Which are the things that come to your mind when you hear “Italy”???
Pizza, pasta, mafia, beautiful men, gestures, people speaking loud, fashion, people being late… this list could be continued, but let’s stop so far on these because that was more or less the list of the stereotypes that I had before coming to Italy 10 months ago (btw, today is exactly 10 months and 1 day since I arrived to Milan). I guess 10 months is sufficient time to make some conclusions and evaluations.
Allora, as Italians say, let’s start....
Food. To say that FOOD is important for Italians means to say nothing! Italians worship good food, but the case here is not only in eating process itself, but in the conversations and atmosphere they creating during meals. Spaghetti and pasta together with pizza are usually sacred. There are barely more things that are more important in the life of average Italian.You can not take away pasta from a normal Italian meal; otherwise it’ll not be Italian meal anymore. A typical Italian meal looks like following:
Antipasti (appetizers): usually includes some starters like ham, cheese, fried vegetables, mozzarella with tomatoes or something like that
Primi piatti (first course) usually pasta or risotto. Pasta in most of the cases… You can’t even imagine how many different ways of cooking pasta they know. The thing that for them makes difference is pasta is the sauceJ spaghetti or makaroni itself don’t have that big meaning. Normally you feel full already after this dish, but it’s just the middle of your lunch or dinner…
Secondi piatti (second course) meat or fish with vegetables or potatos
Dolce (sweets) or fruits. Cookies, pastry and all other sweet things is a different story because there are soooo many types of it that a foreigner can’t possibly remember all of that:)
and please don’t expect Italian to start working before drinking his COFFEE. Without coffee lunch is not a real lunch and life is not beautiful. There is no single coffee take away in this country. It will remain the only place in the world where Starbucks will never get any cent of income
The other thing about food that you have to know is timing. Breakfast is something that in terms of energy for the day has no importance here. What is important indeed is how you eat it… You usually go to the bar (you can find bars all around, especially in metro stations, shops and other random places) to take a cup of coffee (one can’t really call one sip of coffee as a cup, but anyways), eat still warm brioche, watch morning news and argue about elections or whatever (topic is not really important) with the owner of the bar and other random people coming in. Taking chairs and sitting at tables is not something you do in the morning, so people will just create crowds next to bar counter. At 1 – 3.30 pm you can expect to have lunch. Well, in companies they have it much shorter, let’s say they can be done in 1,5h. But what I find really irritating is that all shops are closed at this time, so you can’t buy anything before they finish siesta. In couple of hours the time of merenda comes. And then, closer to 9 – 10 pm people will think about dinner. And you better don’t invite Italian for dinner at 6 or 7pm! They’ll be simply embarrassed to eat dinner at that time, but even before that you’ll not find any restaurant open at that time. Well, unless you want to eat in McDonalds (which are places for immigrants mostly).
Sunday lunch in Italian families is a topic of a separate post. The only thing I can say now is that don’t expect it to be shorter then 3 hours with less then 5 courses:)
Godfather is a favorite movie of millions people in the world and the real headache of Italians. One of the first things a foreigner thinks of (and says obviously) if he hears that you are from Sicily or Naples is “ah, mafia, mafia”. Even my mom is used to ask me whenever I go there if I met some Mafiosi. It’s something that is totally not true. I only saw “mafia district” in Naples, it didn’t look very friendly, but that’s it. Most of Italians will feel offended and insulted if you use the term, even when if you use it as a joke.
Language, dialects and regional differences. If you’ve learned Italian in your country, forget it! There are around 20 regions in Italy and each of them has its own dialect or sometimes even separate language. Napoletan, Sicilian, Calabrian, Roman, Milanese, Triestino are the ones that I (being far from excellent in Italian) can recognize. But language is not the only thing that you may find different between the regions. North and South are as we say in Russian sky and ground (небо и земля). Inter-regional relations can be quite tense during election times, local football matches and even during conferences and especially during LC visits. As for now, I have to admit my strong addiction to the South:)
In the end, language doesn’t have that much value, if you want to speak to Italian, what matters much more and which actually unites people from all regions (well, apart from national football cup obviously:)) are the gestures: the way they move their hands, hold their heads, move shoulders, their facial expressions, as well as the way they use their eyes and mouths could be a topic of couple of dissertations for PhD. They simply can’t talk without their hands! What they actually can do is to talk without words, with hands onlyJ they usually speak very loud everywhere, it’s not because they are deaf, they are simply like that. Italians like to travel, but they don’t really know other languages. Why should they? If they can explain everything with their body language?:)
One more thing that you have to know that all Italians are very touchy people, not in the sense of being sensitive but in the sense of loving to TOUCH other people, everywhere… and yes, it’s normal for guys here to kiss when they meet, luckily it’s not a French kiss. Buuuut, if needed during the party, they can also do this. And don’t forget about famous Nutella kiss.
Family matters here a lot. Italians call themselves “mammony” (not sure about spelling tough) because they are used to stay with their parents until 30, and you don’t need to worry – mamma will cook the food, clean and iron T-shorts, remember all birthdays of relatives, will call you 3 times a day. Italian guys may not pick up the phone if their girlfriend is calling, but be sure that they’ll pick up, if mom is calling.
Beautiful men and women. I don’t know if it’s a matter of beauty or it’s simply their charm and warm attitude that they have which makes you feel special and think that everyone around is beautiful. I don’t find Italians guys more beautiful then Ukrainians, but they definitely care about their appearance much more then Ukrainians do, and that makes a difference.
If we got to speak about men and women, I can’t avoid speaking about relationships here which are very strange. People get married at 30 – 35, which is fine. But it takes them a long time to come to this decision. Most of the couples here are not dating; they are just friends, bed friends or friends with benefits as they might call it here.
Chaos determines Italian lifestyle. Nothing in Italy is well organized or easy-to-use. You have to fight to get the smallest scrap of information. Don't be surprised to see Italians fighting to get into the buses or jumping the queue to be served first at the coffee bar. I usually have a lot of fun (even tough sometimes it’s not fun at all) to see trains full of people because they buy tickets without seats reservation. I know, it happens everywhere in Europe. But surprisingly only in Italy, you can always find corridors full, completely full of people that you can even walk to bathroom. It’s simply impossible – you either get off the train and leave your seat for others or you stay at your place and don’t move:)
I’m finishing now even tough I have sooo many observations in mind. They are just popping up in my mind one by one, but I need to stop otherwise I’m going to spend whole night writing it here. Maybe this could be a topic for my PhD?:) The last but definitely not the least, is that some stereotypes are definitely right, some not, but Italians are generous, communicative, smiling and they are the most hospitable people I’ve ever met. They often use the word sunny to describe themselves, and I believe it’s the right word. Keep that in mind, when taking decision about where to go for your next holidays:)
Your Ukrainian explorer of Italy
Pizza, pasta, mafia, beautiful men, gestures, people speaking loud, fashion, people being late… this list could be continued, but let’s stop so far on these because that was more or less the list of the stereotypes that I had before coming to Italy 10 months ago (btw, today is exactly 10 months and 1 day since I arrived to Milan). I guess 10 months is sufficient time to make some conclusions and evaluations.
Allora, as Italians say, let’s start....
Food. To say that FOOD is important for Italians means to say nothing! Italians worship good food, but the case here is not only in eating process itself, but in the conversations and atmosphere they creating during meals. Spaghetti and pasta together with pizza are usually sacred. There are barely more things that are more important in the life of average Italian.You can not take away pasta from a normal Italian meal; otherwise it’ll not be Italian meal anymore. A typical Italian meal looks like following:
Antipasti (appetizers): usually includes some starters like ham, cheese, fried vegetables, mozzarella with tomatoes or something like that
Primi piatti (first course) usually pasta or risotto. Pasta in most of the cases… You can’t even imagine how many different ways of cooking pasta they know. The thing that for them makes difference is pasta is the sauceJ spaghetti or makaroni itself don’t have that big meaning. Normally you feel full already after this dish, but it’s just the middle of your lunch or dinner…
Secondi piatti (second course) meat or fish with vegetables or potatos
Dolce (sweets) or fruits. Cookies, pastry and all other sweet things is a different story because there are soooo many types of it that a foreigner can’t possibly remember all of that:)
and please don’t expect Italian to start working before drinking his COFFEE. Without coffee lunch is not a real lunch and life is not beautiful. There is no single coffee take away in this country. It will remain the only place in the world where Starbucks will never get any cent of income
The other thing about food that you have to know is timing. Breakfast is something that in terms of energy for the day has no importance here. What is important indeed is how you eat it… You usually go to the bar (you can find bars all around, especially in metro stations, shops and other random places) to take a cup of coffee (one can’t really call one sip of coffee as a cup, but anyways), eat still warm brioche, watch morning news and argue about elections or whatever (topic is not really important) with the owner of the bar and other random people coming in. Taking chairs and sitting at tables is not something you do in the morning, so people will just create crowds next to bar counter. At 1 – 3.30 pm you can expect to have lunch. Well, in companies they have it much shorter, let’s say they can be done in 1,5h. But what I find really irritating is that all shops are closed at this time, so you can’t buy anything before they finish siesta. In couple of hours the time of merenda comes. And then, closer to 9 – 10 pm people will think about dinner. And you better don’t invite Italian for dinner at 6 or 7pm! They’ll be simply embarrassed to eat dinner at that time, but even before that you’ll not find any restaurant open at that time. Well, unless you want to eat in McDonalds (which are places for immigrants mostly).
Sunday lunch in Italian families is a topic of a separate post. The only thing I can say now is that don’t expect it to be shorter then 3 hours with less then 5 courses:)
Godfather is a favorite movie of millions people in the world and the real headache of Italians. One of the first things a foreigner thinks of (and says obviously) if he hears that you are from Sicily or Naples is “ah, mafia, mafia”. Even my mom is used to ask me whenever I go there if I met some Mafiosi. It’s something that is totally not true. I only saw “mafia district” in Naples, it didn’t look very friendly, but that’s it. Most of Italians will feel offended and insulted if you use the term, even when if you use it as a joke.
Language, dialects and regional differences. If you’ve learned Italian in your country, forget it! There are around 20 regions in Italy and each of them has its own dialect or sometimes even separate language. Napoletan, Sicilian, Calabrian, Roman, Milanese, Triestino are the ones that I (being far from excellent in Italian) can recognize. But language is not the only thing that you may find different between the regions. North and South are as we say in Russian sky and ground (небо и земля). Inter-regional relations can be quite tense during election times, local football matches and even during conferences and especially during LC visits. As for now, I have to admit my strong addiction to the South:)
In the end, language doesn’t have that much value, if you want to speak to Italian, what matters much more and which actually unites people from all regions (well, apart from national football cup obviously:)) are the gestures: the way they move their hands, hold their heads, move shoulders, their facial expressions, as well as the way they use their eyes and mouths could be a topic of couple of dissertations for PhD. They simply can’t talk without their hands! What they actually can do is to talk without words, with hands onlyJ they usually speak very loud everywhere, it’s not because they are deaf, they are simply like that. Italians like to travel, but they don’t really know other languages. Why should they? If they can explain everything with their body language?:)
One more thing that you have to know that all Italians are very touchy people, not in the sense of being sensitive but in the sense of loving to TOUCH other people, everywhere… and yes, it’s normal for guys here to kiss when they meet, luckily it’s not a French kiss. Buuuut, if needed during the party, they can also do this. And don’t forget about famous Nutella kiss.
Family matters here a lot. Italians call themselves “mammony” (not sure about spelling tough) because they are used to stay with their parents until 30, and you don’t need to worry – mamma will cook the food, clean and iron T-shorts, remember all birthdays of relatives, will call you 3 times a day. Italian guys may not pick up the phone if their girlfriend is calling, but be sure that they’ll pick up, if mom is calling.
Beautiful men and women. I don’t know if it’s a matter of beauty or it’s simply their charm and warm attitude that they have which makes you feel special and think that everyone around is beautiful. I don’t find Italians guys more beautiful then Ukrainians, but they definitely care about their appearance much more then Ukrainians do, and that makes a difference.
If we got to speak about men and women, I can’t avoid speaking about relationships here which are very strange. People get married at 30 – 35, which is fine. But it takes them a long time to come to this decision. Most of the couples here are not dating; they are just friends, bed friends or friends with benefits as they might call it here.
Chaos determines Italian lifestyle. Nothing in Italy is well organized or easy-to-use. You have to fight to get the smallest scrap of information. Don't be surprised to see Italians fighting to get into the buses or jumping the queue to be served first at the coffee bar. I usually have a lot of fun (even tough sometimes it’s not fun at all) to see trains full of people because they buy tickets without seats reservation. I know, it happens everywhere in Europe. But surprisingly only in Italy, you can always find corridors full, completely full of people that you can even walk to bathroom. It’s simply impossible – you either get off the train and leave your seat for others or you stay at your place and don’t move:)
I’m finishing now even tough I have sooo many observations in mind. They are just popping up in my mind one by one, but I need to stop otherwise I’m going to spend whole night writing it here. Maybe this could be a topic for my PhD?:) The last but definitely not the least, is that some stereotypes are definitely right, some not, but Italians are generous, communicative, smiling and they are the most hospitable people I’ve ever met. They often use the word sunny to describe themselves, and I believe it’s the right word. Keep that in mind, when taking decision about where to go for your next holidays:)
Your Ukrainian explorer of Italy
P.S. some people, Italians especially, have the right to say they are different. But this is the way I see everything:)
