I love Italy. I love the food. I love the people. I love the art.
I do not understand how everyone lives in these old buildings with chunks falling off and stucco crumbling and nine layers of paint peeling. Everything made of iron, from pipes to window grates to door hinges, is orange and black and crumbling.
But we are in the oldest part of Florence, the part that draws the tourists. I imagine there are rich people who have new homes or brand new high rises somewhere but I don't see it.
I did get a taxi driver who talked about how awful uncontrolled immigration is, and lamented the "people coming from Africa" and filling up Italy. That's the kind of sentiment that elected that far right woman in her pastel suit. Bummer.
But for me, what I see is a happy people, an earthy people. I hear them bubble up with CIAO! CIAO! to one another and giggle in the mornings and make jokes and offer to help us tourists with everything.
I see happy, well behaved children. I see cooler-than-you teenagers, all sitting in a clump on their cell phones, looking just like clumps of American kids. I see gorgeous women and beautiful men. Didn't Sophia Loren come from Italy? That was my father's crush. Easy to see why.
The Italians recycle everything. They separate bottles and plastic and paper. Everyone recycles. It's a national thing. We've not run across one location here that doesn't recycle and separate. And lots of things here say "made with recycled plastic" etc.
The Italians also smoke. Restaurants give you an ashtray. If someone wrinkles their nose at you for lighting up, you can bet 100% it's an American.
The other thing is time. In Italy, time is different. The Italians have their own concept of time. You can't assume they'll be late, but they certainly aren't ever early. And dinners can take four hours. Anya didn't finish her meal one night and the waiter said "slowly. Slowly. You must take your time and eat." He figured she could finish it if she sat there for another hour!
But if you're a coffee lover, you'll understand this. I will miss the cappuccino so, so much when we go home. It's plentiful, it's strong, it's tasty, and it's cheap. I just paid $1.30 for a double cappuccino at a gorgeous Cafe and drank it piping hot with just one sugar. It was divine. I will miss the cappuccino so much, and I will miss the Italian people as well.
1 comment:
I love this so much. You put into words how I felt about Italy. And yes, the cappuccino, the espresso, the Italian coffee. Even in the countryside, as we rode to Sienna, we saw farmhouses that were centuries old. On the eastern edge of Florence, there are some new buildings, but I don't think it has anything to do with the rich or not. I think maybe the newer buildings house newer people who didn't have an ancient crumbling structure handed down to them. You saw the area around Santa Novella, by the train station. We didn't get there, which is why we didn't see some of what you saw. I could spend a lot more time in Florence. Ah well.....maybe someday once again I can have real Italian coffee. I do so love the letter Robert wrote in Italian. I hope he had a chance to speak with people in Italian as well. Bet he loved that. I didn't learn it as well as he did, but I did love speaking even a little of that lovely language.
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