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Visiting America

My friends from the old country now and then show up here for various reasons, but they always provide interesting views on the differences between life as it unfolds in Italy and what goes on here in the United States.

Franco is retired and is married to Jackie, an American lady he met some years ago in Italy. They live in Murano, a quaint and pleasant little town near Venice, and they show up here every year to visit her two daughters and several granddaughters.

Gianpaolo owns a very successful company that manufactures specialized electrical motors, so he comes here for business, stopping on a grand tour of the world, inclusive of Singapore, Australia, China and so on. A sprinkling of other characters show up now and then, and call me on their way to California.

All of these individuals harbor an interesting mix of views and opinions on how we live here as it compares to their life in Italy.
A complex blend of admiration and criticism always pervades their conversations. For one thing they think American homes are really shacks, not solid homes.

They admire all the comforts of them but they point out that the basic structure of homes here, made out of wood sticks, as they call studs, plates and rafters, belie their flimsiness.

Homes in Italy are made of stones they say, and windows have strong shutters that open and close, not mock panels nailed on either side of windows.
I point out that here we have earthquakes, and wood frame homes are safer, they do not fall on your head like in Italy, but they rebut “Come on! They are made of wood posts because it is cheaper!”

However they all seem to love the space inside our homes, I score some points there, as they admit that in Italian homes kitchens are a joke, and bathrooms are hovels, why, to take a shower in one of those small booths they use, you have to be a contortionist like Houdini just to dry yourself.

And then there is typically a discussion about food. They detest paper plates and plastic glasses, and here I concur, I hate to eat like that too.
I meekly submit to them that it eliminates a lot of labor after a meal, you just toss the damn things away.

They are frequently appreciative of the quality of meat here, but they point out that here we only eat large fish and we do not have the pleasure of small tasty fish which abounds in Italy, like triglie, naselli, cefali ed orate.

Many of my friends do not like sushi. One of my Italian friends who lives here bought some for his visiting mother from Cassino, Italy, only to discover that while he was on the phone she tried to fry it.

But all like the California wines, especially the reds, just a few negative comments about the prices.
They are all impressed generally by the fact that we stay in our lanes when we drive, they are puzzled by the almost complete neglect of the horn.

But they complain about the distances we travel for any chore. As we drove out to pick up a friend to go out to dinner, one of my buddies remarked that we could have gone from Venice to Verona, had we covered the same distance in Italy.

I could go on and on, but to deal with this subject of life perception as seen from two diverse continents could be material for a book, or a series of books.
More to come in the future.

 

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