Driving in (northern) Italy
Contrary to popular opinion, I have to say that Italian drivers don’t seem at all bad. Yes, there are some mad ones, but then you get mad drivers in most countries.
Something you may notice if you drive in Italy is that roundabouts are few and far between, and when you do come across them, you do need to be a little circumspect. Why? Because some follow the system used in England where the driver going round the roundabout has precedence, but many others still follow the ‘driver coming on to the roundabout rule gets precedence’, which also exists in France.
As I said before, roundabouts are not that common; you will not find many in Milan or Genova or the surrounding areas. So, what do they use instead? Good old traffic light of course, millions of them. This could be why Italian drivers are a little impatient at times. I mean you would start to get a wee bit het up if you had to stop every half kilometre or so for a red light, wouldn’t you? I do.
I went for a quick spin today and only got beeped at only once. Where, you might ask? At a set of traffic lights, of course. You do tend to find that if you hesitate for any longer than a, er, nanosecond, the driver behind will beep his horn to wake you up. I now do this too, just for fun, just to show how well I have adapted to Italian culture. Well, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Another little thing is the fact that many cars here seem to have direction indicators which just do not work. It’s strange this problem often afflicts quite new cars. It is also just as likely that you will get stuck behind someone with a penchant for tootling along at 30kmh here as in the UK. This sort of scotches the stereotypical opinion that all Italians drive with their foot flat to the floor.
There is one problem here which puts me off going out of Milan at the weekends, but it has got nothing to do with the way people drive, it is connected to the number of people who drive.
Now, as I was saying, I don’t like going out of Milan because there are often huge queues to get back in the city again. These queues are particularly bad during the summer or during holiday periods. I am always hearing stories of nightmarishly long trips back to Milan. The latest marathon trip was travelled by some friends of ours who took some 7 hours to get back from the Cortina area of the Dolomites. I think it took them about 3 hours to get there. So, if you want to go out of Milan and avoid the jams, use the train, although I have to say that trains do not often get you to really interesting places. One other thing, as people are aware, the motorways here are toll roads. Guess where some of the longest queues are when everybody is trying to get back into the city. Yep, at these toll booths. It’s worth remembering that at the major toll areas, you can pay the fee by credit card. This saves you having to mess around with coins and notes.
I should point out that all my observations are based on what happens here in the north.
With regard to the south, I have heard people say that many drivers in Naples suffer from red/green colour blindness, so they find it difficult to understand when to stop, this means at most traffic lights they don’t. I’ve been to Naples and can attest to the colour blindness which exists there. It could be related to tomato overdoses, I suppose.
Another problem which afflicts many riders of two wheeled transport, especially in the south of Italy, is forgetfulness. You see they are always leaving their helmets at home.
Colour blindness and forgetfulness are not big problems in the north.
Before I bring this note to an end, there is one other thing which affects driving here - the road signs. They can cause one or two problems if you are not paying attention or you do not know where you are going. Come to think of it not many tourists know where they are going, I mean you just follow a map, don’t you, or use the GPS.
OK, the problems are a) especially in rural areas, you will often see signposts listing six or seven destinations - they do like to spoil you for choice here - but this does make it problematic, to say to least to identify that one little place you were aiming for. Where possible, slowing down considerably, or perhaps even stopping should enable you to spot that place name which interests you.
Now, you’ve identified your destination from the signpost, you’ve beetled off down the requisite road and you are on your way. You drive happily along. You keep driving. On and on. You start to feel a little worried. You think: I must have missed the turn or something, because I have not seen any more signs mentioning my destination. You are wrong, you have not missed the turn, but you are right about the signs. You often find this, after a good start the direction signs seem to dry up, until that is you are about two metres from your destination.
I’ve only seen this system in one other place in the world - Milton Keynes in the UK. Milton Keynes is a new town and its great claim to fame was that it was all planned at the same time. Whilst this is a good idea in theory, in practice it means that instead of making lots of little mistakes, you tend to make several big ones. I digress. Watch out for those signs. They love to sneak up on you.
There are no rabbits in Italy, but there are panteganas
As I understand it, the Romans introduced rabbits to the UK many moons ago. Well, it would seem that all these Roman rabbits decided to invite all their rabbit friends and relations over too. I say this because I very rarely see wild rabbits in this country and I cannot understand why.
Back in the UK I often used the train and would see many little bunnies hopping happily everywhere. Not in Italy, where I also use the train quite frequently. Why is this? Where have all of Beatrix Potter’s favourite characters ended up? This is one of life’s little mysteries for me and quite possibly is something that others may not have noticed, unless they happen to be ex-country people like myself, that is.
I only really have a lot of experience of northern Italy and it is possible that other parts of this peninsula house abundant rabbit populations, but in the north here, I think I can quite safely say that I have seen no more than five bunnies since I’ve been here. Strange, is it not?
What the heck is a pantegana you may well be asking. Well, I can’t even find any real info about the things on the world wide web, so I’m unable to say what exactly these beasts are, or rather what species they may belong to. Before I saw what I believe was a pantegana, I had heard a little about them.
People here sometimes use the word to talk about, often, women who have not been blessed with the looks of Claudia Schiffer and the like.
I asked, once, as you do, what a pantegana was. The explanation I got was that it is a big sewer rat. Well, I don’t know how big Italian rats are, but the thing I saw, dead poor beast, lying by the side of a busy road, was huge. We are talking a length of more than one metre. It certainly had a face like that of your common rat, and the body and huge tail also bore a very close resemblance to that of a rat. It was the size though that got me.
I did not believe the rodents of these dimensions existed in Europe, until that moment. Then someone told me that it was probably a baby. Sorry, just joking, you may be pleased to know. Notwithstanding my attempt to be funny, I would not like to encounter one of these beasts alone on a dark night. I don’t know if they are aggressive, and I’m not sure if I want to know. Genetic mutations, anyone. Radiation leaks? Who knows.
Maybe someone reading this entry will be able to shed some light on the mysterious missing bunnies and the monstrous pantegana oversize rat like beasts.
Time for work, must go and see students about courses and that sort of thing.
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Photos from Flickr
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