Italy vs. America

Things I Miss about America:

1. Deciding at 3 in the morning I want to hang a picture and being able to find a store where I can buy a hammer and nails that is open.

2. Being able to find a store that sells hammers and a store that sells nails.

3. Being able to find a store that is open.

4. Walking out my front door and getting into my car.

5. Dr. Peppers.

6. Avocados.

7. Elevators (though I thank my lucky stairs, all 123, because I can eat ALL the Nutella I want!)

8. 24 hour convenience stores.

9. Warm clothes straight out of the dryer.

10. Soft towels.

11. Burrito Supremes.

12. Burrito Supremes at 2am in the morning.

13. Turning my heater on anytime I want.

14. Blow drying my hair and listening to the stereo at the same time without the electricity going out.

15. A decent steak.

16. Running around my own house barefooted.

17. 20 ounce coffees! The coffee is better here, but it is bigger in the states!

18. Target.

19. Being able to buy spinach in August, oranges in December, and nectarines in February.

20. Squash. The only squash they have here is Zucchini. Winter just isn’t the same without squash.

21. Normal retail operating hours.

22. Air conditioning in the summer

23. Being able to walk into a bookstore and know that I can buy and then read any book I want.

24. Drinking cappuccinos after dinner without a disgusted sideways glance from the waiter that declares: “Damned American tourists!” - despite the fact you are speaking Italian

25. Restaurants more than 8 feet wide.

26. Grocery stores more than 20 feet wide.

27. Internet access – when you want it, where you want it, as fast as you want it.

28. People leave messages on your cell phone.

29. It doesn’t cost five dollars to listen to a message on your cell phone.

30. My friends and loved ones.

Things I love about Italy

1. The food, the food, the food! How can everything taste so much better here?!

2. One “Ciao” is never enough (phonetically “chow” - meaning hello or goodbye). Closing a conversation involves at least four or five Ciao’s each. Remember those days as a teenager? ”You hang up.” ”No you hang up.” ”No you first.” “No you.” Except here it is “Ciao” “Ciao” “Ciao-Ciao” “Ciao.” “Ciao-ciao-ciao.” “Ciao-ciao.” “Ciao.” You change the intonation of the Ciao’s depending on who you are talking to. With your boss you exchange a few brisk “Ciao’s.” With your friends they are more chirpy Ciao’s. With your lover they start softly, becoming softer and softer until the last ‘Ciao’ is a whisper lingering in the airwaves as the phone clicks off, like a kiss you hold to your cheek long after he has driven away. I love ciao-ing.

3. The way the sunlight diffuses, casting the softest light across the countryside. Morning shadows are breathtaking. Sunsets, other-worldly.

4. Italians always dance at parties – whether you have two people for dinner or twenty eventually someone will put on music and everyone will dance; including you because most dance so badly you know you had better moves copying MTV at 13 years of age when your parents weren’t home.

5. The way the wrinkles freeze the faces of old men in a never-ending smile that deepens and brightens when they actually do smile.

6. Italians to love set the table. Tablecloths, placemats, napkins, plates, every last detail – they put it all out just so, no matter how cheap or ugly the things may be. And not just for dinner but for every meal of the day. I remember studying the table setting section at the back of a Betty Crocker cookbook when I was 9 - learning how the silverware progresses and where to put a wine glass and a water glass. There’s something so inviting about a set table; something so reverent about setting a table for the meal to come.

7. Ricuperare – the art of getting by. Italians conserve energy, recycle trash, measure pasta so there aren’t leftovers. In America I shop. In Italy I get by. Credit cards buy stress. Getting by brings peace.

8. You can buy a cup of coffee, a shot of Jack Daniels, a sandwich, or a pastry at any bar, anywhere. Imagine Starbucks with liquor!

9. Good bottles of wine cost $3.00. Really good bottles cost $5.

10. Full service gas stations and grocery store produce sections.

11. The sense of amazement as you walk across a bridge that people have been walking across for 2,000 years.

12. Baci – both kinds.

13. You can pay your electric bill, buy stamps, and pay a government fine all at the post office.

14. Men can wear pastel colors and somehow here they don’t look gay.

15. You can buy an alcoholic drink at a shopping mall (though shopping with impaired judgment and a credit card can be dangerous).

16. At an Italian party, everyone introduces themselves to everyone. You walk in the room, extend your hand to the first person you see and declare, emphatically, “Ciao sono Sherry” (well, actually you use your own name). They say their name, which you will never remember, then, without engaging in conversation, you promptly do the same with the person next to them. If you know the person, you kiss their right cheek then their left, and move on to the next person. When you have kissed or shaken hands with EVERYONE in the room, only then do you begin a conversation with the person of your choice. The process removes all that “stiff cocktail party” feeling when you don’t know the other people in the room. Now you know everyone. Granted you don’t remember their name but since all the men are named Alessandro, Marco, Franco, Stefano, or Giorgio and since all the women are named Stefania, Antonella, Francesca, Paola, or Simona, you have a twenty percent chance of guessing it right.

17. Cappuccinos cost less than $1. Pasta costs 25 cents a bag. Pizza costs $5 – for a WHOLE pizza.

18. No cell phone contracts.

19. Train service – just about anywhere you want.

20. Mushrooms actually taste like mushrooms, apples like apples, tomatoes like tomatoes, …

21. Men with balls – seriously, how many beautiful American women sit at home on Saturday night because you men are to whimpy to ask them out?

22. The country’s favorite past time is taking a walk.

23. Here it doesn’t seem like a sin to eat pasta every day of your life.

24. Even the clouds here are lighter, freer, more playful, more beautiful.

25. You can buy boxes of cream ready-made at the grocery store.

26. Driving coast to coast takes less than four hours.

27. Order a coffee at a table, you get little pastries for free. Order wine in the evening, you get little snacks.

28. Good pesto.

29. Piazzas.

30. NUTELLA!

Things we fail to appreciate as Americans

1. We NEVER have to listen to re-recordings of Neil Diamond’s September Morn by over-emphatic singers with Italian accents who mispronounce already questionable words to a song that should have been allowed a quiet and peaceful death about two months after it was released thirty years ago. Nor do we have to suffer through Sinatra’s ‘My Way’ (and by the way, every Italian you ever meet will eventually remind you that Frank Sinatra is ITALIAN!) sung in Italian, Pavoratti style, without Pavoratti’s skill. Let me assure you this is pure and yet inescapable torture if you ever plan to leave your hotel in Italy.

2. There is less than a 1 in 1million chance that you will ever hear the Bee Gees or the soundtrack for Grease in a public bar or restaurant.

3. Wide lanes and roads.

4. Ninety percent of the world’s movies are made in our language. The only voiceover movies we have to watch are old Jackie Chan flicks that are so bad anyway the two second delay between sound and lip movement can’t make it that much worse. Do you know how annoying it is to watch Star Wars on voiceover delay? Thank God for Darth Vadar – he’s the only non-annoying character in the film.

5. Single family homes.

6. We can actually read our pop culture t-shirts. Italian men walk down the street with pink shirts that say “Kiss Me, I’m Cute” without the foggiest clue how NOT CUTE that makes them!

7. Floor to ceiling windows.

8. Our beds! Italians have one bed – a single – slightly smaller than our twin beds. When you get married you push two singles together and call it a “matrimonale” bed. A sheet set consists of two pillow cases and two flat sheets – they don’t have fitted sheets. What does this mean? There is nothing holding the two mattresses together. What does this mean? The beds separate during sex – if you’re not paying attention, and you probably aren’t, one of you is going to fall. I’m still bruised.

9. Reliable mail service.

10. Wireless access.

11. One of the lowest sales tax rates in the world.

12. We worry more about who our politicians are sleeping with than who they had killed.

13. Wherever more than two people are waiting, we naturally form lines.

14. Elevators and escalators anywhere you might be carrying a suitcase.

15. 30 year old children are expected to have their own place.

16. 30 year old children can afford to have their own place.

17. We don’t build our homes out of cold conducting concrete.

18. The mafia only controls New York and Las Vegas instead of the southern half of the country and half of the north.

19. Our radio stations play songs in our language (and Spanish).

20. No school on Saturdays (Italian kids go to school six days a week!).

21. The freedom to fire a bad employee.

22. Our women are sane (trust me on this one guys, everything is relative).

23. A person from California can understand what a person from New York says (though they probably won’t agree with it).

24. The quality of our television programming – believe me, it could be worse!!!

25. Our country stops only for the Superbowl as opposed to every single game in both the AFL and NFL. The Italians LIVE for their soccer games.

26. Sports bars.

27. The freedom to be who you are and the ability to find people who will accept you as you are.

28. In the last hundred years we have actually built some very attractive buildings. Except Mussolini, the last Italian to build a decent building was a citizen of the Roman Empire or a friend of Michelangelo.