We are the World

I simply had to name my blog this after hearing this song as someone’s ring tone. This could only happen in Italy where the 80’s reign supreme. This is my last week in Italy and I leave with mixed feelings which is appropriate because I have experienced all the extremes of Italy. The further north we went, the more Italy functioned like the rest of Europe but the more hurried and curt people were when dealing with you. Friendly banter disappeared at times and we experienced bad service, dodgy waiters tricking you into ordering sides for which you pay 7 euros more in Italy and there was just some rudeness. The coffee got better the further north we went and was best in the Milan – Como – Turin area but especially Turin. The food improved as well. Italy is a country of contrasts for it seems people are much better off in the north, they dress better, drive better cars and have a better quality of life but the downside of this is that you are less likely to experience the genuineness of the Italian people. It may be a universal constant that the better off people are the less friendly they become.

Allan and I had planned a couple of days on the beautiful lake Como. Easily the most popular of the 3 Italian lakes it is also the most touristy. Unfortunately because I have no interest in bike racing it was the final of the giro d’italia on the day we left Milan and Allan missed it because this wasn’t factored into the holiday plan. It could have been but as I am the only person in Australia to have not watched the tour de France I don’t think of things like this unless I am reminded. Recognizing this we turned up at Como only to be treated very rudely by the guy at the hotel because we had arrived prior to the check in time and Allan wished he’d stayed in Milan. The manager pointed out to me that my reservation said 2pm check in. We knew this but simply wanted to dump our bags and felt he could’ve been a bit nicer. He obviously hadn’t carried 20kg around with him all around Europe every few days. I researched my hotels thoroughly whilst sticking to a budget and have found several places were not worthy of their high tripadvisor rankings.  There are several reasons for this. The first is that hotels in Italy don’t have standardized room sizes and so Allan could get a bigger room then me when paying the same price. The second is that the location of the room in the hotel matters significantly because if you overlook the street you can get no sleep because of garbage trucks that come in the middle of the night. There is also a significant drop in quality between 3 and 4 star hotels in Italy. In many cases a 3 star hotel in Italy is the equivalent of a 2 star, or 1.5 stars in Australia. If you are fructose/gluten intolerant than don’t ever stay in a hotel below 4 stars because they offer very little for breakfast that you can eat, the 4 star hotels offer varieties of eggs, bacon and gluten free options, anything less than this and its awful Italian pastries and a bit of cheese and ham.  

Como was nice but boring, lots of views, lots of walks. Locals just sit on park benches and stare at the lake. From Como its possible to explore the lake using the ferry system. However the Italians have devised the most complicated timetable of all time so that it is not possible for any foreigners to make sense of anything. This being Italy you don’t bother asking anyone working for the ferry company for help because they won’t be helpful so I decided against going anywhere for fear of ending up somewhere stranded because I couldn’t figure out how to get home. I was also a bit over Italy’s inefficiencies! So I drank coffee, went for walks and did little else because I figure on holidays it doesn’t hurt to take it easy once in a while!

Sometimes I think I should send a bill to trenitalia for the number of tourists I’ve helped at train stations. It’s a nightmare trying to negotiate these Italian trains if you don’t know anything about geography, computers or any basic Italian. The problem is that if your stop isn’t the final destination of a train its difficult to figure out which train to take because the departure screens just list the final destination. So how do you know which train to catch? You could ask someone that works at the station – good luck. You could use the internet – not much help. The best way is to use the POD system which is based on the numerous German train travel games like ticket to ride or union pacific. One matches the written departure time on the ticket with any trains leaving at the same time, and if multiple trains are departing at that time one then uses their geography knowledge to pick the most likely final destination for your stop. You then run around to each prospective platform to match the list of stops. Consequently catching a train with me is never easy and is best summed up in the words of Allan, “Going on holidays with you is like being on the amazing race only more stressful.” It is exhausting catching trains in Europe with me because often you literally run to get on to the right carriage, get on, and then it takes off. Allan thinks I enjoy making it stressful – its true I do. However if we have a booking then we need to make the train.  

Top of the Mole

Its quite appropriate that Allan make the amazing race comment as our next destination was Turin. Turin is the only Italian city that the amazing race has visited twice. On the night I did my detailed planning for this city I watched the latest episode of the amazing race only to find they went to Turin. I grabbed my notes and made a list of all the things they did when they came here and my goal was to do all the same things. There was much joy in this trip symmetry and I climbed the Mole, a tower that gives good views of the city and area and first official entry for the great towers of the world series this trip. A series within a series it has sort of a cult following. I then went to the automobile museum which gives a detailed history of the evolution of the motor car in Europe and America and goes into depth of its impact of culture. In the amazing race they had to find a 1916 FJ Holden and ran around the museum but I couldn’t find it. The museum itself is huge so I can see why it took them so long to find it.

Po River

Turin is missed by many people when coming to Italy but I loved it. Its easily one of the best cities in Italy and is actually ranked the #9 best attraction in Italy. The 3^rd biggest city in Italy it attracts few tourists but unlike many other places in Italy which can really be eyesores this is a beautifully laid out city. Its all flat and has wide pedestrian walkways, many of which are undercover. The charming streets are lined with the Turin arch and as is the case in Italy one soon finds themselves in some amazing piazza. Turin is perfect for the type of travel I like to do – wandering around European cities. I could do this to my hearts content here because every street had something to see. There were so many shops here as well as bars, cafes, restaurants and museums that I was never bored. The city feels very much like Melbourne and is very easy to navigate around and is set around the attractive Po river, the longest in Italy and a common trivia question.

The Turin Arch

People in Turin also don’t pretend to be something their not. There is no outrageous fashion like in say Milan where people like to look good and can really overdo things. Its more real and down to Earth here. Italians always look good, it’s the way they are, and they accessorize well I’ve noticed but they can do this with anything they put on. Turin has a major student population and it seems all people do is spend their time in bars and café’s. We never once saw an office worker or office building so one wonders if anyone works here at all. It was difficult finding hotels as well. Our hotel was disappointing but at least it was cheap and didn’t detract from our time here. The staff at the hotel were very curt and not particularly friendly. I had trouble with my door and had to ask the scary women at the desk for help in opening it. I’ve had trouble with a few doors in Italy as well as the auto sensing taps in the bathroom. I may have broken a couple of these taps when trying to turn them. The accent in the north is much harder for me to decipher as well. People speak much faster but their words almost seem to be German scented or flavored with another Eastern European dialect and I’m always struggling to keep up and have looked stupid several times. The standard of English is improved up here but its still very poor. I suspect people learn English at school to about year 9 level so probably only learn a year or 2 more of what an Australian would learn of a foreign language.

Turin Bread - The best bread in Italy

Turin offered the most unbelievably amazing life changing coffee I’d ever had. I was up to 6/7 coffees a day here. I also had the best food here as well and life changing gnocchi. If Turn was a surprise packet then Genoa was more so. This could be the nicest city in Italy if it wasn’t for all the rubbish and dog poo lying around but its still very charming. Just as a side track don’t come to Italy if you hate dogs, they are everywhere, in shops, restaurants and meeting other dogs down the streets. Genoa is a beautiful old sea port that rests in the hills overlooking the ocean. Its still one of the busiest seaports in Europe and the Porto Antico is set right on the waterfront where one has stunning views of the boats, oceans and city skyline. There is plenty to see and do down there. Being on the sea there is a constant sea breeze which has been very refreshing from the warm weather I’ve experienced since coming to Italy. This warm weather has been unfortunate because it doesn’t help the way I like to travel. I’ve been in Europe in May before and the weather can be poor, I guess it just went the other way this trip.

Genoa Porto Antico

Genoa is quite hilly and filled with all sorts of old medieval lanes and charming buildings, hundreds of years old. One can go for a walk down a little lane, and then go down another lane, and another lane and this can go on for as long as you like. Allan pointed out that these lanes were probably used for sewerage. The city does not get many tourists and as people actually live in the city you’re amongst real Italians and here you get to see their true, friendly nature and they will do their best to communicate with you. The food and coffee here is fantastic, the seafood is especially fresh and even I liked it. The city is quite small and very easy to walk around, great for browsing in shops its also full of museums and churches. The aquarium is the signature attraction, its very fishy but has some interesting stuff. Its fun to walk behind groups of school kids and watch their reactions when they see the penguins, the swordfish were cool and I was the only person looking at the box jelly fish but many of the fish were too small to be interesting and it wasn’t worth the 19 euros admission price.

Panorama of Seaport

A relaxing time in Genoa was just what the doctor ordered and the people here are good natured and happy to use their dodgy English which will always be better than my dodgy Italian. Try as I might I simply don’t have the vocab to get very far in Italian and given we spent 2 terms learning the parts of the body this was never going to be helpful unless I had a problem with my eyelashes. I think I should design a language course with English as a prerequisite so the teacher doesn’t spend all their time explaining grammar. Regardless there are only about 10 words one needs to know when coming to Italy if you don’t know Italian. The numbers are important, I’ve got them covered. If you know French, then just change the endings and learn 10 – 20. Prego is the most overused word in the Italian language and can mean just about anything from, can I help you, to your welcome, to you go next to no problem. Its been fun watching American tourists trying to figure out what it means. Grazie and buongiorno are next followed by per favore. Prendo is the verb one uses to order and then you have anche (for also), basta (for that’s it) and then just learn a few Italian sounds and you should be able to pronounce most words as the language is very phonetic and they should understand you even with a dodgy accent. Don’t ever think that if you know French you’ll get by in Italy. The grammar is similar but the vocab often quite different. I saw plenty of French tourists struggling in Italy.

Genoa - City

Traveling with Allan gets better with each holiday and the days off have been helpful. The main stress in our trip revolves around choosing the restaurant each night because of my restrictions. We need to find somewhere that has dishes without tomato, pesto, preferably fish, vegetables and fruit and this can take a while. It can be frustrating for both of us looking at menus from place to place until I can find something and then there is the issue of Allan finding a place that he likes and me vetoing it because I can’t eat anything there. Add to this my love of gnocchi and Allan’s hatred of gnocchi and Allan’s desire to eat risotto and my refusal to eat risotto. I love risotto but I don’t trust anyone to make it without onion. Add to this that Italy serves less varieties of risotto than Australia. They only really do seafood risotto, risotto Milanese, risotto with radish, risotto with asparagus and I’m not eating them. Italy however offers a vast variety of dishes and it is usually possible for me to find something to eat. As we went further north the dishes contained more tomato, pesto and fish and this complicated matters. In the more touristy places they deliberately have more British type food which I can eat. The best food was in Turin and Genoa. I don’t know if this is because we were better at finding better restaurants or if because these places weren’t so touristy and so we ended up at places where the locals ate.

People rave about Italy as being a truly wonderful country but I don’t think the experience of most tourists here truly reflects what Italy is really like. Most people visit Rome, Florence, Sienna, Pisa & Venice and then fly out. Rome aside, these places are mostly pitched at tourists where people speak English in all the key areas, they have designated areas for tourists to eat where the locals don’t go and you see nice things that are reasonably clean, you take a few photos, have a coffee and gelati and leave thinking Italy is fantastic. Its like going to Australia and only visiting Sydney, Gold Coast, Great Barrier Reef and Cairns. Everybody knows you haven’t experienced the real Australia unless you’ve at least come to Melbourne! What people don’t tell you about is the dog poo in the streets, the smell of urine, the rubbish left lying around, the smell of sewerage, the bread is awful and dry, the pizza bland and overrated, the trains are old and often lack air conditioning, the old run down apartment buildings people live in and areas that are very run down and unpleasant and not to mention the lack of public toilets in places. The fact that Italy is so much warmer and more humid than the rest of Europe should also be mentioned as this can make travel unpleasant.

Pirate Ship!

Despite these things I definitely liked Italy and particularly those places that weren’t so touristy. The people were easily the friendliest and most genuine I’ve met in Europe with the exception of a few places. Despite language difficulties they made a genuine effort to communicate with you and realized that it was unreasonable of them to expect all foreigners to their country to speak Italian as its really only spoken here. Its worth coming here for the coffee alone, the shopping is great everywhere (not just Milan and Florence) even if you’re a guy and the gelati worthwhile. If you can find places to eat where the locals go and pasta home made then you won’t be disappointed. You can easily find bad food in Italy as well as bad coffee in places. Italy is also much cheaper then many other European countries. Italy is packed with tourists and I can see that this is a great country to go with a someone special but even then I think it would still be worthwhile going somewhere out of the way and getting your own space. It would help a persons experience if coming to Italy for a reason like hiking, bike riding or even to buy specific things in certain places. I wouldn’t rate this place better then France, Germany or the UK, it certainly doesn’t run as well as any of those places but it’s certainly worth returning to and just avoiding certain places.

So I’ve survived 5 weeks in Europe. I had mild Eddie McGuire withdrawal symptoms this week but got through them. I also cleaned my backpack because she had some dirt on her. I have about 2 weeks in France to immerse myself in French and see how many people I can fool into thinking I know some French. Allan and I will be splitting up as planned in a few days and this week I intend to cover well over a thousand kilometers before slowing the pace of my trip down considerably and then heading home.