourist. It stays up until dawn, then dissolves into a scramble of avenue stores, clinking cafe spoons and traffic sounds…

Set smack in the center of the country on a 2,100-foot-high plateau, the only thing that Madrid doesn’t have is coastline. It doesn’t need it. It’s as crazy and cosmopolitan as New York; it’s a Paris that’s been placed up high on a plinth and spun around by shot after shot of mountain air.

And Lisbon:

Lisbon is not about the evening. It lives for its light. The city is stretched out along the water and you can smell it even when you are a mile from shore. Fog and clouds sail in, but the ocean keeps it one of Europe’s mildest cities. Instead of Madrid’s scouring winds, there are long, easy days—sometimes weeks—of sun…

The country’s nautical history has brought in a mix of backgrounds, building styles and foods, and there are times when you are walking in cobbled streets when you forget where you are. A trolley rumbles past and you think Boston. San Francisco. Then an insistent sun pushes out from behind clouds, and you remember. Lisbon.

And the different palates of the two cultures:

The Portuguese-Americans on my street eat fish. Good fish, fresh fish. Fish that comes in cans. So when I get to Lisbon I am amazed that locals are obsessed with sweets instead: custards, powdered sugars, delicate cakes.

“Pasteis” is the name here for the pastries and “doces conventuais” (convent desserts) that are laid out in bakery cases all over town…According to Samantha Martins, a hotel clerk I talk to, “Lisbon’s pastries are better than in Paris.” How come? “They are more sweet.” …

Madrid doesn’t have much of a sweet tooth. But this is the birthplace of tapas, those savory, appetizer-sized special dishes that have conquered the world. You can’t get dinner here until after 10 p.m. since tapas bars slow down the clock. Locals take their time over wine and over little plates. When I try some slices of a special Iberian ham called “Jabugo,” I decide that I don’t blame them…

I start eating more. There are anchovies and crushed tomato spread on bread. There are “mariscos” (plates of shrimp and calamari) and “chirrosa,” miniature sausages that are fried in oil tinged with wine or cider.

For more of the author’s delightful comparison of the two cities, check out the entire story.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! What better way to mark the day than with a tour of Irish cuisine? Ambrose Clancy did just that recently, traversing the island and sampling a variety of Irish meals. He wrote about his tour for the Sunday travel section of the Washington Post.

The Irish have become prosperous and, of all things, European. I decided a food safari was in order to smell what was cooking. Here is a chronicle of some meals during my recent visit: a sampling of the new and old.

Clancy experienced the new diversity of Ireland at Italian and Indian restaurants, but he also enjoyed a good amount of traditional Irish fare, such as this breakfast:

The next morning, at Darry Ryan’s B&B in the heart of town, the old advice is true; we could eat this breakfast all day. Eggs over easy fried in bacon fat, two small mild sausages, a grilled half-tomato garnished with fried mushrooms, white toast in a rack, brown bread, strong tea.

There’s also black pudding, which I eyeball carefully. You can’t have a proper Irish breakfast without black pudding, a sort of sausage that uses pig’s blood as its dominant ingredient. Added to the blood are oatmeal, milk and bread. It’s baked and then cut in thick circles and fried. The texture is dense; ditto the taste, heavy and unpleasant. I drown it with tea.

And this pub fare for lunch:

In the town of Clifden, set above an estuary leading to the sea, a place where hikers and cyclists make base camp, lunch is at E.J. Kings, a pub of stone-flagged floors and food either simple or full of flair.

The Guinness is creamy, and an open-faced crab sandwich on brown bread, with no mayonnaise but just oil, gives a straightforward tang of the sea. Just as good is a BLT, with crispy rashers (bacon), sun-dried tomatoes, caramelized onions and a sharp farmhouse cheese making every bite satisfyingly complex. But the star is the chowder, based in rich stock, laced with sherry, cream, onions, potatoes and salmon that adds a touch of pink to the creamy whiteness.

That’s what the Wall Street Journal asked in a recent article, which noted that Finland placed first overall among 57 countries who recently tested their 15-year-olds in reading, math and science. This despite the fact that there is little standardized testing in Finland and very little in the way of assigned homework.

High-school students here rarely get more than a half-hour of homework a night. They have no school uniforms, no honor societies, no valedictorians, no tardy bells and no classes for the gifted. There is little standardized testing, few parents agonize over college and kids don’t start school until age 7. Yet by one international measure, Finnish teenagers are among the smartest in the world…

The academic prowess of Finland’s students has lured educators from more than 50 countries in recent years to learn the country’s secret, including an official from the U.S. Department of Education. What they find is simple but not easy: well-trained teachers and responsible children…

The Norssi School is run like a teaching hospital, with about 800 teacher trainees each year. Graduate students work with kids while instructors evaluate from the sidelines. Teachers must hold master’s degrees, and the profession is highly competitive: More than 40 people may apply for a single job. Their salaries are similar to those of U.S. teachers, but they generally have more freedom.

Finnish teachers pick books and customize lessons as they shape students to national standards. “In most countries, education feels like a car factory. In Finland, the teachers are the entrepreneurs,” says Mr. Schleicher, of the Paris-based OECD.

The story does note that some of Finland’s advantages are difficult to replicate in the United States, since the Finnish population is largely homogeneous both culturally and linguistically. It also points out, however, that nearly all Finnish schools perform at a similar level because there is hardly any disparity in spending per school district.

Each school year, the U.S. spends an average of $8,700 per student, while the Finns spend $7,500. Finland’s high-tax government provides roughly equal per-pupil funding, unlike the disparities between Beverly Hills public schools, for example, and schools in poorer districts. The gap between Finland’s best- and worst-performing schools was the smallest of any country in the PISA testing.

There is much more in the full article, which is worth a read if you’re interested in educational issues.

If you like chocolate, you might want to check out this recent feature in Smithsonian Magazine called “A Brief History of Chocolate.” There are quite a few delectable facts about the history of this incredibly popular treat. A sample:

When most of us hear the word chocolate, we picture a bar, a box of bonbons, or a bunny. The verb that comes to mind is probably “eat,” not “drink,” and the most apt adjective would seem to be “sweet.” But for about 90 percent of chocolate’s long history, it was strictly a beverage, and sugar didn’t have anything to do with it…

Etymologists trace the origin of the word “chocolate” to the Aztec word “xocoatl,” which referred to a bitter drink brewed from cacao beans…In the book The True History of Chocolate, authors Sophie and Michael Coe make a case that the earliest linguistic evidence of chocolate consumption stretches back three or even four millennia, to pre-Columbian cultures of Mesoamerica such as the Olmec…

Sweetened chocolate didn’t appear until Europeans discovered the Americas and sampled the native cuisine. Legend has it that the Aztec king Montezuma welcomed the Spanish explorer Hernando Cortes with a banquet that included drinking chocolate, having tragically mistaken him for a reincarnated deity instead of a conquering invader. Chocolate didn’t suit the foreigners’ tastebuds at first –one described it in his writings as “a bitter drink for pigs” – but once mixed with honey or cane sugar, it quickly became popular throughout Spain.

By the 17th century, chocolate was a fashionable drink throughout Europe, believed to have nutritious, medicinal and even aphrodisiac properties (it’s rumored that Casanova was especially fond of the stuff).  But it remained largely a privilege of the rich until the invention of the steam engine made mass production possible in the late 1700s.

There was just a three-part series about Russia in the Christian Science Monitor. It focused on the young people who are part of what has been dubbed the “Putin Generation” - those who have come of age in a Russia that is more stable and prosperous, but still tightly-controlled politically and beset by corruption in business.

The whole series is worth a read, but there were some interesting cultural points in the second article, which focused on a young woman who has struggled to establish herself as a new business owner. The story points out the opportunities of the new Russia, but also the country’s inability so far to break free of some of the stifling practices of the past. An excerpt:

Yulia Barabasheva never wanted to have her own beauty salon…But with a dream of securing a steadier income and starting a family, she opened her unmarked brown metal door to the public in April last year.

It took the help of her husband, Igor Barabashev, a businessman, to get $180,000 in start-up loans and complete a six-month slog through Russia’s formidable bureaucracy to obtain a license. Now, she and her staff of 14 take clients up to 12 hours a day, seven days a week, giving them thinner eyebrows or 5-inch nails.

At 25, Barabasheva is politically unengaged, like many of her “Putin generation.” But she enjoys a rising prosperity, which Russians typically chalk up to President Vladimir Putin. Serving that new wealth has opened the door to opportunities that would have been unheard of for average Russians just a decade ago. But even as Mr. Putin’s Russia allows ever greater numbers of people, like Barabasheva, to move up the economic ladder, it demands a scrappy persistence to battle red tape and corruption while trying to get ahead…

That shift toward broader prosperity, especially in Moscow, has been dramatic. In his first five years in office, Putin brought the poverty rate of his countrymen down to about 16 percent, according to the World Bank…Official figures put the middle class at about 20 percent of the population…

But the backstage of business in Putin’s Russia is much messier, according to Barabasheva and other entrepreneurs. “The state structure is quite complicated, quite corrupted, and it requires a lot of financial investment and emotional investment,” she says.

In a recent speech, Putin acknowledged such challenges. “To this day, it’s impossible to start a business within months,” he said, laying out his vision for Russia through 2020. “You have to go to every office with a bribe: firefighters, hospital orderlies, gynecologists, you name it. It’s just a nightmare.”

It’s one thing to travel, it’s another thing to completely immerse yourself in the culture or the daily life of another country. One of the best ways to do this, of course, is to actually live and work abroad. And perhaps even by choosing to do something you might never do at home. Like, say, working in an olive orchard? Patricia Fieldsteel did exactly that, moving from New York to France and getting a job harvesting olives in Provence. She wrote about her experience for the New York Times.

I work a small organic farm with 350 trees in Nyons in northern Provence, where I now live…Some of the local trees are said to be over 1,000 years old. Olive trees never die but give birth from their stumps to new shoots that grow into trees. They have been in the Mediterranean basin for at least 6,000 years and most likely were brought to Provence by the Greeks before the birth of Christ.

A mature olive tree is almost a sentient being; to spend time with one is an intimate, spiritual experience. Every tree is different, having its own personality and aura. Growers often endow each of their many trees with a human name and human attributes. Sometimes I ponder all that a tree must have witnessed in its majestic silence over the centuries. Each year, I experience a sense of contentment and peace that has rarely, if ever, been present in other jobs I have had…

We work daily from dawn to dusk, with Sundays off, sometimes. We break for lunch, enjoying a communal meal around an old farm table by a wood-burning stove — bread, cheese, sausage, pâté, hard-boiled eggs, cold meats and sometimes homemade soup, followed by chocolate, fruit and steaming bowls of café au lait.

It’s been two weeks since Time magazine named Vladimir Putin its “Person of the