Daily Life In Italy in Summer

July 31, 2008 · Filed Under Life in Italy · 2 Comments

Maybe some people are wondering just what daily life in Italy is like in summer. Well, once the warm weather hits this country, the routine in the north does change a little.

First of all, most of the schools in Italy close for summer at the end of June, which means many children suddenly find themselves with not much to do, while many of their parents are still working.

Families With Children

What Italians generally do when the schools close, especially whose wives don’t work, is take the kids to the sea or the mountains, while the husband stays in the city or town to work. When both parents have jobs, Italian children are sent to their grand parents, who either have or have rented houses or apartments down on the coast or up in the cool of the mountains. The 30°C+ heat in Italian cities can become oppressive and potentially dangerous for very young children.

For many Milanese, the coast generally means the Liguria region, the area on both sides of Genova. However some, especially those with family down in the south of Italy, may well send their children down to grand parents or relations down in the southern areas of Italy.

Those who do not have grand parents or relations, and who have the resources, will have a ‘colf’, which is basically a nanny who is often employed full time to look after younger children. Sometimes, the colf will take the children out of Milan, and at weekends parents will join the children. Read more

Tags: Italian, Italians, Italy, Life in Italy, summer

It’s a love hate thing

June 26, 2007 · Filed Under Life in Italy · 5 Comments

Living in Italy. Today, I had a chat with someone who has spent 25 years in the Living Museum, and although you might expect someone who has been here so long to be used to Italy’s oft unruly ways, it sounds as though this person still becomes frustrated at the disorganisation of the place. Maybe I do not need to mention it, but this person comes from an Anglo-Saxon culture and, it appears that some people from such cultures find the Italian way of life something of a challenge. The person I mentioned above is not alone, and I’m not just talking about long-stay ex-pats. I know of Italians who have spent time in the US and the UK and either never want to return here, or long to return to the perceived ‘normality’ of Anglo-Saxon cultures.

Yet the Living Museum remains an attractive place to live for many. The sheer beauty of the place is intoxicating and this alone can justify making your life here. Other things that can smooth the way considerably are having a well stocked bank account and/or an armful of patience. If you can leave Italians to deal with the bureaucratic stuff; there are agencies that make a nice living doing all the silly bureaucratic bits and bobs which need to be done here; you can live exceptionally well.

On the other hand, if you end up having too many run-ins with the disorganised aspects of the place, you may well end up running away. I know too that there are ex-pats who would never dream of getting together with an Italian girl or boy, which is probably quite wise. In fact, I know quite a few stories of Italo-foreigner relationships that have gone completely pear shaped, mainly as a result of differences related to the way Italians and others run their lives.

Personally, I feel that I have only really encountered some of the more idiosyncratic aspects of Italian culture after having had a child here. Up until then the cultural differences where pretty minor and utterly bearable. Since the arrival of my son, however, cultural differences have made the road rather rocky at times. Although I should say that I am no angel and some, er, difficult aspects of my own sweet character have not done me too many favours. Mix that with someone who was once told by his boss that he hated compromising and you have a recipe for a windy (wiggly) and bumpy path at times.

Happily, I also know of some Italo-foreigner relationships which have worked out and the old adage ‘love conquers all’ does seem to have played a part in this. ‘Give and take’ is necessary in most relationships, but in mixed cultural ones, particularly where one side does not always appreciate the ways of the other, the level of give and take can become unbalanced and lead to almost inevitable fractures.

Unless you are highly resilient, adaptable and exceptionally broad minded, I would advise Anglo-Saxon types to be wary of getting together with those from the Living Museum. Life could become a nightmare, or paradise on Earth.

Go on, choose that straw…

Tags: Culture, Italian, Italy, Life in Italy

Behind bars

January 21, 2005 · Filed Under Italy · 2 Comments

Nope, they haven’t sent me to jail, but when I have a look out of the window of the appartment, it feels a bit like being in one. You see there is a security grating thingy over each of the windows. You can open these things, but they are a pain and the key is never where it ought to be.

We did not put these bars on the windows, they were installed by the previous owner. These security measures are another difference between the UK and Italy.

If you drive around Milan, or wander about on foot, particularly in the evenings, you will notice lots of shutters.

The shops, more often than not, are hidden behind huge steel shutters, and it is not always clear what the shop behind the shutters sells. This means that making a mental note of just where that interesting hardware shop was, for example, can be difficult.

Looking up, which is something I encourage everyone to do here, on account of the amazing terraced gardens to which I’ve already referred in a previous entry, you may notice that the appartments take on a sort of bunker look after dark.

Italians are not into curtains and tend to install shutters everywhere because they are more secure and I think, help keep some of the burning heat of the sun out. However the resulting effect, once all the shutters are closed, can be a little bit disconcerting. Everything looks closed and abandoned. This was very strange for me at first, coming from the UK where shutters are almost unknown and where windows are always visible giving, me at least, the impression that the neighbourhood is more open and friendly. Which is more than can be said for Milan in August, when almost everyone leaves the city for mountains or sea, and the city does a good impression of a ghost town, with all those shutters being kept down for ages. You have to experience the sensation of seeing all these shutters down to get an idea of what I am on about. It’s as if all the houses have closed their eyes and gone to sleep. A funny feeling.

Not only do 99.9 percent of appartments here have shutters, but many also have bars. Either the openable things we have or immovable cast iron gratings. These gratings cannot be removed, unless you happen to be handy with an angle grinder or an oxyacetylene torch, that is.

Usually, it is the first two or sometimes three floors which have been turned into mini-fortresses. And we must not forget that the door to the appartments, all of them, just about, not just the fortress entrances, will be a ‘porta blindata’. This can be roughly translated as being ‘armoured door’.

My translation may well be a little rough, but it does explain exactly what they are. Often they are made of steel and have a locking system which many banks (in the UK) would be proud of.

Then, there are the keys

The keys to these super secure doors come in many shapes and sizes. In our last place, where my other half installed an nice solid steel door, we had short, flat, high-techy keys, which were OK to carry around in your pocket. My in-laws, instead have these funny double sided keys which are about four inches long, well in fact there are two keys like this, one for each lock. These keys are heavy and a bind to carry around, and they do a pretty good job of ruining pockets too.

You will often find that a door here has two or more locks. You may also note that turning the key just once is not enough. You have to turn keys at least twice to get the key out, and something like four times, if you want to be sure that all the door locking rods are buried deep in their sockets.

Many Italians carry around, an alarmingly big bunch of keys. Actually, such grapefruit sized bunches could quite successfully be used for self-defence purposes, if necessary.

All this security, which does not seem to be fully justified, in my humble opinion. (You have windows, which are often double glazed, on top of which there are the shutters, which are sometimes, admittedly, flimsy plastic things, but are also quite often heavy solid wooden or metal structures, and finally your steel grating things.)

And Just what do you do in the event of a fire?

This fetish for security begs the question: ‘What the blazes do you do in the event of a fire?’ when you find yourself all nice and ’safe’ behind all the armour. I guess all that security would turn many burning appartments into very effective ovens. There are very few fire escapes here too. Just as well that many, but not all, appartments in Italy have balconies.

I imagine that the local fire brigade has to go around with all manner of equipment for opening armoured doors, steel and iron gratings, and such like.

You could, of course, equip your house with a nice axe, or a handy angle grinder (petrol version - seeing as the electricity may be off in the event of a fire), or just go the whole hog and invest in a trusty thermic lance, plus a course on how to use the thing. You may need at least once lance per room, just to be on the safe side, and it would be advisable to instruct the kids as to how to use the things.

I can see it now, courses at the local church hall for 9 to 11 year olds - Thermic Lancing for Beginners - Lesson One - Burning your way through steel shutters in the event of a fire - Classroom 8 - 9am to 11am with Father Fuocorosso.

Sounds like fun when I think about it. But all in all, I prefer to be in front of bars, drinking a coffee or a beer, while reading my valued copy of ‘Thermic Lances for Dummies’, maybe.

Tags: Culture, Funny, Italian, Italians, Italy, Life in Italy, security

Italian temperatures and Umbrellas

January 12, 2005 · Filed Under Life in Italy · Comment

Nope, this entry is not going to be about the weather here in Italy. It’s about thermometers. Every house in Italy has got at least one of the things, or so it would seem.

I regularly hear that someone has had a day off because they had a high temperature or fever - ‘febbre’ in Italian. Gave me the impression initially that Italy was full of exotic diseases, until I got the dictionary out and discovered that ‘ho la febbre’ means I have a temperature.

Now, for those of you who are not into taking your temperature regularly, the body seems to operate at around 37°C, although mine seems to hum along quite nicely at 35.3ish°C for some obscure reason. Italians do seem to be a little obsessed with their body temperatures. I mean before I got here, back in the UK, I didn’t even own one of the things, so I never knew whether I had a temperature or even the correct temperature.

When I was young, I vaguely remember my mum brandishing a thermometer when I had measles or some other kiddy ailment, then I grew up, left home and thermometers did not even cross my mind. Then I came to Italy and, amongst other things, got caught up in thermometer culture. We’ve got this Mickey Mouse digital thermometer for our sprog and I will admit to having used it on more than one occasion.

Mysterious ailments do seem to abound here, for example there is the ‘cervicale’, which as far as I can make out is a sort of neck ache, the existence of which, of course, sends the sufferer dashing for the nearest thermometer, I imagine.

Next, you have ‘colpa d’aria’, if I have spelt that right, which I think is a chill, and which, the doctors out there should correct me if I’m wrong on this one, is not really a classified medical ailment, unlike a cold for example, which is technically a viral infection, as I understand it. However, having said this, our paediatrician did actually suggest that our little one may have been affected by one of these dreaded, thermometer inducing, ‘colpa d’aria’.

Is this really a comment that a fully qualified Doc should be making? I’m not too sure personally. A more doctory comment would have been something like ‘he has caught a virus’ or something similar.

A brief aside, here in Italy all children are assigned their own special doctor - a personal pediatrician who you have to go and see when the little one is not too well. Once they get older, they can go and see a, er, normal doctor. Back in the UK, paediatricians were reserved for specialist opinions and not for everyday consultation.

Our Italian pediatrician, I have to say, is a wonderful person and very human and down to earth. Back on track, another mysterious ailment is connected to digestive problems and these can also lead to a day off work. Apparently, eating the wrong combination of certain foods can play havoc with your digestion. My other half is rather prone to these problems, as is her mother.

Maybe Italian food is not as great as its cut out to be, you may be moved to comment. I could be wrong here, but I’m pretty certain that English people are not as prone to the same illnesses that hit the Italian population regularly.

There is other evidence that Italians are a sensitive race, too. As we all know, Italians love clothes and in winter they put most of them on. As soon as the season officially changes, or so it would seem, everybody puts on a heavy coat, even while driving, a scarf, and more often than not a pair of gloves. I have not even dug my scarf out yet this year and don’t even know where my gloves are. But then I am a cold northern European, in more ways than one, or so it would seem.

One thing which does get me is that I use an umbrella here much more than I ever did in the UK. This is strange seeing as everyone knows that the rain falls incessantly in the British Isles.

Why ever would someone in Italy need to use an umbrella so much? Well, it’s the type of rain you get here. When it does rain here, and it does not do so very often, apart from during winter, it really rains, it pours, cats, dogs and elephants. The rain also lasts for longer periods.

Strange things happen here in Milan after a few hours of what I can only say must be something similar to a tropical downpour, the sort of thing that gives those forests in South America their name.

In Milan, roads explode when it rains, pavements collapse, cars get trapped, and blocks of flats become islands. OK, maybe I am exaggerating just a little, but the block of flat becoming an island was real.

On one occasion, I woke up to find my whole appartment block had become a mini-island which had been surrounded by water.

Another time, I actually had to take my shoes and socks off and wade across a flooded side road, climb over a railway embankment just to get myself home. The less adventurous onlookers were rather concerned for me, because they said the water was full of rats.

I did not see, or feel, one of the aforementioned rodents, but I did take my temperature as soon as I got home, just to be on the safe side.

Tags: Culture, health, Italian, Italy, Life in Italy, temperatures, weather