What do you think about my country ?
- Thread starter Nhirlathothep
- Start date
SlitheryDee
Lifer
- Feb 2, 2005
- 17,252
- 19
- 81
All I know about Italy is that everyone there rides bikes and say "ciao!' to each other all the time.
crashtech
Lifer
- Jan 4, 2013
- 10,695
- 2,294
- 146
I think I want to visit someday and see what real Italian food (and espresso) is like. My wife is in love with some of the picturesque little seaside towns there, and I want to check out archaeological sites and Roman architecture firsthand. I have heard that Italians are less contemptuous as the French when their language is butchered up by Americans, but instead most find the attempt rather amusing.
Excellent wine. There are way too many cats in Viesta. Why do teenage girls wear ears on their helmets and cruise up and down the street on their scooters all god damned day?
Also, I approve of siesta.
Also, I approve of siesta.
Great people, absolutely beautiful countryside, amazing culture and food, but very corrupt government and public sector.
In fact, I have sent packages to Italy that were stolen by postal officials. I hear their postal system is the world's most corrupted, which is saying a lot.
In fact, I have sent packages to Italy that were stolen by postal officials. I hear their postal system is the world's most corrupted, which is saying a lot.
Murloc
Diamond Member
- Jun 24, 2008
- 5,382
- 65
- 91
it's a bureaucratic and inefficient state. Also too much corruption and mafia.
Infrastructure sucks.
The population of illegals isn't under control, nor are the foreign criminals (expulsion notifications void of any consequences don't really work).
Most people are perfectly fine and not different from other Europeans. Once it comes to politics several of them fall in the same traps over and over again though.
A certain percentage of the people also gain advantage from the current system and make it difficult to change.
Good for holidays, all regions have interesting cuisines to try, people in the service sector are generally nice (as in nicer than in other countries) and many put a big effort in their jobs/small business despite the difficulties.
Many public workers are lazy privileged parasites. Avoid having anything to do with the public administration if you can.
The labour laws (which of course favour the public workers) are beyond retarded. The redundancy fund is abused beyond its scope for political reasons. People are put in a social security limbo instead of being encouraged to change jobs with a financial safety net.
I don't like how conservative it is from a social point of view.
For holidays it's one of the best countries you can visit unless you want big free beaches (the beaches are all taken over by commercial estabilishments, protected by a lobby and exploited by the mafia, e.g. Ostia beach, isolated areas and rocks are the best bathing places in Italy, also because there aren't many beaches at all in some regions).
The food is excellent anywhere if you can find the right restaurants and avoid the tourist traps.
They like airy bathrooms with tiles on the floor and they're clean. North-west european bathrooms suck.
If you like food and old stuff, go to Italy. France is fine too but the food is different and the coastline is smaller. In Italy you can have everything within reach. It depends on what you prefer really. I like both.
My opinion looks negative but it's really only because I live in a place that is technically the same ethnicity and culture as Lombardy, yet it's in another planet when it comes to state administration and business.
So these things stick out a lot.
Infrastructure sucks.
The population of illegals isn't under control, nor are the foreign criminals (expulsion notifications void of any consequences don't really work).
Most people are perfectly fine and not different from other Europeans. Once it comes to politics several of them fall in the same traps over and over again though.
A certain percentage of the people also gain advantage from the current system and make it difficult to change.
Good for holidays, all regions have interesting cuisines to try, people in the service sector are generally nice (as in nicer than in other countries) and many put a big effort in their jobs/small business despite the difficulties.
Many public workers are lazy privileged parasites. Avoid having anything to do with the public administration if you can.
The labour laws (which of course favour the public workers) are beyond retarded. The redundancy fund is abused beyond its scope for political reasons. People are put in a social security limbo instead of being encouraged to change jobs with a financial safety net.
I don't like how conservative it is from a social point of view.
For holidays it's one of the best countries you can visit unless you want big free beaches (the beaches are all taken over by commercial estabilishments, protected by a lobby and exploited by the mafia, e.g. Ostia beach, isolated areas and rocks are the best bathing places in Italy, also because there aren't many beaches at all in some regions).
The food is excellent anywhere if you can find the right restaurants and avoid the tourist traps.
They like airy bathrooms with tiles on the floor and they're clean. North-west european bathrooms suck.
If you like food and old stuff, go to Italy. France is fine too but the food is different and the coastline is smaller. In Italy you can have everything within reach. It depends on what you prefer really. I like both.
My opinion looks negative but it's really only because I live in a place that is technically the same ethnicity and culture as Lombardy, yet it's in another planet when it comes to state administration and business.
So these things stick out a lot.
Last edited:
- Oct 9, 1999
- 46,873
- 10,668
- 147
I have had a number of small scale but absolutely lovely experiences in Italy. My experiences are totally anecdotal, however, and not meant to be any sort of authoritative overall view of the country.
They include:
Stopping for directions in a small town square and ending up in the middle of a caricature of a vignette that featured a flock of townspeople engaging in multiple, simultaneous heated arguments involving raised voices and tons of arm waving and other gestures that you just couldn't make up if you tried.
Passing through small villages nestled in the side of the mountain wherein the most disreputable looking guy in the entire place would be the policeman with the three day old beard and the open shirt sprawled back on a chair lazily sunning himself without a care on the world.
People in those same villages who would spit contemptuously and tell you, "The Romans, splurrt, they never conquered us!"
Leaving Italy at the (then) Yugoslavian border, with the train stopped at two in the morning, everyone being made to get off the train by stern, unfriendly, AK-47 toting border guards as some Arab guy earnestly tries to get you to "just hold this package for me."
The hulking, ancient Colosseum enduring modern day Rome right up against it. Just, wow.
Folllowing a crazy, pissed motorbike renter who spoke note perfect English in a southern accent, to the point where we thought he had to be American until the phone rang and he switched to rapid fire Italian, as he bombed through crowded urban intersections at night after the light had turned red and cross traffic had started to move, because we'd got lost and were late returning his bikes and he had to come get us.
Getting searched at the border and having the Italian border policeman helpfully explain to me that it wasn't particularly wise for me to have the vivid Italian Communist poster I'd liberated . . . because I was an American. He wasn't on any power trip, he was really trying to be helpful, you know, in case I didn't know!
Experiencing the mish-mash of German and Italian language, grammar and culture in the South Tyrol in Northern Italy.
Harvesting teeny tiny "wild" strawberries on an organic farm in a manner that couldn't possibly have been even remotely cost efficient.
And a ton more, which don't do much for the fact-seeking observer, but evoke warm fuzzies in me of the about the many times I traveled through Italy during my 4 and 1/2 year sojourn through Europe. <shrug>
They include:
Stopping for directions in a small town square and ending up in the middle of a caricature of a vignette that featured a flock of townspeople engaging in multiple, simultaneous heated arguments involving raised voices and tons of arm waving and other gestures that you just couldn't make up if you tried.
Passing through small villages nestled in the side of the mountain wherein the most disreputable looking guy in the entire place would be the policeman with the three day old beard and the open shirt sprawled back on a chair lazily sunning himself without a care on the world.
People in those same villages who would spit contemptuously and tell you, "The Romans, splurrt, they never conquered us!"
Leaving Italy at the (then) Yugoslavian border, with the train stopped at two in the morning, everyone being made to get off the train by stern, unfriendly, AK-47 toting border guards as some Arab guy earnestly tries to get you to "just hold this package for me."
The hulking, ancient Colosseum enduring modern day Rome right up against it. Just, wow.
Folllowing a crazy, pissed motorbike renter who spoke note perfect English in a southern accent, to the point where we thought he had to be American until the phone rang and he switched to rapid fire Italian, as he bombed through crowded urban intersections at night after the light had turned red and cross traffic had started to move, because we'd got lost and were late returning his bikes and he had to come get us.
Getting searched at the border and having the Italian border policeman helpfully explain to me that it wasn't particularly wise for me to have the vivid Italian Communist poster I'd liberated . . . because I was an American. He wasn't on any power trip, he was really trying to be helpful, you know, in case I didn't know!
Experiencing the mish-mash of German and Italian language, grammar and culture in the South Tyrol in Northern Italy.
Harvesting teeny tiny "wild" strawberries on an organic farm in a manner that couldn't possibly have been even remotely cost efficient.
And a ton more, which don't do much for the fact-seeking observer, but evoke warm fuzzies in me of the about the many times I traveled through Italy during my 4 and 1/2 year sojourn through Europe. <shrug>
- Oct 9, 1999
- 46,873
- 10,668
- 147
justoh
Diamond Member
- Jun 11, 2013
- 3,686
- 81
- 91
"Jeremy Clarkson tours Europe to see if the reality of the French, Belgians, Italians, Spanish and Germans matches the stereotype."
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2ni9p6
Italy starts at 8:55 ish
You're welcome!
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2ni9p6
Italy starts at 8:55 ish
You're welcome!
You've never been, amirite?
As a man travelling alone you won't encounter many problems, but each of my blonde, female colleagues that went there for a congress or customer visit got harrassed the moment they walked out onto the streets. Lega Nord is a facist party with a lot of followers there, the poorer South knows quite a lot of corruption, and in the EU only Greece has a worse debt to GDP ratio (which is of course because the government handled the economy so greatly). Even if the EU can throw Greece out of the Euro we'll still be stuck with the rest of the Southern-European countries.
GagHalfrunt
Lifer
- Apr 19, 2001
- 25,284
- 1,998
- 126
Good food, pretty women, absolutely no ambition, no desire to work, no will to do anything useful. What's not to like?
And best of all, it's not France.
And best of all, it's not France.
Spent 3 weeks back in 2013. Won't go back. Everyone I dealt with was shady and out to screw people over. From the markets to the boardrooms it was all the same. Greece was the only other place I'd ever felt like this. I did me 1 amazing family I still call regularly so it wasn't a total loss.
- Oct 9, 1999
- 46,873
- 10,668
- 147
Saw that happen in Rome as the assembled sharpies hassled the youth hostel touristas. But I never saw or experienced anything untoward in Turin, Florence, Venice or anywhere, ever, in the countryside . . . and I traveled, at different times, with a German blonde woman, a Dutch blonde woman, and a French brunette, so . . .
The moral of my story? Get out of the well-worn tourist traps and meet the "regular" people and you'll almost always have a much better experience, as I did. This is as true in America (from my direct experience hitch-hiking) as it is in every single other country I have traveled through.
It would be like landing at LaGuardia, making your way to an over-priced hotel in Manhattan, then fighting your way through Times Square before having dinner at some long past its due date restaurant now running on fumes and past reputation and thinking you now know America and Americans.
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