Today’s guest post is by Sosaucer, Anna Volpi. During her travels, Anna has experienced unique observations with other cultures and shares with us lost in translation moments overseas. Today’s story gives us a funny (albeit, biased) insight on the life and times of native Italians.

Read her previous article on travel here.

I live in Northern Italy. I love the country and feel at home, most of the time. Sometimes I feel very different than the people I grocery shop with and share a post office with because I was born in Florida to an American mother and an Italian father. I grew up bilingual and bicultural, hopping continuously between both countries.

Because I love Italy I feel that I am allowed to poke a little fun at it. This is an article full of very generalized information, and by no means to be taken as a golden truth for everyone. That said, I’d like to bring you on a little tour of the Italian customs that make me giggle.

The Untouchable Rooms

If a family can afford a large enough home, it usually includes some special rooms that I call ‘untouchable’. The untouchable rooms are fully decorated and always clean. The house usually has an untouchable kitchen, living room and bathroom. The kitchen is fully equipped, has lots of counter and cabinet space and a table always covered with a nice tablecloth and centerpiece (usually tacky glass fruit or something of the likes). There is a fridge, but only for extra storage space. The living room has a comfortable couch, a rug, cabinets full of silverware and glassware for special occasions. The bathroom is always spotless, with matching towels hanging in a perfectly folded way. These rooms are never used. No one enjoys the couch, no one takes a shower in the bathroom, no one cuts vegetables on the kitchen counter. They are rooms that people put time and money into decorating and then let them be. The only use these rooms get are when guests are given a tour of the house.

You might be asking: so where do they cook and eat? Well, in what would be a large garage, the family sets up a living space and kitchen. They don’t use the brand new stove and oven upstairs, they use the hotplate downstairs. They don’t use the new fridge, they use the old one downstairs. There is a bathroom that the whole family uses. Even when it is occupied, other family members will wait their turn rather than use the untouchable bathroom upstairs. All the living happens in the space downstairs. The untouchable rooms aren’t even glanced at when the family moves through or near them to get to their bedrooms.

Cleaning Is Life

Cleaning. Italian mothers love to do it. I have a friend who bought his own house last year. His mother plans her week around cleaning his son’s and daughter’s houses. She even cleans an empty apartment that her daughter owns. Another friend who goes to college in another city has to submit to his roommate’s mother. About once a month she takes the two hour train ride to go clean her son’s apartment. If you take a stroll around a small town, you will see women sweeping the sidewalk next to their house or washing the outside walls of the house with a bucket of soapy water and a sponge. It may be cold and windy outside, but there they are, sweeping up the leaves that will be right back as soon as they are done.

Another favorite past time of the Italian mother is ironing. There are no dryers in Italy, everyone hangs their clothes to dry, so the Italian woman feels that she must attack every tiny wrinkle that remains in the clothes. My aunt irons undershirts; something that no one ever sees. When I told my Italian mother in law that my mother doesn’t iron anything except for her karate uniform, she said:

‘Oh, she pays a cleaner to do it.’

‘No,’ I replied, ‘she simply doesn’t iron anything.’

‘What do you mean? How?’

‘Well, she stopped years ago and nobody has noticed the difference.’

My mother in law became quiet and puzzled.

Bureaucracy

Getting paperwork done in Italy is scary. Anytime I have to get something official taken care of, I psychologically prepare myself to face angry employees, long lines, traffic, questions and filling out countless forms. What does it take to get a driver’s license in the United States? About $35 and an hour or two of your time. Here’s the process in Italy:

1. You need to go to the DMV and wait an hour in line just to get some paperwork that you need to bring to other places.

2. With one of those forms you go to the post office and pay €14 for a state tax stamp.

3. You bring another form to the hospital clinic and pay €32 for an eye check up.

4. You bring your tax stamp and your doctor’s note back to the DMV to set up an appointment for your written exam (No, you can’t set up an appointment on the phone or on the internet). This requires more waiting and a small fee.

5. You take your written exam. With luck you pass. You bring your certificate to a driver’s school. You can choose to take lessons at the school (€12 for half an hour) or practice privately. Then you must take the driving test through the school. If you don’t take any lessons and just take the exam, it will cost you €200.

Of course, you have to wait weeks for any of the appointments.

Mothers and their Children

Many Italian mothers treat undershirts as life savers. It seems that if their child doesn’t wear one they will immediately become ill. Wool in the winter, cotton in the summer. Even if you wear a tank top, you must wear a tank top undershirt. Yes, in August as well.

Sweating. I always thought that sweating helps the body cool off while getting rid of toxins. In Italy, sweating means that you may get sick. Mothers just don’t want their kids to sweat. I have seen mothers come to the park just to make sure their kids weren’t sweating. If they were, they would bring them home.

The Swimming Pool

I grew up in Florida, so I may be extra-familiar with pools, but I don’t think I’m wrong when I say that Italians are strange in their swimming pool ways. Most Italians don’t have their own swimming pool, so they go to the community pool in the summer. Here’s how you enjoy a day at the pool:

You don’t wear your bathing suit under your clothes, you change in a changing booth. You always wear sandals, everywhere. You can take them off only immediately before you enter the water. When you get out of the water, you must put on a robe and wear your sandals. Before going home, you must take a shower and blow dry your hair, even in the summer time.

Vacations At The Seaside

Italy isn’t known for its beaches but the Northern Adriatic coast becomes a beehive in the summer. The lazy Italians that don’t want to travel far flock to the coast and spend their vacation in an overcrowded, loud campsite or in a hotel. The beaches are not nice, everything is expensive and there are just too many people. The funny thing is that they spend nearly what they would if they traveled to another nicer spot in the Mediterranean. I do not understand the logic. Of course, an Italian can not go to the beach if they do not have an umbrella, lounge chairs, a nearby shower, bathroom and restaurant. The umbrellas and chairs are all set in perfect order by the establishments that own a piece of the beach. You are not allowed to move the umbrellas or chairs. If you arrive late one day, your umbrella will be several rows away from the sea so that your view is the back of someone’s head. To them, this is vacation.



Travel is what naturally runs in Anna’s veins. After studies in theater, anthropology and photography, she lived out of a backpack for a couple of years in various countries. She is now on a baby making break, but will be back on the road as soon as possible with the added passion of a mother introducing her child to the World.

Read more posts by Alisha

This entry was posted on Friday, May 14th, 2010 at 2:57 PM and is filed under Europe, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.