Category Archives: living in Italy

bio, living in Italy

House-Moving in Italy

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We couldn’t have picked a worse time to move: record high temperatures and humidity, with people literally falling down in the streets. In a particularly horrible accident the other day, a man on a street repair crew fainted. His colleague driving the tar truck didn’t see him on the ground, and backed over him.

Our move has been far less dramatic, but involves lots of hard work and running around when we’d be wiser to take a siesta. When you rent an apartment in Italy, unless it’s advertised as “furnished,” it’s completely bare: no kitchen appliances, no light fixtures. (Toilets and showers yes, at least, but often no toilet seats.) So everyone buys and/or moves their own major appliances, and we’re taking the opportunity to upgrade our kitchen. Our old kitchen in Milan is literally one meter by two – I’ve seen bigger walk-in closets. When we moved here, we had to measure carefully to ensure that the stove and a (clothes) washing machine would fit in beside the sink. I am so thrilled now to have a huge, eat-in kitchen, even though it’s tiled (floor and walls) in a bilious shade of olive green that was popular around 1975. We’ve brought up some pieces from my in-laws’ place in Rome: a painted wood table, sideboard, and display dish rack which also happen to be olive green (decorated with flowers and birds, which is not as bad as sounds). I’ve never been particularly fond of these pieces, but they go very nicely in the olive green kitchen.

Our own kitchen stuff (which, in Milan, is in the living/dining room) is made of a light-colored wood (from Ikea), so we’re adding more pieces in that style to expand storage and work space. For the last 12 years I’ve been producing culinary miracles on a 40×60 cm worktop. Can’t wait to see what I’ll be able to do with a REAL kitchen.

So the upside is that we get to do our own kitchen. The downside is that we have to, and it’s still not in working order. Figuring out what would fit where, making buying decisions, and having things delivered and installed, is taking far more time than I expected. Getting workmen to come is proving difficult. The electrician never showed up for our appointment last Friday, and has since been impossible to reach on his cellphone. Hit by a truck? (If not, he’s about to wish had been…) At least the plumber has been reliable, and hopefully will be able to find his carpenter friend to come Monday, because there’s a worktop that will need to be cut for the sink…

We’ll move the last major stuff from Milan on Sunday, and will bring up our handyman to attach bookshelves to walls and hang paintings. I always knew Signor Gino was a treasure; I just hadn’t realized he was an irreplaceable treasure – so far we haven’t managed to find anyone in Lecco to do this sort of thing. We’ve got zillions of books sitting around in boxes because I can’t put them on the shelves yet, which is making me crazy.

Yesterday, in frustration, I vowed that I would learn to use a power drill myself, so that in future I can make my own holes in the wall. As a start, I went to the hardware department at the local Bennet (Italian Wal-Mart). After half an hour of browsing, I realized that I am indeed a complete geek: I was enjoying looking at tools, electrical connectors, wire… I bought a wire stripper, and am determined to use it! So I’ll be watching Gino closely on Sunday to see how he does all this stuff, and from here on I will be a do-it-yourselfer.

Oh, and one slight detail: I want everything done before I take off for Boston on July 4th!

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bio, living in Italy

Changing Homes in Italy

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Anyone who has had the experience of setting up a household in Italy will wince at the list of things we have to do in the next two months: sell the family home in Rome (emptying it of many years’ accumulation of books – this is a family of professors! – furniture, etc.), set up the new apartment in Lecco, get our daughter through her middle school exam, send her off to summer camp in the US, then, finally, move our own stuff from Milan to Lecco. Oh, and in the midst of all this I may be starting a very demanding new full-time job. (The second interview went well, now I’m just waiting to see the money.)

Setting up simple household utilities in Italy used to be an arduous process. As one friend put it, getting a phone line installed required “a recommendation and a bottle of whiskey.” The recommendation would ideally be from someone with contacts inside Telecom Italia, to ask the folks there to be nice to you. The bottle of whiskey would be a “gift” to encourage the technicians to get their job done, but you might need another bottle to tide you through the months-long, completely unnecessary wait!

Things have changed. I called Telecom Italia last week about a line for the new apartment in Lecco. The place has been inhabited before, so the wires are there, but I wasn’t sure all the plugs were working, and the line was of course disconnected. The lady said that a technician would call me in about ten days to make an appointment. Actually, he called me two days later, when I happened to be too far away from Lecco to meet him. So we made an appointment for yesterday morning, 9:30. When I arrived at 9:15, he was already standing outside waiting for me. Turns out some repairs were needed to two plugs, but within an hour all five plugs and the line were working. In the meantime I called the electricity company from my cellphone. After reading the relevant numbers off the meter, I was shocked to be told: “Okay, now just cut the plastic seal and flip the lever; it should already be working.” There’s gotta be a catch. This is Italy. It can’t be that easy.

On my way back to the railway station, I was delighted to find near home a good polleria (a butcher shop specializing in poutry, selling cooked and uncooked chicken, other kinds of poultry, and rabbit). There is also a new, American-style coffee bar offering different types of coffee (Ethiopian, Kenya, etc.) – unheard-of in Italy! I had just had a coffee, so didn’t go in to check, but maybe (said she wistfully) they make a decent cup of American-style “long” coffee. I like espresso, especially when I’m in a hurry, but there are times when nothing beats lingering over a huge, steaming mug. That would be great, and very unusual here. In every bar I’ve seen in Italy so far, if you ask for American coffee you get espresso in a large cup, with hot water added. Yuck. This new coffee bar looks like nothing I’ve seen in Italy, not even in Milan. Which perhaps proves that Lecco is not as provincial as the Milanese would have me believe!

more moving | moving again!

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bio, Italian culture, living in Italy

Generation Gap: Italy’s Ageing Population

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One aspect of Milan I’m really tired of is that it seems so old. Europe’s population in general is ageing, but the average in Milan seems to be even older, though I don’t know why that should be. Surely they could find some cheaper and more congenial place to retire. New Yorkers retire to Florida to get away from cold winters, icy sidewalks, and a fast-paced life that has no time for people who move slowly. Why don’t the Milanese?

Whatever the reason, there are a lot of old people in Milan. Nothing inherently wrong with that; some of my favorite people are a lot older than I am, and I count them as friends. But life in Milan must be harsh for the old, because most of them seem to be in eternally bad moods, always looking for something to complain about. This is so widespread that we notice any old person who actually looks happy. A few days ago, in the subway, Rossella and I saw an old couple smiling and laughing together. It was so unusual that it made our day.

Milan’s oldies seem especially to seek occasions to complain about the younger generations. A friend witnessed this scene:

An old man got onto a crowded bus. He planted himself in front of a young man wearing a workman’s coverall, who sprawled, exhausted, in a seat. The old man glared at him for some minutes, until a young woman nearby nervously offered him her seat.

“No,” said the old man, “I’m waiting for this jerk to get up and do the right thing.”

The younger man raised his eyes and said, “I just finished working for fourteen hours. You’re retired and haven’t done a damn thing all day. I’m not moving.”

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bio, living in Italy

Changing Places – Moving from Milan to Lecco

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It’s a phenomenon familiar to people who have moved around a lot: when you’re about to leave a place, you are suddenly out of patience with it. Annoyances you’ve put up with for years loom large, and you count the days til you can get the hell out. This is a defense mechanism: by concentrating on what you dislike, you hope to lessen the pain of leaving the things and people you do like.

Thus with me and Milano at the moment. We’re getting ready to move to Lecco (a mid-sized town on Lake Como, not very far away), and I am at the end of my tether with everything Milanese. I’ve had enough of sidewalks used as dogs’ toilets, gypsy beggars who all whine the same tale with the same words and faux mispronunciations (I could recite it along with them), of nearly getting run over in crosswalks, of bitchy old ladies who bear a grudge against anyone younger than themselves. Most of all, I am tired of pollution and the respiratory problems that result; I hope Lecco will cure all that.

This move is different, though. I’ve been in Milan – in the same apartment! – more than twice as long as any previous place in my life. I now know what it’s like to be part of a neighborhood. The shopkeepers know my habits (odd American ones, such as making pot roast out of beef rather than veal), and will give me credit when I don’t have cash. They adore my constant striving to give them exact change, and always carrying a cloth shopping bag instead of taking plastic ones. The owner of the coffee bar downstairs frequently gives Rossella chocolates; in all these years, he never figured out that she always gives them away.

I will miss some favorite restaurants, where we’ve been regulars for years. I will miss knowing where to find things, especially things that are hard to get in Lecco, such as Indian spices, Basmati rice, and fresh coriander. I will miss being able to get almost everywhere I need to go by public transport – one of this summer’s ordeals will be
getting an Italian driver’s license (and, believe me, it will be an ordeal). I will miss having many cinemas, theatres, and museums close by, even if we hardly ever go to them.

On the other hand, in Lecco we’ll be living three blocks from Lake Como, instead of three blocks from more gray squalor. We’ll be living in an apartment twice as large as our current three rooms, and I can finally have an office NOT in the bedroom. And a kitchen larger than one meter by two. Am I looking forward to the move? You bet.

What happened next

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bio, Italian culture, living in Italy

Making Friends in Italy

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This question came up recently on one of the expats-in-Italy boards I hang out on (it had coincidentally already been on my mind): How do you make friends with Italians?

Although most of the Italians I’ve met are warm and friendly and great fun to have dinner with, I’m not sure that I have any really close Italian friends. There are Italians with whom I can enjoy a long chat when the occasion happens to arise, but no one I’d call up and pour out my heart to when I need an understanding ear. I do have friends like that, both in Italy and elsewhere, they just don’t happen to be Italians.

I’ve observed, over the years I’ve been here, that most Italians don’t make friends as easily as many Americans do. I think it’s a matter of practice. Many Americans move around a great deal (most within America, some outside), and have repeatedly faced the need to make new friends. When you move a lot, you learn to get to know people quickly.

Most Italians stay all their lives in the city of their birth (if they possibly can); some never even move out of their original neighborhood, though they may commute across town for work. Some commute between cities, working somewhere during the week and returning home on weekends. Some are forced to migrate for work, but still maintain strong ties with their paese, a word meaning both “town” and “nation” – which reflects Italy’s long history as a collection of separate city-states.

Hometown ties extend even to strangers. When we first moved to Italy, our car (donated by my husband’s parents) had a license plate from Teramo, a town in Abruzzo. We drove it to Milan for our first reconnaissance visit. Late at night, at a toll booth just outside the city, a man in a car beside us shouted excitedly: “Are you from Teramo? That’s where I’m from, but I live here. I’m in the Guardia di Finanza. If you ever need any help, just look me up!” (The Guardia di Finanza are the financial police, who investigate accounting frauds, tax evasion, etc. – I hope never to need him!)

Kids usually stay in the same school for the complete cycle at each level: five years of elementary school, three of middle school, and five of high school. As far as I can tell, Italians form their enduring friendships during their school years, and, even if they grow up to be very different from those friends in lifestyle, experiences, careers, etc., they don’t feel a strong need for new friendships in later life.

I just ran across an article in the International Herald Tribune which suggests that this is also true in other European cultures: “the therapist stated categorically that people just did not make friends any longer in middle age. That advice, suggested Draguns, reflects cultural traditions in Germany and the Netherlands, where people tend to limit their friends to those they made in school and to keep the same friends through old age…”

I’ll be curious to hear from my European readers about this, to agree or refute or expand. I wonder: do Europeans feel that American-style friendships are shallow, because they happen so quickly? Some undoubtedly are, but not all. Some of my closest friendships have been formed very quickly, often with other third-culture kids who feel the same need I do to find the right people and make friends quickly.

See also: Rebecca’s view

Update: A few years later I began meeting and hanging out with il popolo della rete – Italians who are active online – and then began to find like-minded Italians to be friends with.

What’s your experience of making friends in Italy?

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