You know the old joke: In heaven the French are the cooks, the Italians are the lovers, the Germans are the engineers, and the English are the diplomats; in hell the Germans are the lovers, the English are the cooks, the Italians are the engineers and the French are the diplomats. Flying from Italy to spend a couple of nights in historic Mainz, Germany on the banks of the Rhine made us think of that.
Our first indication that we were in the Land of Precision was the airplane trip itself. We had a 20-minute connection in Munich to catch a flight to Frankfurt. Lufthansa had a van waiting for us when our first flight ended which whisked us to the other side of the airfield and our second flight. Amazing. Meanwhile, in Rome a friend was enduring a 5-hour delay for his Alitalia flight and, needless to say, he missed all his ensuing connections. We can only say that if you have the choice between Lufthansa and other carriers, you won’t regret choosing the former.
Some things were remarkably similar, for instance, the market, where only the mittens and heavy jackets told us we were no longer on the Riviera:
Mittens, jackets, and, oh jawohl! the background:
That is the Dom, the great central cathedral of old Mainz.
The good burghers live on the other side of the platz:
When we left Rapallo the Christmas lights were just being strung across the streets and wound around the palm trees. In Mainz, too, Christmas was definitely in the air:
Big trees like the one behind this fountain were being placed in all the main squares. And what says “Christmas” in Germany more than this?
Good as the Italians are at most things culinary, they have not yet mastered the gingerbread house, or, for that matter, the angry Santa. What is wrong with him?? Must be those pesky elves misbehaving again.
Speaking of gingerbread, you don’t see many houses like this in Italy:
But above all, the culture shock of being in Germany was the cleanliness and order that was all around. Italians are more casual about such things. What exemplified it best for us was the difference in airport trash receptacles. In the Genova airport they are here and there, and on the floor around them is evidence of well-intentioned but careless effort. In the Frankfurt airport on the other hand, the trash receptacles look like this:
They are almost frightening.
Part Two of culture shock was arriving at the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport in Texas. We flew on American Airlines which was comfortable, on time, and staffed with very pleasant flight attendants. America! We were honest citizens and, on the customs form, said Yes to the question, ‘are you bringing food with you.’ Our punishment was to be sent to the Agriculture Inspection Area where a long line awaited processing. Fortunately a kindly inspector took pity on us, quizzed us on our cheese and olive oil, and let us through. A few years ago I brought a cat into Italy with nary a glance from the customs officers to whom I tried to introduce him at the Milano airport. So, Officials and Inspections and Security, all on a level a bit above that we’ve grown accustomed to. (On the other hand, no one holds a candle to Italians when it comes to plain old bureaucracy.)
Then there’s size. Everything seems huge in America when one is accustomed to Italian scale. Beginning with the large people, and moving right along to the large automobiles, roads and houses which accommodate them. It’s a change of scale that takes one’s breath away.
We’re in Arizona now, and will be for a few months, having traded a sea of water for one of sand. Oddly, though we’ve always been Americans, we feel a bit like expatriots in our own country now; perhaps we’ve been living away too long. Or perhaps this is just a first reaction, and after a week or two we’ll slip back into a more comfortable place. Just now being here feels like wearing shoes that don’t fit exactly right: some places are too loose, and others pinch too much. Rather like the shoes we wear in Italy.
An Ex-Expatriate 
ooops… sorry….
this is the first link, that i mispelled in my comment.
Ciao.
Thanks for the compliments about my english and my blogs. If you want to come to visit you will be welcome 😉 Actually i don’t have a big lot of people that use to come, and, as you can imagine, this is kind of frustrating for a blogger.
No words for that doctor you were describing in the last comment. Idiots are allover the world, so i am not surprised you found one in Italy as i wouldn’t be surprised if you had found any other place.
For some reasons every now and then i go to USA, and there are actually three ways i make comparisons between the life style in Italy and in America.
1) when i want to describe USA to an italian… i say stuffs like “oh, Americans use to eat turkey and cranberries the last thursday of november for thanksgiving, while we in Italy don’t even celebrate such a thing like that”.
2) when i want to decribe Italy to an American… i say something like “In Italy there are a lot of mopeds that are very useful to avoid the traffic in the big towns, although they are very irritating for pedestrians and car drivers, here in america i hardly see any!”
3) when i want to say that Italians are better than Americans… i say something like “In Italy there is not such a barbarian practice as death penalty”
Obviously i don’t have nothing against attitude n. 1 and n. 2, but with n. 3… i think there is a big risk about it.
Infact, if i say such a thing like the example i made about death penalty, there could be two reasons.
1) if i am speaking with an American, i want to chat about politics (so, as you say, there is the good thing to help one culture to take the best – or atleast what i consider better – from the other)
2) if i am speaking with an Italian, i want to describe USA people as barbarians because they have such an attitude that we, in Italy, cannot even consider anything good. And that doesn’t help any of the two cultures to get the best from the other.
In this second case i feel always irritated when i see foreign people speaking about Italy. And i always see it all around myself. Looks like everybody likes to show all the good or bad things about Italy, and i find it irritating both, also if they speak of good things, if this is done in order to judge us.
First of all i always find that their vision of the Italian attitude is so simplified that i find arrogant for them to think to have an idea of what is life over here.
Secondly because they also implicitly judge italians, and in my opinion one can judge only if he feels better than who he/she is judging.
Last but not least, looking to the behavior of somebody or someone they implicitly judge all the Italians as they were all the same (for example, beaureaucracy is bad because people that work for it are lazy, and that cannot be different because all the italians are lazy… sure you didn’t say such a thing, but i bet you thought it when you tried to renew a visa or such a stupid beaureaucratic need like this).
The real irritating thing is to feel as if you are on one side of a magnifier glass where, on the other side, there is the rest of the world looking at you. I am just over here living my life the best i can upon my values and my being myself, as it happens for pretty much every other human being in this world.
Being described like that is like being the dwarf at the cyrcus, where all the public point their second finger of their right hand and laugh with each other.
Thanks for your comment. Actually your post is not THAT much irritating as other things i read because it’s written by somebody that is just a blogger and is supposed to tell just her opinion. But i read also articles on popular international newspapers much more offensive.
Just to make a couple of examples you can read this post (sorry it’s in Italian) of a friend of mine that reports the translation of a british article (in the commentary section there is also my comment), or also this article (in English), which i commented over here.
A last thing. I don’t believe that the practice to give money for collecting trash is any good in the long period.
First, I have a social consciousness that induces me to feel kind of guilty to put some… say… paper in the regular trash container, knowing that in this way that piece of paper cannot be recycled. It’s a problem of education, not of money. If you pay for collecting, say, alluminium, you temporarily solve the problem of collecting alluminium, but paradoxically you educate not to collect alluminium if you are not paid for it.
Second, making a business out of collecting trash is like saying that who doesn’t need those money is allowed not to recycle. Rich people will throw the soda can on the side of the roads while poor people will collect it. That has nothing to do with saving the world from trash.
Supporting recycle with money could become a business which is against another better way to solve the problem of trash: not producing it at all. For example, in my family we use water in returnable glass bottles. When we decided that, the production of plastic recycle of my family drastically reduced almost to zero. If we were paid for collecting plastic recycles, this practice not to produce it at all would make us loose some money. Note that the idea to pay a little extra for buying water in plastic bottle as a deposit wouldn’t work, because actually we pay much more (30 cents a liter against 10 of the plastic ones), and we do it for the only purpose of saving plastic for the world. If there was a deposit for plastic that would be unrealistic to thing that one liter would cost 10 cents for the water and 20 cents for the deposit, so it would be anyway more convenient to consume plastic.
Okay, sorry if it was too long.
Please send me an email again if you answer, so i know i should come to visit 😉
Hi, Dario ~ No need to apologize for your English. You write very well, with passion, and make yourself understood. I wish I could say the same for my skill with Italian.
We’ve lived in Italy for about 7 years. We live there because we choose to and because we love it. I think if you read other parts of my blog you’ll find many entries which praise Italy and talk about the wonderful experiences we have there.
Your comment reminded me of the time I was at a very fancy dinner in Italy, seated across the table from a famous doctor. Because I don’t speak Italian well he assumed I didn’t understand it, and launched into a lengthy diatribe against America and Americans – it was pretty unpleasant. Finally I stood up and said, “I don’t have to listen to this.” and left the table. Haven’t been invited back, but that’s ok. I as so MAD!
What surprised me about that encounter was that I actually agreed with some of what the good Doctor was saying – but because he was an ‘outsider’ it seemed to me that he was being unfairly critical (also stupidly presumptuous to think I wouldn’t understand). It’s like parents – they can criticize their own children, but if anyone else dares to, watch out! So I completely understand your irritation when you read remarks that seem critical of Italy.
Having said that, though, I don’t think I’m being critical of Italy when I talk about how big things are in the US – I actually wasn’t assigning a value to either big or small (though in the case of autos I think small is better) – I was simply commenting on what a shock the difference is when moving from one country to the other.
(An aside from a friend: roads in the west are very wide because they were first built to accommodate wagons pulled by teams of oxen, which required a great deal of space to turn or change direction…)
The important part of your comment, though is this: why make comparisons at all? It’s a good question. I make them because it helps me understand each culture a little better. Also, it would be nice to think that one culture could learn from another. Do I wish that Italian bureaucracy weren’t so complicated? Sure – don’t you? Do I wish the US was not so violent? Of course – don’t you? Are there good reasons why each culture has developed as it has? I think so, and that’s part of what makes it interesting to think and write about.
A quick note about the recycling. I believe it is possible for people to pick up cans and if they get enough to sell them as scrap aluminium. In 11 states, though, including New York, California, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, there is a deposit paid by the purchaser on each can or bottle purchased. That is, if I buy a Coke for .75, I have to pay .80 to cover the can deposit. Then when I finish the drink I take the can back and get my .05 back. It’s an incredibly cumbersome way to discourage littering. You are absolutely right when you say that Italy and Germany are miles ahead of the US in this regard.
Thanks for reading, and especially for commenting in English. If I had tried to respond in Italian you wouldn’t read this until 2010. And I think it’s very cool that your excellent blog is in two languages.
I’m sorry, my comment is full of errors. But i think you can understand it anyway. Only one thing i wanted to explain better. I have seen people going to the recycle place being paid for it in America. No way in italy they do such a thing!
Ahaha… i always feel ingenuously irritated when Italians are compared for those stupid things with other peoples. Italian mafia amore mandolino pizza.
Just like tourists that come here to visit for a couple of days.
How many years are you living in italy? And all you have to say is that beaureaucracy is junk and trash is not well collected? As if these were our main problems… ihih… did you see our prime minister, for example? That is a real problem, if you live in Italy.
By the way, still ingenuously i always feel like to rebate to those critics with equally superficial remarks, like, for example?
– do you know why italian roads are so narrow and american ones are so wide?
Cos in Italy most of towns were built in the middle age when there were no cars and it was useless to build wide roads, while in America in the middle age… well… what was america in the middle age?
– I have seen people go to the recycle place to recycle trash only because they give money when you do so, otherwise they would mix paper, glass, alluminium and orgainical all together, which thing is done by stupid italians although in Italy they don’t pay a cent for recycling. But yeah, under this point of view i agree, Germans are still the best ones.
– So cold in the market in Germany? And so beautiful the summer vegetables exposed over there? Must be that they are produced somewhere else and been transported over there burning tons of oil, so feeding American wars in the middle east and polluting the world that, incidentally, over here in Italy we must breathe.
…never mind, i could continue for hours this way. But the what you could rebate is why should i make a comparison with all those cultures and finding out the good and the bad things of the ones and the others? Yes, it makes no sense
Better than a lump of coal, no? Chiara, can you send me (yet again) the url of your vespa site? Thanks!
Hope you have a great stay stateside! I agree; Lufthansa airlines and German airports have no equal for efficiency and cleanliness. And that angry Santa is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen in chocolate form! Maybe it’s intended for children who weren’t quite as nice as they should have been…