Category Archives: Strange things

How different is Italy and the Italians?

It’s a winter festival!

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It looks like snow.  It covers the ground and the trees and, sometimes, floats in the air – almost like snow but smaller and finer and not, actually, snow.

It has a special name here – galaverna – verna being the word for winter and gala (apparently) being not a word for a festival but, rather, a word meaning milk or milky.  So I’m told.

Anyway, it looks beautiful but it is bloody cold. As you may know, this is not my favourite time of year, especially as the offices are kept artificially cold.

Beautiful but brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Oh, by the way, I looked up the word galaverna. It means hoarfrost. I have heard the word hoarfrost but never actually knew what it meant. I thought it meant very hard frost or something. But, these days, of course, I look words up. It actually means the small ice crystals that cover everything when it’s very cold.

Nightmares before Christmas

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“Did you lock the door?”

I don’t know why I had woken but I have my suspicions. I answered that I had, not knowing, really, if that were true but being pretty sure that I locked it when I came back from walking the dogs. Of course, I couldn’t get up to check it for that would highlight my doubts and, right now, even in my half-awake state, I knew that ‘doubt’ was not required nor desired.

“Did you hear that noise?”

This was moments later. I didn’t check the time right then but later I realised it was about an hour after I had got to sleep.

“Turn the light on”, he demanded. I did. “Do you want me to go and check?”, I asked. “Yes”, came the response.

I got up. “I’m coming with you”, he said.

I walked into the lounge and then the hallway, turning lights on as I went. The lights were for two reasons. 1 – just in case Rufus had done a pee and 2 – because F was frightened.

I had asked, just before I went to sleep – “Do you watch these [horror] films when you are on your own?”

“Never”, came the reply.

He makes me laugh even if I was up and about when I should have been asleep!

And, as a treat, a clip from one of my all-time favourite Christmas films :-D

Better late than never.

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Of course, I expect it’s too late now.

But it’s done anyway.

This morning was when I finally got these.

The cards have been ready since the 10th December and I had brought them with me to work this morning. Having got them, I stuck them on straight away and then walked to the nearest post office to post them.

But I think they will take a week or more to get to their destinations which means they will arrive after the big day.

Ah well, such is life. They do look very pretty so better late than never. I’m sure everyone will understand.

Difficult to see = probably dead soon!

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I left work at just after 5. I left because I am so cold. By the end of the day, my feet feel as if I have had them in buckets of ice all day.

It is dark now, when I leave home and work. It’s no wonder they invented Christmas. It helps to brighten up the dark mornings and nights with lights. I really dislike this time of year.

However, back to the post.

I hadn’t reached the end of the road when a bike came from my right, without looking, and rode on the side of the road just in front of me. Because I was near a junction, I had already slowed down.

However, bikes coming out without looking are nothing new.

What really amazed me was that the guy was wearing dark clothing and had no lights on the bike. The street lighting, this far out in the suburbs, is not that bright. Stupid guy, I thought, he really does want to be killed.

I turned the corner and within a few minutes, there was another cyclist without any lights. I wonder if this is illegal. Surely, this IS illegal? I then decided to count the cyclists on my way home and count the number who had lights (on – not just on the bike, of course).

OK, so I am driving and concentrating on driving so I may have missed a couple of cyclists but I counted 11 in the end. Of those 11 cyclists, 8 – yes EIGHT – either had no lights at all or, if they did have them, they were not switched on.

If it is illegal then 72% of cyclists are illegal.

But that’s not the point, really. The point is that 72% care so little about their lives that they want to be killed. Cyclists – without lights YOU ARE DIFFICULT TO SEE!!!!!!!

The solution, I suppose, by the last two cyclists I saw as I was walking along the pavement to the supermarket, is to ride on the pavements. The last one, with a child in the child seat, did, in fact, have lights. It was just that they (the front one, at least) were broken. I don’t mean not switched on – I mean, nearly hanging off (although, obviously, not switched on too).

Of the 8 without lights, probably about 4 or 5 did have some sort of reflectors and one guy was wearing a fluorescent jacket. Of the 11, at least two had no reflectors and were dressed, to all intents and purposes, in black.

It beggars belief.

A post office with no stamps.

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Yes, I KNOW I live in Italy.

Yes, I KNOW everything doesn’t all go quite as smoothly as it should, sometimes.

BUT, how can a Post Office be waiting deliveries of stamps? More importantly, how can it be waiting for Christmas stamps when Christmas is less than 2 weeks away?

If they don’t arrive by Friday, I may have to send out cards with ordinary stamps and that doesn’t please me.

Sometimes, I just think – ‘bloody country’!

Cleaning before we start.

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“First, we must clean very well the lounge”, he says, “and clean the pictures”.

“Oh God!”, I reply.

But, I don’t mind really. Milan is on holiday tomorrow. Italy is on holiday on Thursday and Friday most people have a ‘bridge day’. So it’s a very long weekend. He is, it seems, quite excited about putting up the tree and decorating it but, like everything in his life, the flat has to be thoroughly cleaned beforehand.

To me that would be putting the hoover over and a quick dust. For him it includes all the pictures on the wall and, I’m sure, the complete cleansing of every surface.

He brought a bag over last night. “There’s some nice things in here”, he says.

Later we look. There’s some ‘smelly’ stuff. There’s some of the disinfectant he uses for CD covers (probably for the pictures) and then there’s some insecticide spray.

“What have you got this for?”, I ask.

“I like it”, he replies, adding, “it’s for the sofa”.

He has to explain that one. “We never clean it properly”, he says, “and this will kill the little animals”.

I suppose I could have got upset that he should think the place has bugs or fleas (he asks, from time to time, if the dogs have ‘little animals’ – and is reassured when I say that I dose them every month for exactly this reason and that, no, they don’t) but I’m not. It’s his ‘thing’. It’s OK. It makes me laugh, especially when he calls them ‘little animals’ since I’ve never really thought of bugs or fleas as animals but, rather, insects.

And so I laugh instead.

I am sure everything will be taken down and cleaned and dusted, all corners will be swept and washed. everything will be done ………. by which time I will be far too exhausted to be bothered with putting up the tree!

Sigh.

We may both be in Europe but it doesn’t mean we’re the same.

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Of course, I have long known it. More, I have blogged about it quite often. Usually, it makes me laugh although often that laugh is kept inside of me.

I have talked about it with FfC who now has a child.

It’s the illnesses that Italians get.

A often talks about his liver and how it is suffering. Or should that be how HE is suffering?. Yet, if this article on Italians and their ills is correct, it is impossible for you to ‘feel’ that your liver is bad. Indeed, until I came here, I had never heard of such a thing. I still find it very amusing, more so now that I know it cannot feel unwell.

I always thought the closest thing to ‘colpo d’aria’ was a stiff neck. I was always amazed by how much the Italians took it so seriously. Now, from the article, I understand that it can include illness to your head, ears, eyes, etc and so cannot be just a stiff neck. Again, until I was here, I had never heard of such a thing. Now that I look it up I find a translation that says it is a ‘blast of air’. I can’t even imagine the UK people too worried about a blast of air. After all, one of the things you can guarantee about the UK is the wind!

Let’s not get too pious though. The English (and Scottish and Welsh) DO have illnesses. We used to have a cold, a sore throat, a cough, (all three would be ‘flu), a headache, a stomach (or tummy) ache, etc. Nowadays this has become ‘flu, a migraine, stomach cramps. Of course, originally, a migraine was worse than a headache but since no one else can actually feel what you feel, how can they know that what you have is not a migraine but just a regular, plain, headache? As you can see, this is all invention anyway (although if some of my friends saw this they would argue that I didn’t have a clue, I am sure).

However, I loved this bit, which is so very true:

British mums hold their kids’ jackets so they will not get hot and sweaty while they run around and play. In contrast, the parks here in Italy are filled with pint-sized, quilted Michelin men, zipped up to their noses to stop the air getting in and hitting them.

In fact, the wearing of a scarf round the neck (precisely to stop the blast of air) is, I think, now, a fashion item here. Certainly, you will see people with a scarf round their neck even if they are inside a building or even outside, even if they are not wearing a coat!

Yea, Italians do make me laugh sometimes.

Love and hate. Is it really the same thing?

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It has been said to me on more than one occasion that it takes about 7 years for an ex-pat, living in Italy, to come to terms with Italy or move away.

I have been here 6.

I have one more year to go.

And then I could be leaving.

Although, after the last two days, I won’t need the next 6 months or so.

Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE Italy. I also hate it. It’s not the country, as such, nor the people (well, except for a few – as anywhere else in the world). No, it’s the crazy bureaucracy and ‘job’s worth’ mentality.

Just over a year ago I bought a car. I bought it from a garage that sold second-hand cars. I realised I was paying over the odds but I got a zero-kilometre car (therefore, almost brand new) for much less cost than a new one. (Although I deeply regret not choosing either a SEAT or a Ford and, instead, lumbering myself with the ugly duckling that is the Fiat Ypsilon).

The advantage, thought I, with buying from a garage is not only the fact that everything will be done properly but I will also have some sort of guarantee – plus (and this is a big plus), they will fix all the paperwork which, because I don’t have an Identity Card, is a nightmare to do yourself.

The car, however, celebrated its fourth birthday (officially) yesterday.

It’s fourth birthday is important because at four years, you are required to take it to have a revisione. A revisione is like the MoT Test in the UK.

I’m not worried it will fail since, although it is four years old, it has only been driven round for less than 18 months, so it should be fine.

Apparently, I could do this revisione at any time during the month of its birth.

I was a little concerned that the tyres would be a bit worn. However, it needed to have the winter tyres put on and they would be fine since they had been used for less than 6 months and very few kilometres. So, I booked to have the tyres change. Unfortunately, that could only be done last Saturday. No problem though as I then had three days to fit in the revisione.

With Pietro’s help, there is a place nearby that does not require an appointment. And there’s not time like doing it now and so, yesterday afternoon, I took time off work to go and do this thing.

I have a theory about Italy. When you have to do something that requires official paperwork, you will have to visit an office more than once and normally three times.

I go to this place. I give the receptionist my logbook. There is a problem, apparently. It seems that the ‘use’ for the vehicle was not a normal private car. They cannot do the revisione until the ‘use’ has been changed on the logbook. Hmmmm.

Pietro is called. No problem – he finds me the nearest ACI (Automobile Club of Italy) office, where things like this are done with a wave of the wand.

Unfortunately, this office had lost their wand.

They could do it but I wouldn’t get the logbook corrected for about 2 weeks. And it will cost me €70! But, please note, it COULD be done – it was just a matter of time. I can’t wait, of course. The car will be ‘illegal’ by Thursday morning. It seems the only way to do this was to go to the equivalent of the DVLA. They might be able to issue the corrected logbook immediately. The woman seems fairly certain they could.

So, that’s the end of Day 1 in the saga. there is nothing to do but go home and, rather than go to work, go off to the west side of Milan, in the outskirts (the opposite side of town from my house), and get this thing done.

My plan then was that, armed with the new logbook (which would surely take no more than an hour and a half), I would go straight to the revisione centre and do that. Then to work.

As you may know, I’m always looking for the positives. In this case, the positive was that I would get up three quarters of an hour later than usual – 6.15 instead of 5.45!

I was a bit later than I had wanted to be this morning since Rufus had sprayed shit around the flat overnight. Poor thing. I’m wondering if the operation tomorrow morning is really worth it?

Anyway, I use the metro. Better than trying to take the car across Milan. I’ve never actually travelled at rush hour in Milan. It’s a nightmare. The platform was about 5 people deep. I ‘missed’ two trains until I could fit into one.

I get off and find my way to the DVLA place. I’m not sure where to go but take a guess. It seems right. I wait in a queue for the desk labelled ‘Information’. She has a coat and scarf. We are inside. I check other people in their office. some are wearing coats and most are not. No one is dressed as if they are outside (which is cold), except her. I show her the documents.

Apparently it can’t be done. Either the garage that sold me the car has the required notification or I need to do a statement at a police station (yes, I know – but here nearly everything requires a statement from a police station) to say that the notification of change of use had been lost and then I could come back there for a new/updated logbook.

I speak to Pietro. Pietro seems to think I should speak to the garage. I’m thinking it will be easier (and quicker) to get do a statement at a police station. I know that Pietro is probably right but, still ……..

Pietro calls the garage for me. He says they are checking. In the meantime I ask someone if there is a police station nearby. I walk to the police station.

It is very cold out here, far from the centre of Milan. I think, again, that I could never live somewhere like this. 15-story apartment blocks – the place has no ‘soul’. No restaurants, no bars, no shops to speak of. It’s like living in a town with nothing around. So, like living in the country but without the countryside. I’m sure I would die here. Or, at least, my soul would. I think that if I had to come here, I would seriously consider relocating back to the UK.

I find a bench. There are several benches arranged around a sort of pedestrian piazza. But it is soulless in that there is nothing there, in the centre. The benches are wet with melted frost. I go to the one that has been in the sun the longest. It is drier that the others although not completely dry. I sit anyway, my coat protecting me from the worst of the water. I wait for Pietro’s call. I see my phone has not much battery left. Typical!

An old man walks into the ‘piazza’. He carries a small plastic carrier bag with something in. He checks some of the benches and tries the water with his finger as if he doesn’t really believe it’s water. Maybe he things it is just shiny? He now knows that it is water. He looks at another bench and sees it’s the same. He ambles away. This would be worse, I think. To be retired in a place like this. To be in a soulless place while your life ebbs away. Dreadful.

Don’t get me wrong, it has lots of trees and space. But there aren’t that many people, certainly not walking around. The buildings are uniformly hideously boring. There is no prettiness in this place, in spite of the trees and the space. This is a place for sleeping. For hibernation. So depressing.

Pietro calls. Apparently, the garage are going to get me an updated logbook by tomorrow, if I go to them with this one. Oh well, on the bright side, I won’t have to pay €70 (I can’t bring myself to say ‘save’ since, two days ago, this wasn’t in the budget in the first place!).

I go back to the metro station and get on a train.

As I walk from my metro station home, I pass the Tuesday market. I decide that I will get a new ironing board cover. Also, there is a place selling Christmas trees. I get one. It costs €25. It’s probably going to be slightly too big but it will be OK. I’m hoping that it’ll be a nice surprise for F.

I go back to the flat and give my cleaning lady the new ironing board cover. It won’t fit – but I’ll make it fit, I just don’t have the time right now.

I put the tree on the balcony.

I go to the garage. This is far to the north of Milan. I know the way, more or less. I hope I will get there before 12 noon. I am worried they will close and then what shall I do? Already I’m taking more time off work than I would like.

There are some major road works which closes off the road I know. I am sent on a detour and, as usual, the detour signs stop suddenly. I pick a road. Eventually, I end up on the right road, more or less and get to the garage at a quarter to twelve.

I go in.

The woman takes the logbook and gets me to sign something. I don’t know what it was and don’t really care. She faxes off the logbook to their ‘agency’ that deals with registrations of cars, etc.

After about 5 minutes, the woman from the agency phones. Yes, we are fully aware that there has to be a revisione done by tomorrow night. That’s why I’m here and that’s why we need an authority for me to drive without the logbook and why we need the logbook back tomorrow – so I can do the revisione.

We wait.

Eventually, the permission comes through the email and the woman prints a copy for me.

Tommorrow, at 3.30, I go to the garage again to get the new logbook, then race back to the revisione centre to have the revisione done. There had better be no problems!

If only I could believe that, after traipsing here and there across Milan and outside of it, there would be no problems, I would be happy and relaxed. I don’t so I’m not.

I have used the words ‘fucking’, ‘bastard’, ‘bloody’ and ‘Italy’ in the same sentence many times today. At least to myself.

I may update and change this post tomorrow. Running out of time. Sorry.

I just seem to be having a bad day – my visit to the post office; Christmas stamps

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Dunno just not a good look this morning

You know. Sometimes you just get those days.

I saw the picture and, apart from the hair, it reminded me of the post office worker on Saturday.

I have to say that I really do hate going to the post office. As soon as I found out that I could pay bills via the tobacconist, it cut down my need to go to the post office to almost zero.

However, when you send parcels, it is impossible to avoid them (although I might try something different next time).

And so it was that the birthday present for Best Mate needed to be posted. I found an old jiffy bag and popped everything in it. I sealed it up very well and put the label on. And, Saturday morning, as I was already up early (the car tyres were being changed plus I needed to go to the vets with Rufus), I walked down to the post office.

They used to have a ticketing system – a bit like they have in the supermarkets for the deli counter – but that is gone now. Instead we have a system remarkably like the one in the UK. People queue. This wasn’t how it used to be but it seems to work now.

So I queued for the postal counters. Obviously, there were a lot of people queuing but it was OK – I had time. I got to the counter. The woman behind the counter looked a lot like the picture.

Now, as you know, being English, sometimes it is better to not speak Italian. Sometimes (but not always), I get away with things that I wouldn’t if I spoke Italian.

She tells me that I can’t send it like that.
I ask why not.
She tells me that a) the package is broken (which it isn’t but it does have a strip of something on it and so it’s not perfect) and b) that it’s dirty. By dirty she meant that the package had printing on it. In particular, the bar code used by shops in the UK to process the sale of the jiffy bag. Apparently, from what I could make out, the other post office workers wouldn’t be able to understand that this was part of the envelope and not a bar code they are supposed to use for tracking or sending the parcel!

Although, at that point I nearly laughed (based on the fact that I do find it hard to believe that their postal workers are quite so stupid), I didn’t. Instead I feigned stupidity and ignorance and not being able to understand much of the language. I argued (in my best English) for a bit and also tried the ‘I don’t know what you are saying’ face with silence and just waiting. Sometimes that works a treat. This time, although she got a bit frustrated, she cheated rather than give in to my intransigence.

Ah well, it was worth a try. After about 10 minutes, she managed to find someone else in the ever-increasing queue who translated for me. Apparently, I would just have to go round the corner to purchase a ‘new’ envelope and then I could come back but would not have to wait in the queue.

I went to the shop. I found a bag big enough and paid an extra €1.80. The bag was useless – too thin, not enough padding – were it not for the fact that I just slid my jiffy bag inside.

Then I went back. Of course, having started this pretence of not really understanding Italian, one must keep it up. It’s no good at that point, suddenly spouting Italian like you can really speak it (albeit with a terrible accent).

She wanted to know how it was to go. I said, in my best English ‘to sign for’, miming the signature bit.

I asked, in faltering and badly pronounced Italian, ‘When?’. She said Wednesday or Thursday.

On another postal note, I am almost at the stage of writing Christmas cards. I have ordered stamps, as every year. This is from a colleague who’s mother works in the central post office in Milan. The problem this year is that it seems there are no Christmas stamps!

Having checked previous years, on the post office website, the Christmas stamps are available from about October. This year, there is no issue of Christmas stamps or, at least, no Christmas stamps issue date showing. This is more than a little disappointing. V (the colleague) still thinks there might be some but I have my doubts. We shall see. Such a shame, though, if they aren’t doing them this year. Some, in the past, have been rather lovely.

It’s not a load of Kaki

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SuperMario says he wants to change Italy to a more meritocratic society. A view that seems to be widely applauded and backed by many that I know here.

It’s a nice idea. Some would say that it works that way in most Western countries. And, to some extent, they would be right.

I was looking for the word that means the opposite. It’s not so easy to find, you know? Kakistocracy was the first word that comes up. Except it doesn’t really explain it so well. I mean, this country has not been run by a bunch of idiots – I mean, they’re not really stupid even if you disagree with them. You could even say they have been clever.

Eventually, I found that oligarchy is what I’m really looking for. The country has been run by a bunch of wealthy and connected people. Then I found Corporate Oligarchy – this included such people as would run the banks and other corporate institutions as well as politicians of wealth and connections.

It is said that “any political system eventually evolves into an oligarchy” [Robert Michels].

And that got me to thinking that, in spite of our conviction that we (in the UK) have a completely meritocratic system, in fact, as far as the ruling class go, it is really a Corporate Oligarchy.

And, of course, with the old regime being washed away here, it has been replaced by a new Corporate Oligarchical system – run by banks.

Perhaps it’s time for us to go back to the creators of the democratic system, Ancient Greece, and introduce some checks and balances as they did, just to prevent the creation of this oligarchic government that we all seem to have?

But, actually, that wasn’t what I wanted to say.

What I really wanted to say is that, in spite of everything that people may say here, given the chance of getting a good job through someone you ‘know’, nearly everyone would take the opportunity. So, in spite of the backing, the reality will always be different. I think these are words that people want to hear – as long as the ones in control don’t have to actually change anything.

Don’t you think?