La Dolce Vita

La Dolce Vita

About a month ago, the realization that I was going to Europe finally hit me. This summer was to begin with a series of events that I knew would change my life forever and it is easy to say they have.

The three weeks in Florence gave us a taste of what it would be like to live in Europe. Not be here purely on vacation but study and live our lives in the same (well close enough) to the way we lived at home. Because we had an apartment we were able to grocery shop and cook dinner, lunches and have breakfast at home, we were living real lives in Italy. In our time there I learned a lot about living the Italian lifestyle. For instance:

In Italian supermarkets, you use plastic gloves to pick your fruit. Once selected, you bag it, weigh it and put on a sticker that the clerk can scan. I was told this came to be mostly because prior to supermarkets, the Italians purchased their fruit from street vendors who would not allow them to touch the fruit. Instead they would tell the vendor what they wanted and they would pick it out for the customer and people were not used to the idea of other strangers handling their fruit so alas, gloves.

The Eurail pass works really well, for commuter trains but they tend to take a lot longer to get where you are going, I mean a lot longer.

The myth of wait staff not needing to be tipped is false. Apparently this comes from two things that have been misinterpreted. One, in Italy (particularly Florence) if you eat your food in the restaurant, there is usually an additional charge. This charge can be in addition to the second confusion: the service charge, which appears on your sit down check. This tends to be a small fee of €1 to €2 and does not go to your server but to the establishment to help cover the high cost of linen laundry, dishes, etc. Because of years of guidebooks and people misinterpreting these two things, servers no longer expect to get tips, particularly from Americans. I learned this from a friend of Val’s who is living in Italy and had it confirmed by a couple of other people.

You can also tell the difference in service and attitude when you begin tipping in any regular establishment you may frequent. We stopped into one café fairly regularly on our way to school to get coffee in the morning and I hadn’t seen the woman behind the counter smile as big as she did when we gave her a very simple €.50 tip on our coffee. So, when you go to Italy, ask about tipping and be ready to do so. Also, make sure it goes directly to the server as sometimes dishonest restaurateurs will see the money on the table and snatch it up. There are usually no spaces on a credit card receipt to tip so have some cash handy, besides tips should always be in cash, even stateside.

Remember doing the full multi-course meal takes time and they aren’t used to having the table right away to seat the next group. This means two things: don’t rush your meals and don’t get pissy if you cant get seated in ten minutes. If you have to eat at a certain restaurant, make a reservation. In any sit down regular restaurant you can have a meal consisting of a antipasto (appetizer), prmi (usually pasta), secondi (the meat), dolce (desert) and coffee and could also involve salads and side dishes, it takes time. If you don’t want the whole thing you can just order one course and have a good sized meal.

While I am here, a word on coffee. If you order a “café” you will get a straight up perfectly poured shot of espresso in a demitasse cup with a packet of sugar and a small spoon. Coffee is not for the weak. However, you may find some of you other coffee shop favorites like dopio, macchiato, cappuccino (though it is usually a little closer to what we would call a latté) and such. If you absolutely want a good ole cup of joe, order an Americano, it is the closest thing you are gonna get.

When visiting churches make sure you are dressed appropriately. Inevitably someone in our group was wearing something too revealing and ended up having to cover up a part of his/her body with a blue smock. No one wants to look like a blown up smurf so avoid bare shoulders, shorts, hats and sometimes even open toed shoes. Remember, it is a good ten degrees colder in most churches so chances are, you won’t roast, too bad.
Get a good phrase book, I recommend Lonely Planet’s travel phrase book. It is concise and will teach you things that you need to know like: “hey you’re breakin’ my balls here” or “easy tiger” and even a page of translations for instructions and apologies during more intimate moments. Let’s just say this book is a whole lot of fun, we plan to own one in every language. A lot of people do speak English. In fact, if you are here during high travel season, English is everywhere but it really does help when dealing with people if you can at least muddle your way through Italian.

Just drink wine. Drinks can be expensive in Italy, especially bottles of Coke, etc. It is generally cheaper (and better) to drink wine, even if it is the house wine. In the couple of sit down restaurants we were able to get a liter (a full standard bottle of wine is only .75l) of wine for less than €7 which would have worked out to about the same cost as us drinking cokes. Also, don’t expect fountain drinks. The entire time we were in Italy, we saw one place to get fountain coke and well, it was bout €4 ($5.81 USD) for a large. They have a great recycling program in most of the cities (more on that in a second) and can recycle all their plastic and glass containers so it is really more practical for them to do it that way.

Drinks can be purchased while you are out and about and I recommend Tabacci’s which tend to have good deals on water etc. Sometimes it isn’t that much more to get a large bottle of water or whatever so check the prices, which should always be displayed, to get the best deal. Now a word on buying water, Frizzante vs. Naturale. If you like bubbles in your water Frizzante is your game, however if you want plain ole water, stick to Naturale. It will generally say right on the label of the water which it is and when you order it in a restaurant, they will generally ask. Personally, I like Frizzante.

While you are out and bout there are usually many options for throwing away your trash with smaller trash cans etc, all over the city. However, if you should find yourself in a more “residential” part of the city, then there is a trick to figuring out which of the three (or four) trash receptacles to use. There are large square blue ones that have a step bar that opens the lid, these are for regular trash and organic material. There are squareish ones that are yellow and are usually topped with an opening covered in black rubber, those are for cardboard, last are the funky rounded blue ones with small holes, which are for bottles (glass and plastic) and are recycling bins. Recycle whenever possible. If you get confused, there are pictures to help.

Traffic. In the small Medieval cities of Italy, there are a lot of forms of transportation that need to share a small space know as streets. Don’t bother learning a lot of the traffic laws as I don’t think they really apply. Parking is as parking does and scooters have a definite law of their own. Don’t assume that just because you are walking down a crowded street that reminds you of a pedestrian mall at home, that cars, buses and delivery trucks aren’t going to try and get through. The good news is, because they drive like they do, they know how to handle their own streets.

As a pedestrian I would make sure to use crosswalks whenever possible. There are lights that work just like they do with cars with a red, yellow and green walking person. Don’t bother with looking for other traffic lights, use these they are for you and there is no telling where else traffic could be coming from if you use the car’s lights. If there is no crosswalk at an intersection, look both ways and cross away. Unless you do something totally careless and walk right out in front of a car, they will see you and generally slow down enough to let you cross. Though it did happen a couple of times that they were pretty sure they were going to be good and I could feel the wind at my back as the car passed. These rules seemed to work really well in all the Italian cities we visited.

Now comes the part where I talk about Gypsy babies and the National past time of Italy. During our orientation to the school and Florence, the school’s administration had a police officer come in and talk to us about safety and long story short, just don’t be stupid. Keep your bags and purse with you at all times and don’t walk with them to the street but towards buildings. If you are a woman and a man approaches you don’t freak out or respond just keep walking and ignore him, he may even reach out and touch you but whatever you do don’t react violently, just do what the Italian women do and remove his hand and walk on. He had a couple of horror stories to tell about women who reacted poorly and (at least in Florence) rape rates seem to be very low. He had a whole line of dialogue about how Italian men are used to being rejected by Italian women and you shouldn’t be any different.

As far as Gypsy babies go, don’t catch them (though I never saw a woman thrown her baby but hey, sounds like good advice) and don’t get caught up in them. For the most part our experiences with the Gypsies were the same few on our way to school and the couple that hung around the Duomo. They would generally mutter something about their bambio and shake a cup at you. Best thing to do, ignore them. I once watched a woman give them a few cents and then they would not stop bugging her until she gave them more money. Just ignore and walk on, it can seem difficult but you’ll get used to it.

Taking public transportation and the general life inside a city. It seemed like all the public transportation systems in Italy worked the same. You go to a Tabacci and buy a ticket that is validated on the bus. You can get on and off the bus through any door and just validate your ticket on the bus. Here too, be sensible and watch for your belongings but don’t constantly check for your wallet, if someone is looking to pickpocket you, they will now know exactly what pocket to go for. Don’t carry all of your cash and credit cards with you where they can be easily stolen, hide them away or just lock them up. Most bus stops had the routes that service them, maps and schedules to help you get to where you are going. It is way cheaper than taking a cab and a good way to see a city.

Life in most Italian cities isn’t that much different from the larger cities at home. I imagine that the biggest challenge for most American visitors is getting over the suburban shock of being in a downtown of a large city. Things will seem dirtier, more crowded and initially unsafe if you aren’t used to living in an urban environment. If you live in a large city, I am sure your downtown area is the same, here it is just larger. For instance at it’s peak in the Renaissance, Florence had a population of 100,000 now the city supports for times as many people and it shows. We can learn a lot from the Italians on how to run a city, or better yet from the Parisians but that will come later.

So these are the few things I learned. Most of them are the things people told me or I wish I knew before I came here. If you have been, I hope I brought back memories. If you are coming, I hope I gave you food for thought. If you don’t ever plan on visiting Italy, I hope I made you laugh. So Ciao from Italy where life moves at a different pace and scooters run the streets. Next we go back to Paris and see if it is still the city of my dreams.

Salut,

Shaych

There is one more photo gallery up of Florence including our photo critique.