As I mentioned last week, my wife and
I were blessed recently to be able to travel to Italy for our daughter’s
wedding. Many things in Italy are very different than here in America. It was
almost like being in a foreign county. Um, wait, forget that last comment.
I made a list of practices I observed
in Europe that we should adopt here in the U.S. First, we should bite the
bullet and finally switch over to the metric system. We are just about the last
holdouts in the world who insist on sticking to a system of measurement based
on the King of England’s foot size and other random oddities. It’s definitely
time for something a bit more scientific and rational.
Next, we should adopt the 24-hour
military method for telling time. Yes, I realize phrases like “fifteen o’clock”
and “seventeen hundred hours” will take some getting used to, but at least the
24-hour system prevents people from doing what I did recently. I was searching
for an airline flight online, and I wanted to depart late morning and arrive
early evening. I saw a flight that departed at 10:30, connected through
Baltimore, and then arrived at 7:15. Perfect. So I booked the flight, and only
then did I see a little “plus 1 day” note in small print. It turns out I
selected a trip that departed at 10:30 PM, gave me the joyous opportunity to sleep
on the floor in the Baltimore airport (again!), and then arrive at my final
destination at 7:15 the next morning. So let’s dump the AM and PM stuff, and go
with the 22:30 method.
Another custom we should have here is
the “man purse.” Yeah, I know it’s acceptable for men to have backpacks or
briefcases or computer bags. But when we went sightseeing in Italy I didn’t
need something that large. I just needed something the size of my wife’s purse
with a strap, which I could throw over my shoulder. But of course I’m an
American, and carrying a purse would make me a sissy, so instead I shoved
everything I needed into my pants pockets, which did two things: it made me
quite uncomfortable whenever I took a step, and it made me look like a
shoplifter. All the European men who were sightseeing had small, comfortable
shoulder bags, and the way their cute girlfriends were embracing them made it
clear the purses did not negatively impact their masculinity in any way.
Another Italian custom we should adopt
is the seven-course meal — for unimportant occasions — and the twelve-course
meal for important occasions, for example, when someone says, “Hey, I feel
hungry.” In my American experience, when we have pasta, that’s the meal. Maybe
there’s some salad and/or bread, but the pasta is the main course. In Italy, they
serve pasta to give you something to do while you’re thinking of what you want
for dinner. The pasta, along with courses of soup and fish and maybe another
type of pasta are just the warm-up bands. The star attraction is not going to
take the stage for another hour or two. And in restaurants in Italy, they don’t
hustle you out as soon as possible so they can seat new customers at that
table. When you sit down to dinner, you can stay all night.
Some additional things I liked about Italy:
traffic rotaries instead of four-way stops, which really keep things moving;
mid-day siestas; using “f” instead of “ph” to spell words like telefono
(telephone) and farmacia (pharmacy); and small cars that are easy to park.
But there are some things about Italy
we definitely should NOT adopt over here. I’ll discuss those items next week.
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