The Italian Gerald

Back in the 1930s, the English travel writer E. R. P. Vincent wrote that “Italia is not Italy”, making the then novel argument that “Italia” (the real Italy) was not in fact the same as the “Italy” experienced ­ by English tourists. Surveying his contemporaries’ travel guides, Vincent felt obliged to warn his readers that, try as they might, they would not be able to spot Botticelli’s models on the streets of 20th century Florence.

“Italia has a future”, Vincent wrote, “Italy does not, it only has a scant present and an immense past. Italia has bitter icy winds, Italy basks in perennial sunshine. Italia is a strange, hard, throbbing land, Italy is accessible, straightforward and very dead.” Apart from proving that whenever travel writers attempt to write purple prose the result is inevitably purple-headed – “strange, hard, throbbing” indeed – Vincent’s point is a valid one. Most 21st century visitors to Italy see little of Italia, but unlike Vincent, New Zealand Gerald thinks this is in fact a good thing.

Outside of the precarious precision of package tours, Italy is a shambles. Unless you’re willing and able to pay tour operators hundreds of euros to insulate you from the chaos, or villa owners thousands to rub you down with truffle oil under the Tuscan sun, the most lasting souvenir you’ll have from your Italian experience is likely to be post-traumatic stress disorder.

Italian airports betray unmistakeable warning signs of the chaos that waits beyond the arrival halls like a lion that’s been starved for two weeks ahead of Christian Night at the Coliseum. Unless you arrive on the very first flight of the day, you will see neither hide nor hair of a trolley at the baggage reclaim.

The Germans, by contrast, police their trolley stands with eagle eyes – you will never find one empty. Manned and womanned motorized collection vehicles insure that the average time a trolley spends abandoned is just 8.6 seconds. In Italian airports, not only is there no attempt to collect the trolleys discarded by the first arrivals of the day, many of those arrivals are stymied by the fact that they have to be in possession of a 1 euro coin before they can liberate a trolley from its stand.

After you’ve risked hernias and musculoskeletal injuries lugging your bags up and down what feels like Rome airport’s recreation of the city’s Seven Hills, the neon glow of the car-hire counters seems to offer some respite – but not for very long. In Italy, even if you can speak the language, “customer service” translates as “me ne frego” (I don’t give a shit).

When I visited 2 years ago and attempted to collect my hire car, the Europcar representative made it perfectly clear that she held me personally responsible for her having to be conscious at that ungodly hour (it was after 9 am). Italians don’t have jobs, they have inconveniences. Jobs are inherently unItalian, like poor dress sense – without slaves, the Roman Empire wouldn’t have made it across the Tiber.

Italians themselves have no illusions about how long things take to get done in Italy. Anything involving even the slightest amount of official administration takes between 6 weeks and 6 months longer than it does in any other country that claims to be civilized. Unless of course you are a member of the most notorious gang of cowboys in the West: the Italian government.

A friend of New Zealand Gerald’s who has lived in a small town in Tuscany for some years believes that the Italy of today cannot realistically be called a democracy – it is in fact an oligarchy. Corruption is so rife that even the espresso machines in the parliament canteens are paying protection. The premier, Silvio Berlusconi, treats the Italian statute book like his own personal Etch A Sketch, making and repealing laws to stay out of jail and in power.

As an example of just how beyond the pale Italian politics is, take the case of the “proposed” autostrada (intercity motorway) extension that would significantly reduce the time it currently takes to drive between Rome and Livorno. The route initially proposed by the government minimized the destruction of houses by allowing for tunnels to be blasted through inconvenient hills. Last month, however, it was announced that there was no longer enough money for the tunnels and that a new route, one that would require the destruction of thousands more houses, had been decided upon.

In fine Italian style, the minister for infrastructure is also the mayor of Orbetello, one of the towns that will be heavily affected by the new “proposed” route. In his ministerial capacity he appointed the head of the company that the government had chosen to build the motorway. Italian-English dictionaries provide no translation for “conflict of interest”.

A group of outraged Orbetello citizens have formed an association with the goal of forcing their mayor/minister to rethink.* Not only have their homes been marked for destruction overnight, the delicate ecosystem of the region is also under threat. The environment, they say, will be irreversibly damaged by the new motorway route. Their resistance is brave, but one fears it will be futile.

Orbetello’s many-hatted mayor is a symptom of the diseased order from which emanates the stultifying chaos of Italy. Only in a society that is so distracted by the chaos of everyday life could the leaders behave in such a cavalier fashion and actually be rewarded for it. A telling postscript to the tragedy of Orbetello is that the residents voted their mayor in after he had been appointed minister for infrastructure.

 * You can increase their chances of achieving this goal by liking their Facebook page: NO all'Autostrada su Colli e Laguna di Orbetello