Day 28: Firenze to Roma

    Have I already been in Europe four weeks? When was my last blog post, anyway? Yikes time flies.

    Italy is slowly warming up to me, or maybe I'm slowly warming up to it. Maybe it's because I understand the language much better now, which means the culture and the people are more accessible. But what I'm finding out is strange. The Italians seem displeased with their country. My second host in Turin spoke to me for five days straight about the horror of Italian politics and the shame of a culture based entirely on soccer, coffee, and fashion. My host in Florence told me that work is hard to find, earnings are low relative to cost of living, work conditions are deplorable, and rent is high. He told me that the Florentines aren't so nice. In Turin, my hosts told me the Turinese aren't so nice. Everyone seems to think that all the nice people are in the south. But the further south I travel, the further south I have to go to find people who describe their city as friendly. So maybe I'll have to go right to the southern tip of Sicily to find the elusive friendly people of Italy…

    Not that my hosts haven't been nice. But Italians are surprisingly serious. I've met only two people who had an easy smile – one was from Sardinia, the other from Napoli – both of course from the "far south." Italians seem to age quickly, too. Thirty years somehow seems a lot older here than in Canada. I have yet to meet the bubbly and flirtatious stereotype.

    So why do Italians stay in Italy if they're tired of living here? At first (in my well-established naivety), I thought it must the charm of Italy sucking people in like magnets. But when I asked my hosts, the replies were curious. Italians are lazy. Italians are xenophobic. Italians are too attached to family and friends. One person even told me (please don't be offended, dear reader) that Italians are f**ed up. And after telling me this they admit that they have no real proof for characterizing Italians this way. So my impression is that Italians are a people of strange convictions and even stranger inclinations. Their actions don't match their beliefs and their beliefs don't match reality.

    I'm heading to Rome now, where I'm sure I'll be told that Romans aren't nice, and I should go further south. Actually I've had a lot of trouble finding hosts in Rome. Tonight I'm hoping there will be room at the hostel. Also, I got fined €50 for not having put the date on my Eurail pass before getting on the train. So my entry into Rome is starting out rough. Nonetheless, the countryside between Florence and Rome is absolutely gorgeous. I also asked my hosts to tell me something good about Italy (for God's sake). The first host had no answer. The second said, "the weather." Ha, ha. Well it's true – the sun is out and it's warm today. Although it rained for my first three days in Florence, and my first five days in Torino. So basically after two weeks, I'm still unable to attribute a single quality to Italy with any certainty. Oh wait, they eat a LOT!

    I suppose I should say something about Florence. Here goes: it is FULL of Americans. Everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. Honestly it's so bad that I was embarrassed to be an English-speaker in Florence. And it's full of college Americans. (No offense intended to Americans reading this, if there are any). So the streets fill up with twenty-year-old ditzes and jocks taking advantage of the sixteen-year-old drinking permission in Italy. And we're in the down season now. My advice: do not, under any circumstances, go to Florence in the summer.

    Still, Florence is a lovely city for walking. The streets are windy and cobblestony, there are tons of old churches, the Duomo is majestic, the river is lovely, and the gelato is goooood. The markets are big but more expensive than Torino. In general things are less clean and stuck-up in Florence than in Turin, and more charismatic. But then you hear someone squealing in an American drawl, and your shoulders sink a bit. Sigh.

    Alora perché non voglio essere una turista (i couchsurfers sono 'travelers' e non turisti), e sopratutto non voglio che la gente pensi che io sia americana, finisco questo blog in italiano. Ciao e baci a tutti!