Self: "Wow, why?
Italian Person: "It's not just the cooking and the laundry and all that, because if you really need to you can hire someone to do that. It's that she likes me to do her flashcards with her."
The other day I was at the park and became engaged in a conversation with an Italian Person. She told me she had been widowed at a young age, and struggled to make ends meet for herself and her daughter as a science tutor for high school kids. They were from another city, but her daughter wanted to go to a university here, so what did she do? Naturally, she dropped everything, sold their house, and bought an apartment for the two of them near the university.
Self: "Wow, why? Italian Person: "It's not just the cooking and the laundry and all that, because if you really need to you can hire someone to do that. It's that she likes me to do her flashcards with her."
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In America, camping involves venturing out into the greatness of nature. Campers dress in athletic attire, drag technical-looking backpacks out from under beds and fill them with trail mix and water bottles, stock up on things that can be cooked over fires and things that can be used to make fires to cook things over. They drive to the middle of nowhere, which Civilisation has decided ought to be preserved in its original state and never violated by the presence of permanent evidence of humanity, unless in the form of things made out of unpainted pine logs. They leave with tents and sleeping bags and return with the inevitable tale of the guy who couldn't take it anymore and slept in the car.
There are two kinds of Italians who go camping, and the only time they cross paths is in the morning, at a local bar at the foot of one of the Alps. The first guy took the 6am train from Milan, wearing a complete outfit of color-coordinated Arc'teryx spandex. He has already climbed three hours, and he's having a quick coffee before his next eight-hour climb to the summit, the last three hours of which will be straight-up, vertical rock climbing. Before the final stretch, he, and his two closest buddies from the local climbing club, will pass the night in an unheated, one-room stone refuge, gratuitously stocked with food and grappa by the last climbers to pass through. After downing hunks of salami and a generous amount of grappa on the summit, taking the view at dawn the next day, they will run down to catch the 6pm train back to Milan: tomorrow's Monday, after all, and they have to work. The other group of four Italians at the bar just stopped in after a couple easy hours on the highway. They're dressed in everyday attire: button-down shirts, long pants, belts, and sweaters tied around their shoulders. They'll walk gently uphill for two hours, taking in the view of the Matterhorn, before stopping for a lunch consisting mainly of cheese at a two-table restaurant in a glade operating out of a stone building built in the 1400s (the owners speak only Walser). After another stroll, and a long nap by an opportune stream in a grassy knoll, depending the powers of their purse, they will 1) sleep in the guest house of a forgotten monastic order with immaculate sheets, free dinner, and a spectacular view, politely refusing the three monks' invitation to join in vespers; 2) return to the Walser restaurant and ask if they have a room available - they do; 3) take some shots in the fancy Alpine village and drop in unexpectedly on a friend whose dad has a spare lodge there. Where, you may ask, is the camping in this scenario? Well, the only people in tents is a camp of Dutch tourists regarded curiously by the four Italians, who pass them at around 2 in the afternoon, who, in addition to their tent, have brought backpacks full of Heineken and gouda cheese from the Netherlands, so they won't get tempted by the Italian food, for which they have not anticipated any room in their budget. In America, there is tolerably good signage indicating where one may or may not park their vehicle. Obey and you will not be ticketed. Disobey, and you will be ticketed depending on the vigilance and aggressiveness of the local constabulary.
In Italy, there is also generally good signage indicating where one may or may not park their vehicle. Obey and you will not be ticketed. Disobey, and any number of things may happen do you, depending on how well you have followed the Top Secret Unwritten Laws of Parking in Italy. These rules are as follows: 1) If you are parked illegally in a handicapped spot, you will surely be ticketed. 2) If you are parked illegally in a place you obviously shouldn’t park in, but the signage could be interpreted as ambiguous, you may or may not be ticketed. 3) If you are parked illegally in a place that only an idiot would park in, and your violation is so balls-to-the-wall egregious that there can be no question about your intent to flagrantly break any and all possible laws of civil order, BUT your parking choice is neither hazardous nor obnoxious and reveals a certain flare for creative genius or uncommon valor, you will be respectfully left alone. This includes leaving your car for days in any of the following locations: in the center of a roundabout; in the middle of the street on top of the lines dividing the lanes; on a sidewalk that is both wide for no reason, and distant from irritable shopkeepers; on an island dividing secondary lanes of traffic. This can be illustrated by the following formula, where FN is you getting away with it: FN = Flagrant illegality / (Creative Genius – Danger) + (Size of Balls – Obnoxiousness) – Irritability of inconvenienced parties In Italy, the following sad story happens all the time. First, taxes are due all the time, all year, and are incredibly confusing. So confusing that the tax authorities themselves can't understand them. Now imagine it's 2008. Italian Taxpayer X, despite having a PhD in law, is unable to understand some aspect of his tax obligation. He takes himself to the local tax authority to ask for clarification. Bureaucrat Y gives him an absolutely clear and certain answer. But since Bureaucrat Y is not to be entirely trusted, Manager Z is called. Manager Z absolutely agrees, 100% with Bureaucrat Y, and assures Taxpayer X that his tax obligation is such-and-such. X pays such-and-such and goes his way. Fast-forward to 2015. X receives an excessively long and formal letter from "The State."* The letter informs X that the State has just become aware of an error in payment of his taxes 7 years earlier. X's good faith, and the fact that the State itself made the erroneous calculation don't matter. X now owes NOT ONLY the money he should have paid, but ALSO A HUGE FINE in punishment for making the error, and INTEREST for the seven years that the government failed to notice and alert him of the error. Oddly, there are no riots in the streets because of this (there are only riots in the streets because of soccer games and, you know, Capitalism).
In America, the above story would go over smoothly with the American people on a cold day in hell.... *Not many words in Italian are capitalised. For example, the days of the week and the months are never capitalised. But the word State is always capitalised. And now you see why. In America, you know that someone is graduating when it is May or December, and you see neat rows of hundreds or thousands of students wearing medieval robes and unusual hats, flanked by excited parents and siblings with cameras, preparing by dint of sheer adrenaline to sit through three days of interminable jawing by institution administrators and a practiced invited speaker who can be counted on for at least five or six instances of comic relief. Pomp and circumstance will mingle with the inevitable drunk guy who just couldn't make it to tonight without puking somewhere inopportune. Pedicures and fresh haircuts will be rampant. Diplomas will be doled out to more or less deserving individuals for approximately three and a half hours. The only question that remains is whether this is pre-school, kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, high school, college, or graduate school.
In Italy, you know that someone is graduating when it is any month of the year, and you catch sight of a person wearing a wreath of laurels whose friends have covered them in some sort of ridiculous outfit and/or eggs, and are currently in the process of throwing them into a fountain or something with an equivalent level of ceremonial gravitas. Every big-city commuter's favourite question to kick off the day (outside Switzerland and Japan) is now an international phenomenon:
In Italy, the train doesn't come half the time because the communists are striking. In America, the train doesn't come half the time because the capitalists are working. I guess nobody's perfect. As any self-respecting American will tell you, Alfredo sauce is a traditional Italian pasta sauce consisting of a wickedly delicious, gooey mixture of butter, cheese, eggs, and heavy cream that is usually accompanied down one's throat by the king of thick pastas: fettucinis. Any self-respecting Italian-American eatery would not dream of disappointing its customer base by not stocking this dish (along with puffy garlic breadsticks and giant meatballs).
Italians have never heard of Alfredo sauce (or puffy garlic breadsticks, or giant meatballs). Wikipedia says it is pasta al burro, but Wikipedia be wrong. |
AuthorI'm an American living in Italy and making gross generalizations about it. Categories
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