Not One Single Thief In Italy This Trip and Other Observations

Dear Blog,

(This is a good blog entry so if you're looking for one, read this one.)

Ok, I know we're in the north of Italy, and for all intents and purposes it's a different country from the south, and for the sake of their children, posterity, and the rest of the European Union, the north should declare it's independence from the other half of the country, rather than dragging it around like a useless East Germany, and pray nightly that it becomes the next Atlantis, and Vesuvius will lose its top and toss the whole boot into the sea. But, even though it's the north, the last time we were here, even in Venice and Florence, every other person we met was trying to steal from us. Over charging at registers, counting out bills incorrectly, hiding charges until it was too late to object, serving reheated food, trying to sell refilled water bottles, lying about products, or even stealing a watch from one of our fellow travellers and running away on a scooter. The travel guides new nothing about Italian history, and I had to stuff my ears with cotton so that my obsessive compulsive disorder wouldn't kick in and make me correct them every time they spoke. I would have been hoarse by the end of the day if I had to. I mean, the number of idiotic things they said was dumbfounding. I'd think that statistically they'd get something right given that many opportunities, but their natural inclination to lie must have taken over so that when presented with an opportunity to tell the truth, they didn't. That's the only way it was possible. It's just statistically impossible to be that wrong all the time.

Anyway, on this trip, we have not had a single person do anything except treat us with respect, care and consideration. No bill has had one error. No overcharges. No hidden fees. And they're apologetic about any mistake they make. I don't know if it's just the difference between Romans and Milanese, or the side effect of being close to the Swiss border, or that we're older, or what the matter is. Personally, I think it's largely the impact of the Euro and the EU, as well as the maturation of two generations who are hooked on Mcdonalds, movies and video games. Every person you talk to can muster up pidgin English, and unlike the french, they simply consider it effective to speak it, rather than wait around for you to stumble through guttural Traveler's Italian.

I mean, all the signs, and all the advertising (which is plentiful) are in English. there are English bookstores both here and in Zurich. It's just odd, and you don't feel like you're in a foreign land. I feel more alien in the international district in Seattle, or the Indian food stores in Redmond. Not that it's bad. I am not an anti-American or anything (although, the average American is far more ignorant than the average European, at least by my experience) but it's shocking how similar globalization has made us. I think the first time I noticed it was in Paris, but you no longer feel like your exploring when you go to Europe. (Its only been three years since we've been here because of the baby, but the rate of change is fascinating.)

The countryside is absolutely stunning. Nor orderly and neat like the Swiss or Germans. Certainly not well maintained or cared for (everything is someone else's problem and besides, who can put the extra effort into a job in the heat, and with all the pretty girls walking by, and the smell of food, and pretty countryside to look at, I mean, why would I spend an extra ten percent of my effort on such a thing, when I have all these options?)

Allora tells me Pliny the Younger was born here. It must have been even more beautiful in Roman times. (If you could afford to be a Pliny instead of a slave that is.)

Everything is closed because everyone is on vacation. I mean, all the stores are closed, with metal gates, and even the homes, (most of them qualify as villa's,) have shuttered windows. Everyone is on vacation. Everyone. If it weren't for some of the more popular restaurants and hotels, the place would look like Charlton Heston would show up for an Omega Man II. (Old sci fi reference for those of you less cultured.)

While I like English and Germans the best of any people, the people here have been wonderful, kind and honest. And given that after my last trip I swore I would never set foot here again (well, except in Sorrento, or maybe one of the hill towns, or maybe Venice - I wasn't really serious) I've been thrilled with the experience.

My only recommendation is for the Italian government to import a few thousand old British ladies in their wool dresses to run the work crews that maintain everything. Because Italians build roads and bridges like madmen in the first place, then they don't maintain anything. I think it's cultural thing hung over from making stuff from stone for two and a half millenia. I mean, you don't have to maintain stone, but you do steel and concrete. Everything here is like an American bridge from the 1970's: one step from falling apart, with WW2 era electrical wiring hanging out of rusted doorways. I mean, in England, every historic site has a dozen grey haired matrons with little black bottles of enamel, touching up everything at every moment. And if you ask them who the Third Earl was, they know and can tell you a story about him.

One thing that surprises me still is how well mannered are the drivers on the road. I think this partly has to do with the fact that they drive less. I notice now that I live farther out of town, I am a more aggressive driver than I used to be. Also, since you're always negotiating small curves and such, you don't get that aggravating road hypnosis of boredom you do on the long straight highways.

Another thing that's interesting is that the people who drive fast, almost always seem to drive Audis. I have to do some research on this, and I know they're fairly fast cars, but while the little blue ford Fiesta might pass you, nine out of ten of the cars that do are Audis or the odd Mercedes. There must be something interesting in their marketing data if we got a chance to look at it.

The bookstores are far better than in the US. I found half a dozen books to read here. This is important because i don't feel like I've had a vacation unless I've eviscerated some idiotic author, and in doing so purged my psyche, like a runner who has finally healed enough to make it two miles without getting another injury. My intended victim is the head of one of the College's at Oxford who has written a foolhardy and pompous book on Identity and Violence. He is my first victim.

One thing I notice is that books on socialism are more popular in the US than they are here in Europe, at least, on the store shelves. Most university bookstores are unabashedly communist. Most university classes are steeped in socialism. The humanities are the most left wing of all. But it's odd to me in these places that have more of it, how much of the stores focus on business books. Hopefully it's a sign of ongoing prosperity.

If you go into a typical Barnes and Noble or Borders, half the store is built to support the Oprah book club or the newest Harry Potter release. ( I should start another rant on what Oprah's philosophy really is, and it's cancerous, but I would have to defend it and don't have the time at the moment.) I mean, I guess there is a place for that kind of thing, but if you go to a bookstore in Milan or Zurich (or Paris or London for that matter) and look in the philosophy, history, or science sections, there will be an intelligent selection of books that represent good thinking in viewpoints. In the US, there is either an unintelligent selection that myopically represents a viewpoint, one that creates an artificial dichotomy for two viewpoints, an massive inventory that tries to represent all viewpoints equally (thereby absolving them of editorialism), but certainly no well considered inventory representing the best of some set of those worlds.

My cut on this is that we have too many marketers. These marketers are trying to be cunning. Education in the US focuses too much on being cunning and not enough on being wise. Cunning is a fools way of avoiding the work of being wise. And wisdom is both hard to accomplish and takes a long time. Marketers who try to be cunning are simply trying to sell products that they shouldn't be. Unfortunately their demographic representing total market of fools in the US is sufficiently large enough to carry onward. It must be like soccer fans in Europe. Consumerism is our Soccer. Consumers are the US's version of idiots. It's exasperating. In other words, we don't educate our people very well and they succeed because of confidence and spending rather than because of innovation.

The US used to house the great universities, great capitalists and risk takers. Now we're the leading economy largely because the average person is profoundly ignorant, and can afford to be so simply because by spending all his or her time in the act of consuming, he's decreasing prices enough to keep people in other countries working around the clock to meet production demands. I mean, there are Ponzi schemes and Ponzi Schemes, but this one is the mother of all Ponzi's, and when the Hayekian Knowledge Bill Collector shows up, the auditors are going to have a hard time figuring out who's going to jail. Because we'll have to wall in the entire continent, even though most of the people would run out in their hiking gear, prada accessories, and leveraged automobiles crying their innocence, while their undisciplined, day-care-raised children, steeped in the religion of consumerism and socialism, drag video games, out of bookless rooms, to the sound of exercise videos promising an end to obesity, with T shirts stained in multi-colored corn-syrup flavors, and with soccer, kung-fu, and Camp-Tillamuck appointments notices flapping in their nanny's hands. The worst part of this is the destruction of the boys, who, in an effort to not offend anyone, stand open eyed and expressionless hoping they didn't offend anyone as they tripped over the cord to their electric ATV's. And they stand there, whimpering and speechless as the iron gates close and the Ponzi-Court nails the sentence to the doors of the prison. I only hope those boys can find a few copies of The Lord Of The Flies, because they're going to read it as a personal biography, or an instruction manual, or both.

That's a long way of saying that I like the social order here in Europe better, but I like our economic freedom better at home. Each man pays for his own sins. Both the US and Europe will pay for different ones. I am not sure that theirs will be so severe.

Cheers

Curt