Driving in Italy: Your Midnight Run

The one great thing about staying in the city thru August is the lack of traffic. What usually takes 45 mins on a good day (plus another 20 to find parking), becomes a swift 15 mins in the summer. But, while one might think that with fewer cars, driving is actually in some way better or safer, think again. Because it’s during the lonely month of summer, when everyone starts running the red lights, pulling U-turns when you least expect it, and driving at top speeds that, even if they managed to see you in their path, they wouldn’t be able to stop their vehicle in time to miss you.

So, actually, while with the heavy traffic you can be sure that people are sort of lulled into obeying the traffic rules, in August, anything goes. I make it a point (in August) of never ever running a yellow as it’s about to change -- because I know there is an entire fleet of motor scooters and cars already jumping the green on the other side.

And if that’s not enough, in an attempt to make everyone cautious, at midnight (year round), all the lights start flashing yellow. This is actually an excellent idea. Somewhere down the line, someone clued into the idea that at night, with very little traffic, people were running the reds and making the guys who innocently sped through the greens a statistic.

But, the idea would be a bit better if they were yellow on one side and perhaps flashing red on the other side. So, one knew or, in the very least, believed, that the other guy has to stop before throwing his 2000lb vehicle into oncoming traffic. And if they ran the red, at least it’d be a lot clearer to the police who was at fault for not stopping.

So, basically with both sides flashing yellow, instead of making everyone cautious, the effect turns out to be the exact opposite. No macho guy (or gal) worth his salt is going to look like the jerk who actually slowed down, of all things. Intersections turn into a free for all game of cat and mouse, except it looks a bit more like Tom&Jerry [actually, I think it’s a bit more like Wyle E. Coyote and the roadrunner—but without the Acme instant spring kit on the wheels of your car].

In short, while racing through the streets of Rome is wonderful during the day, at midnight it’s not the Werewolves you need to fear, it’s the Formula 1 Wannabees.

Eurostar: A trip for all Senses

I admit it: I have wild fantasies over Giugiaro, the designer from Pininfarina (of Porsche fame), the man behind Italy’s “high speed” EuroStar trains: I am a frequent traveler on them, usually 4 or 5 times per week. As I ride them, he fills my every thought. But not out of sheer lust.

In fact, not a trip goes by that I don’t dream of the day that I could take that architect, strap him to a seat, and have him ride his high-design trains day in, day out. And get an idea of how it truly feels to be inside a beautiful Eurostar train. Oh, he can even ride in first class. For ‘certi versi’ it’s even worse than 2nd. The experience would, once and for all, serve to convince at least one designer in the world that Form over Function is not a good thing. But in a country where ‘la bella figura’ trumps all hands, well, not less can be expected.

If nothing else, I’d like to suggest my own expedient: how about simply renaming the ubiquitous ES to AG? AG after Abu Ghraib – that way, at least, riders will know what to expect.

The Eurostar, with its wide seats and sleek design is excellent; superior in fact, to the ones where they were invented: the cramped and dirty and uncomfortable French trains. But, the comfort stops there.

You sit in your seat, but, if you’re a woman, or if you decide on any other position in the chair other than the straight-seated one, well, the chairs begin to make the electrical chair preferable by comparison. So, you close your eyes to forget your pains? You have a line of fluorescent lights shining in them; so strong they even penetrate your blinders (a must on any train trip). There is no peace. Again, you think, ‘if only I could reveal all my state secrets’ -- for sure that might turn off these lights. I now hope to find seats where they are mercifully burned out.

Uncomfortable and blinded, you can’t get any shut–eye anyway: the announcements for eating, drinking, lateness (a daily occurrence) and whatnot, broadcasted in a volume to wake the dead, are incessant. And, in the pauses in between? Don’t worry, your head will be numbed by the shutters that shake, rattle and roll; jarring your every thought and of course, putting out any conversation you might be willing to have -- even with yourself. I have taken to riding in 2nd class, just to avoid going deaf by the shaking shutters.

So, with your sense of touch, sight and hearing underway, the final coup de grace is the smell. The cleaning squads love to post their first-world notes declaring boldly, ‘this bathroom has just been cleaned’, but, on numerous occasions I have entered the bathrooms soon thereafter only to find them covered in excrement of the highest order.
The cleaners simply pour gallons and gallons of putrifying cleaning liquids with a smell so powerful that I grab a barf-bag when the corridor doors open and in wafts another barrage. I spend most of the trip looking like a Taliban's wet dream: wrapped up in a kind of Burkha, except my head and eyes are completely covered; a winter coat wrapped tightly around my legs due to the sub-zero temps, a scarf around my face as if I am an avian flu carrier...The germ-paranoid Japanese take one look at me and immediately change cars. Don't they do this to prisoners on Guantanamo?

What's left? Ahhh..taste. While the food on the ES (I mean AG) trains is outstanding, the prices have risen to Four Seasons levels. I used to eat 4 or 5 meals a week years ago… Post-euro, I haven’t eaten a meal on board in over 4 years. But, if you happen to take an early train anywhere, ‘caveat emptor’: the hot tea and coffee has a bit of a metallic taste to it. Why? The litres of chlorine they pour into the water at the beginning of each trip. Great. I thought Chlorine was used to disinfect swimming pools or, at these levels, even killed people.

Glad to see the new spiffy design of the fantabulous EuroStar. Maybe someday someone will finally take into consideration the passengers and not the politicians.

A Word from the Brits

Recently, an article made the headlines ‘round the world of the best & worst sites to visit according to Virgin UK. And, while the conclusion was obvious – if you follow the crowds you’ll always be disappointed – even I had to agree, that the Eiffel Tower & Times Square were pretty big letdowns, especially if you go to either place for New Year’s Eve (I have). What caught the Italians by surprise, is that three of their sites made the top 10. So, just to sort of compare notes with my Caveat Emptor column on the left, well, I couldn’t agree more.

The MUST SEE list included Venice’s Grand Canal. While the expense of riding up and down it is approaching UK congestion tax fees (with the current horrid exchange rate), I must say, I have never ever been even tempted to pick up my newspaper or a book whenever I’m on a ferry boat riding the Grand Canal. If you do, you feel like your ripping off your very own senses.

On the list of disappointments, the Spanish Steps came in at number 6. And, while they’re not much to look at, they make a great place for people-watching, even though, you’re probably being watched even more by all the pickpockets roaming around there. What’s really worth having a look at there, though, is the McDonald’s. I was around when it first opened in 1986—they had to make it conform to the beauty of the square (even though the Micky D’s smell stlll was intentionally pumped out into the square – you should have heard the retailers’ protests way back when!). Well – with its mosaics and fountains and ceramic tiles, to this day, I still want to hang a banner down the front of it, alà Greenpeace, which declares, “Real McDonalds don’t look like this.”

My BIG disappointment, The Leaning Tower of Pisa, came in at number 10. And, while it’s loads of fun to take those pictures which look like you’re holding it up, can’t you do that nowadays with Photoshop?

But, incredibly, even Leonardo made the ranking. At number two of the disappointments, was the Louvre – now, I think that’s a bit of British envy – the problem there is the crowd, and, anathema to the Brits, the fact that one must actually pay a King’s Ransom to see the Emperor’s treasures. But, the Mona Lisa a big letdown?

I must say, the first time I saw it, behind a crowd of people and under plexiglass, I didn’t even stop to try and see it. But, now that it has its very own room, well, I think it’s all about expectations. Clearly, people thought it would be who knows what, when in fact, it’s just a simple portrait that even Leonardo didn’t complete until years after the sitting.
In short, it’s when you get off the very beaten path, well, you will be amazed at every turn in the road and what you’ll find on every hilltop. And, if you stop for lunch, well, you will never be disappointed. Except, I’d say, in Venice.

To see my lists of great sights or sites to avoid, just click the link.

Baby on Board

As the Italians pile into their cars to head home from their month of repose, they all follow the same tradition: pile the luggage in the trunk, the mother-in-law in the back, and the baby, right up front in mamma’s arms. If they’re little enough, and papà's bored enough on the long drive, sometimes, as a car passes at 90mph, I look over to see baby actually standing on papà's lap, hands held firm on the steering wheel, everyone all a-smiles.

Obviously, the Italians feel (despite the statistics to the contrary) that their children are immune to decapitation-by-airbag or other atrocities that could occur in case of the most minor fender bender; in a country in which fender benders are often fatal. For them, this simply does not pose a life-threatening situation (unlike those of air currents, wet hair and bare feet in the house). Well, I’ve sort of made this my personal crusade. As mothers strap their kids in the front seats, I generally poke my head in the window (I confess: I am a ficanaso - an unrepentant busybody) and remind them of their folly.

The reactions I receive run the gamut of MYOB from a modest, ‘bug off’ to today’s insult, “may you and your dog be decapitated first.” I wanted to remind the mother that I was not the one with my head posed directly in front of a missile that will fire at 280 km/hour…but, she sped off before I could tell her as much.
Instead of seeing that they are literally playing Russian roulette with a loaded air bag, even friends who go to great lengths to put their kids in harm’s way whilst at the wheel -- while taking all kinds of precautions whilst indoors-- will inform you that you are simply being an over-protective American… This, from a society that fears a bogeyman will take their children’s lives should they even pass by an open window on a hot summer’s day.

I have finally, however, figured out the illogic (of their reaction to me, not of their action in the first place--that will forever remain a mystery): Italy, although a “Catholic” country (quotes intentional), has a populace whose beliefs sway from the superstitious to the absolute surreal. So, when someone says, “Watch Out! You may get killed or, hurt, or worse,” well, they view it as if you have just put a curse on them. Of course, rather than take the precautions to ward off precisely that threat, they just touch their balls (if they have them…the Italian version of ‘knock on wood’) and carry on. Thus the reaction of the drivers in question.

The encounters usually end with me looking at the car as it runs off, ATTENZIONE: Bebe A Bordo signs posted carefully in back – a 21st century talisman -- warning other drivers they better be careful because they have a baby in the front seat, no seatbelt. I dream of the ad campaign in which those test dummies fly around a car at top speed, and the fact that the Italians wouldn’t even have to invent the ad; they’re so good at dubbing, they could just copy it…
And the mothers with their little bundles of joy? They speed off, babies secure in their laps, but, even if the car has no A/C, windows closed tight to ward off certain death from the air currents.

Life in Italy: Rules to Live By

After their primal fear of Air (see Posting below), the Italians, I have found, also have an incredible fear of Water. And, if you want to throw into the pot the fact that the entire country is burning endlessly from heel to hamstrings due to the sex-crazed pyromaniacs lighting it ablaze, one might even come to the conclusion that over here, the three basic elements of life are a sort of unwanted necessity; good for making pasta, but bad if you have any more intimate contact with them.
I try to go to the pool every day. When I leave the gym, however, heads turn – and not because I in any way resemble Marilyn Monroe or Paris Hilton for that matter. People stop what they’re doing to stare, as if I had gotten out of the shower and simply forgotten to put my clothes on.
They gawk and, even old ladies will stop me on the street to tell me what I already know: my hair is wet. Actually, damp, but let’s not get caught up in syntax.
I have very short, thin, hair. Which means, in the usual 90 degree heat, it’s pretty much bone dry before I’ve crossed the gym parking lot. But for some reason, another Italian paranoia has been passed down by centuries of nonnine (little grandmothers), generation to generation, that, one must never ever leave the house with wet hair. Even in summer. You will probably catch your death (from what, no one seems to know).
I think back on those carefree summer days growing up in Michigan, pool hopping in the dead of night, riding bicycles to the lake and back, riding in cars to the beach, top down, my (long) wet hair blowing in the wind. And to think, I even lived to tell about it.
I cannot for the life of me figure out why I should, after swimming in chemicals, further damage my already-chemical dyed hair, by blowing it dry before going out in the burning sunlight. In fact, my hair dries so fast, I don’t even own a blow dryer (which, just to confuse newcomers, they call a Phon). But, come to think of it, if you’ve ever gone to an Italian beach, there they sit, thousands of people under umbrellas, guarding themselves from that other life-sustaining basic element, the Sun.

Hot Time...Summer in the City (III)

I’ll never forget my Italian great-aunt, and how she would spend the dark cold days of winter, pining away for that first glimpse of summer sun. Only to spend the summer, sitting in the dark, windows closed and shutters, well, shut.
During the days, the Italians smartly shut the shutters in order to keep the intense heat from coming indoors. But in the evening, when things cool down to 75 degrees outside and 90 degrees inside, they shut the shutters all the same. Because ‘out there’ lurks something more insidious than a peeping tom or more dangerous than a rapist or burglar. Air.

The Italians’ fear of air (or, air currents, more precisely) is legend. In the heat of a summer night, the mere mention of, ‘why don’t we crack a window?’ causes them to spring up on cue and lock down the house as if preparing for a monsoon. Heated discussions ensue. In Italy, it is not religion, sex or politics you should not mention at the table (all are freely discussed and debated with relish); but mention opening a window in blistering heat, and all hell breaks loose.

One sweltering evening at a friend’s, a baby was overheating so much, his entire body turned scarlet, but the mamma refused to even crack a window for fear of immediate death by contact. Like the Wicked Witch of the West, I imagined the baby would simply have melted not from heat, but from the cool air that would have wafted in.

Even on buses or unairconditioned trains in the midday heat, one by one, like life-sized Jack-in-the-boxes, the Italians will spring up and shut those windows, no matter how insignificantly they were cracked open to begin with. Italy’s public transport is nothing short of a war zone; waged at the windows between the hardy foreigners and the feeble locals time and again.

One Herald Tribune reporter surmised that the Italians’ fear of air goes back to the Bubonic Plague -- when an open window or a breeze really meant ‘catching your death of a cold’ (note: last known mass outbreak 1900). The Italians even have an expression for what happens when your body (or neck) freezes up from a draft: “colpo d’aria”, or ‘hit by air’. But as for me, although the more modern versions of the Plague-- Sars, Ebola or even Shanghai flu- may eventually prove me wrong, I’ll take my chances and keep on sleepin’ the whole night through, windows wide open.

Hot Time..Summer in the City (II)

WARNING: from the Italian Consumer Reports (2007): Aria condizionata e salute
Raffreddori in piena estate, mal di gola, occhi irritati, torcicollo, a volte gravi infezioni batteriche: l'aria condizionata può causare questi e altri disturbi. Per evitarli, sono sufficienti una regolazione adeguata della temperatura e una manutenzione corretta e costante dell'impianto.
WARNING: AC & Your Health -- Colds in the thick of summer heat, sore throats, stiff necks, grave bacterial infections; all caused by AC. To avoid risk, simply keep the temperature at avg levels & keep your unit properly maintained.


While this summer is a scorcher, it will not go down in history as the infamous one a few years back when even the thermometers were waving white flags. It was the summer that Italians discovered U.S.-style weather reporting: factoring in the heat with humidity temperature, rather than giving us the straight numbers. It was also the year they brought in an American import previously thought to be so insidious that only the most obscene even had them in their automobiles (but not in their homes or offices): air-conditioning.

Yes, that was the summer in which Italians – in a sort of mass brainwashing – collectively overcame their primordial Fear of the Air Conditioner – all 60 million of them. 2.1M units were sold that summer compared to 950,000 just 3 years previously.

Up to then, Italians would exchange their war stories of having visited the U.S. in the summer and been met with the ‘cold showers’ one gets when leaving the sidewalk and entering a sub-degree store in New York City. And how, each one of them got every sort of illness because of our overuse of the A.C. And even worse, how it then lead to sore throats, then bronchitis, and God-knows-what other viruses that were lurking in the AC ducts of their hotels, just waiting for attack.

Before that summer, you’d be surprised to find how “broken” ACs in taxi cabs were at epidemic proportions. Even in the spanking new ones. If you managed to find one "working", the driver would keep the windows cracked just to be sure the air never was too too cold. Clearly, they were being driven more by their fear of the AC itself over their fear of gas consumption. But not that summer.
Suddenly, air conditioning units were sold out throughout the entire peninsula; fans could not be found from Sicily to Brussels; brownouts were rife. And, funny thing, no one got sick from their AC blowing like the wind. The articles condemning the use of cold air disappeared from the front pages of newspapers.

In fact, the only ones to die that summer were the ones who did not have the luxury of that purely American symbol of largess. They were the fallen heroes of the last battalions of a battle raging since the '50s: a battle for the very soul of the 'Sunshine State'.