The Commandments

There are rules in any society, of course, and the society I currently live and work in is no different.  But the rules are definitely different from some of the rules I once knew. Let's take a look at a few of the 'commandments' of life in Italy:

Thou shalt pay in cash, and thou shalt give exact change as often as humanly possible.

This is the tomb of Martin V, the pope who resolved the Great Schism.  It is located in Rome's basilica, St. John Lateran.  People drop (because that's as close as they can get to a subterranean but open space like this one) money on this tomb for some reason, and I have yet to find out why.  If you can closely scrutinize the photo, you can see some pretty big bills. His bronze-covered sarcophagus is, for some reason, a money magnet.

This is an extraordinarily cash-based economy, in a world where other similar countries are getting as close to being paperless as possible.  Landlords collect rent in cash.  People pay their utilities bills in cash.  I re-up my phone account by paying cash. Many restaurants will only accept cash.

Once you get used to this phenomenon - the reasons for which are not known to me, but I'm speculating that it's a mistrust of banks (or fees they might charge) - you must then become accustomed to being shaken down by every person with a money drawer.  No one thinks twice about asking the customer if they have exact change.  They will patiently wait for you to dig for it, rather than make change for you.  If you visit more than a couple of vendors in the space of a few hours, and you've been complicit with several requests for one or two euro coins, or fifty or twenty cents, then you're fresh out of change altogether, except for the 1, 2, and 5 cent coins, which no one wants.  And you discern how much they don't want those coins by the fact that vendors will routinely round up or down in transactions, waving away your offered, small(er) change.

So, to recap:
They only want your cash, and they only want your exact change, up to a point. And then they don't.
And when you reach that 5th vendor of your day, and you say, 'mi dispiace, I have no more change,' they first exhibit monumental disappointment in you, and then determine that they cannot make change for you without going to some kind of trouble, which includes (I'm not kidding, I've seen this several times), going into their own purses and wallets, or giving you a handful of coins you dread carrying. It's as if no one is actually prepared - either at the beginning or at any other time of the workday - to make change.  And as long as they willingly round up or down, depending on which is closer, how they get a day's till to count out to a reasonably accurate sum is completely beyond me.

(NB:  our favorite bar-tender/owner, an Italian-Canadian, will resolutely tell you that the reason for this inability/unwillingness (?) to make change is because 'some people don't know how to run a business'...take that however you want)

Thou shalt not put cheese on your seafood pasta. 

Not ever. Why? No one can tell me, exactly.  I've asked, and all I've ever gotten is this nebulous idea about how the cheese might cloak the delicate flavor of the fish.  To tell the truth, if the dish is really well done, then it almost never needs the addition.  But just be aware that if you ask for it on your risotto con frutti di mari when you visit here, you will be judged.  Harshly.

Remember:  all eyes - even from the plate! - are watching you hover over that seafood with a spoonful of parmigiano.

Thou shalt cross the street with people who are a safe bet. 

Roman traffic is no joking matter.  Everyone has a story to tell about that heart-stopping moment they were almost hit by a motorino (the drivers of those things notoriously pretend that the traffic laws don't apply to them).  I say, if a nun or a priest is taking that crosswalk, take it with them.  Your chances of surviving are instantaneously improved.  Who's going to risk hitting one of them?

Thou shalt never order a capuccino after 11am. 

Save your milky coffee drinks for the morning only. Have an espresso instead. I think, but I'm not sure, that there is some uniquely Italian idea about the pitfalls of dairy on the stomach in the latter part of the day, but no one has clarified WHY for me yet. Clearly, this commandment does not similarly apply to gelato (and my Italian teacher has confirmed this with lots of shoulder-shrugging, because she cannot articulate the reason). Why on earth would you think that it might?

Thou shalt wait impatiently in line, unless thou canst jump the line.  

Then by all means, skirt all sense of propriety and get in front of other people. 

If you're standing within decent range of one of the exits of a moving public bus, planning to exit soon, and someone else has intentions of exiting at the next stop, they will ask you, in a kind of fretful tone:  scende? (are you descending?).  Because if you aren't, they want you out of the way right now. And forget having people at the bus stop actually move aside before alighting so that you can disembark.  They're not waiting for you.  They are getting on the bus RIGHT NOW.  

Sure, this is a bus shot, but I really took this because I loved her bag.  Not the leather one.

The same principle applies in automobile traffic.  Everybody's honking at everybody else, as they crowd five cars abreast on a two-lane road at a stop light.  They are FEROCIOUSLY impatient. 

If you are a pedestrian waiting in a queue at a taxi stand and an older, clearly native couple approaches to also get a taxi, watch them.  They will jump the line, unless you're in that queue with other people who will call them out for it.  I once said to an Italian friend of mine:  your people don't seem to like lines very much, but I'm not trying to be judgmental.  His response?  It's o.k. to be judgmental, because I think we really have a problem with waiting in a line. 

Clearly, if you have ever been seated at a restaurant in Italy and clocked how long it took for a server to take even your drink order, then you know that waiting is a selective sport. 

Thou shalt never violate the sanctity that is lunchtime. 

Do not expect to get much of anything done - particularly regarding work/business or government of any kind - during lunchtime.  When I mistakenly offered to give an administratively-endorsed presentation to colleagues somewhat recently, and the attendance was pretty low, I overheard one person comment:  there are no Italians here, but hey, this was scheduled for lunchtime, so there's no getting them to come to this.  

Beginning at about 12:15 or 12:30, businesses and churches are shuttered for at least two hours. For some Italians, and particularly in smaller towns, the pausa actually lasts 4 to 5 hours. So the working business day winds up being about 3 hours in the morning, 4 to 5 hours' break, and about 3 or 4 more hours in the evening. 

Traditionally, you were supposed to go home, have lunch with the family and take a nap.  Many urban Italians lament the loss of this tradition to the consumption of too much transit time by traffic and distance. 

But many traditionally oriented, small businesses maintain the pausa, nap or no nap.

Thou shalt never expect either traffic on the roads or online to work properly if it is raining.

My Italian students have explained to me that this is the way things work - or don't - here.  It's got something (very fuzzily conceptualized) to do with infrastructure and how no one has corrected the problem, but online traffic slooooooooowwwws to an almost halt when it is raining here. 

And forget about car traffic, which is already a pain on a sunny day.

My first downpour as a resident of Rome.  Little did I know that the rest of 2016 and 2017 would mostly be drought-stricken.

Thou shalt eat pizza with a knife and fork. 

First of all, it's so thin that it's pretty impossible to fold like a regular New Yorker would and eat like a 'pizza sandwich,' so that's out. Fresh, natural ingredients can be a bit wetter than we're accustomed to, and that makes for an even softer outcome.  You can handle the crust however you want, but the interior - which is pretty much made just for one person, even though it looks pretty big - is knife and fork territory. Handle otherwise at your own risk.

And in truth, it is advisable that you not handle your food with your hands at all.  A sandwich or a burger?  OK, sure.  Most other bready things besides pizza?  Also acceptable.  The rest, including meat on a bone, no.  And ladies?  Forego the convenience of that personal-sized water bottle.  Pour your water into a cup before drinking, or else be considered less than civilized.  This rule apparently does not extend to men. 

Thou shalt complain about the general state of things, because it is a natural part of living. Fixing things is another matter altogether. And they will be fixed whenever they are fixed....IF they are ever fixed.

Since I wrote this essay in full and while I was editing it, I lost my internet/cable/telephone line to a fire in a junction box somewhere in the neighborhood.  Despite the fact that the telecom company stated that the thing would be repaired in 24 hours, it took five days.  Three days later, I watched a guy haphazardly use the tiniest backhoe to dig a hole in the road and - you guessed it - inadvertently cut the gas line to my building (Americans, you know those signs that read: Call this number before you dig? hahahahahahahahaha).  The Spouse's shower will be a (probably welcome, given the current temps) chilly one tomorrow.  And so much for those sourdough flatbreads I was going to make like flapjacks on my stove tonight for dinner.  I was poised to wash laundry this evening, too.  Our portieri says (after we asked her pointedly, because NO ONE bothered to tell anyone in the building that the gas was cut off) that this will be repaired tomorrow.  Hahahahahahahahahaha. 

Many things are guasto (broken) here and they remain that way indefinitely because....lack of funds? lack of interest? Someone went on vacation and they were the ONLY person who could possibly do the repair job? 

I don't know, but these are the realities:  complaining in a place that resists change is an artform (I probably need to work on it), and it is always a true surprise when the repair is actually done. Unsure of what I mean? For change resistence, read this. For some of the more quixotic properties of this life, read this.

Thou shalt herald the discovery of a clean, well-stocked bathroom that is available to the public, for it is a thing of great wonder and amazement.

This is the stuff of legend in Italy.  Here is the laundry list of issues:  

-Public restrooms regularly do not come equipped with toilet seats.  "Not that I'd ever want to touch one of those anyway!" you might respond with alarm.  Excellent point.  But someone did tell me that the routine explanation for this veritable absence of toilet seats is that 'people always stand on them and break them, so why have them at all?' 

Stand on them? What are they - acrobats? 

No really...how do the seats get broken?

-Public restrooms that are not routinely monitored and actively cleaned by a designated person are hellish by mid-day. And they never improve. 

If there is a designated public toilet that charges a fee for use, then you can bet that someone is working that location with a mop and heavy duty cleaner.  They will stock those stalls with toilet paper on the regular. You'll SEE them doing that job while you're in there.

Plenty of people have posted online blog entries and reviews of Italian toilets.  And plenty others have investigated the history and present inclusion of the infamous bidet in Italian bathrooms (do read the q&a on that last link, but do not do this and sip a hot beverage at the same time).  I don't plan to go down either of these roads.  I will objectively say that the the general state of public Italian bathrooms is so sketchy that it makes perfect sense that bidets are a regularly installed, third appliance in them.  If only they appeared to work and you wanted to get anywhere near them. And after 24 months of bathroom visits across this fair land, I can recite a litany of 'if onlys,' folks:

If only employees of restaurants and bars wanted to ensure that clients and customers found the toilet paper stocked.  If only some mechanism - either the one that dispenses paper towels or the one that blows a sad little stream of cold air that will allegedly dry your hands - was in some way functional.  If only the more 'modern' fixtures that have "eyes" to sense your hands' presence, awaiting the mechanized dollop of soap, actually 'saw' your hands AND dispensed the dollop in any kind of reasonable timespan (this is pretty much an airport feature, and nowhere else....most places, you're lucky if there is a badly mangled pump-activated bottle of soap).  If only the lock on the door was intact.  If only there was one solid hook upon which to hang your purse while you steadied yourself with two hands and carefully placed feet to perch over...

the dreaded....

loo with....

-an ill-fitting lid/seat

-an ill-fitting lid/seat that looks like it was last used by Gollum and a band of drunken hobbits

-a broken seat

-no seat

...or the worst of all, and most routinely found in Rome's bustling, more or less modern looking international airport:

                  the positively mind-bending seat that sits at a 45 degree angle relative to the porcelain bowl.

(apologies to everyone with a feng shui preference...but this shot, with the infamous half-mast seat therefore exposes an open bowl with with the clear blue disinfectant, which seemed like the nicest thing I could include in this segment)

Because you wouldn't touch that thing with the hands of your sworn, mortal enemy, you nudge it with the toe of your sneaker, pushing it down to lay flat on the bowl rim.  But it won't stay there.  It pops back up, assuming its original position.  So you nudge it upwards, so that it will sit perpendicular to the bowl rim and therefore, well out of the way of what you're there to do.  And it won't stay there either.  It resolutely slips back down, assuming its original, 45 degree angle.

Fiumicino's website indicates that at some recent point, '48 toilets have been modernized with an avant garde concept.' (well, that's the English translation)

So, this avant garde concept is the one in which women attempt to squat and hover over a porcelain bowl while dodging an object that they canNOT push out of the way (or touch, for fear of evil germs), thereby being totally compromised in their primary, necessary, and potentially disastrous, endeavor...?

'So go to the next stall,' you say, exasperated with this tomfoolery.  'Not all of them can be the same.'

That is correct, technically speaking.  ALL of the toilet seats in the various women's (and so I hear, men's too) bathrooms in Fiumicino airport, regardless of terminal or other area, are not positioned at 45 degree angles, relative to the horizontal rim.  Some are at 50.  Others are at 35.  Some might be as high as 60 degrees.

But none of them are properly adjustable by the ministrations of the user.  Instead, almost all (that I have encountered, at any rate) are in some stage of mid-salute.

Oh, and I failed to add that these are 'modern' toilets, each equipped with an 'eye' that is supposed to sense your presence and therefore flush when your presence has gone.

But it does exactly the opposite, actually.  Just get near the device, near it, and it flushes because you are present. Step away from the device and it does absolutely nothing. Now, THIS is avant-garde!

I actually found a website that publishes travelers' reviews of Fiumicino.  And interestingly, on occasion, some representative of the airport has written the 'I'm so sorry you had a bad experience' response.

I cannot seem to find evidence of anyone commenting about these infernal toilet seats - anywhere online. There is effectively zero dialogue about them. I took the above photo just last month, in part to satisfy my concern about middle-aged brain and faulty memory.  Did I dream them up?

Why, no. 

These items have in fact been like this as long as I've been traveling in and out of Rome, upon moving here 2 years ago.

So to summarize the layered mysteries, here:

Someone installed these toilet seats.  Did they sit at mid-salute from the very beginning? If so, why not correct that? If not, and they somehow - freakishly - became this way over time, why not correct that?  Does the housekeeping staff - responsible for the blue disinfectant you see in the bowl, and the easily observable, general state of cleanliness - have any impact on this scenario?  Would they not tell the maintenance folks: 'hey bozos, my job would be a heck of a lot easier if you would fix these toilet seats so that when women aim, they hit the target and not the floor.'

And why - among the scores of online mentions and outright diatribes about Italian toilets in terms of bizarre design, state of cleanliness or functionality (and believe me, there are plenty) - does no one address them in the first place you encounter them upon entering the country?

Instead, from the same site that boasts the avant-garde toilet installation at this airport, we see this:

According to surveys conducted by ACI, the Airport Council International association measuring the perceived quality through passengers’ interviews in around 250 airports around the world - in the third quarter of 2016 Leonardo da Vinci ranks first amongst the large airports of the European Union, in terms of passenger satisfaction.

And I'll just end that one.  Right there.  Because any more words would completely fail me.

But about most Italian toilets available to the public, otherwise, forget it.  Enter at your own risk. There is no chart with restaurant employees' initials inked in at various intervals throughout a given day, dear Americans, because no one is dealing with them because you are no longer in America - or any other country that takes some measure of civic pride in its restrooms (I'm looking at you, Netherlands, Germany, etc).

Behold, the Dutch airport toilet. Note the nice, level, unbroken or otherwise maligned seat. 
Note also the change in design of the bottom of the bowl.  Compare it to the design of the Italian bowl.  People of the Western world who comment on such designs are confounded by the amount of porcelain real estate that has no water on it or in it.  This makes a difference, dear readers.  Italian toilets that may have questionable paper supply levels will still have a toilet brush.  Because it's pretty necessary. 

And God bless the Dutch for not only keeping the toilet paper supplies stocked, but also including a little dispenser for a sanitizing agent to be placed on some of that paper so you can clean the seat first.  Really, quite civilized.

Only the personal values of the ownership of a given place with dictate whether an Italian bathroom is a fairly clean and stocked place.  And when you find one, tell all of us.  Urge us to visit it even if we don't have a reason to go (a girlfriend here regularly does this when we dine out), because it's like visiting a holy altar where we can all weep tears of joy and gratitude.

And because I couldn't just stop at 10 commandments, you get a bonus.

Thou shalt observe hierarchy and job descriptions, regardless of practicality or even common sense.

I never thought Americans were terribly hung up on hierarchy, yet neither did I believe we were totally relaxed about it either.  And when I think about how other nationalities observe - or don't! - traditional social mores, I realize that we sit somewhere on a sliding scale.  I have an Italian-Norwegian student who simply calls me by my first name because she spent much of her life far north of here, where an egalitarian society enforces the idea that everyone is called by their first name.  In the States, it is a toss-up for us academicians:  we tend to individually assert how we wish to be addressed (which really makes things quite confusing for students, particularly if they move from one region to another and hit a wall of culture shock). And while we never forget who the institution's president is or what power they hold, we can move forward with a lot of decision-making and the staging of events without that person present.
And here, it is very, very, very important to be cognizant of the hierarchy of an organization.  A gathering or program doesn't begin until the capo appears and makes his (well, typically it's still a 'he') token, opening remarks.  If that person is 45 minutes late, then you will begin then, and absolutely not before.
You are also beholden to the chain of command in terms of communications.  Individuals from two or more organizations - or those within a larger, singular organization - will only communicate laterally.  It is simply unthinkable to do it any other way. Your job description and/or title dictate what you will and will not do in this highly stratified place.  I once had a conversation with a perfectly nice fellow who works in facilities upkeep. He inquired about the work his team had recently completed in a room nearby - was it acceptable?  Absolutely, I said. Tutto bene. But the floor needs sweeping since the work has been done.  There is debris remaining from the work.
Ah, he replied. I am glad that you are pleased.  Talk to the head of facilities about the floor and he will dispatch housekeeping to attend to it.
This conversation took place 5 feet away from a broom closet that contained a broom and dustbin. Upon consideration of the elaborate process by which I would have to do as he instructed (write an email, describe the job that needed to be done, send it, wait another day for a reply and perhaps another for the job to be done), I paused for a half-beat, just to see what would happen next.
In another world where I used to live, and if time permitted, the facilities staff member would most likely get the broom and tackle the job in 2 minutes, thereby truly finishing the full task of performing repair work and cleaning up the resulting debris.
But this is not that world.
He genuinely, warmly smiled, wished me a buona giornata, and exited.