England is melting and so am I.
My body can't tolerate these high temperatures, as it keeps forgetting that I come from sunny Italy.
Expat Italians often complain about the weather here, so at least I hope those people will take this as a chance to shut their mouths and finally enjoy the summer.
Complaining might be part of the human nature, but it's a bigger part of the Italian nature. I can't say I'm guilty free here. I don't really like complaining too much, but you know, in Italy it's often a way to start a conversation!
I think I noticed the difference much more since I started living in London.
To make you an example, thanks to a friend I ended up on this online magazine for fans of the Italian culture and language today. It's always intriguing to see how we are perceived by other cultures, so I decided to navigate around a bit... and when I found the language lessons I couldn't be more excited!
Being a languages fan (I wish I could speak them all... if only I had a babelfish in my ear!) and having tried to study a few of them, I'm sort of acquainted with language books. I never found many books for foreigner italian students though, so when I have the chance to read dialogues and exercises for those books I do, because believe me, they sound quite funny -- and they make you realize how ridiculous you sounded all these years while doing the same on your own foreign language books.
This language article talks about how to talk about the weather in Italian.
I quote the article: "When we learn the basic Italian weather expressions, [...] we can discuss the weather with Italians". You see, technically the sentence is (obviously) correct. It's the approach to the language that's wrong.
In Italy you don't discuss about the weather, you complain about it. The weather is never lovely, and when it is, well it was about time because it rained/was too cold/too hot/too mild all this time, damn it!
I can't say these complaints are totally unmotivated. I don't know about other parts of Italy, but Rome can't cope with any extreme weather, and by extreme I mean everything that's not "basic sunny". When it rains it's a disaster (impossible traffic if you go by car or by bus, delayed or cancelled trains... I've seen it all), let alone those rare times it snow (imagine a post-apocalyptic scenario, but with kids throwing snowballs at you. Yes, a double nightmare).
But it's also true these people complain about basically anything: food, the price of everything, travelling, the air they breathe... nothing's like home. Especially when they meet other Italians outside Italy.
"Wasn't the breakfast awful?" is a great way to bond over your toasts at the morning buffet if you're in a hotel, and "Is the bus ever going to come? I pay taxes!" is perfect for the bus stop.
If you're old enough, you can also add the classic "Ah, when I was young, these things worked better!". You know it's now true, but blaming youngsters for all that's wrong nowadays always feel good.
I hope I got away from Italy just in time not to be permanently affected by this syndrome, but I guess we'll know only in a few years time. If you ever meet me at the bus stop, complaining about youngsters and the weather, please, punch me in the face.
No comments:
Post a Comment