October 19, 2006 18.27 Milan, Italy (I am trying a different way of writting about our trip. Instead of saying so much each place we went to (maybe in another email) I am offering some of my interpretations and some funny stories and ironies about Italy. I hope you enjoy, and I always love feedback.) There has been so many contradictions in our journey of five weeks here in Italy and now alas I must sum it up quickly so we can get back on the road out of this smog pit. (We are heading next to Spain.) Italy is frustrating and inspiring. She is stuck in the past and yet at the edge of modern fashion. She inspires passion and yet so many tourists find Italians infuriatingly rude and vow not to return. What lies beneath this myriad of contradictions? Many people have been to Italy and many people love her food yet how many people understand her medieval and mafia roots that house one of the world's largest and most influential religious institutions? The following recount of one morning may give you an idea of how rewarding and frustrating it is to be in Italy. One morning we were trying to leave this little nothing of a town called Piombino (port to Elba) where no one speaks much English and hours of going in circles trying to find an Internet shop proved nothing more than what a pain in the ass Italy can be, certainly no computers. Even trying to clean the windows of the car while filling it with gas I had a man yelling at me in Italian to go faster. It was not the first time and is not pleasant either. We were at a supermarket because it is such a royal pain in the ass to try to drive in any Italian city that it is always better to go to a place you know how to find even if you don't need or want to go then. Despite the fact that it was a weekday morning there was such a frenzy of people around the store it was hard to turn my body around without knocking someone in the vegetable section, let alone maneuver a shopping cart through the traffic jammed isles of people. (Sorry, pausing to listen to the loud fight going on behind me right now as they yell about why everyone in this country must show their passports before using any computer or phone. Apparently this man thinks if he yells and pounds louder the government will change their oh-so-effective law that supposedly fights terrorism) Having learned a bit about the Italians I deemed it one of those times to get pushy and just ram our way through the totally oblivious line of people who cut right in front of you in order to stop and block you way as they leisurely look at some shelf of food. So, I take the cart from Joel and plow through them all partly laughing at their chaos and partly annoyed at their rudeness. In the deli section of the store we found ourselves soaking up the delicious views of fresh and tasty pasta, sauces, pastries, cheeses etc.. I lost myself in the he amazement array of culinary rainbow of options and it helped the frustration subside, yet I couldn't help but feel proud that I had managed to work my way up to the counter before the rude lady who had blocked us only minutes before. So there I am having a blast ordering a huge array of tasty treats whist fumbling my way through what in my dreams sounds like Italian but in reality is a shocking mix of Spanish, and occasional accidental word of German and ending it all with some endings that only sound Italian to Joel and myself. (We have a theory that every Italian word must end in a vowel.) I find that often I myself forget which language I am speaking and often respond out of instinct in German when English or Spanish would be much better...still, it somehow works. As the friendly and totally patient non-English speaking man helps me I ponder buying some sauce that looks intriguing, yet appears to have a dangerous meat-like color prompting me to ask what it is made of. After lots of funny imitations of what I can only guess were the animals that eat the food, the man starts asking a customer for help with the English word. This is an incredibly enduring custom here. When someone is genuinely trying to help you, and can't, they simply grab anyone and often (being such talkative Italians) everyone nearby and involve them in whatever question or directions are being debated. So there we are, a group of people trying to figure out what the word is in English, and one cunning women goes and finds a walnut. Simple, yet effective. The unknown sauce was made out of walnuts. So, in the process of this exciting and totally fun experience I start talking to a woman next to me in English. Later, while Joel is paying for groceries and I am outsides calling all over Italy trying to find a place that will fill our propane tanks from Germany I see the woman exiting the store and rush up to her asking her if she can help me talk to a man on the phone about the propane because he does not speak a word of English. She agreed to help but had to leave for an appointment. In a typical Italian style she simply calls out the name of a lady who was sitting in a restaurant nearby. Gosh, does everyone know everyone here? So she introduces me to the French teacher and says she can help me and excuses herself. So, I launch into a long account of how complicated it is to get propane in Italy. It is a trite matter, but yet really gives a good example of how 'One Europe' as the E.U. like to call it, is anything but that . So, who would have thought that getting propane could be such a drama? Before our 4 hour introduction to the apparently difficult task a few weeks ago in Switzerland, all through northern Italy and finally in and around Florence, I would not have believed it. Anyway, this time I was prepared. As it turns out each country in this 'One Europe' has a different nozzle for their propane tanks and the long and the short of it is that you can only fill up your propane tanks in the country you bought it in. Problem is that even if you buy an expensive new one for that country, it won't fit into the German VW van for cooking and the refrigerator. (Sorry, pausing for thought after another outburst from the yelling (again) Italian man.) So, I am asking this French teacher if she will talk to the Italian man who filled our tanks last time and find out how long it will take since the last time it took three, yes three, days. So, you can guess that being Italian everyone around got involved and pretty soon the entire patio area of the local bar/restaurant, English speaking or not, was involved in our dilemma. Men were shouting out advice in Italian and I was responding in Spanish trying to explain why their ideas didn't work. So pretty soon one man gets up and leaves and a trail of us follow him to the pay phone inside where he uses his own money to call a local gas store. It occurred to me at that moment that it is these thrills that make me so love traveling. It sounds silly, but to get totally into another society and language, and have them all involved with helping me, it was like for a short time I was fully in their little reality, accepted, helped and it feels thrilling to jump off of the tourist trail and experience something so real...who cares what trite matter it might be about. So...after some discussion it is decided that this place will indeed fill our tanks and that to insure it all goes smoothly they will send a representative from the group of lively and helpful Italians; Alfonzo. So, Alfonzo (who speaks no English) and Joel and I hop into our big blue van and he navigates us efficiently to the gas shop where the woman in charge says they cannot fill the tank because it is not from Italy. After some discussion, and maybe a bit of desperate intent on my part, the woman decides to do it for us and switches into English long enough to tell us, ' I do exceptionally. No again.' I am sure that she only did it for us becuase we had an Italian with us. 'No problemo y gratzie!' I respond delighted and we happily payed 4 times the amount it costs in Berlin to fill the tank. Wow, can you see what a complicated country and emotional roller coaster Italy is? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A funny thing about traveling around in our VW is that 1.People always think we are German 2. People are blown away by our international story (He's from Australia, I'm from the U.S., we met in Thailand, we just finished working in Germany, and now we are here in your tiny town.). It's fair enough to think we are German since our license plates are, but it is really weird to have people act one way when they think we are Germans and then mostly lighten up when they find out we aren't. (Finally I understand what some Germans have told me about feeling embarrassed to be German, but it still doesn't compare to having to say your from the states in this day-in-age.) So, the man from the previous story (the one who made the phone call at his expense to help us) asked us why everything we have is from Germany and we explain our international story. He exclaims, 'Germany!' and I brace myself not knowing how he will respond. As it turns out the man loves loves Germany and considers it his 'second home'. Wow, that's a long way off from the people who key scratched 'Nazi' into the paint on the side of our van when it was parked in a paid parking lot in the quaint old Tuscan town of San Gimignano! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- One annoying thing about Italy, or at least the parts where tourists go, is that you have to pay to sit down. Food or drink is cheaper if you stand than you sit. Sitting near some tourist attraction costs a lot more than sitting in a normal restaurant. Charging a 'coperto' or cover charge is standard to eat at any normal restaurant and often there is an additional service fee in addition to the inflated prices for food and drink. ($3-5 is common for a Coke) And even paying all of that when you sit in a restaurant you are often jammed into such a tiny space that you can't even move your chair to get out and there is often a constant stream of people walking behind you bumping your chair as you eat 1.5 inches from the table next to you. It just seems like space is such a premium over here that it socially accepted to have to pay to squeeze your butt on a clean flat surface or into an over priced restaurant! ------------------ There are some major differences in how this country is organized in comparison to Germany. In Germany there are many double decker buses and they have a layout plan designed to seat a lot of people and so that the rest may have to stand for awhile. In comparison the buses here in Italy are laid out so that there are virtually no places to sit, and a lot of places for people to stand if you can call the sardine imitation they do here standing. We rode on one bus that was so packed full that there was no more room for people to come in, even sardine style and they had to wait another 15 plus minutes for the next bus. That would NEVER happen in Germany. Germans would simply install double buses (either doubled going up or back) so that there was always enough room on a given bus. Gosh, if a bus was that jammed in Germany they would probably call in some emergency back up or something, but here the driver seemed used to it, and the passengers seemed callous about the people who had to wait behind. Another thing that would never happen in Germany is the crazy maze of signs. Some streets are marked, some not. Some cities or highways are marked, some not. Sometimes we understand the signs, sometimes not. Stores and business tend to have the best signs because obviously they profit from it directly. Normally when two people see two different prices at the same gas station one of them would be wrong, but in Italy they're probably both right. Sometimes there are signs at a gas station saying how much we are paying (which is a lot!) and they don' t correspond to other prices signs in front of the same gas station. False advertising or just Italian ineptness? In defense of Italy though, they may be unorganized but they do have a certain class about them. We often find ourselves referring to the India vs. Italia comparison I mentioned in the last email. The lack of organization on the roads (often there aren't even lines between the lanes), the smell of piss (heck you have to pay thru the nose to get the drink, then they will try and charge you a Euro to piss it back out! No wonder the small alleys smell of piss), the mafia (they say 10% of the economy here is mafia related and that one of five business are run by them), the passionate furry....but there is something here that is charming and classy in a way that India just doesn't have in my opinion. It may be hard to believe that southern Italy is actually Europe, and not the middle east or Africa, but in my opinion all Italians have a charm and a class that only the richest of Indians could possibly attain. Somehow I find the hearts of the Italians more pure, and that grabs me as much as their class. ------- Of the many funny little quarks in Italy, I find their particular kind of patriotism funny. They love their own food, flag and language. In fact, they love their flag so much that there is a national obsession with making their food look like their flag. You can get just about any dish in red, green and white just to prove how truly Italian the Italians are! -------- Finally I want to say that Italians are easily the most loquacious people in Europe by far. They talk so much, so loud, and everywhere that it can easily be unnerving if you simply want to relax. It is however, Italy and it should be accepted that Italians are passionate speakers and love to express themselves with their typical hand gestures that are so lovable and quintessential Italian. In some of the thermal baths that we have gone to it seemed to me that people congregated simply to talk. Italians talk at the store, non-stop in restaurants and on their cell phones no matter where they are (I've seen bus drivers chatting away with a full buss and in Venice we saw many a gondola drivers either SMSing or talking on their cell phones). One Italian man stopped his car in front of us on Elba to have a lengthy chat to a friend on a one lane road so we were stuck behind him for the entirety of a not-so-short conversation. We thought we were being pretty patient not to honk or anything, and the guy drove another 10 meters and actually stopped to talk at length to another person!!! Italian women talk the most of course. One Italian woman, Maria, (and wow if we have met a mafia woman, she was it, all you had to do was go to one of her recommended restaurants or businesses and say her name and you were 'taken care of'!) said that her daughters talked so much and so loudly that even her neighbors complained! But, 'What are you going to do?' she asked and threw up her hands in another expressive Italian mannerism. So, since it is now 22.28, and I am exhausted, that is all for tonight. We really have seen some lovely towns, and my dad...but that will have to be for another email. Lots of love! Timory