EMILIA ROMAGNA:
TURISM AND CULTURE
FOR ALIENS ON HOLIDAY
A still passable road, built in 187 B.C. by the Roman Consul Marco Emilio Lepido, cross it diagonally along its whole length: it is the ancient Via Emilia from which the northern Italian region of Emilia-Romagna, near the Adriatic and Tirreno Seas, takes its name.
Once they were two clearly divided lands, on either side of the Appennine Mountains, always contested by someone or given as a gift to someone else. From Longobard to Bizantine, from the long papal disputes to the imperial disputes, from the Guelfi and Ghibellini feudal factions to the Bourbons and to the various Austrian kingdoms, these two lands (Emilia and Romagna) at last found peace in 1860 with the Unification and their annexation to the Kingdom of Italy.
Every now and then it happens that History is the teacher of experience, or maybe because people discovered by chance that unity is strength, the fact is that today Emilia-Romagna is the backbone of Italy – and it didn’t become a burden for us! Thanks to its wide and varied land, it is the Italian region with the most agro-alimentary production and the highest turnover; it has a remarkable variety of settings: sea, mountains, hills, parks, nature reserves, dwellings and castles, archeological sites and nature trails.
The people are practical and open-minded, without prejudice or preconceptions. For traditional lovers of the good life, there are tortellini, wine, good humor and a lot of love.
In the heart of the typical Italian male there has always been this dream of a girl from Emilia-Romagna: the seductive charm of her warm and captivating spell, her suggestive glance, and her soft and sensual walk.
One region, one people, one task:
to communicate with all and to export all.
Forty million tourists a year prove that there is no limit to the welcome in Emilia- Romagna. And recently it caught the world by surprise with an unprecedented advertising campaign as well as being the most knowledgeable Italian region about cosmic penetration: the tourist promotion of its own land for the extraterrestrials!
It all started with a double page spread in the newspapers. The image is very strong: a squadron of flying saucers coming from outer space and heading towards a water-submerged world with only one piece of dry land – Emilia Romagna ! And to paraphrase the famous Steven Spielberg movie, E.T., from one of the UFOs emerges the comic-bubble “Home”. This would mean that while many earthlings still try to find forms of intelligent holidays somewhere on their planet, the Extraterrestrial (who have seen many planets !) know that Emilia-Romagna is the most astonishing holiday experience in the galaxy because the people who live there are the kindest and most entertaining on earth! In fact, in the whole galaxy, there is no similar place ! A place where all the people are at the disposal of their guests. An intelligent choice that of the E.T.’s looking for an holiday among special people, who know how to involve you, how to let you feel the warmth of home and to offer you a level of enjoyment you would hardly believe.
The advertising campaign continues
with several images according to the different regional tourist offers. “UFOs
on holiday” is the leit motiv which will front the image of
Emilia-Romagna, both domestically and internationally. The start of this old
advertising campaign, which kicks off the third millenium of tourism in Emilia
Romagna, was Milan’s International Tourism Exhibition, which was attended
by 50,000 businessmen, 2,600 journalists and more than 68,000 visitors from all
over the world in just two days.
The ad campaign had also scheduled spots in the cinemas. The digital animation who worked on “Chinatown”, directed by John Attard (special effects for the film “Gladiator”) has re-created the scenes of tourist invasion by the E.T. on holiday.
With most Italians pedaling frantically to keep up with the new Euro, and with the remainder, the Seattle people, shouting and screaming because they don’t want to know about this or that, the Emilia-Romagna advertising campaign appears balanced and smart, offering itself as a wonderland.
We do not yet consider UFOs and Aliens to be a science. In the U.S.A. there are government research centers and astronomers working to intercept intelligent signals coming from outer space, as well as qualified researchers and millions of fans spread all around the world. But for the man in the street, and for conventionally-thinking scientists, the argument is a load of rubbish!
So why focus an advertising campaign on UFOs and Aliens to promote the beauty of a region?
Because the aliens are already here: inside us, around us, in our conversation, in our movies, in our culture, in the collective imagination. It doesn’t matter if officially they don’t exist. UFOs and Aliens today are culture. They permit talk of space, planets and galaxies, they allow dissertations about Einstein’s Theory of Relativity – somehow or other we all have heard or studied it at school.
They permit us to think about biology, and the beginning of life on Earth, and allow everybody to express their own opinion about a supposed alien race.
Could a good advertising campaign open people’s minds to new possibilities? It is possible...Nowadays, no-one likes the unexpected. Everyone wants peace of mind. The exploration of outer space is ok as long as it doesn’t bring about dangerous encounters. Deep down, the good aliens represent what we have not been able to be, or what we would like to be. They have superior intelligence, passions and feelings that humans have rejected.
An advertising campaign which questions the way people think is like a stone in the pond: there is a ripple effect. Positive in this case. And you could even say that the reaction of the tourists is less important – if not for the local Tourist Board, then at least for us.
The desire to communicate is inherent in man. From the first graffiti to the Renaissance, from the Baroque period to Impressionism, Art has been and is the first form of communication, the basis of our civilization.
We could cite Guglielmo Marconi, born as luck would have it in Bologna, precursor of this natural need. His occasional need to communicate overseas makes it possible for us today to “curse” or “bless” the mobile phone.
But do aliens communicate with Emilia Romagna ? According to the records, the region has not been visited much more than any other Italian region. From 1954 until 1998, the official UFO sightings have happened with “regular” occurrence in all regions – as “regularly” as in the rest of Italy.
But it seems investigation in the areas of the sightings has been more precise than in other regions. Perhaps the Carabinieri, who have been officially in charge if this “hot potato” since the 1970’s, are more awake than elsewhere? Or perhaps they are better organized than in the rest of Italy?
One thing is sure, Emilia Romagna has been able to take advantage of this phenomenon, which is still a serious issue for many people. The open-minded nature of its inhabitants allows for a lot of intensive creative activity. And creativity “leaves the door open” to the acceptance of new ideas and information.
Except for the famous little plaque attached to one of the first Voyager spacecraft sent into which provided so much information about our planet, no one in the world has ever really tried to communicate with the aliens.
Officially we want to get in contact with them but if you analyze the kind of research undertaken by the Great Powers, it seems that we are, so to speak, “beating about the bush”. It is possible, however, that this approach is not bringing very satisfactory results. Being prejudiced is not a good way to welcome new people. The objection could be that one of the parties is lacking in certain social skills. But, seriously, who would it be as crazy as to join up with people who are as quarrelsome and warmongering as we are? Who would start a relationship with people who destroy their own “garden”, polluting it with toxic substances, and poisoning even the air they breathe?
Perhaps Emilia Romagna with its straightforward ways, found the right way to communicate with aliens? After all, it has always been the cornerstone of Italian culture. It has always put great emphasis on its artistic, historic and architectural past. In fact, Bologna was nicknamed “the learned” and its famous Garisenda and Asinelli Towers, survivors among the many built during the Middle Ages, are known all over the world.
It is no surprise that Aliens could find them “galactic”. But there is also a magic road, the via delle Terme, an ancient and underground path running from the province of Piacenza and from the highest peaks of Romagna, to the golden beaches of the Adriatic Sea. A route which rolls between health resorts and monumental nineteenth-century palaces. Salsomaggiore, for instance, was a little village producing only salt, but in 1839, it started a process of transformation which led to it becoming famous all over the world. The Thermae Berzieri (which take their name from the doctor from Salsomaggiore who first experimented successfully with the therapeutic properties of thermal water present in the subsoil), emphasizes the contrast between one of the most striking examples of Art Deco – a splinter of the Far East with a hint of Assyro-Babylonian architecture revisited with a touch of Klimt and Viennese Secession – and the technology of the future.
Yet, for many years, the media has made Salsomaggiore the international centre of beauty: in fact, each year, the final of the Miss Italy contest takes place there, the winner of which takes part in a variety of international competitions, thanks to partnerships with Italian and foreign sponsors.
The extraordinary agility and skill of Emilia Romagna, which use the “knowledge” to promote true and unique marketing plans, and which invests in the development of its own human resources, could not but turn to the aliens to guarantee the success of its commercial strategies for the region. The famous tortellini have not left out and are used to attract, or at least to make the aliens curious! Goodness knows, maybe this multiple promotional message will get to them more directly than the SETI ( Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), the scientific center, which searches for intelligent signals in outer space.
After all, “going for the jugular” is also a tactic used by our leaders in important meetings: Emiliana cuisine is in fact a banquet with its cheeses and salamis served with wine which is strong and genuine, just like its inhabitants.
* Many Thanks to the Press Office of the Emilia Romagna Region for the photographic material.
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