......do as Italians do. Even if it means fussing around half an hour in order to make the shopping list that consists of less than 10 objects. It also means that you must act as if you have all the time in the world – that is actually a characteristic I approve of and thus I say that we all must have a little Italian inside us – there is no stress and no worries whatsoever in the life of an Italian. If we are people that worry about every single thing that does not come out the way we wanted it to, they are serene as they did not have any expectations in the first place. This is another thing about Italians – they do not make any plans. Going shopping every day and thus losing pretty much half an hour each morning going to and fro is pretty normal. This half an hour is nothing though, but it all adds up when you put together all the coffee, the cigarette breaks, the waiting for one or for another, the discussions – ooooh yea, the endless discussions. We cannot plan even a day ahead, but let us talk about it and in the end decide that “ vediamo domani”. They have to discuss every single element, eeeevry single detail, eeeevery single happening. And they talk about it a lot. I think this is a nation of many words and little action. They talk a lot about who is cooking and how to do it, and in the end, cooking means throwing some pasta in the boiling water and then mix it up with “sugo” that was boilt in another pan. That is a lot of cooking and it needs a lot of decisions. Then there is all the fuss about who makes breakfast – and guess what, breakfast is coffee and biscuits. So all you have to do is make the coffee and put the biscuits on the table. And it takes a loooot of time to decide who does it. I wonder what would happen if breakfast one morning was cereal. Or even worse, omelet.
Food is the most important thing. After pasta and pizza comes, of course, the mozzarella. Everything is with mozzarella. And what is not, can be with it. And every day you eat pasta. Like eeeevery day. And when one wants to change course, one takes another kind of …..pasta.
There is no rush anywhere. It is nice that they are enjoying the road, and not so much the destination. Coz most Italians never make it to the destination. But it does not matter as they are happy as they are.
In the evening, “uscire” is a concept that means going about in a car ( if you have one) or by foot while making small talk. You go along with the crowd, and you know every second person that you meet, because you practice the sport “uscire” every night, no matter how tired you are. In the end, some of the times you can go into a bar and take a drink or a “gelato”, and continue dramatizing every single thing that has happened to you that day with, of course, plenty of body language, energetic talk and laughter even when the thing you are saying is not funny. And you talk loud. Always. Everyone thinks of himself in the center of attention, so you have to act a little bit, some mimical expression, some verbal drama, some physical demonstration. Otherwise you are considered boring.
I think that Italians are a very happy nation. And they consider themselves like that. Things that make them happy only make us smile, because we are perfectionists. They are not. We are hardworking, and still we are not at their level of life. Because I think we are trying to hard.
Also, to be considered Italian, you have to make the words longer than they really are. It is a must !
If you are Italian, you do not speak another language. And you consider that if someone is not a native Italian speaker, he or she cannot learn the language. So if for example if you are an Italian on an Italian beach and you hear a person talk in another language, you can make comments about him and be sure that the person cannot understand “un cazzo” in Italian. Another thing. The overused “cazzo”. I mean the word :PP Why does it have to be used every 2 seconds? Well, maybe in the few more days I have to spend with 7 itaians I will know.
To drink 5 litres of beer, 7 persons, in 2 days, that is 4 meals, lunch and dinner is veeery surprising. To drink a bottle of Limoncello – 0,75 l, 25% , in 7 in one night, one meal, is normal.
To taste a piece of pasta in order to see if it is boilt is a huuuge honor. And he who gets up from the table last gets to wash the dishes. So hurry up !
(to be continued)
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