Category Archives: living in Italy

living in Italy

Strikes and More Strikes

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Italy’s 155,000 public medical employees are on strike today, led, with unusual unanimity, by all 42 of their unions. The major issue is that their contracts were due to be renewed two years ago (I suppose that implies cost-of-living increases, at least), and have not been, due to disagreements between the federal and regional governments over who should pay. The medics have also issued a multi-point protest document demanding the de-politicization of hospital appointments and more control by the medical personnel of their shifts and how their work is organized, which seem reasonable demands.

Alitalia is also on strike, protesting a restructuring plan for the struggling airline which would cut at least 1500 jobs. I don’t sympathize with this one. The entire airline industry is in trouble; why should we taxpayers pay to keep an ill-managed national airline afloat when better and/or cheaper flights are widely available? I fly low-cost airlines so I can go more places, more often, but I lose that advantage if I also have to pay more taxes to benefit Alitalia employees.

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living in Italy

Scenes from the Fashion World

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Milan, as someone is sure to tell you when you go there, is one of the fashion capitals of the world. This never affected my life there in any direct way (and I sometimes wonder about fashion’s real effects on everyday Milanese), but, during the spring and fall fashion weeks, the city is suddenly full of tall, skinny people, walking around purposefully with big binders under their arms. Some of them are indeed remarkably beautiful, but it’s surprising how ordinary many of them look, without the makeup. Except for being impossibly tall and skinny.

Some years ago, on the Milan metro, I witnessed the following scene:

Three young Italian men boarded the train. They were reasonably good-looking and stylishly dressed, buttoned up for warmth in their trendy new black leather jackets, their hair artfully combed and gelled. They talked loudly, clearly wanting to draw attention to their own utter coolness. A couple of stops later, the doors slid open, and in glided two more young men. Not Italian, possibly American – they didn’t say a word, so I couldn’t guess by the language. They weren’t extremely tall, but they were built. Their scuffed-up leather jackets were draped negligently, hanging half off their muscular shoulders. Their jeans were casually torn and maybe a bit grimy. Their manes of dark blond hair were tousled. They flung themselves across four seats, sprawling elegantly, every movement and body angle exuding: “We’re so gorgeous, we don’t have to do anything to attract your attention but just BE here.”

The three young Italians got very quiet and very small. At the next stop, they slunk off the train without a word.

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living in Italy

Service With(out) a Smile

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I’ve bitched at length about Telecom Italia and Tiscali (my current and past Internet service providers), and the lack of customer service nous shown by both. Foreigners in Italy often complain that Italians generally don’t have a concept of customer service, and I’d have to say that’s a fair assessment, amply demonstrated in most chain stores, supermarkets, Ikea, etc.

If you want good customer service, go to the backbone of the Italian economy: the family-owned business. For 12 years in Milan I bought bread, meat, fruit & veg., cleaning supplies, school supplies, ice cream and coffee from our neighborhood shops. All of these were owned by individuals or families, though some had a few non-family employees, and some changed hands over time. We built up relationships with the shopowners. They saw us move into the neighborhood as a young couple. Some used to call us the sposini – newlyweds – because we shopped together, which they found terribly cute. They saw our daughter grow up. Every one had an onboard “database” of customer information, knew our tastes and preferences, and could therefore serve us faster and better.

I shopped at supermarkets only rarely, mostly for things I couldn’t get at the smaller shops. Supermarkets are often cheaper, but to me they were not worth the standing in line and the impersonality (some smaller supermarkets do manage to be friendlier).

I was afraid I’d feel lost when we moved to Lecco, having to re-establish my network of suppliers, but it hasn’t been a problem. I’ve become a regular at some shops, albeit a new regular, and the owners already know me, or at least they act as if they do. And, even if they don’t know me, they are courteous; as owners, they have a direct and compelling interest in my return.

What Italians have yet to develop is a sense of ownership in “mere” employees, especially of large and chain stores. I’ve had some terrible experiences at Ikea,Upim, and Coin (the latter two are chain department stores). American stores are almost all chains, but they have customer service down to a fine art: everyone smiles and greets you in every store you enter; in some grocery stores I’ve been positively spooked by the number of employees offering to help me (maybe I look lost). You could say that this is false friendliness designed to get more money out of you, but that’s what a store is all about, isn’t it?

update: Customer service at Ikea in Italy has vastly improved

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living in Italy

Waiting for Viggo

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Everyone in the world can see The Return of the King now, except us Italians; the film has had a simultaneous worldwide release, except in Italy. According to the New York Times, this is because “in Italy moviegoing is not an ingrained holiday habit.” Wrong! Italian cinemas are more packed at Christmas than any other time of year, although the focus is generally on family movies: Finding Nemo has only recently been released, and the annual Disney film is usually shown at Christmas, even if it was a summer release in the US.

Another holiday movie tradition is the stupid Italian comedy, in recent years dominated by comedians (to use the term loosely) Massimo Boldi and Christian de Sica (the sadly degenerate son of director Vittorio de Sica). These films usually exploit the previous summer’s pop music hits, so an Indian theme this time around was predictable – Panjabi MC hit the Italian airwaves earlier this year. Mr. MC even did a tour of Italian TV shows, being interviewed by dim hosts and hostesses who pretended he spoke Italian (they didn’t bother to provide a translator – maybe they didn’t realize he speaks English?), and ended up looking far stupider than he did even when he had no clue what they were talking about.

Fortuitously for Boldi and de Sica, a recently-popular Italian comic troupe is called “I Fichi d’India.” Neither they nor their name have anything to do with India; “Indian Figs” is the Italian name for the fruit of the prickly-pear cactus, which is popular in Italy, though maybe unknown in India. But any excuse will do to enlarge the cast and add to the stock of fatuous jokes. No doubt there are plenty of scantily-clad women in this one as well, though in the trailer they’re mostly shown dancing. Why any of these women would want to have even movie sex with Massimo Boldi is beyond me.

My husband’s theory is that “The Return of the King” is being delayed in Italy because the Italian distributors know very well that Italians love to go to the cinema at Christmas, and any good film would wipe the floor with this rubbish. So here we are, waiting for Viggo (and Orlando, of course) until January 22nd. Boldi and De Sica are no substitute.

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living in Italy

Hospital Stay

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I have suddenly landed a temporary but demanding job: nursing my daughter. Ross fell off her horse Sunday afternoon, onto hard ground, and broke her humerus just below the shoulder joint.

The emergency room was humming – it was a beautiful day, everyone was out getting hurt. Just before we got there, an ambulance had brought in a young man in motorcycle leathers, who looked pretty severely injured. According to a conversation I heard among the nurses, Lecco gets a lot of motorcyclists – and accidents – on sunny weekends. Another young man had been out hiking in the mountains, slipped on a patch of ice, and banged his head and chin.

They quickly got Ross through an initial examination and x-ray, drew blood, then took us up to a room on the orthopedic ward. Ross was trembling when the anesthesiologist came to talk to her; given recent family horror stories with hospitals, we were all terrified that she had to go under anesthesia. But those stories took place in the US and the UK. So far, I have no complaints about Italian health care. [later on, we had an Italian horror story to add to the family history]

The anesthesiologist gave her a sedative, and off we went to surgery. Ross told me later that, by the time they actually got her into the operating room, she was giggling and wondering why she had been so scared. She lay there looking at all the bustle around her, wondering if they had a machine that goes “ping!”

We had arrived at the emergency room at 5:15; by 7:15 she was under. The surgeon had to pull the bone back into place, and then put in three wires to hold it while it heals; Ross is also wearing a sling-and-strap to hold her arm against her body. Her right arm. No drawing in art school for a while.

Giulio (owner of the private stable where we now keep Hamish) and Viola (his daughter, Ross’ classmate and riding buddy) came racing down from their ski weekend to be there, and passed the time during surgery regaling me with stories about their numerous family sports injuries (they ride and ski, Giulio and Viola compete seriously at both). As Giulio pointed out, it’s lucky this happened right before Christmas vacation, so Ross won’t miss too much school.

Giulio also demonstrated the usefulness of the small-town grapevine: when he heard the name of the surgeon, he called his sister-in-law, who happens to work at the hospital as an orthopedic surgical nurse. She said that we were lucky: this surgeon’s a good one. And she came by the next morning to see us in person. If we need any inside information on this case, we’ll know where to get it.

There was a spare bed in Ross’ room, so I was allowed to stay with her. The first night she was in a lot of pain, understandably, but since then has bounced back with most of her usual energy and sense of humor. They let her out yesterday (Tuesday), and today she’s gone back to school (the doctor said there was no reason she shouldn’t, as long as her arm doesn’t get bumped). She’ll need to have the bandage changed every 3 or 4 days, to ensure that no infection enters where the wires are; those will come out after 25 days, and she has to keep wearing the sling til then. So I’ll be accompanying her to doctors a lot, as well as helping her dress, wash her hair, etc. As I said, it’s a job. But that’s what moms are for.

Jan 19, 2004

Rossella‘s arm has healed well. The wounds (from the surgery) were so clean that her bandage needed changing only three or four times over the month. Last Tuesday we went in for a final x-ray and, seeing that everything looked fine, the doctor pulled out the wires, using a pair of common (even somewhat rusty) household pliers. According to Ross, it felt weird, and the idea was gross, but it didn’t actually hurt.

So now she’s down to band-aids over the holes, and only needs to wear the sling at night. We’re trying to schedule physical therapy; in the meantime, she can use her right arm again, as long as she avoids swinging it out from the shoulder – no dancing the Funky Chicken..

The hospital staff were amused: Ross is the only patient in their experience who wanted a picture (while the wires were still sticking out – her arm looked like a construction site), and to keep the wires as a souvenir. But, as they noted, this attitude coincided with the Clockwork Orange t-shirt she was wearing.

Of course she wanted to keep the wires; she couldn’t wait to tell her schoolmates: “Piercing? Hah! I’ll show you REAL piercing.”

Apr 27, 2004

Ross has healed up fine from breaking her arm in December, and is back in the saddle of her beloved Hamish. She’s had some moments of fear, but is gradually feeling comfortable riding again (it was totally up to her to do so; her father and I might have been just as happy for her to give it up now).

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