It’s been now more
than two years I left Italy and since I always feel like missing something in
my life.
When French
people listen to me talking about Italy, either they’re pissed off or they tell
me to go back. It’s like if there was something magical about Italy that you
could not explain until you lived there. And when I see my foreigners friends
talking about Italy on facebook, I believe I was not the only one to feel love
at first sight with this country…
As I always try to
understand if I’m completely wrong when people disagree with me, I started to
think about what was making Italy for me different than anything else, was I
totally biased ?
I’ve been
thinking about it the couples of times I went back to Milan and I came to the
conclusion that my life in Milan was in symbiosis with values I cherish and I
don’t find easily where I live today. It gets summarize in 3 words: tolerance,
generosity, carpe diem.
Let me
elaborate…
When I left
Milan for Paris, I lived a big cultural shock, people were running all the
time, wearing black, never smiling in the metro, judging people on the type of
job you do or exhibit you saw, calculating every word that would come out of their
mouth: an amazing example of “robots” living for what they have to look like
and forgetting to live simply. Ok maybe, I was not working in the right
environment since I was in the luxury field but I was a RSVP active member when
I was in Milan and I never got such feelings…
TOLERANCE : I
will speak only for Milan where I lived, but in Milan, you can enter in a
Moschino shop wearing a backpack, casual clothes and the people will be
nice to you. You can RSVP to an event wearing snickers and you will meet
hipsters hanging out with working girls, no one pays attention to what you wear or
should I say everyone check what you wear but they won’t let you feel you ‘re a
piece of shit because you made a taste mistake. This is probably linked to the
fact they say “they’re Italian, they were born with good taste”, so as long as
you wear something it’s potentially thought ahahaha. I’ve always been happy to
live in a city representing for me perfectly the post modernism: the morning I
could wear soccer short with flip flops, high heels the evening and I always feel well.
GENEROSITY: when
I invite some friends at home, for me it s a pleasure to treat them well and
make sure they feel well at home and happy. I will spend some time thinking
what I could cook or ensure the table set is pretty and made properly. But when
I do that, most of the time, I feel different and, like if I was doing too
much. French people don’t always understand the principle of having pleasure
treating people well and making things turn nice. It’s not superficial to treat
your eyes well when you have a look at a dinner table.
Well, each time
I go to Italy and I go to my friends house ( OK maybe my friends are an
exception J), well they make me feel special and am really happy to see that
what seems natural for me looks natural for them too. This is a way of
transforming a day to day event in something different and grateful. They put
love in what they do and I do think I’m like them.
Generosity as
well cause people are warm and friendly, last time I went to Milan I told
myself, this is incredible how I have the feeling to exist in Italy compared to
France. People will talk to you in a bar, in a restaurant, at the supermarket,
in the streets, your friends will “touch” you, you don’t feel transparent. You
can be single and living alone but you will never feel like “abandoned” in
Italy. They ‘re less individualist. And what is amazing, I believe that they’re
genuine. I remember being a teenager, feeling special in more anglosaxon
environment where people were nice to you, but as soon as you left, it was like
you never existed, it was present “genuinity” and then you were gone with all
the good they could give you, I was quite shocked you can give so much and then
go to something else, I thought it was pretending. Well with Italy I don’t have
this feeling, I do believe they like people, they re warm.
Being a woman in
Italy has been really nice. French guys always say Italian “pretend” so you re
completely into them, well I don’t care cause I find them less selfish and
proud of themselves than some French that will leave you in a middle of a
strike not to get trouble with their car… Italians are gentlemen and even if at
the beginning it looks weird for an independent French girl, well if they want
to carry my luggage or my bike, I’m grateful towards them and I try to enjoy
without feeling guilty, cause I know I would do the same for someone else.
Now back in France,
I m always looking for the bar where the bartender will talk to his customers or
the restaurant where the person will be nice. I crave for those exchanges, in
an environment where if a people talks to you, either you think he s a weirdo,
he want to sleep with you or steal your purse… But I realized it was not only a
French attitude last time I went to London. I was shocked by the non welcoming
sense of some shops or bar or taxis or hotels.
If people
sometimes could stop pretending they’re important, life is hard, and everyone
wants to piss you off, they could see life can be much easier when you start
with a smile.
CARPE DIEM: I
kept the best for the end. In France, our favourite sport/hobby (thanks to our
education) is to complain and say we will never be happy, focusing on all the
things that go wrong. We never live in the present, or at least most of the
people I know, but leave in a near future that could be finally nicer. So going
for some drinks in 2 means reinventing the world.
Well, I have to
tell you something, in Italy, the economic crisis sucks as well, people have
less money, they re 30 and have still to live either with parents or flat mates
or even sometimes roommates, but they don’t forget to live!!! They don’t forget
to enjoy life. I m not saying that they re happy dumb and never have their
moments, we all do as long as you started an education teaching you to always
enhance things and get better, but at least they know how to “godersela”, I
remember Julia Roberts in Eat Pray Love experimenting this symptom. It’s not a
symptom, it’s a disease we should all get because honestly, life is much better
when you get strike by such syndrome. People live, express their feeling, are
in the spontaneity, they don’t analyze the effect of all they re going to say,
it s not because you get emotional or say something stupid once, that you’ll
get judged as someone lacking responsibility and a bit dumb. And I think they
understood everything, living with a representative mask on the face is tiring
but boring as well. Life is complicated enough to make it even more boring,
showing emotions makes you live.
I guess this is
why I love so much Italy, and if people think Italians are always making too
much and exaggerating, well I think French are making to much in overanalyzing
the perfect behavior to get credibility, they look proud of themselves and
selfish. For them giving to other means either a strategy to get something or a
constraint, what a bad vision…
P.S. Apologize
for the stereotypes, but I ‘missing this damn country and maybe I was wandering
in a much more creative world than I do today !
