“[In the early 1970s] at Christmas I received a small electric train from Dad. It’s beautiful but trains and mechanics don’t interest me, they are his passions. I exchanged it for some Violetta’s succulent plants: everyone in the family – dad, mum, uncles – is a botany enthusiast. So far so normal, it often happens that fathers give the gifts they love, not those desired by their children. Bernardo however uses this episode to repeat a recurring idea of his: Violetta is smarter than me, ‘she is a future businesswoman’ he says. Instead I am called ‘the thinker’. I don’t dislike the term, but I believe that Bernardo basically despises literati, journalists, professors, whom he lumps together with the left-wing intelligentsia that his ex-wife Giorgina frequented. He only accepts great architects, those he chooses, including Ignazio Gardella, Mario Botta, Norman Foster, Vico Magistretti. In the case of the train, what counts for our father is only the material value of the object, which is certainly higher than that of the plants. (…)”. (pp. 93-94).
