Zombie Pirate Ninja Monkey

Reflections on Italy

I'm back from Italy and, even after being back at work for a few days, I am still relaxed.  After spending the best part of a month there in the last couple of years, I see myself as an expert on the country, fully immersed in its culture and able to make arbitrary, sweeping statements about vast tranches of Italian society.

• Italians are not the mad, angry, fist-shaking drivers that they are made out to be.  They drive stupidly fast.  The normal Italian's speed on any road is between 50 and 70 percent higher than the limit, and that applies to almost all drivers.  But I was forgiven u-turns and cut-ins that would have got me outright road-rage in Britain.  People were generally courteous, if prone to tailgating.  I never heard a horn once.  Greeks, now: those are some angry, impatient drivers.  They are the Indians of Europe.  Or the Albanians of the, erm, other bits of Europe.
• Perugia is much under-rated.  It is a really lovely city with spectacular views and incredible surviving archaeology: you can pass into the city through a gate built by the Etruscans over 2000 years ago, and the traffic-free centre of the city, built on a plateau, surrounded by cliffs and high above the eastern Umbrian plains, is delightful.
• Ravenna has incredible buildings, some 4th and 5th century.  The Duomo next to the mausoleum of Galla Placidia is like a small version of the Hagia Sophia, with the advantages that it is still a church and is not ruined by 20-foot wide, plywood cutouts in Arabic.  The 50 metres of Byzantine mosaics in the Arian church built by Theoderic surpassed anything I found in Istanbul, thanks to the lack of Iconoclastic and Turkish intervention*.  Breathtaking.
• Ravennites are, however, a quiet and humble people, who don't like to boast endlessly about the attractions of their city.  On the contrary, their shy nature makes finding any attraction in their city without careful reconnaisance beforehand a little like orienteering in a forest at night.
• If you want to freely plunder an archaeological dig centering on 3rd century Roman buildings, just go to the Zona Arcaheaologica in Ravenna between 12pm and 2pm.  There is a very nice but obsessive-compulsive woman who only speaks Italian and mops the toilets every ten minutes despite the absence of visitors and there is.. well, nobody else.  Just a very small, lazy dog and its stuffed toy.  Even the cleaning woman is about half a kilometre away from the actual dig, which has a low fence and an ajar gate for protection.  I could have filled my pockets with potshards, 1700-year-old mussel shells, beautiful oil lamp handles and more.
• Italian women have a reputation for stylishness and beauty.  Frankly, the stylishness is a myth, even in the north. I have never seen such badly dressed women (the men had a certain old-world chich thing going), even in Eastern Europe.  The looks thing may be a matter for personal taste, but they clearly have nothing on the Czechs, for instance, and I strongly believe that they fail to compete with most of the UK, too ("not Angels but Angles", after all).  France, Spain, Turkey: all compared favourably.
• If, leaving the Mausoleum of Gallo Placidia in a contemplative mood, you choose to place your arm around your companion and give them an affectionate tickle in the small of their back, it is important to check that this is not the elderly wife of the man behind you.  On the upside, the lady in question was delighted.  To be fair, her spouse was not so well pleased.  I left before he could instigate a blood feud.
• Italians mainly have natural, dark hair.  After last night, I know that this is because getting your hair bleached is considerably more painful after plenty of exposure to sunlight.
• Finally, they're not joking about the Italian army.  I encountered a small convoy of them in the hills above Lake Trasimeno while driving to Rome.  They were, I promise you, reversing at the time.

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*I should note that I am, theologically, on the side of the Iconoclasts and the Turks on this one.  I just balk at putting it into practice.