Wandering the Piedmont and Alpine towns of Italy

The regional train from Bologna to Turin (Torino) takes about 4.5 hours. About an hour before reaching Turin, the Alps become visible in the distance. The outskirts of the city reveal its recent industrial history (Turin is home to Fiat, Nutella, among other things). But the center of town has all the charm of a large, "European" city with a wealth of history and culture defining and shaping its uniqueness.
We "discovered" Turin one afternoon as we looked through guide books of Italy, trying to determine our weekend destination. Capri.. Elba... Tuscany? Then our eyes fell upon the Lonely Planet page called "off the beaten path." Turin, it suggested, was - for better or worse - still largely ignored by the touring public and should not be overlooked. Generous aperitivi offerings, we read, uncrowded tourist attractions (the Shroud of Turin), lovely views of the Alps. It sounded intriguing so we booked a hostel.

Day one of our weekend was dedicated to walking the city. Discoveries - not listed in tour books - abounded: a 2nd century AD Roman theater at the foot of the famous Duomo, modern art hanging on the sides of buildings and featured in squares, royal guards in uniform (costume-like uniform), lovely little churches with candle-lit Friday services sung in Latin. And, as touted by Lonely Planet, the aperitivi (Italy's version of tapas) were incredibly generous - overwhelmingly so. But at the end of every westward facing street loomed the snow-capped Alps.

As much as we loved Turin, the suggestion of mountains posed such an enticement that we made plans to leave the next day. See full photo album of Torino.

When we said "we want to hike" in unison, the woman in the train station's tourist office - who likened the ability of my friend and I to speak in perfect unison about our wishes for the weekend to the nephews of Donald Duck - randomly suggested Oulx. Oulx? We'd never heard of it. Sounded fun... We took the print out of B&Bs and made reservations at the first one we called.

The magic that Oulx - and the town Sauze d'Oulx, just above - nearly defies description. We took the regional train west into the mountains. The trip took about an hour and half. The higher we climbed, the more astounding the landscape. Our B&B, run by a young Italian couple, was simply a condo, which we had to ourselves, located near the center of town. A bus took us up higher into the mountains where it was suggested we look for hiking trails. The town we ended up in, Sauze, was where - we discovered that day - most of the Olympic 2006 Winter Games took place.
Being the only tourists in town, we enjoyed the full attentions and hospitality of the (mostly) British expats who worked there. The hike we did took us nearly to the top of Triplex, a mountain in the Via Lattea (Milky Way), which is renowned for its fantastic ski trails. The day ended with a large mug of hot chocolate by a fire and later a dinner at The Falcon - an excellent restaurant run by an English couple who transplanted to Sauze a couple decades ago. See full photo album of the Alpine towns.

Following the "unbeaten" paths (finding off-season tourist destinations) in Italy is the way to go. My friend and I learned, in the mountains, what it was like to truly have our breath taken away.

off the beaten path...

more about where and how soon...

Photos of 5 Terre, Porto Venere and Bologna!

I haven't had a moment to blog about these trips yet.. but check out the Italia section of www.portiamills.com for the lasted posted photos of Bologna, 5 Terre and Porto Venere !

Lago di Garda

Saturday morning, some friends and I picked up a car from Hertz in Bologna and drove north - past Modena, Mantua, Padua and Verona - toward Lago di Garda (Lake Garda). Minus getting a bit lost, it took us a couple hours to reach our destination, Riva di Garda, on the northern-most point of the lake. We spent the day walking around the quaint town, eating, hiking in the mountains there and planning our next move.
The next day we drove down the western side of the lake to a town called Limone, recommended by my aunt who enjoys vacationing in Garda from time to time. Limone proved a lovely town, tucked into the base of the mountain side and sprawling along the deep glacial lake. Next, we headed further south, through Mussolini's old retreat and several other picturesque villages.
In one rather large town, we got a bit turned around -- Italian highways are not intuitive for the average American driver. A family of RV-cruising northern Italians helped redirect us toward the bustling town of Sirmione in the far south of the lake. The latter proved as the guide books described: quite touristy but worth the visit for historic landmarks and Roman ruins. The kiwi and blood orange gelatto that I enjoyed before we headed back to Bologna may have been my favorite part of the day, though, aside from the dip in the lake.

photo album from trip

Castiners in Haiti

By Portia Mills *
Rural Haiti may seem an unlikely place for a gathering of Castine “natives.” But on a Friday evening in mid-March, an unexpectedly large group of folks with deep ties to Castine—Danielle and Larry Mutty, their adult son Paul and his daughter Sarah, Joe Kilch, and I—all gathered around a large dinner table to enjoy the evening air and chat with Fr. Marc Boisvert at his orphanage. Fr. Marc is well known to many in Castine from his first diocesan assignment, as well as Pwoje Espwa, the orphanage he founded in 1998....

Click here to read the rest!

food prices: wake up to the problem and the cause

Food and gas prices have gone up astronomically in the last year or so. In the USA, Europe and other wealthy regions of the world, we deal with the blow by tightening our belts or shopping at Sam's Club instead of Whole Foods or using public transportation more often or modifying vacation plans. Sure, it affects us but not on any devastating level. It is, therefore, very difficult for us to understand the profound impact these high prices have had on developing nations all over the world.

We need to wake up to this crisis and we need to treat it like the priority it is.

Like or not, we are now a global community and when an Iowan farmer shifts production it isn't only his immediate community or market that feels the affects. Yesterday, Paul Krugman wrote in a NYT op-ed "You might put it this way: people are starving in Africa so that American politicians can court votes in farm states." His column lays out in glaring detail how interconnected our world is on every level now - finance, energy, agriculture, even weather. Its worth the read.

Here are the basic facts:

• trade policies set by leading economies directly affect prices of essential items in poor countries
• economic success and development in China and other rapidly growing economies drives up cost of grains and energy globally (see Krugman's piece)
• droughts and crop blights in Australia and other countries that are leading producers of the world's grain contribute to rising costs
• biofuels are a disastrous miscalculation, driving food prices up and promoting deforestation in regions that cannot afford more slash-burn stripping

Some of these things are in our power to change, some aren't. Acknowledging that maybe its better to use oil and continue searching for more, less expensive energy options might mean we have to stomach certain immediate realities we don't like (CO2 emissions, oil-dependency - take your pick) but isn't it a far greater crime for the Haitian poor to eat mud cakes because a bag of rice is far beyond their means? The recent civil unrest there speaks to the gravity of the situation. Something has to change.

The economy of the world is in flux and we have concerns about our portfolios, a Middle-East dominated oil production, the falling dollar, and global warming. But what is a global community without people? Shouldn't these concerns fall to the wayside in light of starving millions?

Our community, our neighbors and trade partners and friends and - for some of us - our families are suffering. We need to wake up to the food crisis. Something has to change.

NEWS ~ Avian Bird Flu in Haiti?

When countries like Haiti make the excruciatingly slow climb out of poverty and corruption, an apparently minor hitch could have disastrous implications on that plodding progress. Today, the Sun Sentinel ran an op-ed on the potentially devastating impact of Avian Flu, now making the rounds in the Caribbean, on Haiti.

While Puerto Rico, a U.S. protectorate, can probably easily weather any disruption in trade between itself and Dominican Republic, Caribbean countries - like Haiti - without the safety net of the U.S. economy, will suffer. The Sentinel writes, "egg prices in Port-au-Prince jumped 25 percent to more than $3 a carton, according to news reports." Little fluxes like these, with high gasoline prices effecting costs too, present terrible difficulties to the majority of Haitians, whose meager incomes place them well below the poverty line.

Though the strain found in the DR is less virulent than that recently found in Asia, the Sun Sentinel's editorial board rightly points out that

Haiti can't bear this now — not while making slow, but what appears to be steady progress under President René Préval. The country imports at least 1 million eggs and hundreds of thousands of chickens from the Dominican Republic daily, according to the country's agriculture minister. A bird flu epidemic and food shortage would further stress a population whose health is already compromised. It could also wipe out a means of livelihood for merchants who sell poultry products.

Some might remember the last animal-related food disaster to impact Haiti: the slaughter of the Creole Pigs. When the African Swine Fever virus spread to Haiti from the Dominican Republic, the U.S. government put enormous pressure on the Haitian government to slaughter all their pigs - offering a seemingly excellent eradication and re-population plan. Thus, Creole Pigs were slaughtered and U.S. shipped in pigs from the Midwest. But the American swine were higher maintenance, requiring imported feed, clean water and falling ill more often. The program failed disastrously and had lasting and continuing impacts on poor farmer.

I would like to under second the Sun Sentinels recommendation that: "The United Nations, USAID and other humanitarian organizations must do everything in their power to help address the problem before the situation worsens."

portiamills.com updates

For months, I completely shirked my blogging and website in lieu of other activities. Now that some of those obligations are behind me, I'm trying to make up for lost time. Please check out www.portiamills.com to see the latest updates. The newest sections are "families," "who's there," and "work and play."

In coming weeks, I hope to reorganize the site to post photographs from other locals and trips. Your feed back, thoughts and ideas are, as always, most welcome and appreciated!

NEWS ~ mobile phones take over

Digicel reaches nearly 2 million customers in Haiti after only one year of business there.

Read the full story.

the real technological revolution

In 200 years, little has changed in the dominantly pastoral Haitian landscape where ill clad workers stand under a relentless sun in grazing fields or rice paddies. In the last several years, though, with the introduction of cellular phones, one might see the almost surreal sight of a field worker chatting on a cell. The implications of technology and portable devices are enormous in countries with inadequate infrastructure. This phenomenon cries out for more effort focused on how to fully employ the potential for local businesses and development efforts.

Technology has only just started to impact all aspects of life and work in the developing world. As I witnessed in Haiti with cellular phones, newer technology fills in where older, infrastructure-heavy technology failed. Most Haitians, for example, do not have land phones and probably never will. Over decades, TELECO, the conventional phone company, formerly run by the Ministry of Public Works, Transport, and Communications, managed infrastructure that has served only thousands of over five million potential customers. In the last few years alone, Digicel and Voilá (Irish and Haitian cellular providers, respectively) started building towers, setting up “charging stands” in town centers (since most Haitians have no electricity), and offering free minute deals; now millions can have a phone.

Much more effort needs to be focused on how wireless communication devices have begun to change communication and, as the isolation for many people falls away, the nature of culture in Haiti and similar countries. Equally important for the developing world are the impacts on local government, businesses and non-profits. In just years, cellular phone towers did to a mountainous island what wired communication, in decades, never could.

Laptop computers could have similar potential, though perhaps on a smaller, or longer-term, scale. They are much easier to transport, re-sell, donate and, by virtue of the battery, use in areas with unreliable electricity. There is real potential, though with many challenges, for projects that employ the same ideas as America’s “Laptop for Every Student” and the global “One Laptop Per Child” project.

New, smaller satellite dishes or possibly emerging ultra-low-cost and small wireless portable TVs will offer yet more potential for technological innovation to bring information and opportunity to the developing world – and critically to perhaps help advance educational and economic efforts in remote regions. Indian farmers, for example, have been using satellite technology in recent years to emulate farmers in the developed world, to track product prices in the market, check the weather, and learn more about other farming techniques.

The potential value of harnessing the new, portable information technologies deserves much greater attention. For this reason, more effort need be focused on what types of affordable technologies might be encouraged, and disseminated, and on low-cost services to support and expand the capabilities of these tools to help advance humane causes and economic development around the world. What has happened thus far is only a beginning, but has illuminated the potential of this profoundly important opportunity.

During Hurricane Dean this year, the Haitian government, refusing to acknowledge a potential natural disaster, would not put announcements out on state-run radio programs about evacuation opportunities for people in risk zones. Digicel, however, seized the marketing opportunity and sent out text messages to all its customers, offering updates on the tropical storm - for a fee. This last point, of course, drives home exactly the need to find creative, low-cost and perhaps subsidized ways to advance such technology.

Tofu in this American Paradise

What do a U.S. congressman, a weapon-designing chemical engineer, an American general and a Disney executive have in common? Aside from a slew of impressive accomplishments to their names, they all immigrated to the United States, eventually naturalized and, today, they received "Outstanding Americans by Choice" awards.

The event was held at the White House in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (formerly the Old Executive Office Building) - incidentally, a building designed by an immigrant - where 25 other immigrants from 18 different nations became American citizens. Among nationalities represented were Afghanis, French, Brits, Filipinos, Peruvians, Iraqis, Chinese and a large handful of Pakistanis. Men, some dressed in service uniforms, women, young and old stood to pledge their allegiance to the flag. In his remarks, the director of US Citizenship and Immigration services mentioned that 650,000 immigrants naturalized in 2007. In 2008, he expects the number to be much higher. Each one of these, he pointed out, has his/her own unique story. Some of these stories are breathtakingly remarkable.
Living in Washington, D.C. affords easy access to the random events that occur only in the capital at places like national monuments, government buildings, and association headquarters. Today, when I went to lunch with the woman under whom I served as a White House intern, I was asked if I would like to tag along for a naturalization ceremony at which some fairly impressive Americans would be receiving awards. Field trip to the EEOB? You bet I wanted to go!

There is just something so cool about being "cleared" into a government building and handing your ID to secret service agents before walking around enormous halls that have seen some major history. So that alone would have been enough to make my afternoon. But what I witnessed today in one of the rooms off the high-ceilinged corridors stirred renewed pride in my country.

A marine sang the anthem while the Color Guard stood in rigid attention. Everyone said the pledge of allegiance. Then, after America's 25 newest citizens promised to defend and uphold, etc. etc., the US Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services recognized four outstanding Americans. First, a Cuban-American U.S. congressman, who fled Castro with his parents in an early wave of refugees, told the room that they could accomplish anything they wished in this country. Next, a Vietnamese-American woman, with a series of accomplishments in science advising and weapons design that seemed incongruous with her slight frame, stood to dazzle the room with her eloquent and patriotic remarks. Following her, a Chinese-American general spoke of fleeing China in the 1950's and of rising ranks in the Army, in which he proudly served for a career. Finally, a English-American businessman thanked the director and Bureau for his award, saying that he and his Mexican wife had found the opportunity and diversity in America unique and necessary to realizing their dreams together.

Each one of the award recipients positively exuded pride in their citizenship and in the accomplishments that have served their adopted country. As the Vietnamese-American chemical engineer said, "America is a stir-fry. In a stir-fry, you want each ingredient to retain its flavor. You want the tofu to taste like tofu and the carrots like carrots. That's what makes it great. I will continue being tofu and doing all I can to help make this great American stir-fry the paradise - I repeat, paradise - it is."

"is it safe to travel to Haiti?"

"If you take a bus to Port-au-Prince, make sure your ride is there to pick you up right when you get off. Better yet, don't get out of the bus until you can actually see your ride, and make sure you have to walk no more than ten yards to get there. When I [finally] saw [my friend's] car through the traffic, it was as if the clouds had parted and a ray of sunshine directly from God was shining down upon me," a friend wrote to me the other day about his bus trip from Les Cayes to Port-au-Prince. Though overjoyed to hear he was unharmed, I must say I was not surprised at his tale. My word to the wise always is, "unless you are Haitian, don't get on the bus in the first place."

Despite the fact that things really are better in Haiti these days, my friend's bus trip confirms that safety still has a lot to do with circumstances. In late Spring of 2007, a boat of westerners sailed into the waters of southern Haiti - coming into Les Cayes to fuel and gear up. They found the island fascinating and, not having planned to do so and unfamiliar with the country, decided to spend a little time visiting around the coast. The next evening, while anchored off another coastal town in the southern department, they were attacked. A mob of Haitians had cut their line, and were walking and boating across the sandbars and shallow harbor with torches chanting for money. The small group of sailors, who were too far for any timely rescue, managed to escape - but only just.

The near misses are not reported. That my Creole-speaking American friend got "scared for the first time" in Haiti will not be in a U.N. report. That a boat of westerners almost did not make it is certainly not evening news. But these anecdotes are important because they reveal a continued state of volatility in Haiti. Travelers should feel more comfortable about the kidnapping situation (or relative lack there of) and a safer capital city, but they should still heed travel warnings to stay away from potential mob scenes, avoid public transportation (or tap-taps, as they are called), etc. etc.

I have decided to take up blogging again (for several reasons) and begin with this topic because lately I have received several emails from people traveling to Haiti and their primary concern is usually security. These people are finding me through expat directories and Google searches for Haiti. Thus, let this entry show that 1) I still stay up on what's going on down there, 2) I am more than happy to share my opinions, 3) I am going to start sharing them more regularly here!