I am in Italy and this is almost my very first visit in this country. As travelling is heavily activating my creative cells and the place is implanting quite some topics to write about I thought that I am going to do exactly that. To keep the chaos away (did I mention my random thoughs? Now they are even more annoying because all my new impressions left some thought and this is now starting to push to the "surface") I am going to write different parts of my Italy experience on my blog to keep it orderly (at least I will try- ha ha)...
Part I. What would be ideal to start with?
Maybe some genereal aspects which come to my mind about this part of Italy. We are staying in a place called Treviso (the birth place of the Tiramisu aka Heaven.) in the Northern Italian province of Veneta, not far away from Venice (Venice I will make a seperate part). Treviso is a rather small place with some 80,000 people living but also being home of some big business such as Benneton. It even has an airport. Arriving here without any (ANY!!!) word of Italian was an adventure. As we wanted to stay in Treviso (hotel can maybe also have a different story, but certainly not a glory one) it was not making sense to follow all the masses to Venince and we had to ask for the way and the best means of transportation. Not an easy one. That nobody is speaking English was an old new experience - in the end we managed as some words could be taken over from my humble spanish and from the words I have read... Nevertheless the friendlyness of the people was striking (being used with Dutch service menthality --- errrr, there is none) as they do not seem to have the attitude of "hey guys, it doesn't make any sense, we do not understand each other, do not waste my time..." but "yes, of course I want to help you, and I will try as good as I can" (using some hundreds of thousands Italian to us unknown words) and a lot of nice semi understandable words which will mean something like have a great day / evening, all the best etc. My first Italian words which I have learned are: Bravo/a, solo/a , arividerci, buona sera, buon giorno, bene, grazie, basta, numbers from 1-8 and 10-18 (when I have time I will immediatly look up, what nine means ...) and qui which I think means "here".
Further more we found out that the public transport was surprisingly cheap, and that local taxis are eco-cars (maybe not everywhere, but the idea was worth pointing out here!). Nice. Oh and I think the Italians are really great in making fantastic food. Even the most simple pasta with some sort of tomatoe sauce tasted delicious and the prices for a pizza were incredibly low but incredibly tasty. Even in Venice we only paid 7 € for a good one.
To summarize I can say that the majority of Northern Italian people in post carnival times are extremely relaxed, very communicative (people are actually talking to each other here instead of ipadding opposite of each other in the restaurant), very eager to help if lost or in need of a WC for example. They also appear - to put it the Dutch way - very "gezellig". What I mean to say is that socializing seems to be a big part of Italian life. They like to meet each other in one of those numerous cafe bars to have an machiato or a cappuccino, and of course a chat with the one standing next to them - no matter if known or unnown. What I also noticed is the amount of bookstores in Treviso. Reading also seems an important aspect of life here; people even walk with their newspapers in their hand (but walk slowly not like in London where the tempo usually remains unchanged bc one is one the way to catch the next tube train). Walking slowly. Next point. The tempo ist on a normal level, everyone takes their time, I cannot feel the stress here. On top of it the scenery is overwhelming. Located close to the sea (not sure but I believe it is the Adrian sea) and the Dolormite Panaroma very close it is just stunning to see it. The scenery, the architecture, the colours (like in an aquarel painting) - everything appears beautiful, and it is a pity that we stayed here basically for business and the same also requires us to leave this place tonight already...
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