We’re staying in an apartment, and many people have donated guide books when they have left – I’ll be donating a Fodor’s Italy, because it’s too heavy to carry. There’s a Rick Steves Italy book here, which I browsed a little. I was taken by his introduction, describing Italy as a land of emotion, corruption, stray hairs, inflation, traffic jams, body odour, strikes, rallies, holidays, crowded squalor and irate ranters shaking their fists at each other one minute, and strolling arm in arm the next.
Gosh, I thought, I should visit that Italy, it sounds much more vibrant, chaotic and exciting than the Italy that we’re visiting. There’s a little corruption – pay cash, get no recept and a bit of a discount. Strikes are publicised weeks in advance. Rallies seem pretty tame by Australian standards, emotion seems to emanate, in Venice at least, by tourists who are lost. Holidays are as per calendar, easier to interpret than say, Thailand. One man’s crowded squalor, washing strung across the street, is another man’s close functioning community. We’ve not seen any irate ranters.
A few things are different from Australia. We have found that the trains run on time, pretty much to the second. Prices in bars are always posted, showing the difference between bar and table prices. Even Florians explains, quite clearly, that a coffee in San Marco will attract a bunch of extra costs, depending where you drink it and if music is being provided at the time. Public transport works pretty well, and the ferries in Venice are reliable, and operate to a well-publicised timetable. The ticketing system is easy – Melbourne has been trying to implement a similar system for the last ten years and it still does not work. Inflation does not seem to exist – we now are paying 2.10 euro for a coffee and brioche, and we were paying 2.10 two years ago. Food costs no more than in Australia.
Some things are different – the way meat is presented in butchers, for example. I had a mate in Aus who had worked as a butcher. I asked him, how come you never see offal, lambs brains, liver, tripe, whatever, in the butcher’s window. He said that the people who want will ask, and that people who don’t like offal will be put off from even entering the shop, so everything is nicely presented, in serving portion sizes. In Italy, they have big lumps of meat in the window, and your chunk will be cut to order. In Aus, that would never work – maybe Italian cooks are better at dressing and cooking meat that Australians.
Most guide books warn against theft, probably for good reason. Maybe Venice is more law abiding than other places, but you see goods unloaded from a boat, and allowed to sit for a while beside the canal, and they don’t get stolen (although the case of Scotch that I saw seemed to have been double wrapped, to remove temptation). The news vendor has articles all around his kiosk, but in Melbourne, that would be inviting people to take them. The postman leaves his trolley of mail outside a friend’s shop every morning at 10:30 and heads off with the shopkeeper for 20 minutes for a coffee. In Australia, I’m certain that this would breach the regulations for handling Her Majesty’s mail – but here it’s OK, and nobody will steal the mail. In bars, it’s mostly the barman’s job to keep track of what you have consumed, and you pay at the end, a spritz, a tremazzino and a panino, that’ll be 5.50, grazie. In Aus, it’s pay as you go.
So I’m searching for Mr Steves chaotic Italy, but yet to find it.
Good.