Being from a big city, I am so used to eating whenever I want but in Italy, the rules were somewhat different. You see, in London, if you wanted to have a full English breakfast at 2 pm, they will gladly serve you whatever you order as you're a paying customer in a restaurant. No one is going to tell you that it's time for lunch and you can't eat breakfast at lunchtime. When we were skiing in Abetone, there's really not that much to do in the evenings apart from having dinner. It was a Saturday night at about 6 pm and every restaurant in the village looked empty, so we tried the first one and they were said no we open at 7 pm for dinner. And I thought, woah you lazy gits, you're asking paying customers to come back later? Then we tried another restaurant - same thing: please come back at 7 pm. One even told us not to come back at all that night as the restaurant will be full then - I then looked into a completely empty dining hall and thought, yeah I get it, you will be full later tonight but there's nobody in there now and you could serve us dinner now before the others arrive. But no, they are pretty strict about when one has dinner. Eventually we did get a table at 7 pm in one of the restaurants and sure enough, the restaurant was suddenly packed with Italian diners who all knew that this was dinner time and it was time to eat. I did wonder about this system: after all, if I worked in the kitchen, I would dread that period at about 7:10 pm when all the diners who have arrived submit their orders and I would have to get all their food out to like 10 or 20 tables, all at the same time? Talk about kitchen nightmares! Wouldn't it be better to stagger the time a bit by allowing people who want to eat earlier to be served at 6:30 pm, so as to make things run more efficiently in the kitchen?
But no, they are pretty strict about sticking to these timings. When we were having lunch in Pisa, we weren't that full after our meal and I thought, okay let's order one more dish of salmon to share as the food in this restaurant is lovely. The waiter apologetically told us no, lunch time is over and the kitchen is shut, I'm so sorry. Then I realized, most of the other dinners had either left or were leaving - lunchtime was indeed over and yeah, they are pretty strict about things like that. I could understand that in a small ski resort village of Abetone (with a local population of only 687), yeah they could be pretty old fashioned in the way they do things. But we're talking about Pisa here, a bigger city with 200,000 inhabitants and home to one of the most iconic tourist attractions in all of Italy, this city would welcome millions of foreign visitors every year and yet in a restaurant within walking distance from the leaning tower of Pisa, they were still pretty strict about when they would serve paying customers. Of course, from the point of view of the staff - that means the kitchen staff get a few hours off between lunchtime and dinnertime; that allows them to have a nap, go see their friends and family and relax a bit, which must be a good thing of course. In any case, most people have a pretty clear concept of when they want to have lunch and dinner, so even if the restaurant was open say at 4:15 pm, it would probably be quite empty then but you would still have to pay all the staff in the restaurant even if they are doing nothing then; so does the Italian system make more sense? I suppose it would be purely an economical issue: are you going to make more money keeping the restaurant open between lunchtime and dinnertime or not? Oh well, there are always plenty of fast food and other snack bars that will be open throughout the day in Italy whilst most restaurants do keep to a rather strict schedule.
I do speak Italian - it is my sixth language, but considering that I am completely fluent in French and Spanish is my fourth language, I am in a position where I can understand a lot more Italian than I can speak. This makes traveling around Italy a lot easier of course as I can communicate with the locals when I need to ask for directions or buy a bus ticket. Do the locals speak English? Well, it depends. If you're in a touristy area, say within walking distance of the leaning tower of Pisa, then of course they all speak English as they want to make money from the foreign tourists. But if you're in the middle of the countryside, then you're unlikely to encounter anyone willing or able to speak any English. This is because English is poorly taught in a lot of the schools there and on Italian TV, there are loads of American programmes and movies of course but they are all dubbed into Italian - this is quite unlike the situation in the Netherlands, where American programmes are shown in English with Dutch subtitles - this exposes many Dutch people to a lot of English from an early age so the most Dutch speak English fluently whilst with the Italians, it's quite random. Age plays a factor of course: younger people are far more likely to speak English than anyone over the age of 50. However, being able to understand a lot of Italian allowed me to eavesdrop on a lot of conversations that went on around me and of course, my partner doesn't speak Italian - well, no more than a few basic words anyway. If he sat next to a group of Italians having a conversation on the bus, he wouldn't be able to understand what they were talking about whilst I can. Let me give you an interesting example from Florence when not understanding the language led to him completely misreading a situation.
This is what my partner observed: a young Chinese lady in her 20s was walking down the street with her dog, suddenly an older Italian man in his 70s ran up to her, yelling at her angrily. She was having none of it and yelled back at him (in Italian - she clearly speaks Italian very well). An argument ensued in Italian where they were both shouting angrily at each other. Now my partner who couldn't understand what was going on was genuinely shocked: he thought that this poor Chinese lady was receiving racist abuse from a random old man whilst minding her own business, just walking down the street. And if you didn't speak Italian, then yeah I can see how that may have come across but of course, I was able to translate what was going on. The lady's dog had just shat on the street and she was looking the other way, pretending that it didn't happen and trying to walk away from the mess - the old man who lived on that street yelled at her to pick up the mess her dog had just made as it was the law. You can't let your dogs shit all over the streets, if the police witnessed it they would issue you with a fine - it is a disgusting and inconsiderate act. She denied that it was her dog that made the mess, claiming that loads of people walk their dogs on this street and it may not have been her dog that made the mess. The old man claimed that he saw her dog do it but she denied it, claiming that her dog didn't do it. So the argument was about the responsibility of dog owners in the neighbhood when they do take their dogs out for a walk - it had absolutely nothing to do with the colour of her skin or racism at all, the fact that she was Chinese or an immigrant was never even mentioned throughout the argument. It makes a huge difference when you can understand the locals!
There's a sliding scale in Europe when it comes to cheap destinations: on one hand, you have places like Norway, Iceland and Switzerland which are extremely expensive. And on the other hand, you will have Eastern European countries like Romania, Bulgaria and Georgia which are extremely cheap. Hence Italy is exactly in the middle of that scale - it isn't cheap, but it isn't expensive either. Some things in Italy are stunningly cheap - I was most impressed with the public transport and you could travel a very long distance on their inter-city trains for a fraction of the cost of what you would pay in the UK. The trains are new and modern, they usually run on time and even the announcements are made in both Italian and English. In fact, their train system is so good it puts the UK to shame, our train system is terrible compared to Italy's! So for example, the train ticket from Pistoia to Pisa cost just 7 euros (£6.02 or S$10.75) and that is a distance of about 60 km. In the UK, the distance traveled by the train from London Waterloo to the town of Wokingham is also about 60 km, but that ticket will cost you £23.10 (26.86 euros or S$41.24) and of course, it isn't as fast as the Italian trains. Heck, there's not much to see in Wokingham anyway! That's why people in London like me would much rather just hop on a flight to go to Italy than to travel around the UK for our holidays as our train system is just so much more expensive than in countries like Italy. This makes getting around Italy really cheap and easy of course and with so many airports all over Italy, it is possible to fly into one airport, work your way across Italy by train and leave through a different airport. Buses are just as cheap and efficient as well and I'm truly impressed with their fantastic public transport system.
There are other things which are expensive of course: take skiing for example. I had been so used to skiing in cheaper Eastern European countries like Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, Slovenia, Slovakia and Georgia that I was surprised at how much it costs to ski in Italy - but of course, there are no bargains to be had in a ski resort in Italy. After all, this is a country that has suffered a deep recession in the last few years and if you're rich enough to go skiing, then you're rich enough to pay these high prices. To be fair, the prices are on par with places like Germany, Austria and France and certainly cheaper than skiing in Switzerland, Norway or Iceland. Likewise, when it comes to accommodation, there are few bargains to be had: rather, you get what you pay for. Sure if you really want to save money, you can get a bunk bed in a youth hostel where you're sharing a room with other 12 backpackers, but good luck trying to get any sleep in such conditions. I might have done that kind of thing 20 years ago when I was a lot older, but no thanks - I need my beauty sleep if I want to have the energy to go sightseeing and do fun things the next day! I went down the AirBNB route rather than used hotels - so I rented small apartments and lived amongst the locals rather than stay in a hotel. So I was probably paying like £70 (81.40 euros or S$125) a night for two, but we were getting really quite nice apartments for that (like a whole apartment, rather than just someone's spare room whilst having to share the the communal areas with others). Food was also somewhat hit and miss - the best meal we had on this trip to Tuscany was actually not the most expensive at all at 28 euros (£24.10 or S$43) for two and some of the more expensive meals were really quite average.
One thing that may take you by surprise is the number of black people in Italy these days. You see, in the UK or America, you wouldn't bat an eyelid if you saw black people around because of the history of those countries which led to so many black people moving over. But Italy is a different story: yes Italy had some colonies in East Africa which are now modern-day Ethiopia and Eritrea along with some parts of Somalia - but this period was a lot shorter than say the French and British colonization of Africa and the black people you see in Italy today are not from their former Italian empires. Rather, Italy is extremely close to Africa - the closest point being the island of Lampedusa which sits just 113 away from Tunisia so many refugees try to reach Lampedusa by boat from Tunisia, because it allows them to seek asylum once they come onshore into Italian sovereign territory. It is hard to find reliable statistics on just how many black people there are in Italy today because often the statistics only show those who are here legally - so these would be black people who are either born in Italy or have already been granted asylum or some kind of residency status. There are many who have arrived and are stuck in limo - they are technically speaking economic refugees: they are fleeing poverty rather than war or violence. The African countries they come from are extremely poor but nonetheless peaceful. These African migrants then fall into a grey area where they seek employment in the informal sector such as selling souvenirs and selfie sticks to tourists rather than try to seek asylum knowing that they may have their claim refused which would lead to repatriation. They are unable to get work in any formal capacity as they are not in Italy legally, so they tend to keep a fairly low profile.
How do the locals feel about this situation then? Well, I had some insight into this when I was on a bus from Abetone to Pistoia - we were deep in the Tuscan countryside yet there were a surprisingly large number of black people on the bus. Now they didn't look like rich tourists to me, but were clearly some kind of migrants who lived in Italy. They were speaking to each other in English rather than Italian, which actually enabled me to listen in to their conversation and they were going into Pistoia to meet "my cousin Richard from Lagos" - so I knew they were Nigerian. Well, it was pretty obvious from their accents, there are plenty of Nigerian people in London and I can recognize the accent when I hear it. A rather loud and somewhat drunk woman boarded the bus and challenged these black guys to speak in Italian instead of English - one of the men promptly switched to Italian flawlessly and explained to this lady: my friends and I are from different parts of Africa - places like Ghana, Sierra Leone and Nigeria. English serves as the lingua franca for people from these countries in Africa so naturally we speak English when we meet up amongst ourselves. We will speak Italian when we're meeting up with locals like yourselves, but what language we use in our private conversations is none of your business. His response was short, sweet, eloquent and to the point - the drunk lady refused to back down in defeat and gave a long rant about all these Africans coming over, committing crimes and expecting handouts from the government. The Nigerian guy on his way to see his cousin Richard in Pistoia ignored her and pretty soon, she realized that she was making a fool of herself. I did wonder if she would have challenged me if I was speaking English with my partner (we are tourists from London after all) and if I would have been able to respond as articulately as that Nigerian guy did in Italian.
Finally, I would like to bust a myth that Italians are stylish when it comes to fashion. Hell no. That couldn't be further from the truth. The reason why this myth exists is because many of the world's top fashion labels are Italian: Dolce & Gabanna, Valentino, Prada, Gucci, Versace, Armani, Marni, Iceberg, Zegna and Trussardi just to name a few. The population of Italy is 59.5 million - that makes it smaller than countries like Thailand (69 million), Iran (81 million) and Egypt (97.5 million). Yet walk into any big department store in Singapore, Sydney, New York or London and you will find plenty of Italian fashion brands on offer there whilst you will never find anything from Thai, Iranian or Egyptian designers. Italy punches above its weight when in the world of fashion and this is reflection of the long tradition of Italian art that covers everything from paintings to operas to literature that has been popular around the world for centuries, making it one of the world's greatest and most influential civilizations. However, we can wax lyrical about Italian culture all day - it doesn't change the way ordinary Italian people dress on the streets of Italy. There is definitely an urban-rural divide: the people in the countryside dress very functionally, the clothes are meant to keep them warm in cold weather or keep them dry when it rains. Whereas if you went to a big city like Milan or Rome, then you will meet people who dress to impress because they have important jobs, they have VIP clients to see, they want to make a good impression with the people they meet. Your average housewife in a small village simply isn't going to wear anything all that stylish when she goes to pick up the groceries from the local supermarket just because she happens to be Italian. People need a good reason to want to dress up so nicely and it takes a lot of time, money and effort to look Instagram-ready with your designer outfits.
The French were better put together in their dressing when I was in the South of France last year. Canadians are notoriously casual on the west coast.
ReplyDeleteHi Di. I think the divide is far more rural-urban rather than by nationality or culture. I'm sure people in downtown Vancouver dress better than those say, 500 km away, inland from Vancouver, far from any big city. The same thing applies in the UK of course, except we're a tiny country compared to you in Canada.
DeleteYes, Vancouverites dress better than the sleepy communities deep in the mountains, but in general, people on the west coast are way more relaxed and casual than say, Torontonians. This is changing, though, with the Asian immigrants and their Canada Goose parkas and Prada purses zipping around town in their Mercedes.
DeleteTo answer your questions in your post, I have not been to Italy but plan to. My expectations? Old buildings and cobbled-stone alleys. Great coffee and food. Cathedrals and churches. My kind of place.
And yes you will get plenty of old buildings and cobbled-stone alleys, lovingly preserved churches that are 400 years old.
ReplyDeletePisa and Florence were full of tourists, like the leaning tower of Pisa was less fun because of the zillions of tourists there - but hey, I just had to go there. But otherwise I spent time in two smaller towns: Pistoia and Lucca and they had the same charms that you talked about without the tourists. I mean there were some, but not many. And in Abetone, I heard no English at all. There were two Chinese tourists and two French tourists - it was hilarious as I was struggling on in Italian with the French tourists and they were struggling in it as well, then they switched to English but with that sexy French accent then we switched to French. Oh the joys of travel.
No idea when my next trip is or where. I'll wait a few weeks and see how things pan out at work first.