![]() Do you remember The Terminal? If the film had been set in Malpensa Airport, Tom Hanks wouldn't just have fallen in love with Catherine Zeta-Jones. Generally, those things are unpredictable. Italy is a place where things are always about to happen. You have to know how to interpret the sounds and signals. It's a zoo with air conditioning, where the animals don't bite and only the odd comment is likely to be poisonous. Or, if they did pay a call, they must have been too busy avoiding people shouting into cell phones and not looking where they were going.Īn airport in Italy is violently Italian. Whoever wrote that airports are nonplaces never visited Milan's Malpensa or Linate, or Rome's Fiumicino. ![]() Particularly when you pack a few fantasies in your baggage, and Customs lets them through. People who live in Italy say they want to get out, but those who do escape all want to come back.Īs you will understand, this is not the sort of country that is easy to explain. Italy is the only workshop in the world that can turn out both Botticellis and Berlusconis. It's the kind of place that can have you fuming and then purring in the space of a hundred meters, or the course of ten minutes. Let's just say that Italy is an offbeat purgatory, full of proud, tormented souls each of whom is convinced he or she has a hotline to the boss. Neither is it heaven, of course, because it's too unruly. They describe a disturbing country populated by unreliable individuals and governed by a public administration from hell. The diaries of disappointment tend to be produced by British men, who show interest without love. Inevitably, there is censure of Italian corruption, and a section on the Mafia.īy and large, the chronicles of love affairs are penned by American women, who display love without interest in their descriptions of a seasonal Eden, where the weather is good and the locals are charming. The diaries take a supercilious attitude toward Italian public life. The former have an inferiority complex toward Italian home life, and usually feature one chapter on the importance of the family, and another on the excellence of Italian cooking. The problem is finding out what.Īlmost all modern accounts of the country fall into one of two categories: chronicles of a love affair, or diaries of a disappointment. Those authors are still quoted today, as if nothing had changed. People like Goethe, Stendhal, Byron, and Twain always had an opinion about Italians, and couldn't wait to get home and write it down. Which of course is great fun.Īs they struggle to find a way out, many newcomers fall back on the views of past visitors. In Italia, you can go round and round in circles for years. Italy is a soft drug peddled in predictable packages, such as hills in the sunset, olive groves, lemon trees, white wine, and raven-haired girls. Your Italy and our Italia are not the same thing. We've got to start somewhere if we want to find our way into the Italian mind.įirst of all, let's get one thing straight. We'll note the vertical fixations of the apartment building, and the transverse democracy of the living room-or, rather, the eat-in kitchen. We'll experience the solitude of the soccer stadium, and realize how crowded the bedroom feels. We'll visit Italy's televisual zoo and appreciate how important the beach is. We'll sit in judgment at a restaurant and feel the sensory reassurance of a church. ![]() Then I'll try to explain the rules of the road, the anarchy of the office, why people talk on trains, and the theatrical nature of hotel life. We'll start with an airport, since we're here. They'll be classics, the sort of places that get talked about a lot, perhaps because they are so little known. So you'll be staying for ten days? Here's the deal: We'll take a look at three locations on each day of your trip. One American traveler wrote, "Italy is the land of human nature." If this is true-and it certainly sounds convincing-exploring Italy is an adventure. Or, rather, take it at face value if you want to, but don't complain later. We never forget who we are, and we have fun confusing anyone who is looking on.ĭon't trust the quick smiles, bright eyes, and elegance of many Italians. The airport, where we discover that Italians prefer exceptions to rulesīeing Italian is a full-time job. Detail from the cover of La Bella Figura: A Field Guide to the Italian Mind.
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