Are there MUSIC FESTIVAL in ITALY?

Too bad. You were looking for a professional review of the huge quantity of festival that Italy can supply. And you arrived in this blog, which is all but professional. But come on, tourists always complain they do not want to see the "touristy" things, they want to see the REAL Italy, the one ITALIANS enjoy.

If you ever thought those things when on holiday, then keep reading: don't waste an occasion to read a fascinating report about Italian MUSIC SUMMER FESTIVALS, written by an Italian, a musician, and a New Yorker.

So here we go: let me tell you I am a little biased when it comes to music (who isn't?!), so I'll write exclusively of the following two events, which - in my humble opinion - are the two more valuable events of the Summer:

Eating Italian Food in New York?!

So: I posted quite a lot about food already, and I'll keep this pace hopefully. I've never dedicated a whole post - though - to eating Italian Food in New York.

Let me start in an optimistic way: IT'S NOT BAD.

If you're not accustomed with the Italian culture you might not know that Italians are well known to always complain, when abroad, about food. Especially when food is sold as "Italian". To this extent they might be sort of right, since most of Mario's Restaurants or Capri Pizzerias around the US serve all but Italian food.

In a sense they accommodated American tastes to Italian recipes, but that doesn't make a good restaurant.

So, what is different in New York?!

So there's not going to a STARBUCK IN ITALY, right?

I feel quite bad about repeating myself. Both in this blog, and in life. But I really need to review a previous post of mine, where I talked about Starbucks and Italy.

APPARENTLY, THERE IS NOT GOING TO BE ANY STARBUCKS IN ITALY.. At least anytime soon. Let me be clear about this, since my post could have been misleading. I decided to cover the topic because of a poster I had seen online, on facebook, where they said that:

Starbucks Comes to Italy (Rome, Venice, Milan, Naples) - June 2012

Now, if I am not wrong, June has come, but no Starbucks have shown up in Italy. So: what was wrong with the poster cited above?!

Guido's BACK?!

'Zup Folks?!

So sorry about the delay.. these last few months have been so hectic, I could barely find time to eat. And you know that for as much as I like writing in this blog, I still prefer to eat well!..

So, what's new with the Italyorker?! Pretty much everything: starting with the fact that I'M TYPING FROM MY BELOVED ITALY. In this sense, "Guido's Back" stands both for Guido is back to Italy, and Guido's back to blogging. I'm a GENIUS, right?!

What's a nice English word?

So, I've been posting mostly about NYC so far, and I'm hoping to do it as often as possible, but let me take a little break to speak about something more related to foreigners abroad and learning English.

As you might have noticed, I am not English mother tongue, so I'm learning a lot of new words day by day, and sometimes it's overwhelming.. Fortunately, from now and then you find a REALLY NICE WORD, and by nice I mean something that sounds fun, or has a fun meaning.

So the word I want to talk about today would be:

BALONEY

How could NEW YORK CITY be even MORE LIVABLE?

I know I've just arrived in the city and it might sound a little arrogant to try to IMPROVE NEW YORK CITY, but come on, I am Italian.. We do love to take a stand against or for any kind of discussion, starting from the last soccer match, ending with tomorrow's weather. If you're proved to be true many times you get to become a politician; if you are almost never true but you say it really loud, you become president.

Anyways, back to the topic, I noticed that many of the blogs on NYC (rightfully) praise New York as a wonderful city to live in mainly because of:

• a lot of walkable neighborhoods (see here) - check out this website, it's kind of amazing:  http://walkshed.org/nyc
• a lot of green areas (a serious article here);
• etc..

Unfortunately, though, I don't think there is yet a culture of BICYCLES..

Is there something like the SUPERBOWL in ITALY?

Let me be frank: NO.

Since tomorrow is the big game's day, I tried to think really hard about some similar tradition we have in Italy. I couldn't come up with much, and I was somewhat sorry about that. I generally like these weird situations in which the sense of belonging of some people becomes really really strong, for a couple of hours.

The only thing that would compare is the World Cup final (of soccer, obviously). A lot of people get just nuts about it, and I would say the general feeling is similar to the Super Bowl. Only with less Buffalo wings.