We saw and did an amazing array of things in Italy in two weeks. It is dizzying to think on and hard to believe all the ground we covered. I tried to cover each day in its own blog entry, but I do have a collection of random thoughts and impressions from the trip as a whole. The thoughts are in no particular order.
Italians smoke too much. Happily, smoking on trains and in restaurants and other enclosed spaces is forbidden, but I saw a ton of Italians on the streets who were smoking. While I think smoking is expensive and harmful, I get especially sad when I see young people smoking, because I really feel they should know better. I saw kids who were clearly in their early teens smoking, and that was depressing.
Mer and I like to keep an eye on fashion in Europe in general, and in Italy in particular. We both feel that Italians have a fine sense of style, on the whole. On this trip, we noticed a few trends, a couple of which were really odd to us. Italian women and some men seemed to be really big into wearing scarves for fashion, even when it was really hot outside. People also wore a lot of shirts with either the colors or some form of the American flag on the shirt – it seemed pretty common. We also noticed that t-shirts with English words on them were big.
Christianity is a very old religion. We saw art from AD 220 and lists of bishops from AD 55, and we were in many many churches that were built in the twelfth century. It gives a strange and somber weight to a church when it has been around for seven or eight hundred years. I loved these reminders of the faith being passed on generation to generation for twenty centuries.
I know this is an odd thing to comment on, but Italian bathrooms in general and toilets in particular were always a minor adventure. Some sinks had handles and some had foot pedals. Most of the showers’ hot/cold directions were backwards to ours, but the sinks were the same direction as ours. The toilets all had various flushing mechanisms – one button, two buttons, on the tank, on the wall, on the floor, pull-mechanisms near the ceiling, and more. It is a minor thing, but a constant reminder that I was not at home. Public bathrooms had fully private stalls with full doors, like being in your own little bathroom; our mini-stalls must freak out Italians when then come to the States.
Italians are very casual about time at supper in restaurants. It is expected that patrons will want to linger over meals, which is wonderful in general, but can be frustrating to a tourist trying to maximize time. There were a few times we skipped sit-down restaurants because we knew getting the check and paying the bill would be a long process. It is considered rude for the waitstaff to bring you your check, so you have to request it. Then, you have to flag down the staff again to pay the bill. I approve of this as a cultural norm, but there were times where we spent twenty minutes just trying to get out of a restaurant when we had finished eating.
We saw a fair amount of construction going on in Italy. Oddly enough, for me, it was curious to see that Italian construction companies put up the huge skyscraper-style tower cranes for almost all jobs, even ones that were only two or three stories (in the States we would use small, truck-mounted cranes for smaller jobs). It always made for an interesting skyline, even in smaller towns.
English is everywhere in Italy, and is the common language when Italian can’t be used. Even store clerks would know some English, and we saw at least one occasion where an Italian and a continental European used English as the common language in which to communicate. Often, trains and buses had English translations after the Italian announcements. While I’m a bit worried about English/American cultural imperialism, I was not sad that so many people knew at least basic English.
Rome is old; there are ancient ruins and buildings everywhere. I was laughing with Meredith that you know you have lots of old stuff when you leave it lying around next to buildings, exposed to the elements. In places not quite so old, even pieces of columns are put in museums – in Rome they are just around everywhere you go.
Italy’s train system is excellent. We only regretted not having a car one time (when trying to get to Assisi), and even then it was not so bad. The trains are almost all electric, which makes them quiet, efficient, and fast. I loved traveling by train in Italy – we could see the country, and we met a lot of interesting people along the way.
Italy is expensive, especially food costs. Many of the restaurants we ate in had higher-end prices we would see in the States, but the prices were in euros, which made them roughly half-again as expensive. There were times we would eat a nice but smaller meal and it would cost us fifty dollars.
On the plus side, all Italian prices include taxes – there is no guessing what the final price of anything will be, and you end up dealing with a lot less change.
Italy has one- and two-euro coins. It was always difficult to process that a coin could be worth three dollars.
Dogs can go pretty much anywhere in Italy, including into malls and restaurants. That was pretty startling to me, but in general the dogs did behave.
Italy is full of astonishing beauty. I fell deeply in love with the Cinque Terre, Lake Como, and the Dolomites – they were all beautiful in ways I had not even imagined.
Mer likes to point out that travel is always either a good experience or a good story, and that was certainly true. One of the reasons I love Meredith is we can travel together for sixteen days, and while I was not always a paragon of grace and love, we still always wanted to be together. That is pretty great.
Travel in Italy is a good thing for my faith. Not only does Italy have reminders of Christianity everywhere, but also, travel in general teaches you that you are not in control, and in my case, you cannot always even communicate. Not even knowing how to work a sink can make you feel a long way from home, and that reminded me that we are not supposed to get too comfortable here on Earth since our real home is with God. In a sense, I’m on one long tourist trip. It is good to be shaken out of routine and comfort to be reminded of blessings at home and as a way to evaluate what is important.
This was a great trip, and I owe it entirely to Mer. She saved up money for the better part of a year so we could afford to go, and then she did ninety percent of the planning of the trip. It was expensive, and there were times I missed my home, but the trip was wonderful and worth it. Sometimes you just have to trust the wife, because she really knows what awaits. I am a very lucky man in many ways, not the least of which is being paired with a woman who loves me enough to share her dreams with me.
